ESSELMAP (aka Testing Facility) is finally released! :D

[esselfortium]

After nearly two years of work (2004-2006), Esselmap is finally completed. It's not my first map, but it's my first non-horrible map. It's a Doom2 map with lots of episode 1 influence.

It was designed primarily in Hellmaker 1.2b2, with most of the texture alignment done in Doom Builder.

The music is a midi of In Flames - Ordinary Story, heavily modified by me because it was pretty inaccurate in some parts.

http://sl4.poned.com/doomwads/testfcil.zip
http://sl4.poned.com/doomwads/testfcil.txt

Hopefully you guys will enjoy it as much as the beta testers did! :)

EDIT: Oh, right. Screenshots!
http://www.wadsinprogress.info/?a=listwads&wad=623

EDIT 2: This map is full of secrets. See if you can find them all. If you can get to the plasma rifle, you pretty much win. ;p

EDIT 4890534: I've fixed some minor bugs and reuploaded it. The monster/ammo balance still sucks but I'm not going to change it now, heh. Thanks guys.

[Phil1984]

Ohhh great level! Lighting inparticular was excellent. But the map design was also suberb, 5/5 from me.

Just out of interest, one mac level designer to another, did you build the nodes for this map with hellmaker 1.2b2 and did you find that at around 800 sectors Hellmaker would start crashing when attempting to save the level?

[esselfortium]

Phil1984 said:

Ohhh great level! Lighting inparticular was excellent. But the map design was also suberb, 5/5 from me.

Thanks! :D

Just out of interest, one mac level designer to another, did you build the nodes for this map with hellmaker 1.2b2 and did you find that at around 800 sectors Hellmaker would start crashing when attempting to save the level?

Yeah, when that started happening I had to turn off the "build nodes on save" option and use glBsp and ZenNode instead.

[Enjay]

As a dark lord of the Sith might put it: "Impressive, most impressive."

This is a cracking map. It plays well and looks great. It has some of the best examples of "real" detail I've seen. Fantastic!

[Sporku]

Great map, but I think I've already told you that. :)

[Belial]

It's nice, some of the lighting detail seemed excessive and ugly IMO, like the radiation sign and the shadow above the crates, and in other random places where some of the horizontal/vertical walls are darker than the surrounding area. The ammo supply is too generous compared to the monster count and the low number of stronger monsters.

Also, I don't think this was intended :P

[esselfortium]

Belial said:

Also, I don't think this was intended :P

Crap! I thought I had fixed that. Oh well.

[Naan]

Beaten it on UV on the first try, with all the secrets (well, I wasn't credited for the RPG secret, but I assume it is)

Pretty good map, plays well, nice detailing work, even if, Belial is right, ammo count is quite generous. I'll rate it 4/5.

Hope this will incite you producing more maps ;)

[Csonicgo]

I was trying to be extra sneaky, and some doors opened on the room leading to the outside and I freaked out. awesome.

[esselfortium]

Naan said:

Beaten it on UV on the first try, with all the secrets (well, I wasn't credited for the RPG secret, but I assume it is)

Nice job, I wasn't sure if anyone would find them all :D

Pretty good map, plays well, nice detailing work, even if, Belial is right, ammo count is quite generous. I'll rate it 4/5.

Thank you. I'll try to make it harder next time around ;)

Hope this will incite you producing more maps ;)

Esselmap 2: The Reckoning is already in production; it's an episode 2-themed map. It'll probably have less of the light gradients and other stuff that's really time-consuming to make, but will hopefully still be fun and pretty. Also it hopefully won't take another two years to finish. ;p

[MikeyScoots]

Pretty cool and large map. It had a moderate bit of detail which is fine, but could've used a bit more IMO. This doesnt mean it was bad though as I enjoyed the map itself. Pretty damn good, looking forward to the sequel. 4/5.

[Ismaele]

I looked at the screenshots on WIP: it looks good, I must play it! :)