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Phml

Bloodlust - one level for Doom 2, limit removing

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Hello,

Here's my second map. Like the first one, it's a rather large level.

HMP is the recommended difficulty and should provide a good challenge. UV is much harder, and HNTR much easier.

I've mainly tested it in GZDoom, it also ran fine on PrBOOM+ and should work on any limit removing port.

It's intended to be a nonlinear level, with different routes. I've also tried to pay more attention about lightning than on my first map.

Download (08/17)

Screenshots below :














Thanks for reading. Your feedback is welcome. :)



--

08/17 changes :

Spoiler

- Some ammo tweaks, mostly on UV. The first rooms got a bit more ammo or ammo moved to make it more accessible. There's less plasma overall, especially in the keys / lift room.
- The final room got slighty more detail, although I'm not done with it yet, but I haven't a good idea for it so far.
- Archviles were replaced with Arachnotrons in the yellow key room.
- Less barons overall, a bit less archviles and revenants in the keys / switch room, slightly less archviles overall as well.
- The red pillars in the keys / lift room are triggered to move up and down at the same time as the red pillars in the final room, and act as teleporters to get back to the final room should the player choose to backtrack. It is possible to skip those linedefs, but for now I don't want to extend them before I know what I'm doing with detail here.

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http://www.filedropper.com/abphmlbloodlustdx2
My death demos for now. I have a question for you though ... have you made it through the first room successfully FIVE TIMES IN A ROW? ON EVERY DIFFICULTY? 'cause I think not. Yes there is a trick to it, no I didn't figure it out until I was on HMP, and no I didn't do it 5 times in a row yet either. So I think you should cut back a little on this, maybe take out 2 chaingunners ON HMP. As I see it there is absolutely no difference between UV and HMP in the first room and that is going to kill interest in the map.

Now between cursing you for having such tight ammo and making me fight an arch-vile, 6 demons, and 6 chaingunners in the first 10 seconds of action, I liked it. Got a real good theme going on here, though I'm playing in the pixelatedness of regular prboom. If the rest of the map looks like this you're not going to get any qualms from me. And if the rest of the gameplay is like this I think some speedrunners are going to have material for a looong time ;)

Also the music choice is nice. Will get back to it after lunch.

*EDIT: ignore bits about UV/HMP, I was demoing on UV due to run line stupidity.

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My success rate in the first room is 100% on HMP, and about 90-95% on UV.

I'm confused about your experience, though. The first room contains

Spoiler

10 imps (6 hidden), 5 zombiemen and 5 shotgunners on HMP.
6 demons, 1 archvile, 6 chaingunners and 2 mancubus (hidden) on UV.

Two very different set-ups and fights, in my opinion.


Understand I make maps I enjoy, and I enjoy hard maps (such as the levels TimeOfDeath, Death-Destiny and Insane_Gazebo make). If even HMP feels unfair, give HNTR a try - and if the skill 2 seems too easy, HNTR -fast should be still easier than skill 3.

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Oh nevermind I know what it is. For some reason when I run prboom from the run line it ignores the skill I set it at and always does the default skill. I've had that as UV, so all those were UV runs -.- Sorry for bashing you like that :( I'll check it on HMP, although it is slightly heartening I can actually do something on UV ^.^

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Just watched your demos and noticed that. In the end, you were doing great on UV.

It's interesting to see how you approached the first room. I'm doing mostly the same things, but with some differences here and there.

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This map is incredible. I couldn't hope to survive it even on easy (yes, I've Been Playing Games Forever But I Still Suck), but I did play through on iddqd and I don't think I have ever seen a map that looked THAT good and played so well at the same time. I may as well just give up making maps now.

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Well I finally made it through on HMP, but in skulltag, and I saved quite a lot. And I have to say it looks great, plays great, and feels great ... up until the final switches area. When it gets there it just feels like a chore to do. BFG, BFG, BFG, hit switch, dodge rockets, BFG arch-vile, go up the lift to a megasphere, rinse and repeat. I don't know what it's like on UV and am afraid to find out. I admit it might've soured on me since I went down the elevator again and had to get through the masses of monsters again, but I wasn't sure where all the ammo and stuff was so I was falling back on stuff I remembered earlier in the level. You might want to add a teleport box in the red key room that lowers when you get in the elevator that takes you to the switches so the player can get back into the action without having to blast through 70 assorted barons, hell knights, arachnotrons, cacos, and arch-viles.

That said, I thought the blue key area and plasma gun areas were awesome, and thought the yellow key and red key areas were well done. The spider mastermind in the yellow key room got kind of stuck on the platform though and never fired at me. Might need a little more room there. The room before the switches elevator was a little hectic without the plasma gun but I got through (went yellow key -> switches room -> blue key -> plasma gun/red key room).

