Miasma [on /idgames]

[tourniquet]

EffinghamHuffnagel said:

I tried to open the map in DeePSea to look at it and got a Vertex Error; Fatal Error; Crash.

Idk if DeePSea is able to handle extended nodes, perhaps this is the problem.
As for the key messages, i'm clueless when it comes to Zdoom stuff in general :p, all i know is that the messages work right in Boom compatibilty mode. Perhaps you may know a solutions via decorate?

@Rayzik: Thanks i'm looking forward to any demos :) I allready considered to add some more health on top of the tower, adding a soulsphere might be a bit too generous for my taste but 2 medkits seem pretty fair. Earlier versions had 1 more cell charge ontop of the HK platform that lowers later on. Perhaps i should put it back in to compensate any ammo shortage.

The way to the final version is still very long since i'll add at least one more map which will certainly take quite a few months to complete. For now i wait and see if some more feedback or bug reports arrive, fix all issues add HNTR and call it a day until the next maps is done.

[EffinghamHuffnagel]

tourniquet said:

As for the key messages, I'm clueless when it comes to Zdoom stuff in general :p, all i know is that the messages work right in Boom compatibility mode.

I have to amend my previous post. I went back in and checked with the latest dev version of ZDoom. On the wall with three switches past the Cyber I got the messages "You need a Blue Card to activate this object", "You need a Silver Key to activate this object", and "You need a Red Card to activate this object". The PD_xxxx codes you have in the Dehacked match what is listed in the Language.enu in ZDoom.pk3 under the 'New strings from Boom' section, but for some reason aren't being translated correctly by the engine. I'll have to go over to the ZDoom forums and post this.

[Demonologist]

My initial reaction was pretty much negative, as upon seeing the lost child of Sunlust (ironically, it reminds of both Ribbiks (indoors) and Danne (outdoors) in style; a child of two daddies, oh my gosh), the freeform and somewhat... underwhelming gameplay that dominated the majority of mandatory progression line and developed pretty slowly was the least expected thing for me, so I didn't even persist after becoming a victim of one of the harder optional battles.
Still, after a couple days of an uncomfortable feeling that I'm missing something I revisited it and decided to dive deeper. I must say, it's not often that the "okay that was easy, let's search for some other ways of self-entertainment, then" paradigm rises above anything else, but still - digging deeper discovers some sexy setpieces hiding in the bowels of the main "adventurous" hub, and those are more than a worthy compensation for possible lack of excitement during the initial stages. It's one of those maps that's really interesting to explore for the sake of clandestine punishment, the thing I thought I dislike just, like, two days ago?.. Welp, the times they are a-changin' rapidly, so it seems.
So in the end - it's a nice Sunlust b-side with a different gameplay twist at its core, it'd be a shame to abandon it like I was going to do initially. Am I getting too old to understand the value of really pretty yet rare and evanescent things? I hope that nope, not quite there yet. Thanks, tourny, a new bright star in this gloomy nebula.
And shame on you R&D, while you're busy creating humorous slaughter spectacles and bizarre little mapsies - others have to make sure your reputation is preserved via active contributions to your supreme ideal!

P.S. A funny thought's been visiting my brain occasionally: should Ribbiks pretend to be Death-Destiny and tourniquet camouflage himself as Insane_Gazebo - would anyone notice the difference when they both present their wannabe-maps?..

[tourniquet]

Thanks Demonologist, right now i'm rather surprised since i didn't expect you would find at least a tiny bit of enjoyment in this map :p Yeah of course, Danne and Ribbiks impact is apparent quite a lot, i'd say it's even more Danne's influence in this map (very excessive use of gradient light + my decision to pick green as highlight has it's origins in Map28), but yeah Sunlust's impact was pretty huge and hard to handle without being too blatant. Not sure if i succeeded, i tried to add as much of my own handwriting as possible though.

[RjY]

Would you consider adding a bunch of invulnerabilities in on skill 2? I think skill 2 needs to be toned down a lot. Remember it is called "Hey, Not Too Rough" :)

[Demonologist]

tourniquet said:

i didn't expect you would find at least a tiny bit of enjoyment in this map

What made you think so? You've got a whole bunch of lovely scenarios here that made me revel in their awesomeness, even though they required some endurance to reach them, heh. Green skull battle(s) is(are) amazing, black keycard Touhou piece is fabulous as well, and that final try-to-survive-it-without-weaponslot7 massacre is some genuinely cool harsh BDSM sequence. I'd punch myself in the face for missing those entirely, these are what I play Doom for nowadays, after all.

Left me wondering if there's a single reason to collect all the keys though. I missed quite a number of secrets, maybe there's something in there, as none of the optional (and mandatory, for that matter) fights seemed to contain goodies locked by all six or something...

