Hell on Icannar: 10 Years Later (a 1-map experience)

[129thVisplane]

you are stranded on an asteroid by the name of Icannar, and thanks to some nukage-related incidents, demons have taken over the local UAC techbase's nukage processing facility. shoot the demons and find a way to escape this miserable space rock.

 

while shatterdawn my beloved burns in development hell, i thought i'd put on my big boy arm warmers, get blasted on 1 bottle of alcoholic cider, dust off an ancient wad of mine and overhaul it completely. "oh no drunk mapping, this can't be good" well lemme tell ya, the booze took the edge off just enough to not instantly cry upon opening udb, but not enough to inhibit my mapping faculties. so anyway, here's the result, come play it and/or drop ur thoughts and suggestions and bug reports ^{help i have been testing it for 3 days straight i can no longer tell how playable it is}

>>> get a (down)load of this wad <<<

now featuring:

• boom format (instead of the original vanilla)
• brand new map (and nukage) flow
• ? actual combat??? maybe?
• a slight touch of custom texturey flair here and there
• 100% more forklift

the necessary details:

• iwad: Doom 2 (MAP01 replacement)
• map format: Boom
• tested in: DSDA-Doom (on default complevel)
• difficulty settings: extremely janky, uv recommended
• midi from: Descent (i think) (was gonna use a custom track but it's a tracker module and i couldn't get it to sound right when exported to midi)
• texture edits by: me
• statusbar graphics by: 16 year old me in ~2012
• cider flavor: wild berries

screenshots:

Edited July 29, 2023 by 129thVisplane

[staros96]

Just played it - I enjoyed the map, if not pretty challenging at times. I thought the ending was super-mean ahah.. I would have liked more ammo, I totally ran out the end and just managed to get into the escape shuttle - barely. But that's me. I think more experienced players will definitely enjoy it, as you get into quite a tight spot in several areas of the map and have to be quite sparing with your use of ammo (in my view). I thought the environment design was great - particularly the ending where you're clearly on a planet surface and headed to the shuttle.

[RastaManGames]

Dayum, those screenshots looks very juicy & inviting!

Gonna get some rest, but tomorrow I will give your map a try!

[princetontiger]

Love the map! I was able to find 4/5 secrets on the first playthrough... I had no issues with ammo.

 

[thelamp]

Cool map! Some mean flanking traps kept me on edge the whole time, really liked the outdoor aesthetics too. The doomcute as well as the small bits of perspective involving the sky textures made for a good experience overall. I was a bit distracted while playing and died an embarrassing number of times haha, this map is not as difficult as I make it out to be here!

 

 

[129thVisplane]

thanks y'all <3 loved the vid @thelamp, the realtime feedback was very useful (and the deaths entertaining)
a slight, mostly visual update: sprinkled in a little bit more ammo, fixed some texture misalignments in opengl mode caused by negative offsets, made post-yellow key progress a little bit more hinted at, made a certain secret a bit less cryptic and added another secret near the end..... (more of an easter egg than a proper secret). also expanded the outside boundaries a bit to prevent glaringly obvious sky wrapping, and added some fences.

down-re-load (even though the op link is unchanged bc apparently google drive works like that)

//sneaky edit: ssg window now has even more of a view

Edited November 23, 2022 by 129thVisplane

[RastaManGames]

What a nice lovely-dovely map is this! It was really good experience, mate!

I am not sure, but seems that there was something like "scripted scenes" as well and that was cute!

Also, there was decent amount of details almost everywhere and combat was fairly solid.

Entire flow of the map isn't very complex, so I've never got lost there.

I smelled the trap in the end and fun thing that I failed to hide from Arch-Vile two times.

 

Here is some video of my playthrough, if you don't mind custom weapons:

 

Keep it up with mapping, my dear Doomer-comrade!

[Dreamskull]

I recently finished my 10 year map. The biggest tip I can give is to throw the player a bone or two here or there. You have the luxury of knowing every detail of the map and they don't. 