Overall it was a good map but a little long, I usually like maps to end before 40-50 minutes and this lasted a good hour and 5, +/- 5 minutes. You get a 9/10 on HMP ;P Now for UV ... uggh.

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@Nomad : This certainly feels good to hear. Thanks. :)


@ArmouredBlood : I can definitely see what you mean about the last room. Although I like big maps ending with epic fights, this one is rather different in both gameplay and difficulty compared to the rest of the wad, probably so much that it might be out of place.

I sort of wanted to do a tribute to Sunder (Insane_Gazebo's insanely hard megawad in progress), and I'm rather fond of how it turned out, so for now the room will stay even if it makes the experience weaker overall for other players.

Original plan was to finish with the cyberdemon lift fight after you press the three key switches, I guess I could upload an alternate version ending there. Hmmm.

(For reference, the final room is almost the same on all difficulties, except there's invul spheres pretty much everywhere on skill 2 and no archviles, and only one invul sphere, more archviles and more cybies on UV.)

An option I intended to leave available for players on skill 3 who dislike this kind of fight was to AV jump their way to the exit with invul spheres (on skill 4, it'd obviously be much harder). Granted, it does require a double jump and it's not exactly intuitive, but on the other hand if I made it any easier there'd be no point in doing the room the normal way.

That said, I'll definitely consider adding a teleport somewhere to get back in the action.

I'm glad you liked the blue key and plasma gun rooms. I had a blast designing these and tweaked it a lot to get it to a point where I felt it'd be fun and not frustrating, so it's great to hear it worked out.

As for the stuck spider mastermind, it might be because of last minute detailing. I added the sky sector and didn't test in PrBOOM+ afterwards (although you played in Skulltag which is ZDoom based just like GZDoom, so it's kind of weird this bug showed up). I'll fix that, thanks for the heads up.


Again, thanks for all your feedback. You are very helpful. :)

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This looks interesting/challenging/big, I only iddqd ran so far. Length and apparent difficulty might make it hard to uv demo. Probably takes a lot of route memorization for someone new to the map and attempts. You can go up the lift without the blue key (but you need all 3 for the bfg anyway). I had to search/use automap to find the blue key because I didn't think to check down in that pit.

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Im angry how good this looked. May i ask what n'th map is this that you have made?

And I did have to end up chainsawing 4 mancubi at one point... not something i would want to do.

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@gggmork : any two key combo should work, although as you say it's obviously a much better idea to get all 3 for the BFG. :)

As for the blue key, I can see how it'd be problematic on UV. On HMP (the skill the architecture was built for) and HNTR, there's no monsters in the way so you can clearly see the blue key going down and up. With all the stuff going on in UV, it's not as obvious (especially if playing on GLBoom, as that GL renderer makes everything super bright). I'm not sure I could do anything to improve that part.


@Ninjalah : this is my second map.

Where did you have to chainsaw mancubi ? Was it in the blood/marble corridor leading to the yellow key ?

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At one point after you get the SSG. It was down that blood hallway. Being non-linear, i may have made a wrong choice seeing as there was easily 3-4 choices.

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That's the spot I was talking about.

Don't blame it on a bad choice from you, it's bad playtesting from the mapper ! I think I unconsciously went for the secret everytime I went through that route, which is why I assumed the ammo was fine (for the record, I usually balance stuff without using any secret, but with many possible routes I might have slipped up here and there). I'll add some ammo in that spot.

Thanks for the feedback.

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Did i just make a difference? What is that, like the 2nd time anyone has done that in America? [/Anti-America]

Also, where you get the chainsaw, did you really expect us to believe it was just a hallway leading to nothing? I was surprised I went thru the wall yes, but it wasn't too much of a secret.

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This is fucking horrible on UV. I love good challenges, but the LACK OF AMMO EVEN RIGHT IN THE BEGINNING is just fucking ridiculous. Don't bother trying this map.


Also, you need to make all of your wall detail impassable for a map like this. ALL OF IT. And a good part of your layouts need work. Not all of them, some are ok, but there's plenty of boxyness after boxyness. You also have a lot of huge plain walls, ceilings and floors (see the last screenshot you posted) that look boring, especially since you use almost nothing but 90 degree angles in those areas and flat lightning. Some parts do look nice, but there certainly are parts that could be improved on.


But more than anything, ADD SOME FUCKING AMMO. And don't be a retard and put the little ammo you're going to give RIGHT BEHIND THE MONSTERS YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO USE THAT AMMO ON.

