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fiend-o-hell

PANOPHOBIA - Community Project (Let's get this going again shall we! )

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Get something pretty like red or blue. Can I have the E1M1 sky for Acid Reign, or are we doing the one-sky-per-episode thing?

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I think the only way to add another custom sky in a boom-comp wad is to use sky transfers, and to do that you can't tag the outside areas with any other number (for instance, your lifts in the Nirvana area would need the tag of the sky transfer action, not a lift action, so they'd no longer work as lifts - I just realized you can make a separate but similar skybox for those with the lift tag, so yeah it can work. We just need to add the texture).

And IMO I think the dull gray sky fits the wad well since the Running Scared segments primarily use a gray floor and red rock wall, so having the E1 -> E3 progression go from gray to red fits thematically. Perhaps going from gray -> gray with some red -> the current E3 sky we have now would offer a little more variety, but I think veering outside that color scheme will clash with the unsettling mood we've built throughout the project.

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If I have to adjust one more sector tag in that fething map I'll wet my trousers. So I'll stick with whatever sky is chosen. We really do need to replace the existing one though, as mentioned earlier it is ugly and doesn't give the impression of anything other than some kind of fault displaying the texture.

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Played Temple of the Water God--it's alright, although a lot of enemies can be bypassed. I think the best thing about the map is that it feels really adventurous, having you explore a lot of different places and climbing across the terrain. Thematically I think it's your best map, although perhaps Acid Reign plays better.

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I've revised the Cyberdemon fight with more land and more plasma, reduced the number of Lost Souls and replaced one Pain Elemental. I think i had speedrunning in mind when I started the map, but being able to bypass some fights is a side effect of this being an exploration map. I did make the Cacos near the beginning teleport close to the player. The water map is nearly done, just needs some fixes in Boom.

EDIT:

Many of the maps in this megawad seem to play like entrants for Slaughterfest and there are a few maps where you're crammed in with one or more Cyberdemons. The gameplay in my maps is closer to traditional style and they're much easier to beat, though still tough.

WELCOME TO HELL
* Now finished.

ACID REIGN
* Needs minor edits to areas with blank walls and needs more lighting variation, but essentially finished.

TEMPLE OF FORGOTTEN GODS
* Numerous revisions to lowering walls in order to make the map run properly in Boom.
* The canyon area (with all the Lost Souls) now has a wall around the teleporter, forcing the player to fight through the monsters to get to the switch, then come back again (avoiding geometry changes as they do so!).
* Added walls around teleporters in the water near the Silver Road area. These walls lower as the player reaches pre-defined points in the map. This prevents the player from cutting out entire sections of the map (at the risk of huge health loss) and forces the player to follow the Silver Road, which is an extremely dangerous place to be.
* More extensive geometry changes to the final arena with the exit; half of it now sinks into the water.
* Shrunk the exit and added Monsters Cannot Cross to make it harder to run past the Knights.
* Added and dispersed ammo in the final area so you have to risk falling off or getting cornered to get it.
* Blocking thing hanging over player's path in final arena is gone.

NIGHTMARE IN SPIDERLAND
* All brown water changed to blue; some dirt floors changed to rugged grass; map now follows a "natural" colour scheme of brown-blue-green, instead of looking like a colon.
* More rockets added around the starting area, encouraging exploration (while under crossfire) and backtracking, and relieving some of the pressure on the chaingun.
* All shotguns and shotgun shells removed from the map.
* Significant teleporter traps added.
* One Spider Mastermind removed from Madman's Bluff to avoid them killing each other.

RUNNING SCARED #1
* In progress.

RUNNING SCARED #2
* In progress.

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Hi guys, I want this project *finished*. We're nearing the two year three year mark since its conception and at about 70% complete, I think we should attempt to wrap it up come February. Here is our current maplist, with unfinished maps in bold and nearly completed maps in bold italics.