[Cacodemon187]

Played the version from the OP, complevel 9 on UV, and recorded a FDA. ^{(too many acronyms lol)} Excellent map!

The combat and progression was solid and straight-forward. I loved all the little details and how the concept of spelunking was reused a couple times.

The custom textures, specially the sky, really tie the whole thing together, and the lighting work at the final scene was wonderful!

I honestly have no complaints, it's a good map all around! Hope to see what you come up with in the future :)

[LadyMistDragon]

Demo of original. You'll witness a somewhat embarrassing death near the beginning, but it's fine. I really like the environmental storytelling on display here, like the movie theater and the little ship at the end.

lmd_inannnark.zip

[129thVisplane]

once again thank u everyone <3 i have observed the vid/demos with great enthusiasm and i bring u a new version. once again op link should be auto-updated but just in case:

download 3: the downloadening

hopefully i didn't break anything. changelog:
-removed rogue medkit that had a tendency to get stuck under crusher

-fixed rogue secret armor that didnt show up on uv

-an extra secret to block direct view of sky jank around shuttle

-a janky attempt at difficulty settings (monster count only atm, severely untested)

-assorted texture alignments and visual adjustments
-space rocks babey!!! (3 flavors, two from blood, 1 from hexen)

also contemplated making an actual texture for the questionable STEPTOP cable but don't quite feel up to fuckin about with TEXTUREx right now. f

Edited November 26, 2022 by 129thVisplane

[nickxcom]

Really fun map! Played through on UV using GZDoom and found a missing texture, at least with Vulkan hardware rendering. The sides of the raising stairs were missing in the slime room with the mancubus. Found four of the secrets and I missed one enemy... They must have sneaked past me at some point lol

[129thVisplane]

5 minutes ago, nickxcom said:

Really fun map! Played through on UV using GZDoom and found a missing texture, at least with Vulkan hardware rendering. The sides of the raising stairs were missing in the slime room with the mancubus. Found four of the secrets and I missed one enemy... They must have sneaked past me at some point lol

thanks <3 aw heck I knew I broke something. fixed the missing stair texture predicament, i choose to blame UDB for that one. occasionally it messes with upper/lower textures that aren't visible immediately. as for the missing enemy, the map does have off-map monster teleporter chambers that sometimes don't like to cooperate, so might have been a late-teleporting caco or pinky or something like that. haven't quite gotten the hang of those things yet lmao

[nickxcom]

1 minute ago, 129thVisplane said:

thanks <3 aw heck I knew I broke something. fixed the missing stair texture predicament, i choose to blame UDB for that one. occasionally it messes with upper/lower textures that aren't visible immediately. as for the missing enemy, the map does have off-map monster teleporter chambers that sometimes don't like to cooperate, so might have been a late-teleporting caco or pinky or something like that. haven't quite gotten the hang of those things yet lmao

Hey no worries, it was a fun map regardless! I will definitely play through it again, maybe with the next update? :)

[Delisk]

 

That was fun map!

 

The combat was excellent and with good ambush, i like it when a map keep me on my toes!

[Biodegradable]

Simply wonderful stuff, Visplane! Very fun gameplay and gorgeous visuals. 10/10, fam. I love it!

 

 

[129thVisplane]

On 11/26/2022 at 1:47 PM, Biodegradable said:

(0:26-0:45 in the vid)

your wish is my command [Arnold Rimmer salute]

icannar_statusbar.wad

 

once again thank u all for the feedbacks and encouragements and stuff, y'all are (unironically) epic <3 i have done some sneaky fixes and enhancements™ after a streamer friend's regular + hideous destructor runs of the map yesterday, and i am now officially contemplating calling it done and submitting it to the idgames zone. unless any other issues pop up im likely gonna submit it later today.

[plums]

Hey I just checked this out and it was great, loved it from start to finish, no notes. Made a FDA if you want to watch: https://user.fm/files/v2-ab58dac65460420e24b8749fd6d525ed/129_ica2_plumsfda.lmp

 

Great music track choice too. FYI you can just throw in tracker modules and most if not all modern ports will play them fine. Or convert to OGG and then you're guaranteed even more compatibility.

