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ella guro

Doom 2 in name only (tentative title)

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Either way, I'm not placing a BFG or a Cyber.

My map is now underway, and will split the level title

Dead (and) Simple

Would a rocket/arch-vile jump requirement infringe the simple part?

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i honestly find required rocket/arch jumps annoying in any map (though i'm fine with them for secrets), and strongly discourage against doing it.

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ella guro said:

i honestly find required rocket/arch jumps annoying in any map (though i'm fine with them for secrets), and strongly discourage against doing it.

^This x100!

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glenzinho said:

^This x100!


x1000, even

Some guidelines on what weapons/monsters were allowed on what levels would be a Good Thing, IMO. Projects like STRAIN & MM2 had these, and they helped in terms of keeping the difficulty curve fairly consistent. I think Requiem had rules like these too, but they weren't enforced very much by the "let's just get this out" stage of development.

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Eregore said:

Are we making all levels pistol start compatible? (I think we should)


yes! i completely forgot about mentioning this. i should make this clear in the first post.

Eregore said:

-Are we pacing the weapon or monster premieres? If possible I would like to request the premiere of the Cyber-demon on my map, and that the BFG will NOT have had an appearance in or before map 11 (so player CAN'T just BFG blast the cybie away), the answer to this question will significantly alter how I approach my map.


i'll have to make it clear to everyone, but this might be a good idea - map 11 seems like a decent place for a cyberdemon debut.

Capellan said:

Some guidelines on what weapons/monsters were allowed on what levels would be a Good Thing, IMO. Projects like STRAIN & MM2 had these, and they helped in terms of keeping the difficulty curve fairly consistent. I think Requiem had rules like these too, but they weren't enforced very much by the "let's just get this out" stage of development.


you're absolutely right there. i'll work on outlining what is and isn't acceptable. for sure, the two rules right now are:

1. no rocket/archville jumps required (use of them in general is also discouraged unless it's clever)
2. every map should be doable from pistol start

btw, if you have any records of what the mapping guidelines were for any of those projects you mentioned, i'd love to see them (mostly as a curiosity).

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ella guro said:
btw, if you have any records of what the mapping guidelines were for any of those projects you mentioned, i'd love to see them (mostly as a curiosity).


I no longer have the specifics, but the difficulty guidelines (as opposed to aesthetic guidelines, like "hellish levels") generally took the form of a table, which specified what weapons and monsters could be used:

Map     Weapons              Monsters
01      Shotgun              Trooper, Sergeant, Imp
02      +Chaingun, Chainsaw  +Demon
03      +SSG                 +Chaingunner
04      etc                  etc
With map15 being about the point that you could use everything.

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This feels like spoiling the surprise, but whatever: I'm going to use ghost monsters in my map. Just wondering if anyone else is and how we can make sure the effect isn't neutered by some source ports.

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Obsidian said:

This feels like spoiling the surprise, but whatever: I'm going to use ghost monsters in my map. Just wondering if anyone else is and how we can make sure the effect isn't neutered by some source ports.

Sounds fun. The only thing I've done similar to this would be making a 'ghost' copy of a yellow skull key, that's supposed to be a hologram of the real key (the hologram lowers when the player hits a switch, so they get the message that the real one has as well).

One minor obstacle I could foresee would be using actor properties in the decorate script that are reliant on the player's CVAR settings for transparency. I.e. "SoulTrans." Some players set Lost Souls to opaque.

I've only just started toying with decorat-ions, so this is the only instance I know of, as it's mentioned explicitly on the ZDoom wiki.

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schwerpunk said:

Sounds fun. The only thing I've done similar to this would be making a 'ghost' copy of a yellow skull key, that's supposed to be a hologram of the real key (the hologram lowers when the player hits a switch, so they get the message that the real one has as well).

One minor obstacle I could foresee would be using actor properties in the decorate script that are reliant on the player's CVAR settings for transparency. I.e. "SoulTrans." Some players set Lost Souls to opaque.

I've only just started toying with decorat-ions, so this is the only instance I know of, as it's mentioned explicitly on the ZDoom wiki.


It isn't a decoration thing, it's a glitch when an Arch-Vile resurrects a crushed monster. The ghost monsters are pretty much impervious to conventional damage, making them pretty darn tricky.

