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scroton

First Singleplayer Boom Map

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This began as a map for a community "200 minute map" project about two weeks ago, then dropped it when I realized I was hopeless over as far as visplanes go (since the project is aiming for strict vanilla compatibility.) Then picked it back up and continued it as a Boom map, just finished it about two hours ago. This is the first singleplayer map I've done in a less advanced format than Hexen in ZDoom.

Map is Boom compatible, tested in PrBoom and ZDoom, There are minor crusher and display bugs in Zandronum, so don't use that. Difficulty levels are used, so if UV is too much consider playing in HMP or lower. I probably need to tweak balance somewhat.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxbbtKR5bll_TFdWYTl6cC1yQ2M/edit?usp=sharing

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neat. Here's some miscellaneous thoughts, in no particular order:

- I found ammo to be seriously sparse overall, at least in the beginning. It would have been nice to get a shotgun earlier, unless I'm stupid and missed it (I sort of refuse to use the chainsaw, terrible weapon)
- stacked items behave kind of annoyingly, at least in prb+. picking up those stacked health/armor bonuses in the RK room, for example, makes the player temporarily blind due to the prolonged palette switch.
- teleport puzzle at the end was pretty cool
- neat elaborate room transformations. I have a soft spot for over-the-top boom effects.
- "boom-compatibility" tends to come with the annoying side-effect of monsters falling off of ledges if pushed, this can be more or less fixed with block-monster lines.
- red key exit was a bit slow, after most things died I wandered about for a bit looking for a switch. If you use more timed rooms in the future I'd advise having tall slowly lowering bars, in the very least the player will be sure they don't have to do anything. A more "active" alternative is to have the exit of a room be triggered by a sequence of switches, often too dangerous to hit back to back when populated with monsters, so that when the player is ready to leave they can do so quickly
- silent teleporters are kind of weird. It's ok to use them out of view or for gimmicky effects, but something feels kind of off when I can sit there and watch enemies silently materialize in front of me :p (e.g. rev platforms in YK room, HK/barons at end)

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Thanks for playing and giving feedback.

I was almost done with an adjusted version using suggestions I got from others and was about to post it here but went back and fixed a couple of other things based on what you told me first.

Adjusted the blue key room and when you get weapons, fixed issue with crusher (zdoom doesn't do certain prboom crushing stuff the same way, so in zdoom you could get stuck in a part of the YKR), took your advice on the monster blocking lines and made it so monsters don't get knocked off ledges in the BKR and took your advice and made it so you can see the bars in the yellow key room lowering and also reduced the time it takes to lower to 2/3 what it took before.

OP link has been updated.

Ribbiks said:

- I found ammo to be seriously sparse overall, at least in the beginning. It would have been nice to get a shotgun earlier, unless I'm stupid and missed it (I sort of refuse to use the chainsaw, terrible weapon)


There is a shotgun but it's in a secret when you first get past the room with the three pinkies in it. Do you think I should put one in earlier? I held off in this map because in other maps I've just given the player a shotgun from the very start and wanted to try something different.

Ribbiks said:

- stacked items behave kind of annoyingly, at least in prb+. picking up those stacked health/armor bonuses in the RK room, for example, makes the player temporarily blind due to the prolonged palette switch.


Yeah, I noticed that while testing. I have a thing for putting stacks of "artifact" items in hell areas instead of "normal" items. I should probably change those up.

Ribbiks said:

- silent teleporters are kind of weird. It's ok to use them out of view or for gimmicky effects, but something feels kind of off when I can sit there and watch enemies silently materialize in front of me :p (e.g. rev platforms in YK room, HK/barons at end)


Heh, this was mostly me being lazy and not wanting to go create a bunch of sectors that I'd have to include in other boom "scripts", but I guess I'll have to go back and fix it here soon. There's a couple of other things I want to change too so I'll get that done in the next couple of days.

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FDA: http://www.doomworld.com/vb/attachment.php?postid=1276833

uses the updated version that is 1,292,308 bytes /
md5sum 729fd4643f0714553e98315f0da3eb37

two deaths, probably runs an hour in total, feel free to ffwd / not watch if you want.