 

I'm sure you know this already but I think you're your own worst enemy when it comes to making things. As a guess I think you're really striving for novelty in everything you do and it sabotages you; this one map is full of ideas and you could easily make another 3 or 4 just riffing on the same style and concept.

[129thVisplane]

10 hours ago, plums said:

Hey I just checked this out and it was great, loved it from start to finish, no notes. Made a FDA if you want to watch: https://user.fm/files/v2-ab58dac65460420e24b8749fd6d525ed/129_ica2_plumsfda.lmp

 

Great music track choice too. FYI you can just throw in tracker modules and most if not all modern ports will play them fine. Or convert to OGG and then you're guaranteed even more compatibility.

eyy nice, fun FDA. i was on my toes watching it and dying internally everytime you narrowly missed a secret LMAO i may have hid them too well. i have a fondness for stealthy little shootable switches. also thats good to know, for some reason i still operate on the outdated assumption that zdoom ports are still the only ones capable of multimedia playback lol

 

Quote

I'm sure you know this already but I think you're your own worst enemy when it comes to making things. As a guess I think you're really striving for novelty in everything you do and it sabotages you; this one map is full of ideas and you could easily make another 3 or 4 just riffing on the same style and concept.

that is so true. i get mad grandiose creative plans and then spiral when they don't instantly happen as soon as i touch the keyboard. gotta love having several layers of neurodivergence. i guess it can still be fun to refine my mapping with things that are just cute little romps through generic doom locations, and slow burn my way up to the megalomanic fortresses in my head eventually. thank u for the kind words and support and things <3

i do in fact have a sequel to this particular map in the works, maybe it's time to stop fussing about the micro-intricacies of enemy positioning in it and just release it lel

[plums]

11 hours ago, 129thVisplane said:

eyy nice, fun FDA. i was on my toes watching it and dying internally everytime you narrowly missed a secret LMAO i may have hid them too well. i have a fondness for stealthy little shootable switches.

 

Hah, glad you enjoyed. I went back to find all the secrets after you wrote this, knowing what to look for made it a bit easier and I only had to cheat for the green armour where for some reason I never tried wallhumping. Also check out the nodebuilder leak on the end secret in software mode! Nice easter egg art BTW, I feel like this kind of thing needs a new word that's more interesting than "sector art," I've seen it in a few places lately.

 

I actually feel like the map is overly safe if you find all the secrets, so the technique of putting in a lot of obscure ones and counting on the player find some of them works well. I saw other people comment that they found the map hard though, so I dunno? Anyhow going back to them I didn't feel like any of them were extremely hidden or anything. Also while I'm not super-concerned with making entertaining FDAs I do like to avoid spending half an hour combing every nook and cranny.

 

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also thats good to know, for some reason i still operate on the outdated assumption that zdoom ports are still the only ones capable of multimedia playback lol

 

This is another thing I've seen come up a few times so I just tested to make sure I'm not giving out incorrect information, and everything I tested (DSDA-Doom, Woof, Crispy Doom, Eternity, EDGE Classic, Doom Retro) had no problems with any common tracker format, or ogg/mp3/flac. So yeah go nuts.
 

Quote

 

that is so true. i get mad grandiose creative plans and then spiral when they don't instantly happen as soon as i touch the keyboard. gotta love having several layers of neurodivergence. i guess it can still be fun to refine my mapping with things that are just cute little romps through generic doom locations, and slow burn my way up to the megalomanic fortresses in my head eventually. thank u for the kind words and support and things <3

 

You're welcome! You seem at least very self-aware of when your brain is trying to work against you, that's maybe the best you can hope for sometimes. I know lots of people on various parts of various spectrums and I know it's hard to manage. Plus just sustaining focus to put out something worthwhile can be hard for anyone. Anyhow any time you do win the fight against UDB I've enjoyed the result!