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Obsidian said:
It isn't a decoration thing, it's a glitch when an Arch-Vile resurrects a crushed monster.


As seen in Requiem map23, for example.

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Obsidian said:

This feels like spoiling the surprise, but whatever: I'm going to use ghost monsters in my map. Just wondering if anyone else is and how we can make sure the effect isn't neutered by some source ports.


you absolutely should. it would be totally appropriate for the map slot you have and the name.

as far as source ports go, not sure what to do about that.

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ella guro said:

as far as source ports go, not sure what to do about that.


Most source ports emulate it. ZDoom will only do it right if it has a special compflag put into the engine for that particular WAD and map. Once it's released I would put in a submission on the ZDoom forums to get the compflag put in, which is what happened to Reverie (a recent release that used ghost monsters).

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ella guro said:

btw, if you have any records of what the mapping guidelines were for any of those projects you mentioned, i'd love to see them (mostly as a curiosity).

Here's a quick guide (courtesy of the Wiki) to what first appears where in Doom 2, which could be used as a base for this project with a bit of fine tuning.

Trooper          Map01
Imp              Map01
Sergeant         Map02
Demon            Map02 (HMP & UV), Map03 (all difficulties)
Chaingunner      Map03 (HMP & UV), Map04 (all difficulties)
Spectre          Map03
Lost Soul        Map05
Hell Knight      Map05 (UV only), Map06 (all difficulties)
Cacodemon        Map05
Revenant         Map06
Spiderdemon      Map06 (UV only), Map20 (all difficulties)
Mancubus         Map07
Arachnotron      Map07
Baron of Hell    Map08
Cyberdemon       Map08
Pain Elemental   Map08
Arch-vile        Map11
Boss Brain       Map30
SS Nazi          Map31
Commander Keen   Map32

Armour Bonus     Map01
Health Bonus     Map01
Stimpack         Map01
Medikit          Map01
Green Armour     Map01
Blue Armour      Map02
Backpack         Map03
Invisibility     Map03
Soulsphere       Map03
Berserk          Map05
Megasphere       Map06
Invulnerability  Map08
Radiation Suit   Map08
Automap          Map09
Light Goggles    Map10

Chainsaw         Map01
Shotgun          Map01
Rocket Launcher  Map01
Super Shotgun    Map02
Chaingun         Map03
Plasma Gun       Map05
BFG              Map07 (mapping error?), Map08
A few higher-powered monsters could be allowed to appear in earlier map slots on UV, but not so many that maintaining the difficulty curve means flooding later levels with them. There's probably no need to withhold the Rad Suit, Automap or Light Goggles if earlier maps can benefit from them.

Obsidian said:

I'm going to use ghost monsters in my map.

Don't forget to scatter some rockets around.

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The thing about those lists is there's not enough context. As a rule MAP06 is too early for a spiderdemon but placed under a crusher that he can't escape from removes the threat.

Monster-wise it may be best just applying a difficulty progression rather than specifying monsters.

Weapon-wise I would be more in agreement but Doom 2 is very generous about it's weapons. They all appear very early. Again, some context is needed as some are in secrets. Also, if rocket and cell levels are sensibly shrewd it removes the issue of carrying over as having heavy weaponry is of no use if you're out of ammo. The BFG would be my one exception here as it shares ammo with the PR but is much more powerfull against the higher HP monsters.

Powerup's don't really matter except the backpack since once you've got that you always have. Most sets have it early on (even the project I'm managing does - it's placed as a secret in MAP02 and MAP05 then given away in MAP07) but I think it's best to keep it away from the player for as long as is practical.

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I decided to use a couple lost souls in my map04, they're just too appropriate for the last area.

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@Greyghost I start the player off with the rocket launcher. =D

And as for the BFG on MAP07, I'm pretty sure it's only for deathmatch.

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Alright, i finished map04, all what's left now is to test it a bit. I have a suspicion that it turned out a bit harder than intended :D (although maybe i just suck at doom, who knows?).

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Hey guys, I'm now totally ready to start on my MAP30 - Icon of Sin (having now finished MAP04 for my own project).