[tourniquet]

Well your recent request to make SD20x7 even more harder left me scratching my head and wondering what kind of difficulty you consider as appealing nowadays. Also the lack of harder encounters in the central parts were the main reason for my wrong assumption. But yeah i'm certainly glad you liked the "search for goodies & punishment or get punished in the final battle" aspect, it's kinda what i had in mind while making this.

There's no secret that requires all 6 keys, mostly goodies like Soulsphere, Armor Automap. Idk if you found the black skull and the corresponding BFG secret but that might be the only thing worth looking for.

RjY said:

Would you consider adding a bunch of invulnerabilities in on skill 2? I think skill 2 needs to be toned down a lot. Remember it is called "Hey, Not Too Rough" :)

Probably not, but i'll try to nerf HNTR as much as possible without making it a too much of a walk in the park.

[Archi]

From your perspective it should be walk in the park IMO.

[tourniquet]

Yeah, that was a rather dumb statement. What i was trying to say is that i'll make HNTR lot more bearable, even HMP needs quite a few adjustments.

[Khaoscythe]

Hm.. better than most of the maps/megawads I've played through as of recent. Minor nitpicks here and there, though they're pretty much covered via previous posts.

[Dime]

On stream, people seemed extremely impressed with the map but incessantly bitched about the music. Favorite encounter was that section where 6 cacodemons are pressuring you with some evil high ground revenants. Not being able to look up has never been so frustrating!

[Rayziik]

Dime said:

...incessantly bitched about the music.

Damn really? I thought the music was freaking great. It was so diverse and crazy that the map seemed not quite as long since I couldn't figure our where it was looping anyways.

[Lingyan203]

The music is from CC2's map24: The Mucus Flow.

I just downloaded this, and it looks really interesting! I can't wait for the final version and then start recording this for my YouTube playthrough!

[tourniquet]

Bummer that i missed the stream Dime but i enjoyed watching the replay. You've tackled it pretty well. The final encounter can be quite a beast unless you find one of the 2 BFG's within the ~40% of the map you've missed. 'Muccus Flow' is a map that is certainly parting the ways, either you love it or hate it and perhaps this can also be said about it's music but to me it seemed like the perfect choice since quite a bunch of aspects from CC2-24 were incorporated into the visual formula.

[Demonologist]

tourniquet said:

Well your recent request to make SD20x7 even more harder left me scratching my head and wondering what kind of difficulty you consider as appealing nowadays.

Heh, I was merely speaking about the unfair/unbalanced/"unintended" UV setting and my vision of it, it doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy what I've got, even on HMP.
The description of appealing stuff would be something like "keep me under crossfire all the time so that I don't fall asleep", it doesn't even need to be a slaughtermap, generally speaking, though it's natural that those are pretty much the pinnacle point of this approach.
So, scratch your head no more I guess.

[Cynical]

Demonologist said:

P.S. A funny thought's been visiting my brain occasionally: should Ribbiks pretend to be Death-Destiny and tourniquet camouflage himself as Insane_Gazebo - would anyone notice the difference when they both present their wannabe-maps?..

Ribbiks's maps are much better looking than D-D's.

[Demon of the Well]

Finally found a chunk of time to play this today, quite the undertaking. Here is a skill 4 FDA (-cl 9 w/saves) of my explorations, if you like. Quite long, of course, but I do eventually see and do everything in the map (100+% kills, 100% secrets), perhaps of some limited interest for appraising those encounters which have been seen less often thus far. I was engrossed enough that I didn't really count my deaths (and haven't rewatched the recording or anything, just finished ~5 minutes ago as I'm typing this), but there were at least a few--I know I died a couple of times in the green card fight (very tricky!), a couple more in the spidermom + goatkids fight (mostly just me sucking), and then at least once in some random spot upstairs in the main building, due to a most untimely rubberwall moment from the engine (and also me sucking).

I thought it was brilliant, frankly, probably the best thing you've made to date. The heavy non-linearity and expansive world with multiple crisscrossing paths is just the sort of thing I enjoy, and a very pleasing foil to the setpiece-heavy leaning of the combat encounters, which is a style that more often tends to be presented in a more straightforward "fight A -- fight B -- fight C -- fight n" sort of way. I felt the balance was just fine, for the most part, neither too austere to overly limit risk-taking (which is important in an exploration-based map) nor too generous to seriously hamstring any of the marquee encounters (though I imagine someone who knows the map can totally steamroll the big fight around the tower if they've done their homework elsewhere in the map beforehand), with a very nice pace to the doling out of cells in particular. A few very minor suggestions on this front:

* If it's not already the case I would certainly suggest making some real armor available earlier on for all skills below UV.
* I think the first rocket launcher fight (or the one I see first in the demo, anyway) needs an extra 10 rockets or so for optimal smoothness.
* The seventh secret should probably contain a blue armor instead of a green one on all skill levels, or maybe a bit of extra ammo or something instead--as is it's a relatively weak item that can only be reached by committing to the tower fight, and the other items available freely around the base of the tower render it almost completely superfluous for any sensible purpose.
* I would have liked for the 'free' soulsphere by the first forkswitch to start the sequence in the green card battle not to become permanently inaccessible if you don't take it right away--maybe have that part of the stairway rise back into place once the player has demonstrably completed the fight or something.