Can you tell your ammo placement pissed me off?

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@Ninjalah - not being the greatest one at finding secrets, I like my secrets to be easy to find.


@Jodwin - I can tell you, of all people, certainly have some nerve to come and swear at me for my ammo placement while, at the same time, making the maps you make. I've seen folks talking about one of your maps requiring 100% accuracy on these forums, and the one I played in 1024CLAU was very cramped and got me down to fists quite often, without a chainsaw or berserk pack that I could find to rely on. Not that I didn't have fun, mind you, but from where I stand this strikes me as the pot calling the kettle black.

I've already made some adjustement to ammo on UV for the next version. That's one of the purposes of making a public thread, you know ; to get some feedback from other players to improve the map.

I'd suggest you follow your own advice and avoid all my maps in the future, we'll be both much happier doomers.

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I had just written an angry reply pointing out how impossible it is, when I opened the map up in Doombuilder to make sure I remembered the ammo count and noticed that you have those caches in the walls triggered with the seemingly random switches so that very few people would figure them out. :P Okay, given that ammo in there it might be possible (though I'd still give a little extra for the arch-vile), but next time make your obscure caches more obvious.

So, ignore my ranting about not having enough ammo, that was obviously not needed (except for the arch-vile :P). Sorry.


Edit: nevermind the apology, there's still hardly enough ammo (And no room for mistakes, which is especially bad in ports that don't have the hitbox bug fixed. Don't test low ammo maps for Boom in ZDoom ports for this very reason!).

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This was great fun! It's been such a dry spell lately, for maps like these...

I only got low on ammo once, around the Invul/Rocket Ammo/Arch-Vile room, soon after I got the rocket launcher (on Skill 4 of course). Thankfully there was a berserk pack there allowing me to punch the two revenauts that were an issue, and from then on, I had no trouble. Maybe it's around this section, that's driving Jodwin insane?

The only other issues, I reckon might be a little annoying to fix, but should be worth it.

When it comes to getting the yellow skull key from under the great corpse of the Master Mind (I friggin missed it the first time, stupid corpse :P) - the arch viles that spawn... I think this fight might need a little tweaking. Currently, as it is, there's a good chance you can die instantly, depending on which way the arch-viles run. As I see it, the fight could do with a touch more cover - as it is, it's better just to run straight out the room rather than try and deal with them.

My only other issue, was with the final great hall - in regards to the detailing the ceiling specifically. Maybe use those two long sectors that run down the side, to help create a 'step' in the ceiling, or something? Regardless of what you add, I think it needs a little something, as it's utterly bare right now.

P.S.

Spoiler

Finding the Invul after clearing the blue key room made me sad :(

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Insane_Gazebo said:

Maybe it's around this section, that's driving Jodwin insane?

No, it's (for the most part) the very beginning. Okay, as I'm currently playing I finally managed to get through it with some ammo (100 bullets and 28 shells after the first four revenants left), but that took a lot of tries and incredible luck with infighting. Normally I had around 30 bullets and 18 shells for the hell knights, which is just not enough.

Well, after that there's still plenty of low ammo moments depending on your route and most of the challenge seems to come from actually finding enough ammo rather than interesting and challenging fights. Not a bad thing per se, except for a HR-style map.

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@Insane_Gazebo - Amusingly enough, the issues you mention are the ones I've been working on. Arachnotrons have replaced the archviles, and I'm currently trying to add detail to the final room.

Thanks for the suggestion about the ceiling - I'll play around a bit and see if I can get something I like with that.


As for your spoiler : HAHA. Working as intended, for a first playthrough. I'm willing to admit I can make quite a few mistakes in design, but sometimes it's just evilness...

I only got low on ammo once, around the Invul/Rocket Ammo/Arch-Vile room, soon after I got the rocket launcher (on Skill 4 of course). Thankfully there was a berserk pack there allowing me to punch the two revenauts that were an issue, and from then on, I had no trouble.


My intent for that part was to open options with the invul sphere, either the player chooses to conserve ammo by berserking stuff safely or he spams rockets and then has to kill and run as fast as possible to the revenant ammo caches.

I'd like to hear about everyone's thoughts about this. Good idea ? Interesting, but poorly executed ? Completely sucky ?

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Keep in mind that some people will always consider a berserk pack as a health item first, and as a fist powerup only when they're short on ammo.

