Claustrophobia 1024 -- Fixed version released!

[[name_withheld]]

The map completely killed my computer. :p It took a minute to load, but once it did, it blew me away. Awesome work. :D

[Jodwin]

Feedback? You sure you want feedback?

Well, sure. :-p

I played it on UV, and for the most part it wasn't really that hard. In fact, only the last cyberdemon fight killed me. Many times. Many, many freaking many times. Two infighting cyberdemons shooting rockets randomly everywhere with plenty of cacos and PEs filling the air with lost souls while there's no health around and you have no armor does not good fight make. Finally I was able to get far enough that I had only the two cybers and one mastermind left with a lot of systematic saving and loading, but that wasn't exactly fun. Well, I could have got the last mastermind too (I got the first one by infighting it with cybers after everything else was dead) but I got bored and rather cheated to the end...

...which brings me to the next problem, after killing the monsters I had no idea at all what I was supposed to do, until I started randomly mashing all the buttons and noticed that the new buttons weren't there all the time. Maybe try making them stand out a little better from the other buttons?

About secret BFG...no. Just no, if you want to add a BFG make it non-secret, but putting something you need to beat the map to a secret is bad. Instead I'd rather just give the player some extra medikits and a blue armor to the last fight. And a good luck charm for avoiding those random rockets.


...overall though, well I'll be honest: The map did look good, but I didn't like the gameplay that much. :( It felt a bit like playing map30 from Congestion, which I personally hated. The layout is pretty similar too, except that you have some more walls. I guess the problem is that in every fight, except the last one, you are forced to stay in a pretty small area yourself to avoid monsters and to keep the monsters from getting to you. Like the fight with arch-viles where the turret revenants appear, you pretty much have to stay by the exit and just shoot rockets upstairs. That's pretty much just an other form of fighting through doorways.

If you wanted to try improving it, either the map layout should be such that it's easy to move around different parts of the map, or the monster hordes shouldn't be too freaking huge (and dangerous - mostly mancs, PEs, infighting cybies and archies which can be hard to take into account when you are just running around) to block the only paths in the map.

Also, the fight after using the first "bloodfall switch" was made of lame, as you could just kill the monsters safely through the metal bars.



...I was a little disapointed, based on the original name of the map and Diminished Apparatus I was expecting some awesometacular Quakeish gothic town, but got a stock square arena slaughter map. :( I'm sorry if that sounds a bit harsh, but I personally don't believe in sugar coating things and rather say them as I think they are.

[Mechadon]

Jodwin said:

Feedback

Yea, that's pretty much what I wanted :D

I wanted UV to be, I guess, two steps above HMP in terms of difficulty...instead of just one. On the two easier difficulties you don't have to worry as much about the PEs and Archviles (which is what I think makes UV a bitch to play in...aside from the larger hordes of demons). In fact I kind of wanted it to be a hassle to just get around the map because of all the monsters flooding the area, forcing you to carve out a further existence. I don't think the double Cyberdemon's on UV was the best idea though; I might remove one or tweak something around it to make it less annoying.

Which fight were you confused after? I know the switches in the room after you hit the blue key switch can be easy to overlook. The rest of the switches, as far as I'm aware, are marked with colored skulls or have glowing lights on them to make them stand out. If you can be a little more specific I'll try to tweak them so they aren't so hard to miss.

Nevermind about the secret BFG...it wouldn't be secret if it was going to be an instrumental part of the map. I was quickly shooting off ideas from the top of my head :P

Aside from the last part of the map, did the rest of the map feel balanced or not (in UV)? I actually didn't implement some other things I had planned after I got screwed up with my tags/actions. I wanted to add a few more flying monster elements since they don't have a problem getting around the entirety of the map, unlike the other hordes that spawn in. I think another problem is that the massive Caco swarm near the end of the map can make the fight with the Cyberdemon(s) that much more difficult. Originally that fight was going to occur during the wave after you hit the yellow switches, but for some reason I changed my mind.

And lastly, about the second bloodfall switch fight...I think I can turn those barriers into a solid wall. That ought to fix that problem ;)

And yes, thanks for the feedback! Very few people bother to give that much feedback so I'm happy when folks take time to actually help me out. I'll be sure to keep your feedback in mind while I continue to work on this.

I was expecting some awesometacular Quakeish gothic town, but got a stock square arena slaughter map

Actually, that was pretty much the type of map I was going for, hee hee :P

[Jodwin]

Mechadon said:

Which fight were you confused after? I know the switches in the room after you hit the blue key switch can be easy to overlook. The rest of the switches, as far as I'm aware, are marked with colored skulls or have glowing lights on them to make them stand out. If you can be a little more specific I'll try to tweak them so they aren't so hard to miss.