I have ideas, though I want some feedback from the guys making the last couple of maps as to what themes they went with (a couple of screenshots going in my inbox would be nice) and just how tough they're aiming in terms of difficulty -- although this is less a concern since, being the last map, I could theoretically ramp it up to 'barely possible' and it would fly. After all, Plutonia Revisited did just that. :P

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ComicMischief said:

Hey guys, I'm now totally ready to start on my MAP30 - Icon of Sin (having now finished MAP04 for my own project).

I have ideas, though I want some feedback from the guys making the last couple of maps as to what themes they went with (a couple of screenshots going in my inbox would be nice) and just how tough they're aiming in terms of difficulty -- although this is less a concern since, being the last map, I could theoretically ramp it up to 'barely possible' and it would fly. After all, Plutonia Revisited did just that. :P


I sorta thought that the decoration was extremely sparse for a boss stage, but then again it might've been limitations. Try use some of the flesh textures: I reckon the only map that really made use of them in Doom II was MAP28.

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Could I request though, that whoever's doing MAP29 make a really tight ammo balance? Not too fussed about the health, but I'd like the player to be left with as little ammo as possible. Cheers.

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Obsidian said:

I can test for you while I'm here if you like.

Eh, I'll just make sure there's enough and not too much ammo and health and then just upload the map so anybody in the thread can test it further if they like.

ComicMischief said:

...I want some feedback from the guys making the last couple of maps as to what themes they went with...

...Could I request though, that whoever's doing MAP29 make a really tight ammo balance? Not too fussed about the health, but I'd like the player to be left with as little ammo as possible. Cheers.

I'm going to try making map29 for this project, although that map isn't reserved to encourage others to try it too (in case mine isn't good enough). I'm going to finish on a ton of fleshy textures probably, it's "Living end" after all. Also indoors. You could totally do as Obsidian suggests and make liberal use of fleshy textures too: it's gonna be appropriate in any case.
About ammo balance, i will try (i like doing that kind of ammo balance anyway), but it's gonna be extremely hard considering the possible difference between people coming to map29 with full backpacks of ammo from previous maps, and a pistol-start. I could probably ensure the player has max ammo and then drop him through a one-way passage to fight the rest of the monsters of the level with only that supply. A sort of final gauntlet. Although people tend to hate one-way passages, and god help me if we're supposed to account for coop.

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Good to hear. I'd love to go for cyber/flesh theme so that sounds A-OKAY from here.

Right now I'm putting together the Icon's room itself. First time I've done one of these, and I've thus far bettered Doom 2's own effort with the face, I think. :)

EDIT: another thing. I don't want to have to mess with DOSbox for testing, am I right in thinking Chocolate Doom has the same visplane limit as Vanilla?

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It might, although there's something that in my directory is called "choco render limits", a version of chocolate doom that displays various parameters like the amount of drawsegs, visplanes or sprites and the maximum limit. It doesn't actually crash or anything i think, but lets you know. (Maybe it does, i only exceeded drawsegs once). So use that. Also that great utility linked in the first post somewhere that automatically checks the whole map for limit breaks. Very handy.

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I have now drawn up V3 of Map07 on paper, before going into builder.
I need to know ASAP if anyone has objections to the enemies featured in this map.

Easy: Arachnotron, Chaingunner, Shotgun Guy, Mancubus, Imp, Demon, Hell Knight, Pain Elemental, Spectre

Medium: All from easy (but no spectre), Cacodemon

Hard: All from Medium, Baron of Hell

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Antroid said:

About ammo balance, i will try (i like doing that kind of ammo balance anyway), but it's gonna be extremely hard considering the possible difference between people coming to map29 with full backpacks of ammo from previous maps, and a pistol-start.

Have you considered a suicide exit? That'd force the player to work with whatever ComicMischief offers them plus 50 bullets.

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GreyGhost said:

Have you considered a suicide exit? That'd force the player to work with whatever ComicMischief offers them plus 50 bullets.


Is it the E1M8's type exit? That could work, although then the similiar themes of map29's end and map30 will look strange. One would expect a dramatic change of scenery after dying in order to finish the penultimate level.

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Just place a teleporter destination point, a player one start and a romero head on top of each other. Place the teleporter at the end of the level you will telefrag yourself meaning death and the romero head will end the level. The e1m8 exit will leave you on 10% health or less with all ammo intact i think

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Oh, okay. Didn't know that trick. Still, I like the idea of a "final gauntlet" much more. Time to plot and plan!

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