MAP01 Running Scared I
MAP02 Welcome to Hell
MAP03 Running Scared II
MAP04 Spellbound
MAP05 Running Scared III
MAP06 Nightmare in Spiderland
MAP07 Running Scared IV
MAP08 Temple of the Forgotten Gods
MAP09 Running Scared V
MAP10 Acid Reign
MAP11 Running Scared VI
MAP12 Pain Consumes
MAP13 Running Scared VII
MAP14 Blood Urge
MAP15 Running Scared VIII
MAP16 Sanguinary Chamber
MAP17 Running Scared IX
MAP18 Meat Train
MAP19 Running Scared X
MAP20 Misfortune’s Playground
MAP21 Running Scared XI
MAP22 Whispers in the Dark
MAP23 Running Scared XII
MAP24 Ruin Me
MAP25 Running Scared XIII
MAP26 At the Mercy of Sin
MAP27 Running Scared XIV
MAP28 Vertigo Limit
MAP29 Running Scared XV
MAP30 The Sigil
MAP31 Cacophobia
MAP32 ???

I'm currently spiffying up Blood Urge and will have that done and ready for playtesting sometime soon. While the main maps are being worked on, I think it's best if we divvy up the Running Scared workload, as those seem like the easiest part of the project to get out of the way. The available numbers are 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, and 13, although MajorRawne has slotted two of them (dunno which two; I assume the segments before his maps). I also have a loose idea for MAP32 so I might take care of that myself. The rules for making a Running Scared map are as follows:

1)The level should not take longer then 5 minutes to beat
3)Outside area must be pitch black (brightness set to 25)
4)Instead of a sky use (flat MFLR8_4)
5)Use ROCKRED1 texture as your primary texture
6)The level should end with the next level's phobia written out for the player to see

You can take a look at our latest alpha (v.3) to get a better idea of how these maps work. In order to ensure that we get this damn thing out the door, I'm going to reinforce a policy that whatever maps are not done/submitted to the project by February 1st will be booted from the project, and another (more efficient) mapper will come in to take that place.

Let's get to work (again)!

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Back when I started Panophobia originally a little bit over a 3-4 years ago, I had no idea what I was doing. I was only 14 years old back then, and now I'm 17. Though that change may seem insignificant to most, if not all of you, those 3 years of puberty and development really have changed my life. I've played Doom since I was little, and got back with Skulltag, now Zandronum, in '09. I wanted to start a small community project back when my mapping skills where extremely mediocre. I just wanted some people to participate and have fun. I had no idea what vanilla was, or what ZDoom features were, the difference between wall textures and flats, and the turn off of pure oldschool visplane-limited Vanilla vs newschool texture packs/effects. Soon after, I ditched it and "passed" it off to FoH, promised to make a map, and expected the project to crash and burn. Little did I expect, FoH did an amazing job keeping up the project and organizing new/old mappers. For that, I do commend him. This extends to dobu gabu maru and MajorRawne as well, for their amazing contributions towards this project.

I promised a map, whipped up some moderate looking screenshots in a few minutes and pretended that I had some sort of an idea what I was doing, when I really didn't. Then, I noticed the topic pop up more and more often on the front page with amazing progress by other mappers, and I thought to myself "shit, I don't have a map." By the initial original deadline, August 30, I had almost nothing done because I was preoccupied with other things. The map could be completed in 2 minutes flat - I also had a thing for slaughtermaps at that time, which heavily influenced my mapping. The deadline was pushed to September 30th, and I still didn't do anything, so I posted nearly complete lies.

Finally, I got back into mapping that bit mid October when the deadline was for Halloween. On October 22nd I decided to get back into the mapping bit and try to feign a half decent map. I pull out my old '11 map and look at the monstrosity that was called a "map". I actually sat down and worked at DB for 4+ hours that day to scrape together something, starting from absolute scratch.

