Xolotl - GZDoom Single Map

[Gaia74]

 

When Xolotl was sacrificed, the legends say that he left 3 skulls, 3 skulls with God Essence, one of each color, topaz, sapphire, and ruby, and we know that they are in this ancient aztec forest

 

Xolotl is a large single player map, and also my try of do a map as fast as I can, normally I don't like to map much, I've always been on the modding side, but I wanted to try to do something to distract myself from things happening and after 7 days (almost 8) where I didn't wanted to stop, here is it :')

 

I hope you enjoy it and you like my little map attempt, it contains some new enemies, but it is compatible with Gameplay mods, and I tested it with GZDoom 4.8.0 and also with Zandronum 3.1 :')

 

Information

Spoiler

===========================================================================
Archive Maintainer      :
Update to               :
Advanced engine needed  : GZDoom 1.8.6.x or higher
Primary purpose         : Single player
===========================================================================
Title                   : Xolotl
Filename                : Xolotl v1.0.pk3
Release date            : 1 October 2022
Author                  : Gaia74
Email Address           : [redacted]
Other Files By Author   : :')
Misc. Author Info       :

-Highly recommended to play it with hardware rendering otherwise some things may not look good

-Have fun!

* What is included *

New levels              : 1
Sounds                  : Yes
Music                   : Yes
Graphics                : Yes
Dehacked/BEX Patch      : No
Demos                   : No
Other                   : Brightmaps and a lot of Code :)
Other files required    : None

* Play Information *

Game                    : Doom2
Map #                   : MAP01
Single Player           : Designed for
Cooperative 2-4 Player  : No
Deathmatch 2-4 Player   : No
Difficulty Settings: No
Jumping/Freelook: It is not necessary, but it also does not affect if you use it :p

* Construction *

Base                    : None
Build Time              : About 60 Hours in 1 Week
Editor(s) used          : Slade 3, Ultimate Doom Builder, Photoshop
Known Bugs              : None known :')

May Not Run With        : Any port that does not support Decorate and ACS
Tested With             : GZDoom 4.80 and Zandronum 3.1

 

Credits:

Spoiler

if I am missing something, please tell me so I can fix the credits!

 

Also if you did something and I use it here and you would not like to see your work here, please notify me and I will make the changes, an apology in advance :')

 

//////////////////////////// Music ///////////////////////////////////////

 

- Signs of Past  - Illusion of Gaia: Remaster By 0rangaStang

- Ryoshima Coast - Okami: Remaster By Fenix Ark Angelus

- Blinded by the light - Final Fantasy 13

- Moonlight Glade - Ghouls vs humans P.D: I really tried to find the author, but I was unable to find, if u know, please let me know!

- Where the Wind Doesn't Reach - Illusion of Gaia: Remaster By Jorge Fuentes

- Secret of the Forest - Chrono Trigger: Cover by DCapoVGM

- Storm - Waterflame

 

In the map you can see who made the music too! :)

 

//////////////////////////// Acs ///////////////////////////////////////

 

- I thank Enjay for the code of the health bar :)

 

//////////////////////////// Guardians ///////////////////////////////////////

All the code, new attacks and effects are made by me Gaia74 :) but the original monsters:

Pyro Demon -

Decorate: Maelstrom
GLDEFs: Dreadopp, Sandypaper (Brightmaps)
Sounds: Id Software, Monolith Games
Sprites: Id Software
Sprite Edit: Eriance, Maelstrom
Idea Base: Archon of Hell by Eriance 

Tletletl Stuff -

Code: Eriance, Blue Shadow, MagicWazard, Ghastly Dragon (ZScript conversion)
GLDefs: Eriance, Dreadopp, Ghastly Dragon, Keksdose, MagicWazard
Sounds: Eriance
Sprites: Eriance

Final: 

Sprites: Sun Mad Cat

//////////////////////////// Trees ///////////////////////////////////////

- Shadow Warrior

//////////////////////////// SFX ///////////////////////////////////////

https://freesound.org/people/newlocknew/sounds/629183/ - WaterFall

//////////////////////////// ROCKS ///////////////////////////////////////

Information:
Name: Rocks
Connection: None
Palette: Doom
Summon: RockGrey, RockBrown, RockTan, RockBlack
Ambient Sound: no
De-/Activatable: no
Destroyable: no
Special Effects: random orientation and sprite 
Brightmaps: no
Actor modification: No
ACS: no

Credits:
Submitted: Captain Toenail
Decorate: Captain Toenail
Sprites: Captain Toenail