I mean the switches that open the exit, opposite side of the red switches in the stone pillars...yes, they are easy to notice but after spending something closer to 30 minutes in the cyber fight I thought I had already pressed those buttons, because they look exactly the same as the very first button you need to press. Just giving them a texture you haven't used elsewhere should fix it.

Mechadon said:

Aside from the last part of the map, did the rest of the map feel balanced or not (in UV)? I actually didn't implement some other things I had planned after I got screwed up with my tags/actions. I wanted to add a few more flying monster elements since they don't have a problem getting around the entirety of the map, unlike the other hordes that spawn in. I think another problem is that the massive Caco swarm near the end of the map can make the fight with the Cyberdemon(s) that much more difficult. Originally that fight was going to occur during the wave after you hit the yellow switches, but for some reason I changed my mind.

Yeah, it felt pretty balanced. One problem might be that you have put all of the health out there right away. So if you are running with, say, 90 % health you could easily waste medikits, and they aren't coming back. If you feel like tweaking with it, maybe remove some of the medikits and teleport them in later to kind of preserve the health... Well that's something I'm not completely sure about.

Only time I actually felt that I might be getting short of ammo was during the first PE fight: I retreated to the starting area in the middle, and kept shooting from there. Since there was no ammo there and there was a lot of lost souls, they drained ammo pretty fast. I didn't get run dry though, but it was pretty close.

The problem with the last fight wasn't so much the cacos but the PEs. Getting swarmed with lost souls while there are some other monsters around, like cybers, can get frustrating. I'm not saying that you should remove the PEs altogether, but if you want to tweak them then maybe remove a few.

One thing I forgot in the previous post, the starting fight was really annoying. Just removing one (or both) of the spectres should make it much more bearable. Or add some helmets for the player. Either way works.

[esselfortium]

The 8 billion cacodemon/lost soul swarm near the end really screwed me over, as well.

[The Green Herring]

New version (v3) of The Warp Facility which adds some extra enemies, and new music ("Go Forth and Kill" by yours truly.)

http://disasterlabs.com/thegreenherring/temp/TheGreenHerring-TheWarpFacility-3.zip

[The Green Herring]

Sorry for the double post, but v3 of The Warp Facility has been updated to remove a 3D Mode Start that crept into the level, as well as the stairs failing to build if you happened to have "Use Doom's stairbuilding method" turned on in the Compatibility Options of the source port of your choice.

Here is the latest version of Four Rooms, which fixes the rendering error, and adds some health, armor, and enemies. I want to replace the music with original music, too, but I didn't want to delay this version's release any further, so here it is. I'll update the .WAD to include the new music when I'm finished making it.

http://disasterlabs.com/thegreenherring/temp/TheGreenHerring-FourRooms-2.zip

[Mechadon]

Thanks TGH! I've updated the OP (I've added you to the music credits too).

Concerning Nil, I was thinking about what changes I wanted to make to it last night after getting that feedback. I'm still trying to flesh it out in my mind but I've got a few things. More than likely I'll be thinning out most of the ground-based hordes a bit and in return I'm going to be focusing a lot more on flying monsters (caco's, lost souls, etc). They'll be spawned in just like the large caco wave near the end of the map. Originally I was going to focus a whole lot more on flying monsters but somewhere along the line I decided to just to do one big wave instead of spreading them throughout the entire map. Overall, I'm definitely cutting down the number of PE's in the map on UV. The lost soul count alongside the massive number of Caco's makes the 2 Cyberdemon fight pretty much unbearable. I'll most likely be moving the extra large Caco-wave towards the middle of the map along with some other tweaks to that particular wave of monsters. Overall, I'm going to try and make the map a little less lop-sided in terms of difficulty; I still want the end of the map to be the biggest fight but right now it's a little crazy. That's my plan, aside from some of the other feedback I've gotten from Jodwin.

Or, I may end up just tweaking the existing map instead of moving around all the monster waves and be done with it. It depends on how tired I get from working on this map :P. Thanks again for all the feedback guys!

[Kyka]

So Mech.

Any word on a decision regarding how many maps in the final claus release?

[Mechadon]

Kyka said:

So Mech.

Any word on a decision regarding how many maps in the final claus release?

No idea. I've been sick the past week or so and I haven't even thought about Claus XP

[Mik57]

Isn't its release date soon? Heh, I remember making my maps back in summer school, thinking that I'd have to hurry up and finish them. :P

[Kyka]

Get well soon dude. :)

[Joshy]

Yeah get well now! Or else! :P Just kidding, you've done a great job so far.