The Halloween deadline came (from almost a year ago from this post), but I couldn't make it for a)quality b)university. Only when dobu messaged me that I realized I've kept the team, the project, and the entire concept back for so long. So... all in all, I guess this ramble was mainly to apologize to the entirety of PanoTeam and to FoH for playing it off and lying repeatedly.

---

The above rant was written almost a year and a half ago (and edited for English/chronology) when I had originally planned to actually finish the map. Soon after I purchased my new gaming laptop, Doom fell out of interest for me. In December of 2013 I tried to map again, but my gaming mouse gave me a "double-click" problem, which basically ruined the possibility of mapping altogether. 11 months later, now November, (December now), of 2014. dobu sends me a message to which I read on a complete coincidence on a random saunter over to Doomworld and this haunting sense of dread and guilt washed over me.


Again, I would like to sincerely apologize to everyone who contributed to the completion of the project. I have finished Carnophobia to the best of my abilities having been on a mapping hiatus for almost a year. Feel free to do what you want with this map, if you even feel that is is adequate. If it is insufficient, I shall release it standalone.

Thank you for reading, and hope to see some of you around soon.

As a quick sidenote, there are many 0-length linedefs to which I can't identify or fix due to mouse problems. Sorry again for the inconvenience. I won't promise anything, but I might attempt to create something. Might.

DOWNLOAD: Carnophobia (MAP06) - https://www.sendspace.com/file/c9009y
Please trash the old map.

Monsters: 375
Difficulty: None (UV-Max'able)
Length: 30:00~ or so
Compat: Boom
Build time: 2 years





tl;dr
my bad

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Thank you! 乁༼☯‿☯✿༽ㄏ

I was really afraid that I was going to have to do the map myself, so I can't tell you how happy I am to see an gorgeous looking final product. Don't worry about feeling any guilt; a lot of projects asphyxiate due not to a single member but a collective disinterest, so I'm glad just to see that the map has indeed survived. I'll give it a runthrough tomorrow and post my thoughts, and if need be I can fix any bugs/stuff myself since I'm basically the reluctant project manager now.

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BloodyAcid said:

Monsters: 375
Difficulty: None (UV-Max'able)
Length: 30:00~ or so
Compat: Boom
Build time: 2 years

tl;dr
my bad


Holy linedefs Batman!

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Okay BloodyAcid, I "finished" your map. I put that in quotations because I had to cheat now and then; the map is absolutely brutal with the munitions it hands you, and I had to turn on god mode to fight a horde of barons and an archvile (as I was bone dry on anything else). If you don't mind, I'd like to tinker with some things in it to get it suitable for release. I'll keep mostly everything intact.

Really nice looking stuff otherwise.

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Go for it, feel free to make any changes you feel necessary.

Scarce ammo seems to be a running trend for me. I guess I'm not a fan of just casually swatting away enemies from overly-abundant reserves of ammo. (Also feel free to make any changes to monster placement, places in the map itself to store ammo etc)

What I'm a bit more assured about is the fact that you could feasibly complete the map, as in all the mechanics/doors/switches/exit working.

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Yeah everything works fine, although there's just a couple of small adjustments I'll have to make to make it MP compatible. I'll try my best to keep ammo in the map tight too (I may have to tone down some of the chaingunner warp-ins behind the player as those can get really frustrating).

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Hey folks! I'm proud of you for keeping this going.

I have updated the header post of this thread a bit.

I will give Vertigo a revision.

Sin will be worked on by dobu.

Also, I have passed on a lot of what Panophobia resources I have on my HD to dobu. I will continue to monitor the project's progress and provide emotional support!

Fight on mappers! Fight on!

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Alright, I tweaked BloodyAcid's map and added difficulties. Download here. I've also been hard at work on the wad and implemented difficulties in everything (excluding fiend's maps), and we only have a few maps left to go (3 Running Scared maps & 3 main maps). I also have to confess that I didn't have a lot of ideas for the Fear of Sinning map, so I decided to take fiend's work there and put it into a new map, the Fear of Making Decisions. I already have a basic layout going, but it's clear this thing will be the last level put into the set. As soon as MajorRawne gives me his most recent updates for Welcome to Hell, Acid Reign, and Temple of Forgotten Gods, I can throw up our last unfinished alpha.

