The Great Hall (Heretic, first map of a planned episode)

[thebiomage]

I've planned on making a full 9 level long episode for Heretic, being inspired by the Castlevania games. The focus is on atmosphere and a sense of place, as the entire episode would take place in and around a massive castle of a nobleman turned tyrant. This is the 3rd map of the episode, taking place at the entrance of the castle. Weapon / enemy progression is designed with this in mind. The map should run on anything, but probably breaks vanilla memory limits.

 

Map available on doomshack: https://doomshack.org/uploads/greathall.zip

 

Screenshots below:

greathall.zip

[Walter confetti]

Looks really good!

[Caleb13]

Man, this really takes attention to details in Heretic maps to another level! I hope you'll manage to keep it up in the other maps...

 

The path to the secret exit is clever, but I think you overdid this one, nobody is going to figure it out without looking in a map editor. Even the fireplace one is pretty hard to find, despite it's hinted it's nearby. Also, it seems sector 570 shouldn't be secret, because there is no other way to reach the 3-stage arena anyway.

Edited November 20, 2022 by Caleb13

[thebiomage]

15 hours ago, Caleb13 said:

Man, this really takes attention to details in Heretic maps to another level! I hope you'll manage to keep it up in the other maps...

 

The path to the secret exit is clever, but I think you overdid this one, nobody is going to figure it out without looking in a map editor. Even the fireplace one is pretty hard to find, despite it's hinted it's nearby. Also, it seems sector 570 shouldn't be secret, because there is no other way to reach the 3-stage arena anyway.

I made that one mandatory sector secret for "world building" reasons. I tried adding this (pic below) next to the dumbwaiter as a hint, maybe it would make it easier to figure out? I could maybe adjust the dumbwaiter shaft a little too so you can get a glimpse of the area.

 

Btw is there anything that can be done to adjust skyboxes near low walls (pic 2)? I tried using a normal skybox in the balcony area, but it gets cut near the bottom and repeats itself, and adjusting the floor / ceiling height makes no difference to this. Only way I know how to get rid of it is to have higher walls so the cut off point never comes into view. I might have to customize the skybox eventually (maybe make it smoothly repeating vertically), because the next level is going to be up on the ramparts and this would definitely become an issue.

[eharper256]

Here's a video for you of me playing in Walpurgis:

Very pretty map with lots of cool detailing; really making good use of those stock textures, and with a chunk of interesting encounter setups as well. The final wave of the secret arena encounter just flat out murdered me 10 times before I decided to nope it and just god-mode that specific part (you only see the first of those deaths in the video, but there were alot).

 

This is partly Walpurgis making that part super hard since it replaces Nitrogolem ghosts with Jaegars: near-instant arrow hits from all sides and lava pools getting in the way is not something our poor Magister can deal with too well without having his 3rd/4th weapon, especially as in this case the previous waves had drained all my Quartz, there was not much armour around, and Jaegar's are tough enough to resist 1 hit from a proximity flechette. Even so, I imagine it to be obnoxious in Vanilla too if you're having to dodge a load of homing skulls with lava getting in the way, so maybe tone that down slightly?

 

This video was also apparently cursed and made Vegas kill my system twice whilst attempting to render it, so I had to slap together pieces in AviDemux instead. Fun times.

 

Other than that, though, I really enjoyed it overall. No idea where the other secrets were though lol.

[Caleb13]

@thebiomage Nice, it still impresses me how y'all manage to "draw images" with small sectors and pre-existing tiles. As for making it more visible, maybe you could make the secret exit line(s) visible on the automap if/when the player finds it? They're completely hidden now. If the player knew about them, it would be an incentive to... figure out the first part of the puzzle.

[TheHambourgeois]

in awe of your doomcute but in heretic skills

 

i will play this whenever I have free time

[thebiomage]

The episode now has dedicated thread where all further updates will be posted, found here: