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mouldy

The Eye [now on idgames]

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'The Eye' is a single boom compatible map for Doom 2. I'd be interested to see what people make of it.

http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/?id=17053

It features 3 difficulty settings and moments of mayhem. This map was a bit of a design experiment, its all arranged in a circle so I guess you could call it non linear in the sense that you can choose which way around you go.

You will need all 3 keys to finish, so if you somehow manage without all the keys let me know! I'm also interested to hear any problems people find or annoyances. I made it to cater for my own chaotic semi-rambo ammo-spunking save-spamming style of play, so some bits might be a bit evil on UV.

Update: I've chopped out quite a few of the archviles and added more goodies to make it less of a chore.





There will probably be some misaligned textures here and there

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Woh! Really impressive architecture and visuals. Pretty relentless gameplay wise - it will take a bit of beating (but if it was designed with save-spamming in mind then perhaps I'm not playing it properly). Unless I missed something, I seemed to get inescapably stuck between the two rows of "teeth" that mark the entrance to the flesh tunnel. Otherwise, great stuff!

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Interesting visuals, I'm not a huge fan of the red/green "christmas in hell" theme, but the blood/flesh areas were really pretty.

gameplay was a bit painful, mostly due to extremely sparse health that gets chipped away by hitscanners scattered all over the place, also the AV overkill might of had something to do with it.

also I got stuck behind the AV lift in the ssg 'library' room.

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I loved it, but after about two minutes of playing I stopped paying attention to things to critique because I was so involved. Definitely more difficult than I'm used to, thus I did turn on Buddha mode once or twice, because I do have places to be today, lol. :P

I love the spiral staircase leading to the exit, and hearing the Cyb's footstomps definitely added to the tension. In my mind, I was imagining an army of them waiting for me up there. Also, God damn you and your effective use of Archies! Sorry, had to get that out of my system.

Also, the bit at the very end where each press of the button reduces your cover sliver by sliver was brilliant. I gotta say, I was anticipating something very cruel when the cover disappeared completely.

Minor critique: the map has a pretty simple overall layout, so I didn't use the in-game map much, but I did notice that most of the detailing was left unhidden, so it did make it a bit 'busy' looking. It was nice to appreciate the detail, but it made locating stairways and other things just a touch bit more difficult than I thought it should be.

Played on ZDoom. Took me 34 minutes to complete (would've been a lot longer without cheating at parts).

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The visuals are hilariously nice and I was surprised there are "only" 26k sidedefs. It ran fine on my 12 year old computer. I played clockwise with saves until the plasma gun after the red key, but missed some monsters and ran out of ammo. This doesn't look fun to demo.

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Cheers for the feedback guys!

durian said:

Woh! Really impressive architecture and visuals. Pretty relentless gameplay wise - it will take a bit of beating (but if it was designed with save-spamming in mind then perhaps I'm not playing it properly). Unless I missed something, I seemed to get inescapably stuck between the two rows of "teeth" that mark the entrance to the flesh tunnel. Otherwise, great stuff!


If you find yourself between the teeth you can press on the outer ones to lower them - a bit of a concession to a design flaw there. The gameplay is a bit of a victim of me endlessly playing it and making it harder because I got used to everything. I'd definitely recommend people starting out on the lower difficulty settings (i think I might be able to make it through on HMP without saving)

Ribbiks said:

gameplay was a bit painful, mostly due to extremely sparse health that gets chipped away by hitscanners scattered all over the place, also the AV overkill might of had something to do with it.

also I got stuck behind the AV lift in the ssg 'library' room.


I did wonder if I was over doing it with the AVs, I kind of overdid it with everything on UV though. You think its worth taking a few out and sprinkling a few more stimpacks around? Thanks for pointing out the mistake with that lift, can't believe I missed that.

schwerpunk said:

Minor critique: the map has a pretty simple overall layout, so I didn't use the in-game map much, but I did notice that most of the detailing was left unhidden, so it did make it a bit 'busy' looking. It was nice to appreciate the detail, but it made locating stairways and other things just a touch bit more difficult than I thought it should be.


Yeah, I made absolutely zero effort tidying the auto-map, sorry about that, I'll stick that on the list of things to sort out.

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Tried it without saves, in the best attempt I got 2 keys and 250 kills or so. That was very painful. Also, I managed to get stuck in the sector 1090 (jumped on a tiny ledge and then down).

Didn't like the visuals much, I think I've played too many high detailed maps so now you need something else to impress me, like interesting texture/color combinations, clever layouts, original gameplay ideas, etc. This map just felt kinda generic despite all the detail. And the gameplay was annoying rather than fun but I guess this complaint is invalid since I didn't use saves.

And yes, you definitely overdid it with the archviles. In the pink skin area I was doing this all the time: make one step, run away, see if an arch-vile appeared, repeat.

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baronofheck82 said:

Pretty badass map you have here. Pretty fun to play - but the Cyberdemon kicked my arse the first time around :)

I just ran around the first one. :P

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Memfis said:

Tried it without saves, in the best attempt I got 2 keys and 250 kills or so. That was very painful. Also, I managed to get stuck in the sector 1090 (jumped on a tiny ledge and then down).

Didn't like the visuals much, I think I've played too many high detailed maps so now you need something else to impress me, like interesting texture/color combinations, clever layouts, original gameplay ideas, etc. This map just felt kinda generic despite all the detail. And the gameplay was annoying rather than fun but I guess this complaint is invalid since I didn't use saves.

And yes, you definitely overdid it with the archviles. In the pink skin area I was doing this all the time: make one step, run away, see if an arch-vile appeared, repeat.


Good job finding that mistake, I'll sort that out, cheers. Interesting points you make about the gameplay, seems that people are finding it frustrating. It was originally going to be easier but I let someone test it who suggested I make it harder. Maybe I should ease it up a bit though...