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dobu gabu maru said:

Alright, I tweaked BloodyAcid's map and added difficulties. Download here.

I've played it just now. Great map, extremely fancy looking and well playable. I liked the balance, I thought it provided a very appropriate amount of challenge on UV - for me, at least :) I've been dying often, but always from my own mistakes. I've noticed that some lava pools didn't deal any damage (the ones in the northern red cave), which others did (the final SMM area and probably others), that could have used a fix. All in all, good job!

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Thanks! Glad it played well; after running through it several times I kinda lose track on how difficult it feels overall. And yeah I'll fix those damaging sectors.

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Whew, just gave the update a try, and I must say that the balance fixes you made really helped in making the map for playable.

I think my two favourite changes are the iron bars that raise to lock you inside the first battle arena and the swapping of the BFG for the plasma rifle. Those two things alone I feel really made the map a lot better.

I noticed one thing though: the mancubus at the plasma rifle secret is missing light textures on the ceiling.

All in all - great job dobu :)

UV-Max: 24:10 (I'm a slow player)

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Glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for making the map! I felt that taking out some of the chaingunner warp-ins and toning down the switch hunts helped to promote fluidity in the map. Also, the BFG removal was actually for the sake of the megawad, as I want its first introduction to be in MAP31 or MAP18. Speaking of the list, the new main maps are organized thusly:

1 - Welcome to Hell
2 - Whispers in the Dark
3 - Ruin Me
4 - Temple of the Forgotten Gods
5 - Nightmare in Spiderland
6 - Spellbound
7 - Meat Train
8 - Sanguinary Chamber
9 - Gluttonous Myriad (the fear of making decisions map I'm working on)
10 - Acid Reign
11 - The Circulatory (previously titled "Blood Urge")
12 - Pain Consumes
13 - Misfortune's Playground
14 - Vertigo Limit
15 - The Sigil

In organizing them, I considered author, difficulty, weapons/enemies introduced, length, and style. Of course there's some variability considering how Gluttonous Myriad and Nightmare in Spiderland turn out, but otherwise I think this is what our final set is looking like. If you want a peek at the unfinished alpha, I uploaded what we have compiled here, but this is a reminder that this is not meant to be playtested (various maps are incomplete and missing). I'm mainly uploading it just incase my computer dies on me or something unfortunate.

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Finished The Circulatory—Download here. Only UV is implemented so far.

The pistol start is pretty rough, but once you get beyond that nothing should be too awful (there are some tricky spots here 'n there). The hardest aspect about balancing the map is that there's a number of ways to go through it so ammo tends to be on the high side in some areas, and low in others. Also in classic dobu™ fashion, I wound up making it a bit too big, so it'll take a good 40 minutes to chew through. Only a few maps left guys!


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hihi. here's an fda for ^^ https://www.mediafire.com/?t6uckln8db8uury

got to (presumably) the last fight with 2 cybs. I didn't have the patience to snipe them to death so I tried to run past em and died -.-

Aside from that, fun map. You and mouldy seem to make similar stuff nowadays: above-average difficulty, highly nonlinear, unorthogonal, stock-textured, overall well put-together :D Start was most fun for me, the initial AV setup. BSK area was also fun trying to find space to strafe aboot whilest HKs and revs did their thing. some misc thoughts:

- infinity tallness annoyances. particularly if cacos start wandering around. this was most noticeable for me in the SS secret en route to the BSK, and the room with lots of balconies adjacent to the BK fight.
- I liked the plentiful armor bonuses, it allows you to get some decent milage out of the limited blue armors scattered throughout the map. neat.
- the silent tele doorway is kind of awkward, why not just use a regular teleporter or a lift or something?
- I managed to wake one of the final cybs up from across the map, must've been some nodebuilding wonkery.
- not really diggin the last area at all. awkwardly small, awkwardly snipeable from the floor below. not really sure what the intended strat was here, whatever it was it wasn't conveyed particularly well.

