[Vanilla] Nitrogen - small map to play on your lunch break (now on idgames)

[Jacek Nowak (jacnowak)]

IWAD & MAP:   Doom2 MAP01
Format:       100% vanilla (no artificial flavors)
Ports tested: Chocorenderlimits, Crispy Doom, Eternity Engine, GZDoom
Difficulty:   All implemented, UV recommended for most players

Map can now be downloaded from idgames:

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/m-o/nitrogen

 

Alternative download link:
https://jaceknowak.net/storage/doom/nitrogen.wad

 

It's a vanilla map so of course no jumping etc.

 

Screenshots:

 

 

The map is based on my entry to Abyssal Speedmapping Session 69 but it has been expanded, polished and it's not a speedmap anymore. It's a very classic map in terms of gameplay. It's something I wanted to do for a change to try to overcome the mapper's block I got when working on a large UDMF map.

 

As always, feedback is welcome and playthrough demos and/or videos are VERY appreciated!

 

Credits:

Music: "On a Sea of Lava" by Myrgharok from Ultimate MIDI Pack
Textures: CC4-tex by various authors
Special thanks to Obsidian and team for organizing ASS69 as without it I wouldn't be motivated to make this map :)

 

 

 

Edited September 25, 2022 by jacnowak : added idgames link

[Degree23]

Really enjoyable until the darkened walkway above the lava where you have placed a Revenant that can fire homing rockets on the far side of the room, but where he can still fire homing rockets at you. I never find that enjoyable, and after dying there twice, I didn't want to try a third time.

[Biodegradable]

Great little map, Jac! I had a ball with it. Solid, kinetic and a lot of fun.

 

 

Edited September 19, 2022 by Biodegradable

[Lucius Wooding]

Pretty fun map overall, I played on UV. You described it as classic gameplay, and I agree. Difficulty is pretty moderate and most of it is good comfy demon blasting with a couple high spots thrown in.

 

Aesthetics and lighting were both pretty well done. It's not a super high detail map since it's vanilla but it used the textures pretty well and had some nice decoration in places.

 

The secrets were decent, especially the first one. I also liked the interconnectedness of certain areas.

Spoiler

I do think the megasphere secret more or less requires the radsuit, I think it'd be more fair if you didn't have to cover so much ground over the lava once you find the initial passageway. Particularly with the 20% damaging floor and the longish hallway on the inside. Luckily it's not needed too badly. Personally I think it's way too risky for a low health player to think about exploring there, so even though a megasphere is a good reward it would only be found by a player who probably won't need it.

 

The earlier areas were the most fun. The start was a little bit of a hitscan hell but pretty quick to get through. The room layouts in the first half had good bones for tactical combat which is a huge plus. That skill is hard to quantify but if a mapper lacks it then all their stuff will tend to play like shit.

Spoiler

I really liked the archvile ambush at the end in the room with the rocket launcher. The initial fight was fairly well done with the revenants being the first real resistance in the map. But using archviles was a nasty surprise and the arena is very well suited to them. That fight is probably my favorite.

 

I think the main lava room has a few problems however:

Spoiler

-The lava room is just too damn big in scale, both height and span. As a result the monster projectiles have the tendency to outreach your weapons. Most of the parts of the room could be scaled down a fair bit and still be effective, IMO. You'd then have a much better use of auto aim on distant monsters. 

 

-The verticality of the room is minimally used for how big and tall it is, the majority of the monsters are on 2 levels, and there isn't really any cover in most of it. It also takes a long time to wait for projectiles to pass since they're in midair such a long time.

 

-Although the flying enemies can cross the room easily, they are much more of a nuisance than a threat. The mancs, arachs, revenant, and archvile on the other hand can easily murder you if you're not careful. Compared to the first encounter, which had lots of cover and nothing to distract you from the group of fliers, jumping down at the end of the walkway is a lot more dangerous.

 

-The lava room kind of forces you to camp and wait for the flying enemies since they’re so annoying to leave alive and the walkways are tight, which takes a good amount of time. There is a ton of ammo, but the cacodemons in particular are annoying to kill without a hitscan weapon. So even though you get cells and rockets, it’s still somewhat tedious to kill them. Over long distances with no obstacles, using rockets will just scatter them (often making you wait for them to bump the nearest wall a mile away for a follow up shot) and the SSG is not going to be efficient at range so the chaingun is the de facto choice. The rest of the map is much more fast paced and a couple of the encounters here, as well as the overall terrain bogs down the pace of the map for a bit.

 

I'd say the rockets and cells were more than generous and bordering on excessive. Not that I'm complaining, since there are a good amount of heavier demons in the second half.

 

Also it was annoyingly dark on the walkways but it wasn't a huge deal. It just kind of forces you to be a bit careful.

 

This is a nitpick, but the iron pillars in the room with the rocket launcher don't wrap their textures perfectly. I recommend either scaling the geometry a bit to fit more nicely, or manually nudging/splitting the affected sides. 