///////////////////////////////// Roof Light ////////////////////////////////

Submitted: Gez
Decorate: Gez
GLDefs: Gez
Sprites: Id Software, Raven Software
Sprite Edit: Captain Red

///////////////////////////////// Crystals ////////////////////////////////

Credits:
Code: Captain Toenail
GLDefs: Captain Toenail
Sprites: Captain Toenail

 

 

Screenshots:

Spoiler

 

Download: 

Spoiler

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nJz4pixaX672_THjOFNKRDUZYN8rkHuU/view?usp=sharing

 

[ScrappyMcDoogerton]

Some interesting things going on in this one, but it's bogged down by a few common GZDoom mapping issues:

 

Extreme texture repetition due the massive size of the environments and sparse detailing.

 

Combat is completely flat. Every enemy appears right in front of you, and on the same vertical plane. This combined with a very large enemy count, no power weapons, and huge environments, makes wading through the demons a slog.

 

The custom bosses are absurdly overpowered, with immense health pools, and unavoidable attacks that can instakill you. I actually just Godded through the bosses because defeating them normally would have been a huge undertaking.

[Gaia74]

2 hours ago, ScrappyMcDoogerton said:

Some interesting things going on in this one, but it's bogged down by a few common GZDoom mapping issues:

 

Extreme texture repetition due the massive size of the environments and sparse detailing.

 

Combat is completely flat. Every enemy appears right in front of you, and on the same vertical plane. This combined with a very large enemy count, no power weapons, and huge environments, makes wading through the demons a slog.

 

The custom bosses are absurdly overpowered, with immense health pools, and unavoidable attacks that can instakill you. I actually just Godded through the bosses because defeating them normally would have been a huge undertaking.

I tried to make it as attractive and different as possible in the shortest time possible, however I totally agree with your points, I should have used more different textures and not limit myself too much, I should have been more creative haha.

 

With the Custom bosses btw

Spoiler

They all have their tricks, for example Celt is quite easy to lure and kill him bit by bit using the terrain with ssg shots, another way is to pay attention to his attacks, the ring attack is slow so you have reaction time and run time, the spread of large spheres has a angle gap to make it dodgeable for example, also his only instakill attack always targets you, so running in circles around him like other enemies is enough

 

another tip, always He always puts his 2 hands together to make a strong attack., same for the other 2 bosses 

 

However, I think I made them too complicated, I mean I did have some trouble sometimes haha, I apologize for that 

 

I understand, I appreciate the criticism, I will try to improve those weak points, mapping has never been my strong point, so thank you very much for playing and for the comments n.n

Edited October 4, 2022 by Gaia74

[Kan3]

I tested it in UV.

 

First of all, I didn't expect something like this, the overall feeling is awesomeness.

I loved this attempt at making a sort of RPG, with some open world in it, out of Doom.

The atmosphere is great, mostly thanks to the musics, and I felt somewhat nostalgic playing through this, probably cause it reminded me a bit of Spyro and the first Harry Potter games for psx x)

 

Nice scripting, nice storytelling!

 

I quite liked the bosses and I personally disagree with @ScrappyMcDoogerton (except maybe for the last one). I found them quite entertaining and challenging, with the electricity one being the most hard of the 3, due to its teleportation and spamming sequence (that I'd probably tweak cause it possibly very annoying).

The last one is a yes and no for me: it feels a bit too off from the Doom world and what really almost pissed me off is the fact that I didn't know where I was shooting at cause of he being always covered in smoke and being translucent.

The same goes for the 3 random attack patterns when he becomes immortal: fine the ice thing, fine the electricity thing, too heavy the fire spamming. The flames spawned from the crystals were probably too fast and damaging, just a step in the wrong direction and you get melted down with no mercy.

 

What brought down the first 3 boss fights though was the lack of arsenal: I had to deal with the 3 of them with basically just the double barrel cause they're immune to radius damage and too fast to be hit with rockets enough time.

This thing made the fights with them repetitive for me, cause it was just "run in circle and doublebarrel them down".

An advice I could give you is to make them have weaknesses and strenghts using DamageFactor and DamageType properties and give the player more weapons to play with and make him figure out what's the best to use against who.

 

Talking about aesthetics and other fights I definitely agree with Scrappy.

 

I know you said you don't really much like mapping, but the overall experience suffers, a lot unfortunately.

The repetitiveness and flatness of textures are a huge letdown, not because you used the wrong texture in the wrong wall or floor, but because of the linedefs and sectors that are too simple.

You could partially avoid this by using custom textures (highly recommended in my opinion in this sort of projects), but it will still look dull in many parts of the map.

