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pavera

Beneath the Surface [Ready for public playtest]

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Finally, after two years of (on and off) work, I'm ready to present Beneath the Surface, an underground techbase themed, Boom compatible map for Doom 2. The map is medium length and features some fairly challenging gameplay, especially on UV. While I've deemed the map finished, and I've already passed it around to some friends for opinions, I'd like to present Doomworld the opportunity to play it before I upload it to /idgames!

I still haven't selected a music track for it. If anybody would like to suggest or even make one for me, I'd be happy to use it. Otherwise, I'll probably just leave it as the default. The map runs on Doom 2, MAP01, and is Boom compatible (think i already said that). It's built around UV, so I recommend playing it on that for the full experience, but it does have difficulty settings if you find it too frustrating.

This map has been my baby for a while, and I'm pretty proud of it, but I'm prepared for any and all criticism you people can garner. I know the detailing is humble in places, and that there are multiple misaligned textures. Let's just say that I started detailing this map back when DB2 first came out!

Anyways, here's the download link: http://www.mediafire.com/?f9bqp9i82ap52lx

And here are a couple screenies for you skeptics:
Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2
Screenshot 3
Screenshot 4

Hope you guys enjoy my hard work!

EDIT: Oh yeah, also, FDAs are encouraged!

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I liked playing through this! I haven't finished it yet, but I like the way it transitions from an outdoor, hellish scene to a techbase scene and back again. I can certainly understand why it would take so long to make. I'll add more when I finish the map.

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Looks pretty cool. I'm a big fan of the underground techbase theme in general, so this should be good. I'd love to record a demo, and/or complain about stuff if I get some spare time.

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It's come to my attention that there might not be quite enough ammo in here for some people! While I might not have any problems getting through the level with the amount of ammo currently present, I'll go ahead and add some more bullets and shells scattered about.

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Add extra ammo for lesser skill levels. You should leave UV as is.

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Is it Boom compatible as in "playtested and balanced in a Boom compatible port", or as in "will run in Boom, but playtested and balanced in ZDoom with BLOCKMAP fix, mouselook and autoaim off, etc."?

Edit: a few minutes in and I have the feeling that it is the later, but that being said, the ammo is more than alright and I haven't run into a frustrating fight yet. Quick FDA as I got to go : here. 2 deaths, didn't get too far ; the second death I got stuck in a sprite while trying to go for the soulsphere secret. I'm not sure if there was an actual way out, but I tried every direction and couldn't find a way before I got fireballed to death.

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Gave it a second go. This time I complete, and I think without deaths (can't remember). I missed one or two secrets and a few monsters.

Ammo and health seemed alright. The fights, I thought, weren't anything to write home about, it feels like a bunch of filler encounters, repetitive too (imps on hills, chaingunners hiding behind a corner, monsters teleporting behind, etc.) ; however, there's enough variation in the environment for the map to remain entertaining the whole run. It was a bit dark for me (GLBoom+ gamma level 2), you can see in my very first FDA I ran around at the start because I couldn't even see the opening (having the same rocky texture didn't help) so I bumped it to level 4 and that was fine.

The secrets were good, not too hard to find and yet at the same time rewarding. As gggmork noted, there's lots of room to play with. I wondered if the map was also planned for coop, and was surprised to see that it wasn't, looking in DB2 just now. I believe this could benefit from coop, it doesn't seem like you'd have to change much if anything with the layout, and it could serve as an additional level of solo difficulty as well.

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Thanks for all of the constructive comments so far, as well as the demos! Glad to hear it's not a complete piece of trash. :P

I'm slowly working on a new build with some fixes. Thanks for pointing out those stalagmites near the soulsphere, Phml. I actually share some of the opinions you guys have about this map. I've always found that it's a bit spacious, especially in the red key chamber. I figured rather than let it sit on my hard drive and never improve, I'd open it to public scrutiny. Hopefully some more suggestions can help tighten up this map's gameplay a bit.

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I played through this last night. You did a very good job on layout and texturing. The detailing was just right in my opinion...clean and varied.

I went through it on UV and I was really digging the gameplay until I got to the big lava room where the cave structures start (near the end of the map). Ammo was way too tight for my tastes. I don't know if there just wasn't enough or if I missed some caches, but I couldn't get 100% kills. I did, however, beat the map on my first try by some miracle. Thankfully I saved some rockets to quickly deal with the Archvile at the end. Otherwise I would have been done for :P

Very nice map though! I'd probably give a little more ammo padding towards the end of the map. Otherwise though it was very solid. Nice job :D

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I forgot to point out something from my FDA - one imp on the faraway columns (near the soulsphere/red key, behind the lava ; sector 322) fell as I shot it and I couldn't kill it. I'm not 100% sure, but I believe that if you set the linedefs to "block monster", they wouldn't be able to fall.

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Or I could just make the lines impassible. Also, great idea on the berserk pack. Not sure why I didn't think of that in the first place. :P

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FDA.Thought it was cool, died a few times and got a bit tired of the same rock texture after a while so I sped through it. Last run I went a bit slower, got almost everything though I think I missed the 4 imps on the pillars in the pit by the RL. The rock stair up from the lava lake outside the exit brings up a complaint phml liked to bring up a lot in that it blends in with the rest of the wall, might want to add a couple candles or something, though it wasn't too bad. Got really lucky with the last arch-vile, heheh.

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I enjoyed this.

I noticed ...

1. Line 4058 could be flagged impassible

and

2. Sectors 518 and 519 serve no purpose.

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OK, I'm still sweating because I just beat it in my FIFTH attempt! Really cool map; hard, but not impossible. Heh you got me at the end... I thought "WTF NOW!?" but then it ended... :)

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