Again, in regards to the starting room, the two switches on the other sides of the elevator are bad. When I first played always one of these two things happened:
a) The arch-vile stayed inside the lift, I managed to clear the starting room, but didn't try either of those switches by the lift because I assumed they both brought the lift down and there just wasn't enough visible ammo for killing the arch-vile as well
or
b) The arch-vile doesn't go back up and I end up dying

When I finally did finish the beginning with enough ammo it was all thanks to the arch-vile starting to kill chaingunners, reviving them and then killing them again. It works, but if it's intentional, it's bad design, especially since it's all about luck in that particular area.

Also, even when I did beat the start with plenty of ammo I still didn't have enough ammo for one last hell knight (but running past that to grab the shell boxes in the hell knight hallways wasn't too hard). If you intended the player to be able to grab those shell boxes right after freeing the hell knights, that again is bad design. Every rational player at that point would just run out of the room, and definitely not try to run at the knights to grab what little ammo is there. You should move those shell boxes to the revenant room instead.


Yeah, my first post was a bit over the top, but considering that giving enough ammo is usually not too hard...heh. Just from now on test your low ammo maps more in Boom ports (if they're boom maps, that is).

And whatever Maes says about me and 100 % accuracy should be ignored. He's just traumatized from having playtested unfinished maps. :P

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Let me set things straight, Jodwin. I don't mean the following to start a fight with you, but rather to avoid frustrating you by ignoring your feedback while you put time into it.

First, I don't like your tone. You start by swearing at me, and now you're trying to boss me around. If you believe this is a good way to get your points across, think again. Although I still read and consider what you say, I'm less inclined to pay attention to your opinion than other, more polite forum posters.

Second, I build maps I enjoy. Emphasis on I, me, myself. I am not concerned about popularity at all. If my maps have 30 votes ending with a 1/5 average rating on idgames, so be it, as long as I am happy with it. Granted, rest assured if it came to that I'd have the decency to stop clogging up the archives with what would be considered as poor maps by the community, but for now I know at least a few doomers are enjoying my maps.

Some people will not play on anything under UV. Some people will consider a berserk pack as a health refill and never punch stuff until they're out of the ammo. Some people will feel fights, ammo, gameplay, detail must respect specific expectations.

To all this I say, tough luck ! I'm not striving to be a great mapper, I simply make stuff I enjoy - and if people choose to lock themselves in a certain mindset and don't appreciate my maps, what's wrong with that ? There's thousands of other wads around, that will be perfectly fine for what they enjoy.

Don't misinterpret this as me trying to claim a higher moral ground. I'm closeminded myself, in that I can't appreciate most weapon mods, heavy detail maps, puzzle maps or script based maps. Again, what's wrong with that ? I stick with wads I like and don't bother the folks who enjoy other things.

I will not start testing my limit removing maps in a Boom engine, except for quick compatibility runs, simply because none of these are enjoyable for me. I might consider adding a different disclaimer putting more emphasis on the fact that these maps are first and foremost tested on GZDoom if enough people share your concerns.

As for ammo concerns, I already mentioned I did and am doing some ammo tweaks for the next version. I'm warning you, though, you won't see anything drastic that'll completely change the map. Again, saving you time, just like you said, don't bother with this wad.

You might feel you want a better map, and you're entitled to your opinion. My own opinion is that you want a different map.


I apologize if this upsets anyone ; I don't mean this as a rant against Jodwin but rather to explain some of my design choices. To reiterate, I have what you might consider a rather egoist point of view regarding mapping and would rather make maps that would be widely considered to be of lower quality but closer to what I enjoy myself, rather than great maps most people would enjoy that wouldn't exactly fit what I had in mind.

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It's fine that you prefer making maps for yourself first. However considering that at least in this particular case it would be very simple to make the map fine for a slightly wider audience than just yourself, telling people off on the grounds of "I'm right, you're wrong!" is silly. You don't need to drastically change your map, just make it playable for everyone:

The reason I said you should test this in boom rather than a ZDoom port is that it can drastically affect the map's gameplay in low ammo situations. Yeah, I had initially tested Hell Sewage from Claus1024 only in ZDoom myself and when I finally tested it in Boom it was much worse and it simply needed more ammo to account for the hitbox bug from vanilla: I've encountered the same issue firsthand myself, so I know what I'm talking about.

If you want to keep making limit removing maps and only testing them in ZDoom ports, that's fine, but keep in mind that other people will play those maps in their favorite compatible port, and based on their port of choice they might have very different experiences with the map. Rather than making limit removing maps that are actually balanced only for ZDoom ports, it would be better for everyone (and no different in the end) to simply make ZDoom maps. Everyone wins. Including you, because you won't have to read responses like this from everyone else who by default play your maps in Boom ports. "Tested in ZDoom" is different from "designed for ZDoom."