It misses proper shadowing and lighting in some areas to help with the "three-dimensionality" and the overabundance of acute angle doesn't help either.

Another thing is about tree: the one you made within the map are huge and linear (in their simplicity I found them quite fitting and nice), but there are only a few of them, while the rest of the vegetation is composed of sprites of tiny bushes and saplings that clashes with the map.

Again about trees:

Spoiler

 I know you save tons of time by using the same sectors for both ceiling and floor, but the foliage looks awful D:

 

About the non-boss fights, again, they felt quite repetitive for a couple of main reasons:

• Same plane fights
• frontal waves of basically the same monsters
• Huge and labyrinth style "arenas" (except for the fights in the temple)
• Same weapons

I feel like it would've been nice to have the map modifying itself during different waves instead of making monsters spawn like that for example.

 

Another thing: The main area.

Like I said, I loved the rpg feeling coming from this map, but this is still Doom.

What I mean is that you didn't add any gameplay changes to justify the open world-like main area, it's still the same "shoot em all" style that becomes tedious after a while (especially if you just have a shotgun and a chaingun).

The fact that you can easily avoid the fights with almost no consequences doesn't help either.

What makes entertaining the RPG-like etc. games is that you get something by killing stuff, be it experience or dropped stuff etc., but not in Doom. So killing hordes of useless demons that wander around a large space like that becomes boring fast.

Of course I don't mean that you had to make a total conversion and what you did is wrong and sucks, not at all, it's just a tip to help you understand why someone could find this tedious.
Since you also like scripting etc. I believe you could implement some sort of dropping system for demons, something to collect, or even just a kill counter, that will unlock something for the player, be it a powerup, health, armor, weapons.

 

That said, I found a couple of non-bugs:

• I had to activate the fly cheat on the bridge fight cause a cacodemon got "stuck" under the bridge
• The electric boss killed himself by shooting his powerful attack against a wall in front of him
• Same boss can be cheesed quite easily if lured behind 1 of the 4 great rock pillars, cause he cannot get through from the little passage in that spot.

 

This could really become a wonderful little wad with some adjustment and proper detailing, you could even make a tiny community project out of it (that I would love to partecipate in), so, overall, great job!

(I found the second secret, but unfortunately I couldn't catch any references if there were D:)

[Gaia74]

Rip, those bugs I didn't think they would happen but they did, sadge, I completely missed them, I will improve those points though, Now that you say it like that, I also agree that I should have done it better, thank you very much for playing and for the criticism n.n

[Arwel]

Amazing map, and really a breath of fresh air! Very different compared to doom mapping styles I used to, both in aesthetics and combat. Lots of new assets and decorations, custom scripting, changing music, nice custom boss fights and in general a lot of fun! Not really feeling like deconstructing much to provide criticism, but I'd say even though I agree that lower tier monster fights are "flat" and "repetitive", I didn't find that to be a big issue. I considered that just a part of navigating the level. And boss fights compensate for lack of challenge in combat for me. My favorites are ice boss and the last one, these two work really well. Yeah the slow lightning bolts bullet hell attack of the last boss felt kinda overpowered, and some other attack seemed to have some scripting issue when it sometimes makes combat stuck, but overall a nice fight. Ice boss fight I think is the most balanced, it really went smooth and just the perfect amount of shooting, kiting, hiding, running for health and ammo. Played on UV, got all the secrets and kills except for the one monster, and I have no clue where it could be. Probably some bugged caco under the bridge or something.

[Gaia74]

31 minutes ago, Arwel said:

Amazing map, and really a breath of fresh air! Very different compared to doom mapping styles I used to, both in aesthetics and combat. Lots of new assets and decorations, custom scripting, changing music, nice custom boss fights and in general a lot of fun! Not really feeling like deconstructing much to provide criticism, but I'd say even though I agree that lower tier monster fights are "flat" and "repetitive", I didn't find that to be a big issue. I considered that just a part of navigating the level. And boss fights compensate for lack of challenge in combat for me. My favorites are ice boss and the last one, these two work really well. Yeah the slow lightning bolts bullet hell attack of the last boss felt kinda overpowered, and some other attack seemed to have some scripting issue when it sometimes makes combat stuck, but overall a nice fight. Ice boss fight I think is the most balanced, it really went smooth and just the perfect amount of shooting, kiting, hiding, running for health and ammo. Played on UV, got all the secrets and kills except for the one monster, and I have no clue where it could be. Probably some bugged caco under the bridge or something.

Thank you very much for playing and for your comment n.n!