 

Also:

Spoiler

lol, ASS69

 

[Clippy]

Bio showed me this one. At the start of the video my cats knocked down a big Costco package of kleenexes down the stairs. Bio had to leave. And I made some silly mistakes while playing haha. I had fun tho nice spicy little nap Good Times 

 

 

 

[Sito1000]

Solid map, it's got some parts I really like and some parts I don't. Primarily, I think the beginning and end are the strongest, but the middle could use some work. I'm basically gonna spoil the whole thing here so be warned if you haven't played it yet.

Spoiler

I love the nonlinearity in the first few rooms, it's a little hitscan heavy like some other people said, but I've been playing some Doom 1 nightmare lately so I'm used to that, and it never felt unreasonable. First chunk feels a little like an amped up Knee-Deep in the Dead. The amount of hitscan also made me consider my routing more to preserve health, which emphasized the nonlinearity, which is great. 

 

The rocket launcher room is solid, again I like the option to choose how to confront the imps, and it's an interesting arena to fight revenants in.

 

The strobe lava room is the map's lowest point in my opinion. Having to try to make out enemies for that long with the strobing effect gives me a headache, waiting for the cacodemons placed low in the lava around the bridge to get up to where you can really shoot them is a pain, and while I wanted to go for the megasphere secret early on, the length of the damaging floor combined with the basically unavoidable archvile that wakes up when you step on the mancubus platform meant I couldn't. That might be intentional, because after killing that archvile and picking up the soul sphere I was able to make it, in which case I respect that, but I'm not totally sure it is. Dealing with the swarm of cacos when the primary weapon I have ammo for is the rocket launcher is also a drag. 

 

The health balance is generally all over the place, it showers you in it at some parts and leaves you starving for even a stimpak in others.

 

After the archvile soul sphere room I think the map gets a lot stronger through, I like the hell noble ambush room, the way you end up walking out onto the blue key platform from behind instead of having to run back to get it after it lowers like I was expecting was really cool, and the arachnotron was placed in an interesting way. The next section is cool too, the revenant cage is cool looking, and I'm a huge sucker for things like the drop back near the beginning after you get the yellow key, almost feels Dark Souls 1-y with the way it connects two places you wouldn't have thought were anywhere near each other. 

 

The double archvile fight is a strong closer, and while the archvile and baron by the exit felt a little redundant, I didn't mind having something to dump my leftover cells into.

Overall, it's got a lot of strong ideas, I just think it could use a little more polish. I'm excited to see what this mapper does next.

[Dusty_Rhodes]

Looking forward to playing this, screenshots look nice. Also excited for the compiled ASS69 which I was lucky enough to make one map for. Congrats on the level Jac!

[galileo31dos01]

Solid stuff, thanks for sharing!

 

FDA recorded in crispy-doom: nitrogen_FDAbygal.zip

[Bobby :D]

Decent level, made for a great background for a horrible, horrible chat as usual in the Squonker Discord. As far as the level goes, its a mono-textured romp that I feel has some interesting ideas but has a lot of fat and plainness for the better part of the 7 minute playtime I had. In terms of what I liked, the initial layout and encounters within (at the beginning and exit) are my favorite parts, they use the layout in an engaging & fun way that feels good to move around and prioritizes good positioning.

 

The biggest gripes I have with the map are the bloated precarious segments that drag and pull on longer than I feel is necessary, and the encounter around the tight corridors in this segment feel very frontal and lack urgency and angularity. A big part is how the thing placing encourages a more reserved play, with a good amount of reserves and a lot of mid tier enemies on the paths. When it comes to dealing with this sort of thing, I like to figure out the best way to make the player want to push forward through the linear path. Backdoor encouragement works well, but also expanding the ideas present into something more open and approachable reduces the tightness of the chokes, encouraging player interaction. Constriction also works, but is a lot tougher to get right. I feel like a size down is also appropriate, as well as cutting some of the downtime to smooth out the experience.

 

Visuals for this map are a tad bit lacking. The use of flat ceilings with lights blinking across makes apparent the lack of vertical space. Doing caverns, I like to play with the ceiling alot, and really highlight the contrast between the enclosed and the open skylights, and the variety of rocks and natural textures in a shapely, geological way. Maybe experiment with that? Maybe use a black flat to hide the aggressive blinking ceiling. Also, the use of minimal texture can be supplemented with a few basic philosophies. Stuff like corner pillars, inserts, architecture, and other low resource techniques can fill up the mundane monotexturing without bloating the visuals and make the more focused highlights really pop out. A secondary color can help delegate some of these responsibilities.

 

Either way, a valiant effort I imagine making this, and I appreciate it. I can't wait to see what else comes from you, there's alot of potential.

 

 

[Dusty_Rhodes]

Awesome map! Love the detailed textures you used, it really made it pop. The layout was also clever, the room in the opening had three methods of approach and that really is a great thing for replay ability. The lava section was unique and fun and I had a great time!