With that in mind, I'm not expecting a huge change in the ammo situation. I'll emphasize: I like good, challenging maps, whether it's with tight ammo, or tough fights, or low health, etc. The problem I had was that there didn't seem to be enough ammo in the beginning area to kill all the monsters, unless you got incredibly lucky with infighting. Really, that's pretty much the only area that needs a change IMHO. Was my original post over the top? Yeah, I admitted that already. Lets get over it already.

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"I'm right, you're wrong!"


Never said that, never implied that, never even thought that.

If that's what you got from what I typed, it's safe to say we won't be able to communicate, be it because of my lack of english skills or something else. I just wish we could indeed get over this and that you'd understand my maps are probably not going to be enjoyable for you.

Personally, I'm done with this.

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Phml said:

Never said that, never implied that, never even thought that.

If that's what you got from what I typed, it's safe to say we won't be able to communicate, be it because of my lack of english skills or something else. I just wish we could indeed get over this and that you'd understand my maps are probably not going to be enjoyable for you.

Personally, I'm done with this.


Good man.

Oh and i didnt bother to open the map up in DB, but were there any chaingunners in the first room or was i just getting massacred by the zombiemen and shotgun guys that made it seem like there were?

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Jodwin said:
Keep in mind that some people will always consider a berserk pack as a health item first, and as a fist powerup only when they're short on ammo.

You can't make all maps assuming people will waste the opportunity to free ammo by punching stuff. That's like mapping for suckers. It's so much fun to punch things to death that the powerup is much more satisfying (let alone beneficial) in that way than as a health item. It gives you a maximum of 99 health, but can inflict thousands of hit points against enemies.

I sometimes leave it for a bit if I'm guessing health may be scarce, but start to itch for it and go back to it as soon as I'm hurt, even if it's not that much, because I know that if I am not using it I'm likely wasting ammo that is needed for something else. If I know the mapper's design style, and that he doesn't strangle you on health (which I don't like, anyway), I pick berserk pack up immediately, regardless of my health.

When placing a berserk pack in a level, in a high skill setting, you must cut back on ammo, or you'll wreck the level for skilled players. On lower skill settings you might want to assume players suck at punching, and that they'll use the powerup as a health item instead or at least much more.

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Got to the final room on UV in prboom, while saving a crapload of times. I have gotten all the switches pressed, activated the lift, survived the barrage of hundreds of monsters, then fallen off the lift 3 TIMES. Fuck. I also retract my statement about rinse/repeat, I wasn't thinking like a speedrunner ... which further pushes this map into a niche. I still think the person who can demo this on UV deserves a medal, especially if on prboom.

except for the first room and slightly after when you're trying to gather up enough ammo for a push on the yellow key, I'll have to agree with Insane_gazebo* that it isn't really low on ammo, in fact when you get to the big room with the 3 switches I don't think you need quite as much plasma on the tops of the vats, maybe some more rockets? (please? I love rockets. There aren't enough rockets :P) And that reminds me, both on HMP and UV I found so much plasma ammo that I had 600/600 each time I got the plasma gun, and rarely was under 200 afterwards. Was that your intention? Anyway I think you're already fixing the first room, with those ammo problems out of the way I think the rest of the level will be quite manageable.

I do have another slight problem though, in the passage that opens up when you grab the rocket launcher it's very easy to get stuck on things, to a lesser extent on the hell tunnels it connects to. putting the supports inside the wall in the tunnels will probably look weird but make it a lot less annoying to get stuck on. I don't really know what I'd do with the passage except remove the block hiding the cacodemons, yes you'll see them but then it won't be quite as cramped punching the hell knights. Or you could shorten that one's monster closet and widen it. It's not THAT big of a deal but kind of annoying =/

And those arch-viles are very hard to kill in the blue key area >.< my rockets and plasma get stuck on the revenants which just get revived.

I'll post when I finally get through that last room @.@

EDIT:*stated the wrong person originally -.-

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myk said:

You can't make all maps assuming people will waste the opportunity to free ammo by punching stuff. That's like mapping for suckers. It's so much fun to punch things to death that the powerup is much more satisfying (let alone beneficial) in that way than as a health item. It gives you a maximum of 99 health, but can inflict thousands of hit points against enemies.

Yeah, tysoning is great fun, but that still doesn't change the fact that some people will always consider berserk as a major health item and might save it for cases where they're very low on health. If you, as a mapper, want to force the player use berserk as a fist powerup instead then either place it so that the player is forced to pick it up or give him no other ammo. If you just leave the berserk sitting in a corner then some people will just walk by and (possibly) come back when they have <30 health. It's not "suckery", it's just a different approach (which can be easily "corrected" with better item placement).

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