Doom 2 - Prison of the Elite (single-level 1P/Coop/DM wad)

[Andrew The Judge]

This is a map I made recently aiming to be played in Doomsday. I may have put too many sprites and sectors in it so you might not be able to run it in original Doom and some source ports. The last version that this worked on was 1.9.0-beta 5. This map is still a WIP (work-in-progress) so I am looking for some feedback on it. I think it is a map that captures everything about what Doom is (I think I did everything Doom had except for crushing ceilings). I mean come on we don't need crushing ceilings in every Doom map (just like we don't need a train or subway in a Duke3D map). Try it out and tell me of anything you like and even what you dislike. Also, let me know how difficult it was to complete. I'd also suggest giving the text file a good once over since I put a good amount of effort into making the story of this map pretty decent. Thanx for all feedback in advance. My only question is where is the best place to post the map itself online. I don't want to bother messing around with FTP Clients anymore and LevelMakers got shut down or something so I want to get this map out there. Thanx again in advance.

[ArmouredBlood]

try wadhost. I anticipate this release greatly ;)

[Andrew The Judge]

Thanx man! I got it posted here:

http://wadhost.fathax.com/files/

If you have any trouble getting it working let me know (it has a tendency to crash some versions of Doomsday).

[ArmouredBlood]

To direct link your wad right click the link in the wadhost list, chose 'copy link location' then paste that into your post like so; http://wadhost.fathax.com/files/01PRSN1337-beta1.zip

Will check it in a minute.

[ArmouredBlood]

Excuse double posting;

So I played your wad. Right off using stairway to heaven for the title is nice, but nine inch nails for the map? I mean I like them in small doses but more than 5 minutes and it gets annoying. Which is a fourth of the time I spent trying to figure out how to get your red key -.- Yes flat indicated switches are fine, but make sure it's absolutely obvious if it's part of the main route.

Next the gigantic arena is just that, gigantic. So gigantic it needs stuff filling it. Scale is important in doom, too cramped and gameplay suffers, too large and it looks awful (unless the mapper is amazing and somehow pulls off a crazy effect). Look at stuff like deus vult 2, or to a lesser extent map 27 of sycthe 2. The first has massive levels that look awesome, but suffers a little in gameplay. The second is smaller, but is well detailed, and is awesome in gameplay. Maps like these should inspire you and give an idea of what looks great, although everyone has an opinion ;P

After that, it's annoying that there isn't enough ammo to kill the cybers. I understand limiting ammo, but it'd be a better idea to put the player in a situation where he CAN'T fight the cybers and has to warp away instead of giving him half the ammo he needs and never get more.

Then there's the lava caves. It's an interesting idea, but using the most damaging lava is a bad idea, if the player HAS to go across it there should be something to balance it out. Unfortunately there wasn't enough health for my exploratory forays, so I had to resort to saving, which is okay for large 40+ minute maps, but I dislike saving for little stretches that would take me 5 minutes to play to again and die once again while trying to figure out what to do. I guess just make it a little more intuitive where to go, health bonus lines are great for this (it's like cocaine lines to doomers :P).

The final area I can't say much for, because I got bored and iddqd'ed through. There're too many hitscanners in this giant open area, and the spidermastermind with arachnos would waste anybody trying to speedrun through it.

I'm not really sure what you could do with this. I think it'd be best to learn from this and move on, play a lot of the more popular megawads to get ideas for stuff you like then make some maps with them in it. Single maps like vader's thunderpeak are also good maps to try.

Also try mapping for something other than doomsday, it looks really pretty but is very performance demanding, when playing through scythe 2's maps 20-25 I had to switch to skulltag because of how many demons on screen there were. And finally, using mp3s for music is neutral here, the extra file size messes with dialup people (yes there are some still out there ... I think myk still has it for one :P). Also only certain ports are compatible with mp3s, usually ones people here don't have or don't prefer using. That's about it.

[Andrew The Judge]

Thanx for the input. As I said it is a work in progress so I figured make it insanely hard and then tone down from there. I also realize that the large open areas seem a bit bland. I was going for something large scale because that's what I like. If you read the txt file it tells you to hit skull switches, run to the teleporter and then backpedal to the secret door. Once there you have a large amount of Megaspheres and Plasma Ammo to take everything down. The goal in this map was Coop Nightmare while still maintaining a decent singleplayer and DM experience. This is essentially my first fairly complete map (back in the mid 90s when I was younger I just made large cube rooms filled with Cyberdemons just to see how crazy it is. As for the lava area it's tough for a reason. It's a torture chamber. Running head-on through the Arch Viles won't work. You'll have to disable them some how. If you use the map it actually has the numbers 1337 when you look from above. At the bottom of the 7 is the switch to turn them off. It's an effect I wanted to use that I had seen in other wads. Anyway, the things you have mentioned are all valid and I will consider them if I ever decide to put more work into it.