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That level truly is gorgeous. Especially the central part, when looking up at angles only allowed by OpenGL renderers.

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This is pretty mean on uv, alot of crossfire and archviles in bad places. The map look really sexy(i nerdgasmed while playing).

I think its funny you put the shootable door at the very start to repeatable. I use that room alot to funnel enemies into an area i can easily defend, and its funny hearing the gong type sound every time you shoot through that doorway.

Health and ammo are on the verge of being too sparse, but then again that gives you some time to cause monsters to infight to save ammo and health.

Ill give more feedback the further i get. Ill try not to cheat even though it is tempting to see what the rest of the map looks like.

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Nice design overall, I really like how everything wraps and curves around everything that is a very nice stylizing. The height variation also creates a nice feeling of volume and scale. The lighting is nicely varied creating a strong contrast which enhances depth perception.

I do have some complaints of course in the visual wise department to start off the use of METAL4 and METAL5 did not fit in the theme all so well also you could have set the REDROCK1 texture in the central chamber to upper/lower unpegged this would take care of a lot of alignment issues in that area which isn't too big of deal. Expanding on the upper/lower unpegged some areas were indeed manually aligned when using upper/lower unpegged could have saved you time but it looks like you started doing that into the early development of the map then changed your ways. One more thing that I didn't really like was the lack of attention to using textures as materials mainly my beef with this is using GSTONE1 then on a 90degree using SP_HOT1 which is not really how the bricks would look.

Anyways, overall a solid map 4.5/5

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It somehow feels like a Hexen map architectual-wise, I won't get detailed over it until I've fully played it through though.

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TimeOfDeath said:

I played clockwise with saves until the plasma gun after the red key, but missed some monsters and ran out of ammo. This doesn't look fun to demo.


Yeah I think I will definitely be tweaking the difficulty to make it less harsh.

I'm interested in how other people balance the difficulty in their maps. The way I did it was to aim for something I could just about do without saving on HMP and then add more difficulty to UV for people who are better than me at doom. But this doesnt really take into account me knowing the map inside out. I find myself deciding where to go next based on where I know the ammo and health will be.

Alwaysdoomed said:

I think its funny you put the shootable door at the very start to repeatable. I use that room alot to funnel enemies into an area i can easily defend, and its funny hearing the gong type sound every time you shoot through that doorway.


Haha whoops! I never noticed that, cheers.

Pottus said:

you could have set the REDROCK1 texture in the central chamber to upper/lower unpegged this would take care of a lot of alignment issues in that area which isn't too big of deal.


Thanks for the tip. That particular area was one of the first bits I did and was before I learned about upper and lower unpegging, its only my 2nd map so I am still learning stuff!

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Very hard to say how long it took, I've been working on it on and off over the last couple of months maybe. Most of the time seems to be spent on thinking of ideas for the spaces rather than physically making them though. And I'm kind of learning doom builder at the same time so there has been a lot of trial and error going on.

Think I will make my next map smaller and simpler for sure

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I'm definitely looking forward to playing anything you produce. A small request, if it isn't too far off from your plans: Include a babby mode for Doomers like me that kind of suck at large groups, heh. [:

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cheers, this map is a real bastard so I will definitely do something more user friendly next. The best I have done so far on this map on UV with no saves is getting 3 keys, but died before I could use them.

What I might eventually do is make a few more maps to go with it as some kind of short episode, I will knock the difficulty down when I do.

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I've updated the map to descrease the difficulty:
http://www.mediafire.com/?298cbf9f2dz4lob
including stripping out half the archviles and a few awkward chaingunners and adding more health. Consequently I think its more fun to play, but let me know if you either find it still too hard or too easy now (I can now get through it without saving if I'm not too careless)

This is probably the last update I will do before either uploading to idgames or saving it for a collection

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Wow, those screenshots truly are fantastic :O. I am a big sucker for GSTONE maps. I gotta find some free time to play through this.

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This is a fantastic example of what good level design is. Linear for the most part (if you don't count the path choice at the beginning), but not so much that it is boring or too straight-forward.

This is also a fantastic example of good gameplay. I had a blast playing this! I'm sure I speak for everyone, when I say, "Thank you!"

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hey cheers! Think I will make my next map a lot more non-linear. I like maps that let you choose which order you take the battles, though you can do that to some extent in this one (or avoid them entirely).

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I can't wait! I like maps that let you perhaps choose your path, but as long as the paths are kept somewhat linear, I am happy.

I've played some good non-linear maps though too, so you never know :p

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Yea, this level rocks. Great layout. Gameplay kicks my ass. I almost didn't get into it because it's pretty slow going until you get your hands on an ssg. Fighting revenants, mancubi, etc with shotgun/chaingun is a bit of a chore. But it got better/easier once I got my hands on the SSG and plasma.

Great work!

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Level looks superb. Really really good looking, well done.

Given how hard you said it was I thought I'd try it on Hey Not Too Rough and even though it's the toned-down v2 I just get completely and utterly stomped. As in, regardless of if I go left or right at the start, I die within 20 seconds. I just can't deal with a tidal wave of hitscan myself.

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It could be that I didn't test it enough on lower difficulties, but just to show its possible on UV here is a recording of me rocking through the map in about 16 minutes

http://www.mediafire.com/?icukwg9etqboowk

I left plenty of monsters alive, I'll go back and kill them another day

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just a little bump to mention this is on idgames now

http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/?id=17053

I added co-op starts but no idea if they will work, or how the map will respond to 4 players running around with all the weird walk-over triggers I set up. Could be a scenario where one guy runs ahead and trips a locked door behind him, forcing his mates to go the other way around...

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