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hakros

The Lost City of Exelion 1.6

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r7fhRA5.jpg

 

Welcome to The Lost City of Exelion.

 

The Story

 

Centuries ago, the glorious city of Exelion fell, due a demonic presence that corrupted and killed all its inhabitants.

Our hero, 'John Suiteppe' managed to escape from the city shortly before the disaster.

He wasn't ready then; But now, after having fought for years against the demons of hell, he decided to return to his former home and take back what's rightfully his.

Will he be able to drive out the evil plaguing the city and take back the old kingdom?

 

--------------------------------------------------------

 

This is my sixth map created for doom 2, the most intense one so far.

The ending can be a bit difficult but I have tested the map many times and checked that it can be passed.

I hope you like it and have a good experience.

 

Thanks for your time... :-D !!

 

--------------------------------------------------------

Name: The Lost City of Exelion

Version: 1.6
Format: UDMF
Port: GZDoom
IWAD: Doom2.wad
Map: MAP01
Gameplay: Single player
Build Time: 4 weeks
Textures: Yes (Included) (based on HakrosTex)
Jumping & Crouching: No
Freelook: Needed
Difficulty: Just one UV++
Dehacked file: No
Secrets: 15

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SPECIAL CONFIGURATIONS NEEDED

Sector light mode: DARK

Max FPS: 100 or more

Compatibility with mods: No recommended, performance issues.

--------------------------------------------------------

DOWNLOAD FROM HERE

Standalone version includes also (GZDOOM)

https://hakros.itch.io/hakros-the-lost-city-of-exelion

--------------------------------------------------------

 

SCREENSHOTS

Spoiler

7SJPHrN.jpg

 

B8ScF45.jpg

 

AGGvbxQ.jpg

 

Mb5ArG4.jpg

 

hEReZNL.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by hakros

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Very cool adventure map! I haven't played a ton of it yet because I'm just on my lunch break but I love the architecture and sense of scale

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10 minutes ago, nickxcom said:

Very cool adventure map! I haven't played a ton of it yet because I'm just on my lunch break but I love the architecture and sense of scale

 

Thanks... I'll hope you can finished it :-D

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1 hour ago, Insaneprophet said:

Just sayin, imma play this when i get home

 

Thanks !!

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Release 1.2

I've found one bug, so i've fixed, and i've added info about the special configuration needed.

 

SPECIAL CONFIGURATIONS NEEDED

Sector light mode: DARK

Max FPS: Unlimited

 

Greeings !

Edited by hakros

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Tested in UV.

 

This was MASSIVE!

I started with confidence, looking at the mare ~200s monster count, but slowly that will raise up like crazy and all hell breaks loose.

This is one aspect that I quite liked, cause you definitely do not expect that and the more you go, the more hard become the challenges while the map modifies itself: it's a very cool concept and it is quite well executed (I really appreciated the script efforts to make everything in here to work properly).

Overall you used the right textures and there's a really nice detailing around, with some architectures, lighting and atmosphere.

 

There are a bunch of flaws though (at least in my opinion), but some of them are directly connected to the slaughter nature of the map.

I will riassume these in 5 points:

  • Simple and bland architecture and texturing of some areas. Like I said, this is one of the flaws that's quite enough connected to the map nature, cause if you do not want GZDoom to melt, you cannot go too much overboard with sectors, linedefs, vertexes etc. Though I believe in some points you could have made a bit smoother and less plain choices.
  • Lighting. Except for a few map parts, light remains basically the same fro the most part of the map, there are no light effects or heavy contrasts that could spice things up visually in certain spots. Though the use of color light and some dynamic is well done.
  • Repetitiveness of encounters. The map is huge, the fights are huge, but some of them just felt the same cause of the mechanic of having 1 or more cyberdemon around and a horde of several types of demons storming the place.
  • Confusion. I didn't lose my way often, at all, and that's a great point in the map favor, but in a couple of situations I was completely lost. I will point out especially the part after the you just need the yellow keycard (if I remember correctly), when the teleport pad opens up to bring you to the ssg area. That's really unnoticeable cause there's nothing that guides the player back there and it's pretty strange since you (wonderfully) used cam's view to show what happened after a switch several times.
  • FPS drop. This can clearly just be due to my setup, but it's something to be considered, especially when there are a couple of things that you can do to slightly alleviate the thing: an example can be the torches, you added a brand new dynamic light thing and a new sound thing to every single one of them, while you could just go for a simple decorate file to modify the vanilla torches (also gzdoom already gives them GLDEFS).

 

I recorded "1" video and here it is divided in 4:

Spoiler

 

 Here I explain everything else a bit more in detail (kind of).