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Thanks for another showcase of expert play. I must say, I was heartbroken when you failed to trigger the plasma gun fight by stealing it outside of the WR Teleport linedef—you're too cautious for your own good sometimes! Addressing some points:

- the silent tele past the door is used just as a quick way to transport the player across the map without breaking movement/cohesion like a lift or regular teleporter would do—I'll probably make it one way (from lower-ground to higher) just to avoid the gameplay wonkiness you experienced.
- The second cyb teleports into the final room when it "wakes up" from you grabbing the RL (its done so to punish the player for grabbing an early RL, though there's no way they can really know it beforehand).
- I understand your complaints about the final room. The mancubii at the pre-fight there were a late addition (the very last thing I changed) so I didn't realize they could be awoken so awkwardly, leading you to piss off the revs, which in turn starts that weird ledge jamboree. There's actually a decent amount of room to fight both the cybers in there, and rather than locking the player in (and attempting to balance ammo to fight them with) I thought it was better to allow them with an escape if they couldn't handle the fight yet (or if they wanted to look for the PG/BFG). Of course this makes getting back inside a pain in the ass as you unfortunately experienced, but it's part of the payoff of backing out of the room. I'd be open to hearing any suggestions though; I personally considered only having one cyb be in there, but it turns the fight into a laugh when you have the BFG in tow (or when all the Lost Souls are dead).

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ahh, the PG sequence is pretty neat, creative use of the silent teles. also I missed that whole bfg area, that might lighten my grievances with the 2-cyb ending a bit.

so the last room: definitely removing the manc would encourage the player to be more of a sport and stick around after presumably awakening the subsequent mobs as intended. for the cybs: I think it would be a lot less panic-inducing if they came from the same direction, like, they both tele into the center of the room as the encounter begins, or both walk out of the hallway normally. having to focus only in one direction off the bat would let the player get their bearings while the LSs come out and they get the idea of how the encounter will go down. another idea ofc is just locking the player in there like a dick and throwing enough basic ammo to kill em.

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Righty-o, I'll remove the mancs & cyber tele and see if anyone else winds up complaining about the fight. I won't be linking the update until difficulties are squared away, so if anyone else wants to playtest it feel free.

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Wow, I had to have a go at this map after seeing the screenshot, but I should have known better :)

I find a lot of your maps really don't gel well with my style of play, and this is another one that I couldn't get on with. It reminded me a bit of that massive map you did which didn't end up in the nova project, lots of bastard encounters in really confined spaces. I fired this one up in zdoom and it was stuttering like crazy (for reasons I can probably guess) so I switched to prboom which ran smoother, but had to stop because the floor bumps in that port jar the whole screen and start giving me motion sickness, which is a shame. If I'm honest I also gave up cos its too damn hard for me, all my skill relies on having space and cover, and there isn't enough of either for my liking. God knows how you manage to keyboard your way through these maps!

I might have another go with zdoom on something bigger than my laptop to see if that helps.

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Jeeze what a paragon for non linearity.
My first exit was with only half of the map explored and around 300 enemies killed, gonna need to replay it before i'll give some feedback.

EDIT: Truly remarkable map, given the fact that you only need 1 key to exit and everything else is basicly non mandatory.
All areas are extremly interconnected hence there seem to be countless routes to apraoch the scenario, really cool.

Struggled a bit at the start mainly due to bad aiming and lack of ammo otherwise quite hard but comfortable to play.
Really liked the mazy area with the Cyb, you'll get teleported into, after picking up the PG and also the secret BFG scenario though i'm not a fan of the deep water there.

Amazing stuff.

Something weird is going on with the imp on this ledge seems to be stuck and sorta unvisibly.