As to the fights themselves, I most enjoyed the battle around the base of the tower, but nearly every other engagement of appreciable scale seemed pretty smartly designed, as well. One thing I'm not so sure about is the cyberdemon who overlooks the manc-fest for the black card; unless you know the secret way to access his platform (which I fortunately did by that point) disposing of him is kind of tedious, and I was thinking of suggesting he be replaced by a number of arch-viles instead, who can be more reliably hidden from by sticking to the base of the platform at the price of having a much more potent overview if you try to cut through the back of the room. Hmm....I dunno, the more I read what I just wrote the more I suspect it might be better the way it is, haha. But food for thought, nonetheless. I'm pretty sure you can cheese the hell out of the first part of the fight in the little wooden BFG shrine after the spidergoat pool by tiptoeing past the dropoff until the 'closets' open without actually dropping down, though I was too blithely unaware to even notice the closets had opened at all in my playthrough. Finally, I reckon some of the combat en route to the green skull fight (before the dropdown, I mean) is a mite filler-y, might consider having far less opposition there for the sake of pace and a sort of sense that you've really entered a forgotten area.

Very little overt bugginess that I encountered, just a few minor HOMs dotted around (which should all be obvious in the demo--most noticeable ones off the top of my head were the one near the first SSG after the room reshapes itself a bit, and some visible on the architectural detailing along the mouth of the cyb/rev-gallery when riding the lift to the teleporter out of the green card area). Some of the silently-moving platforms and lifts also weird me out a bit and don't feel right, but maybe that's something nobody really cares about but me.

I think it goes without saying that from an aesthetic standpoint it's quite beautiful, redolent of both The Mucus Flow and Sunlust without being too slavish an imitation of either. Very elaborate architectural detailing, and a more disciplined color/texture palette in comparison to some other prior work (i.e. your first map in Nova II, for example); this approach suits my personal taste a little more, I think, but I'm sure plenty of other folks might prefer the busier 'mosaic' look, so I guess that's neither here nor there. No complaints about the music selection from me this time, incidentally.

I've seen enough of your work now that your particular style is taking more shape in my head independent of its most obvious influences, and a handsome and engaging style it is. Now, it is perhaps already a mite trope-y in some ways (for example, you pretty much always do a tower fight, it seems, and often that fight is the climactic one), but depending on your own artistic priorities perhaps that's no real concern to you. Nevertheless, if you're looking to eventually turn Miasma into a short mapset (2-4 maps or whatever you said initially), I think that mixing them up a bit in terms of pacing and flow and size would be for the best--you might have one that emphasizes exploration and uses a lot more incidental combat, a shorter one that poses a handful of tricky high-choreography encounters, and of course this behemoth, which is a bit (or more than a bit) of both worlds.

Excellent work, thanks much for making and sharing it.

[DeathevokatioN]

Wow.... seriously.... absolutely stunning level design!

[koren]

Been grinding away on this map for the last few days and ended up recording a max demo. Really enjoyed playing this map and as a bonus it looks absolutely stunning too. When I played through it initially, I missed or otherwise avoided most of the secret areas and found it to be enjoyable, but the some of the incidental combat along the way was a bit underwhelming and functional. That's not a big problem because apart from the final fight, the secrets and optional paths are where the map really shines. The green key fight in particular stood out as being particularly enjoyable to dismantle.