[gggmork]

Why does zdoom fuck up my map?
Download this: http://www.sendspace.com/file/mxqqv2

highlight all 3 items (wad, texture pack, lmp) and drag drop INTO PRBOOMPLUS, not zdoom.

Its a nomonsters demo where I wag the arrow keys back and forth in front of 4 doors to point out what I'm referring to. You should see the player waggle in front of 4 closed doors (or closed wall areas that intend to open like doors), which is good because they're intended to be closed.

Now highlight the texture pack + wad and drag drop INTO ZDOOM 2.2.0. Those doors are now all incorrectly open if played with zdoom, which completely screws up the gameplay, making enemies appear much earlier than they're supposed to, wtf? So the doors are correctly closed in prboomplus and incorrectly open in zdoom.

edit: plus more zdoom-only screw ups: the platform at the end of the 4 eye switches is supposed to start way up at the same height of the surrounding floor, and the devil is broken in zdoom. It all works fine in prboomplus.

[Jodwin]

gggmork said:

Why does zdoom fuck up my map?

See this fixed version in Doombuilder.

Namely, this issue was with conveyor belts where you had put the player thing inside a small (8x8 or so) hole in the ground, which would be raised by a line action later. In prBoom the player thing spawns in that hole, but in ZDoom it's spawned on the same height as the conveyor belt sector is. This obviously causes these particular conveyor belts fire off too early (four of them in the map). I fixed those by turning them into the "door" variety like the other, working conveyor belts in the map. :)

Also, an other "ZDoom bug" in the map was with the revenants in the devil dude fight: In ZDoom the revenants would teleport right in as soon as you shot at the devil the first time (doesn't show in your original version because the sequence was broken), because the mancs were still in their holes in the ground and wouldn't block the revenants from teleporting unless you had infinitely tall actors on. That's also fixed by preventing the revenants from moving until the mancs are raised. :)

[gggmork]

Nice detective work :)
I'll have to remember that to make things more prboom/zdoom compatible. Maybe hold on because I found another bug (apparently for complevel 9, the line that affects a sectors scroll speed can be as short as you want, but in other complevels this line must be 64 pixels long or longer, otherwise the doll scrolls slower than the floor for some reason (if I edit prboom.cfg to be complevel -1, then the devil part goes extremely slow, but works fine with complevel 9). But I fixed that so works at normal speed in any complevel now I think. So I could probably combine that (and other stuff kyka might have sent you, like re-adding the tag15 sectors so you can't grab stuff through closed doors) with your 'no floor holes' so you don't have to redo it.

EDIT:
There, this version has kykas textures & your zdoom bug fix (a few I just made columns that lower instead of holes so I didn't have to make new sectors etc). And fixed the weird too-slow-scrolling-in-non-complevel9 bug.
Tested and works as normal in zdoom, prboom cl 9 and prboom cl -1 (and made the devil look slightly less suck).
Only gameplay things that annoy me a bit is the cyber door used to be taller so he could shoot you as soon as he sees you, and the crushers used to have a block that prevents you from simply running right through with no need to get trapped inside (for the demon fight), but those are fine as is I guess; maybe the crusher is better this way actually. Inside the devil mouth the initial mancs seem to fit in the holes fine in zdoom, maybe its just the scrolling that makes the holes screw up in zdoom.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/zv8doj

sigh, top of white stairs needs lava damage removed.

[Mechadon]

That reminds me...I need to test all of the maps in ZDoom too. Guess I'll add that to my list, heh.

BLARG...ok, I've got a lot of things to go over so I'll try to keep this post to the point. First off I've updated Subterfuge 1024 and Nil. Thanks to Kyka for some of the suggestions he made for Sub1024 as well as Jodwin for the feedback for Nil :]. I've been under the weather for a while now but I did find the energy to do a lot of work on Nil the other day as well as last night. You can grab both maps below:

http://www.filesavr.com/mek-sub1024-v5
http://www.filesavr.com/mek-nil-v2 (TX wad included)

I think I'm fairly pleased with the changes I've made in Nil overall. I won't bother bloating this post with all of my changes/concerns; I'll just wait and see what everyone says. Though I will run off a few things:
- In the starting room you'll notice two barred doors. This is a last-minute attempt to open up the map when your cornered in said room. It works out ok...when there aren't any monsters in the room below you :/. I tested and tested and I didn't really run into a problem with it, but I'm not sure how well they will pan out with someone who isn't familiar with the map.
- The map has many many more Cacodemons now. I like the gameplay change they offer since they can get around the map much easier (and do nasty things like flank you when you least expect it). Though after a couple waves of them, their corpses start piling up. I found that I was having a hard time seeing through all of them.
- Apparently the addition of all the flying monsters has sorta clogged up my spawned monster holding areas, meaning that sometimes it's impossible to get 100% kills. I'm not sure how to resolve this problem :(.
- UV probably needs more tweaking towards the end of the map.