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^yeah, I have no idea what happens to that imp sometimes. I'll probably have to remove him.

mouldy said:

this is another one that I couldn't get on with.

Aw, sad to hear that. I tried my best to keep the areas open and allow the players variability in tackling the encounters (as opposed to my NOVA monstrosity), but I suppose my knack for mercilessness always slips through. I still contend that once you pick up the RL & PG most of the difficulty plummets, but getting there is of course the hard part. And the map plays in Zdoom (laptop & PC) just fine on mind end, FYI.

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Right, I had a proper go at it now on a more beefy computer. Not sure which part is making my laptop struggle, usually its massive highly detailed open areas but I didn't see anything that would obviously cause trouble here.

After playing through the whole thing it seems that my initial impression was soured by a few troublesome encounters near the start, and everything after that was fine, so I'll just moan a bit about those few areas... First off the beginning itself with the archvile is a pain because you are forced to play it perfectly or not at all, and then I just save, so it feels a bit like jumping through a needless hoop before getting on with stuff. Maybe you are meant to run away from it? Dunno, thats a minor niggle I guess. The chainsaw room is a bit ridiculous to tackle straight after that, so I just saved that for later and went another route, but if you wanted that to be a viable option from the start then maybe that room could use some toning down.

Anyway, the main pain in the arse is this room:

which I found nearly impossible due to there being zero cover and way too many priorities to deal with. With the mancs on each corner not even moving will help you, and yet you still have a vile and PEs to deal with along with the other stuff and snipers from every other wall. Nothing else in the map is this tough by a mile, I'd suggest maybe just one manc on each corner for starters and either ditch the PEs or just have one, because this is a rocket fight and they poop the party. It seems like this room is optional, so I tried to avoid it completely, but then I came to this trap:

which I found way too difficult without a rocket launcher. So I had to go back to the bastard room and god-mode it. Two suggestions I would make for this trap to make it less horrible without rocket launcher is to change the mancs into some imps or something, that corner is vital to help deal with the lack of space. Also i'm assuming this is boom compatible so I'd suggest using a false floor to flatten the bumps in those corridors, they are really annoying here even in zdoom.

The first time i played i got this far and then the blue key on the lowering lift made me rage-quit. This time that wasn't so bad because I could squeeze past the PE and run to a room that I had already cleared out, but before all I could do was keep running into more and more monsters. Guess thats just the nature of non-linearity, so not sure I can really complain. Maybe that PE blocking the escape is a bit much. After that all was well, and I had great fun getting totally lost in this beast. The layout and detail is magnificent, and the difficulty wasn't exactly easy but there were always so many options for escaping and exploring. It boggles my mind how you make these massive maps, this one in particular seemed to have all kinds of mechanical shenanigans going on and weird stuff.

Took me about an hour in game-time, mostly because I did the whole thing before discovering the exit-jump.

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A note to those involved in this project: the delays were caused by me, no-one else. Most of my maps just need final tweaks. I took on what is, for a mapping newbie, a horrendous workload in the project and while I have enjoyed it, I have had health issues for the last year which mean I've made little progress this year. My maps will be completed though.

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mouldy said:

stuff

Alright, thanks for sweating through it; I'll work with some of those changes you suggested. Sorry that you had to experience one of the roughest routes to take (especially since you didn't clear out the upper right area past the BK before the trap there). I do agree that the RL arena is probably the single hardest fight on the map. I'm still getting a handle on being a bit more accommodating in my design, and being reminded to tone it down in certain places is helpful.

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As a quick question, will all the intermission maps (ie the maps where you run towards the name of the phobia) be included? At the moment, I feel that the maps detract from the experience of a cohesive mapset, but that may just be me.

Also @dobu's map: it plays very well and looks very nice, but I also agree with what mouldy said about that room - even with the plasmarifle and 150 health, for me it was very luck based depending on who fights who and if a lost soul follows you the whole time.

First exit in roughly 40 minutes with more than 10 deaths.

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