Some quick thoughts, mostly echoing what others have said:
- First exit for the map missed all but one of the secret areas and ignored the baron/spider encounter after a particularly nasty smothering. Despite this, it felt absolutely fine when it came to balance and available resources, if a bit low on armours. The only significant difference was between having the BFG for the final arena or not. That said, the BFG only comes into play by making the elevator ride up the tower less dangerous and is a less stressful method for eliminating the exterior viles than rocket spam. Plasma to clear a path and steady infighting seem to be the dominant and most sensible strategy the majority of the time. The BFG is still a great reward though and definitely worth the pound of flesh.
- All the encounters were nicely balanced with almost no particularly egregious difficulty spikes. Even the baron/spiderdemon crowd-control fight is consistently beatable with a cool head and good positioning. There was only one real exception in my eyes and that's the black key room. I died quite frequently to the baron/rev pin - usually because the barons decided to hem me by approaching from the outer edges. The vile released killed me even more - they seemed to enjoyed tossing me into the air for some cyberdemon skeet shooting. After that, it's pretty much smooth sailing.
- It was very awkward to get the cyberdemon infighting with the wall of hell knights in the black keycard area. It's only really a problem if you're looking to conserve ammo and get max kills though. I also imagine it would be possible, though rather dangerous to go through the secret passage and force the fight that way.
- The green armour secret overlooking the final arena seemed somewhat redundant. Perhaps bumping it up to a blue would encourage players to take a risk and leave the megasphere by the switch alone. I felt the arena was far too ominous and resulting fight had too many angles of attack to start it with only a green.

Looking forward to playing through and making more demos for this and any other new maps when you release the final version.

[cortlong50]

been playing for about two minutes. and its amazing.


so if youre reading this, download it. youre in for a treat.

[june gloom]

Reminded a bit of an old Gothic DM map, though I don't remember exactly which Gothic DM or which map.

[darkreaver]

Cynical said:

Ribbiks's maps are much better looking than D-D's.

Can´t even compare the two. Very different styles.

[Demonologist]

Gameplay-wise, Ribbiks' works are directly influenced by D-D and mostly utilize the same approach of hard pressure by not totally overwhelming in numbers but nevertheless tough foes with player being sctrictly limited in supplies, with puzzling setpiece-based fights being all the rage; visually - quite different, yes, but I doubt that it'd be a problem for Ribbiks to mimic D-D's visual style as well should he really want to, simpler works like jq2, znud and the like demonstrate this fact better than his critically acclaimed super-curvy artistic meisterwerks.

Sorry tourny, will not derail this thread any further. Cheers, gentlemen!

[Tango]

Finished my playthrough of this just now, really wonderful stuff :) The visual/structural style is really neat; probably something that would drive me crazy in the editor, but really awesome nonetheless. I had to save-scum to get past a lot of spots, and I think I must have missed a lot of the optional encounters, but what I did play was really fantastic. I don't actually play Doom all that often outside of testing my own maps, so I had forgotten how much fun it can be to find strategies for huge fights. The tower battle in particular was pretty amazing, and the little fights inside the tower itself were so cool :)

[DeletedUser]

hihi here's some 1h and 46 mins Blind FDA I did today or alternatively you can view zee stream version starting at 01:42. Does not finish, gets to 2nd big outdoor fight, not sure whether to beat the rest offline or try and beat all of it on stream :>

[Suitepee]

I'll consider giving this a try for my upcoming playtesting stream. I could use some hard map practice for Sunlust preparation.

[tourniquet]

Sorry for the late reply, didn't check the thread for quite a bit due to some RL stuff.

Thanks for all the demos and suggestions DotW, Koren & Krypto, looking forward to watch them later.

@Suite: This map can be quite a timesink and perhaps frustrating + i guess there are a ton of other mappers looking for some feedback so i rather recommend to disregard it for your stream.

[Suitepee]

tourniquet said:

@Suite: This map can be quite a timesink and perhaps frustrating + i guess there are a ton of other mappers looking for some feedback so i rather recommend to disregard it for your stream.

After your comment in my stream earlier, I have decided to not cover this in my upcoming playtesting stream as per your request.....

However I may still play this at some point anyway, as part of my "playing harder wads to prepare for Sunlust" thing I need to do eventually.

[Killer5]

Thanks tourniquet for making this map. I truly enjoyed playing it and the encounters within.

Kind of reminds me of the first time I played super metroid as a kid. So many ways to go and very easy to get lost. But so worth it after beating it for the first time.

I haven't watched any previous demos because I didn't want to ruin the exploration for myself. Here is a max demo. It is very rough but the route I chose is a whole lot of fun!

As far as pacing goes it depends on the route you choose. The first time I played the map I was kind of surprised at having a really easy time and then jumping into the hk/baron/mastermind pit. I really ended up enjoying the encounters after learning the map more however. The map provides breaks in the action which is nice for a longer map like this.

I can't wait to see some of the demos of this map. I bet some people are going to get really crazy with the routes!

I noticed that there was a floating stimpack in the green key area after hitting the switch to release the imps. There is also a texture 'break'? or misalignment where the mancubus platform lowers right next to the ssg. These have prolly already been mentioned however.

Thanks again for your work.

[mgr_inz_rafal]

Well... Amazing job! Outstanding design, yet surprisingly easy even for a newbie like me :)

Need to try it on UV.

PS. Did I mention that the design in outstanding?