Anyhow, pretty fun. Best part was the way the level mutated with boom scripting, that was quite elaborate and well executed. Worst part was that some of the fights got kind of tedious, especially the mancs guarding the yellow key, and the imps in the last bit to an extent, because there comes a time when those enemies basically stop being any danger but you still have a lot of them to kill. Admittedly the imps did almost get me though, so OK. I thought supplies were good, I didn't have a problem with using the chainsaw at the start, was kind of disappointed when I realized I wasted the megasphere at the end though because I thought I'd be teleporting to somewhere I couldn't get back from. Maybe that's my fault though!

I was fine with the silent teleporting barons, I thought it added to the surrealness a bit. Revs were fine too, not much different than an instant floor raise anyhow. I dislike stacked items in general both for the palette switch and the fact that you can't really judge what you're picking up and what supplies you have left, though there was enough ammo that that didn't seem to matter much anyhow.

Aesthetically it was nice, the slime area was my favourite. Can't actually remember too much detail around the Hell area, maybe because I was intently focused on running around and not dying.

So, pretty good! Do you have other maps easily available? The only other thing I've played of yours is Fractal Doom.

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plums said:

FDA: http://www.doomworld.com/vb/attachment.php?postid=1276833

uses the updated version that is 1,292,308 bytes /
md5sum 729fd4643f0714553e98315f0da3eb37

two deaths, probably runs an hour in total, feel free to ffwd / not watch if you want.


Thanks for taking the time to play it and share feedback! I really appreciate it. I watched the whole thing, after figuring out how to play demos. Your behavior when first entering the YK room made me giggle, as did your back and forth between the teleporter and the megasphere before grabbing the sphere. It helped me get a better idea of what players are thinking/doing and how they play the map.

plums said:

Anyhow, pretty fun. Best part was the way the level mutated with boom scripting, that was quite elaborate and well executed. Worst part was that some of the fights got kind of tedious, especially the mancs guarding the yellow key, and the imps in the last bit to an extent, because there comes a time when those enemies basically stop being any danger but you still have a lot of them to kill. Admittedly the imps did almost get me though, so OK. I thought supplies were good, I didn't have a problem with using the chainsaw at the start, was kind of disappointed when I realized I wasted the megasphere at the end though because I thought I'd be teleporting to somewhere I couldn't get back from. Maybe that's my fault though!


Yeah, I think I'll redo the yellow key fight so there are a couple less mancubi and some other various monsters instead. Someone else suggested having teleporters in the final room that the player can move around more easily, I may incorporate that into the next version or replace a bunch of the imps with stronger but less numerous monsters. I think I may also go back to my original (before release) behavior of the final room where the walls come down as soon as you open the RK door, that way the player is more aware of what's happening.

plums said:

I was fine with the silent teleporting barons, I thought it added to the surrealness a bit. Revs were fine too, not much different than an instant floor raise anyhow. I dislike stacked items in general both for the palette switch and the fact that you can't really judge what you're picking up and what supplies you have left, though there was enough ammo that that didn't seem to matter much anyhow.


I may keep the barons silently teleporting but I'm definitely gonna change the revs and chaingunners to proper teleports.

I try not to scrimp on ammo, just health and armor, since I figure it's best to give the player just one of the two to keep track of if there's going to be a lot going on in the map.

I think I'm going to switch those health and armor bonuses out though, and definitely in the YK room, since that's where the "pickup blindness" is the worst.

plums said:

So, pretty good! Do you have other maps easily available? The only other thing I've played of yours is Fractal Doom.


I only have two other released maps, the most recent is Pepper Your Angus from 32in24-13. My first map (and first thing ever to do with doom mapping or modding) was /pol/.wad, a politically incorrect, possibly offensive map meant to be representative of the 4chan /pol/ board.

The rest of my mapping is as of yet unreleased GZDoom projects, though I'll probably keep releasing a map here and there in the interim, either Boom maps like this one or maps that use G/ZDoom features and new textures and monsters/monster behavior but are still in the vanilla doom style.

As far as non-map Doom projects aside from Fractal Doom (link for those that haven't seen it), I'm also involved with the WIP The Space Pirate, which is a less vanilla gameplay mod than Fractal Doom is, and attempts to introduce creative and interesting weaponry and monster behavior.

There's also a couple of mini projects geared towards utility, ZDoom Pistol Start Options and Vanilla Chex Quest 1 & 2 in ZDoom

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scroton said:

Your behavior when first entering the YK room made me giggle, as did your back and forth between the teleporter and the megasphere before grabbing the sphere.


Yeah, you got me good with the YK room trap, I laughed too.

Thanks for the links, I'll check out those maps for sure.

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