The next thing is the deadline. Or I guess you could call it the release date. I'm hoping to get this done, tested, and released before the end of March. It really all depends on how motivated I am to get everything setup...but I'm going to set the deadline on March 28th. That date is subject to change. That means that if you want to make a change to your map or contribute anything, you'll have until that date to submit it. Here's the list of things that need to be done between now and then:

- Figure out the final maps to be in the main wad.
- Figure out the map order; tweak as necessary.
- Compile the MAPINFO, EMAPINFO, dechacked, etc.
- Update the ENDOOM graphic.
- Make a new CREDIT graphic.
- Make a new M_SKULL graphic.
- Make all of the CWILV## graphics.  Again.  Ugh.
- Fix some of the blarged up greens in the texture resource.
- Get music for the maps that don't have any.
- Get the contributor information from those who haven't submitted it yet.
- Compile the readme.
- Figure out a testing plan.
- Compile the wad for testing -> test -> tweak
- Check to make sure all maps are within the 1024x1024 area and that they conform to all of the guidelines.
- THEN trim all unused textures/flats from the main wad to cut down file size as much as possible.

Most of this stuff is for me to do, obviously. However, I could really use some help! If someone who is graphically inclined would like to volunteer to do the CREDIT graphics or a new M_SKULL, that would be great! I made an INTERPIC, TITLEPIC, M_DOOM, ENDOOM, smallfont, bigfont, and a statusbar for the original Claus, though I'm not sure if anyone here has seen them. I'll post them up later on if you guys would like.

We also need to figure out some sort of testing plan. I can't remember if this was brought up and discussed before. Personally, I'd like to keep testing restricted to the mapper's and a select few outside of that (preferably someone with some experience with testing). The main ports I had in mind for testing were Boom (and related), ZDoom (and related), and Eternity...though compatibility in any other port outside of those is also very desirable. The more compatible the maps are, the more ports people can play in, and that means more people will likely play these maps. But we definitely want them to work in Boom compatible ports first and foremost. We need to figure out an efficient way to test the maps, report bugs, and fix the bugs in a way that won't take forever. I would especially like to avoid having to fix bugs myself in someone else's map; I did this in IGPack since, for the most part, waiting on the mapper to come along and fix it just...well, took too long :P. If you guys would like to start discussing this, go right ahead! Once we get a plan laid out I'll make a list of things that need to be checked and tested.

I also really need the rest of the contributor information from those of you who haven't sent it in yet. I'm going to update the OP with the folks who haven't sent in this information yet (along with the template to fill out). I'll wait another week or so before I start mass PMing :P. Here's the template again:

Name:
Email:
Other files you've released:
-Map name:
-Short Description:
(If you did more than one map just fill in as necessary)

Ooook, I think that's all I had to bring up today! Sorry for the massive post. I tried my best to condense it as much as possible...I just had so much crap to post.

[Mik57]

Well, if its necessary, I can perhaps edit some of the maps if some of the authors don't show up.

[Joshy]

Hurrah, a release on the 28th of March. On my 18th Birthday, this'll be an awesome present!

[Mechadon]

Thanks Mik57, that would actually be extremely helpful. If I'm lucky everyone will be available to make changes to their maps if needed. Or if I'm really lucky we won't have to make any changes! [HAHA]

Ok well I've made some more map updates. This time it's Diminished Apparatus and Dead In, Dead Out, both of which are at version 6. Nothing too extreme was changed. Grab them below if your interested:

http://www.filesavr.com/mek-dimapparatus-v6
http://www.filesavr.com/mek-deadindeadout-v6

I also forgot to mention something in my last post that I know some of you have been wondering about. 34 maps probably isn't going to be very feasible (from what I can tell) soooo...33 maps is the absolute maximum right now.

[The Green Herring]

A little update: While I haven't finished my song for the level, I believe the final title for "Four Rooms" will be "Four Square." When you think about the arrangement of each room and the progression, it makes sense.

[Mechadon]

Update: Version 7 of the texture resource is available for download. Check the OP for the small list of changes.

Claustrophobia 1024 Texture Resource V7

Let me know if there are any problems. I've been working towards compiling the main wad and compiling a final-ish version of the texture resource was on the list of things to do. I did some minor testing and from what I could tell everything seems to be working just fine.