 

Unfortunately, I couldn't record the last part due to the immense fps drop, so I would not give any type of critic or advice or appreciation, cause I didn't understand a damn and just spammed bfg around while trying to reach the spheres (that's a real shame cause I couldn't enjoy at all the custom bosses D:).

Also, I had quite a hard time, always due to fps, in certain sections cause of the too wide area that was visible to the player.

Visplanes are no concern for non-vanilla maps, true, but when the player view goes trough too many sectors, linedefs etc. in a very long area, this might cause problems, like in this section here:

Spoiler

 

BrT52x6.png

Since the player can basically see the starting point from several thousands of units away, passing trough several huge map parts.

 

I found no bugs or glitches except for this:

Spoiler

 

uZ6DGQh.png

Where I think you just forgot to raise this sector back.

 

Overall, this is a great project, full of cool ideas and work, light the lightning, the modifying map sections, the demonic voice, the cams etc. things that I never saw in a slaughter map and that made me enjoy it despite my base hate for this map's type.

Is there room for polishing? Absolutely, but still a nice piece of work.

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2 hours ago, Kan3 said:

Tested in UV.

 

This was MASSIVE!

I started with confidence, looking at the mare ~200s monster count, but slowly that will raise up like crazy and all hell breaks loose.

This is one aspect that I quite liked, cause you definitely do not expect that and the more you go, the more hard become the challenges while the map modifies itself: it's a very cool concept and it is quite well executed (I really appreciated the script efforts to make everything in here to work properly).

Overall you used the right textures and there's a really nice detailing around, with some architectures, lighting and atmosphere.

 

There are a bunch of flaws though (at least in my opinion), but some of them are directly connected to the slaughter nature of the map.

I will riassume these in 5 points:

  • Simple and bland architecture and texturing of some areas. Like I said, this is one of the flaws that's quite enough connected to the map nature, cause if you do not want GZDoom to melt, you cannot go too much overboard with sectors, linedefs, vertexes etc. Though I believe in some points you could have made a bit smoother and less plain choices.
  • Lighting. Except for a few map parts, light remains basically the same fro the most part of the map, there are no light effects or heavy contrasts that could spice things up visually in certain spots. Though the use of color light and some dynamic is well done.
  • Repetitiveness of encounters. The map is huge, the fights are huge, but some of them just felt the same cause of the mechanic of having 1 or more cyberdemon around and a horde of several types of demons storming the place.
  • Confusion. I didn't lose my way often, at all, and that's a great point in the map favor, but in a couple of situations I was completely lost. I will point out especially the part after the you just need the yellow keycard (if I remember correctly), when the teleport pad opens up to bring you to the ssg area. That's really unnoticeable cause there's nothing that guides the player back there and it's pretty strange since you (wonderfully) used cam's view to show what happened after a switch several times.
  • FPS drop. This can clearly just be due to my setup, but it's something to be considered, especially when there are a couple of things that you can do to slightly alleviate the thing: an example can be the torches, you added a brand new dynamic light thing and a new sound thing to every single one of them, while you could just go for a simple decorate file to modify the vanilla torches (also gzdoom already gives them GLDEFS).

 

I recorded "1" video and here it is divided in 4:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 Here I explain everything else a bit more in detail (kind of).

 

Unfortunately, I couldn't record the last part due to the immense fps drop, so I would not give any type of critic or advice or appreciation, cause I didn't understand a damn and just spammed bfg around while trying to reach the spheres (that's a real shame cause I couldn't enjoy at all the custom bosses D:).

Also, I had quite a hard time, always due to fps, in certain sections cause of the too wide area that was visible to the player.

Visplanes are no concern for non-vanilla maps, true, but when the player view goes trough too many sectors, linedefs etc. in a very long area, this might cause problems, like in this section here:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

BrT52x6.png

Since the player can basically see the starting point from several thousands of units away, passing trough several huge map parts.

 

I found no bugs or glitches except for this:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

uZ6DGQh.png

Where I think you just forgot to raise this sector back.

 

Overall, this is a great project, full of cool ideas and work, light the lightning, the modifying map sections, the demonic voice, the cams etc. things that I never saw in a slaughter map and that made me enjoy it despite my base hate for this map's type.

Is there room for polishing? Absolutely, but still a nice piece of work.

 

Thanks so much.

Very useful (and complete) analysis ;-) !!

 

The problem with fps at the end depends of the PC of each one because other playtester that already have played the map had this problem after 10 minutes in the arena while for me that happens later after 15 minutes. But yes there is problems to solve here.

 

And some of the problems/bugs that you comment I've already solved them in the las release 1.3

 

Thanks again for played it, I'm glad you liked it :-) !! 