[Jacek Nowak (jacnowak)]

Thanks everyone for all the feedback, videos and demos!

Glad most people liked the map :)

 

@Degree23 sorry you didn't enjoy the lava cave. The purpose of the revenant was to encourage the player to move forward but I can see it's not everyone's cup of tea. Thanks for downloading the map. If you wanna give it another chance, play on HNTR - it's not very different from UV in terms of monster count but it softens trickier moments and that particular revenant is removed at that skill level.

 

@Biodegradable glad you had fun, looking forward to seeing your video, they are always fun to watch :)

 

@Lucius Wooding thanks for detailed feedback, that's really helpful and it will help make my future maps better

Spoiler

there IS a radsuit in the level (in a secret area), the idea was that the player will explore the lava after getting that radsuit

regarding ammo - I wanted to lean on a more generous side because wasn't sure how stuff plays out with the arch-viles, but I probably exaggerated a bit

 

@Clippy thanks for the video, really enjoyable to watch! It was hillarious how you survived at 2% health - I was pretty sure you would die :D The moment when you got lost - hah, happens to me as well sometimes :) Glad that you found the way and maxed the map in the end :)

 

@Sito1000 thanks for detailed feedback, I don't plan on doing changes to the map but feedback is very useful for my future maps as I can see what people like and what they don't

 

@galileo31dos01 thanks for the demo, fun to watch, you have really good skill! looks like the map was too easy for you maybe but glad you had fun!

 

@Bobby "J thanks for detailed feedback. Regarding visuals - strobing effect in the main cave eats up a lot of visplanes (chocorenderlimits showed max 120 in one place in the main room) so I couldn't add even one sector as I wanted to keep it vanilla compatible.

 

@Dusty_Rhodes thanks for the feedback, glad you had great time!

[Bobby :D]

4 hours ago, jacnowak said:

 

@Bobby "J thanks for detailed feedback. Regarding visuals - strobing effect in the main cave eats up a lot of visplanes (chocorenderlimits showed max 120 in oneplace in the main room) so I couldn't add even one sector as I wanted to keep it vanilla compatible.

 

I noticed this when I booted it up in the editor myself. I notice that there are 2 issues that probably contribute to this

 

1. The use of large blinking lights over a long LOS.

 

2. The lack of breakup in open spaces.

 

Finding ways to integrate economical solutions to this I can come up with at the moment follows:

 

- Integrate LOS blocking areas into the boundaries of the hot zones

 

- Limit the usage of blinkers, only reserving it for maybe just the platforms or lava zones.

 

These solutions are the best for the effort spent but to make it look good you're gonna need to put some work in to make the minimal visuals still retain some impact. I try to only focus intense lighting on smaller zones of interest for that reason, so that it pops out on a barer landscape. The rooms overwhelming size and openness can also be modulated to something more condensed and focused to limit the already present gameplay bumps and to allow you more room for your limits.

 

 

[Alfwin]

 

[Jacek Nowak (jacnowak)]

Map is now on idgames.

I made two extremely minor visual adjustments (one of them fixes a visual glitch in vanilla found by @Alfwin in video above) and I now consider that version as final.

[jmac]

I recorded my blind playthrough of this. Usually I have some nitpicks to bring up, even with maps that I thoroughly enjoy, but nothing really comes to mind this time. Great work. I enjoyed it from beginning to end. Difficulty was pretty mild (even though I got myself killed once), and the progression was very straight-foreward, leading to 10 minutes of good, stress-free fun. Sometimes I need maps like that. I'll have to check out your other maps, if you have any yet.

 

Played on UV using DSDA. I missed a few monsters and secrets, so I'll probably come back to this map at some point. I also accidentally cut my video a couple seconds short. Oops.

 

 

[Jacek Nowak (jacnowak)]

3 hours ago, jmac said:

I recorded my blind playthrough of this. Usually I have some nitpicks to bring up, even with maps that I thoroughly enjoy, but nothing really comes to mind this time. Great work. I enjoyed it from beginning to end. Difficulty was pretty mild (even though I got myself killed once), and the progression was very straight-foreward, leading to 10 minutes of good, stress-free fun. Sometimes I need maps like that. I'll have to check out your other maps, if you have any yet.

 

Thanks a lot for the video and for this very positive feedback! Glad you enjoyed the map.
 

If you enjoyed Nitrogen you might also like Hydrogen, it's probably closest in gameplay even though longer:

 

People said good things about Radium too, if you don't mind playing in Eternity or GZDoom (in GZDoom you need to play with hardware renderer as portals don't render correctly with software):

 

If you want to check out more of my maps you can do a search for my name on idgames:

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames//index.php?search=1&field=author&word=jacek+nowak&sort=time&order=desc&page=1

Bear in mind that my maps from 2010-2013 are pretty crap though ("Arsenic" and "Mine filled with methane" are least crap out of those but still far from my current maps quality-wise).