Just a sidenote, I'll probably have new versions of Nil and Sub1024 up later on tonight. [edit] Actually, scratch that. They'll come later...after I get some sleep :O

[Mechadon]

Sorry for the double post. I noticed a problem with one of essels large flats; it was overwriting the Doom 2 stock lava flat :X. I also had a new sky texture to add from POTGIESSER's map. Here's version 7.1:

Claustrophobia 1024 Texture Resource V7.1

[EDIT]

And here's version 3 of Nil:

http://www.filesavr.com/mek-nil-v3 (use texture resource v7.1)

I'm considering all of the gameplay changes up to this point done (unless something is severely broken). Though I am still having some trouble with my monsters spawners. The flying monsters seems to be clogging some of them up sometimes...meaning it's not always possible to get 100% kills. Since version 2 it doesn't happen as often now, but it's still a problem. Any suggestions on how I can resolve this would be very appreciated :(

[Jodwin]

A foolproof method for fast teleports, when you don't mind the monsters being awakened, is to create a room where each monster is blocked by a lowered ceiling (the ceiling shouldn't be over the monster's center or it won't be awakened). Then add a lot of teleport lines inside the sector, 16-8 units apart from each other. Something like this (add or remove teleport lines to speed or slow it down): http://www.akinomori.com/stuff/images/teleport.jpg

Or if you want to stick with scrolling floors...don't you need to make sure the flying monsters are on the floor all the time to be affected by the floor scroll? If that's the case, then you should make the spawners be as tall as cacos are...

Or if you mean those teleports with singles cacos in them don't always work, the teleport sector has ceiling height of 80 while the caco sectors' ceilings have height of 304 so maybe the cacos are just flying too high to get to the teleport?

[Mechadon]

Well I'm 99% sure the culprits are the Cacodemons (the Lost Souls don't seem to cause any problems). The teleporters that are giving me the problems are the ones that have mixed monsters types...as in, the ones that have the swirling floors. Originally when I made the teleporters I didn't have any flying monsters in them. The monsters are alerted from the very beginning of the map (the sectors where the monsters reside in are linked to the beginning sector). The starting room has a high ceiling so I had to raise the trigger floors almost to the ceiling so the caco's/lost souls wouldn't spawn in at the wrong times. The problem, from what I can tell, is that the Caco's will get stuck next to other monsters, or vice-versa.

So the way it's setup now I wouldn't be able to lower the ceiling (or make any other drastic changes) without breaking the main room and my method of awakening the monsters :/. I suppose I could redraw all of those sectors to separate it form the starting room sector, lower the ceiling and add a scrolling floor so the Caco's would move...but I'm not sure if that would keep the monsters from getting stuck to eachother or not. Does that make any sense? Basically what I did was finish the map, check for any stuck monsters and if there were any, I'd noclip my way to the spawner room. To me, it looked like they were stuck to eachother :P

[esselfortium]

According to a post Ajapted made a while back, you can make flying monsters be affected by Boom's conveyor belts if you put them under a transfer-heights fake floor (i.e. underwater).

[The Green Herring]

I did that in Four Square to summon the Cacodemons into the map. It works like a charm. ;)

[Mechadon]

I had no idea such a thing was possible in Boom. So I suppose making the sectors separate from the starting room and then tagging them for transfer-heights would keep the caco's from clumping up with other monsters? I'll probably get rid of the swirling teleporter too, as that may also be causing the problem; instead I'll just use Jodwin's method. Hopefully that'll work. Thanks for the advice guys!

Oh right! I just spent...oh, I dunno, 4 hours putting together and testing a map rotation. I did a relatively quick test run and it feels pretty good. I'm sure there's going to be even more people hating my guts after they see the final list though; I tried to squeeze in as many different authors as I could while keeping quality at the top of the priorities...and unfortunately I pretty much had to exclude some of the accepted maps :/. I apologize in advance; if you had multiple maps, I tried to keep atleast one of your maps in the main wad. I also decided to go through some of the tweaked and reworked maps that were worked on by the fine fellows doing the Overflow side-project. Since this is a community project, I wanted to have as many different authors in this as possible so it there wouldn't be 4 or 5 guys dominating the map list.

I must say I'm really impressed with the overall set of maps; you guys have done an incredible job! What I've played is 100x better than what would have been released months ago from the first go round....and we haven't even started major testing yet :P. Please feel free to leave your comments about the map listing. I've still got to make some more CWILV graphics and a few other things before I'll be ready to release a testing candidate. Hopefully I can get all of that ready to go in a few days tops.

[Spertz]

Mechadon I just emailed you my map template

[Mechadon]

Ah, thank you Spertz! I was actually getting ready to reply to the email because I had no idea who it was :P