 

 

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@Kan3 I just finished the gameplay (thanks for recorded it) and it's very strange your fps drops at the beginning of the map, normally these happens only in the lake (second part) and in the final arena.

 

So unless you have a potato PC....xD maybe the problem is the mod that you're using for the blood effects (the gibs and particles) and you can also check the fps configuration, when I played some mapsets like abandon and 'slaughter spectrum' I needed to configured it as unlimited FPS 

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55 minutes ago, hakros said:

@Kan3 I just finished the gameplay (thanks for recorded it) and it's very strange your fps drops at the beginning of the map, normally these happens only in the lake (second part) and in the final arena.

 

So unless you have a potato PC....xD maybe the problem is the mod that you're using for the blood effects (the gibs and particles) and you can also check the fps configuration, when I played some mapsets like abandon and 'slaughter spectrum' I needed to configured it as unlimited FPS 

Yeah, it's nashgore, I tested it without after the video and it went perfectly smooth. Dumb me that I didn't think about that before...

I bet that was the culprit of the massive drops on the later parts due the huge amount of monsters and so blood and gore entities from that mod.

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I am wanna note too, that at some point there was big FPS drops on the place that was mentioned above.

And... Sorry for my rudeness, but please write in OP-post that this is slaughter map with not 240, but 6500 (if not more) enemies.

I spent almost hour to beat it with my weapon pack, but since it has no any mass destruction weapon, I was powerless on the last arena, that was overfilled with Pinkies (I am, after that map, thinking that Pinkies is your most favorite enemies in the classic Doom games).

There is mine guilt too, 'cause there was expectations of something like "Tomb Raider" or "Indiana Jones" type of adventures. I mean... Explorations of ancient ruins, finding some cheesy secrets & solving of interesting puzzles.

I hope to see (in future) a lot more calm map in this setting...

 

P.S.: Oh... I've noclipped to see if it is end, but there is more... So much more... Please, forgive me, @hakros, but I am done...

 

If you want to spend ~1 hour to watch my noob-like run, where I dropped out at the almost end - here it is:

 

Edited by RastaManGames

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6 hours ago, RastaManGames said:

I am wanna note too, that at some point there was big FPS drops on the place that was mentioned above.

And... Sorry for my rudeness, but please write in OP-post that this is slaughter map with not 240, but 6500 (if not more) enemies.

I spent almost hour to beat it with my weapon pack, but since it has no any mass destruction weapon, I was powerless on the last arena, that was overfilled with Pinkies (I am, after that map, thinking that Pinkies is your most favorite enemies in the classic Doom games).

There is mine guilt too, 'cause there was expectations of something like "Tomb Raider" or "Indiana Jones" type of adventures. I mean... Explorations of ancient ruins, finding some cheesy secrets & solving of interesting puzzles.

I hope to see (in future) a lot more calm map in this setting...

 

P.S.: Oh... I've noclipped to see if it is end, but there is more... So much more... Please, forgive me, @hakros, but I am done...

 

If you want to spend ~1 hour to watch my noob-like run, where I dropped out at the almost end - here it is:

 

 

Sorry but that was part of the surprise (the enemies count), but yes maybe i needed to specify that mods are not recommended due performance issues

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I mean... No! Not just mods...

Just note that this map can be considered as slaughter one, so player might want to have if not vanilla BFG-9000, but something like that kind of power in his hands while playing.

I was fooled by my own expectations that was raised by your nice screenshots...

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7 hours ago, RastaManGames said:

I mean... No! Not just mods...

Just note that this map can be considered as slaughter one, so player might want to have if not vanilla BFG-9000, but something like that kind of power in his hands while playing.

I was fooled by my own expectations that was raised by your nice screenshots...

 

Ok, but what I told you, without mods and with normal weapons your experience will be totally different.

 

You will have all necessary and the fps drops will be minimum except at the end combat.

 

Thanks for playing anyway !

Edited by hakros

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I wasn't having so much FPS issues beside that very long segment, that can be divided by door/lift.

And, as I said before, I am not fan of slaughtermaps.

If there was only 500 or 1000 enemies - maybe I can deal with it, but ~6500+ is just too much for me.

 

Sorry...

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9 hours ago, RastaManGames said:

I wasn't having so much FPS issues beside that very long segment, that can be divided by door/lift.

And, as I said before, I am not fan of slaughtermaps.

If there was only 500 or 1000 enemies - maybe I can deal with it, but ~6500+ is just too much for me.

 

Sorry...

 

Don't worry in this case there are around...

Spoiler

25000+ !!

 

;-) !

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Thanks, I'm making changes to solved the problems that you found at the end...... ^^ !!

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