Birthing Pools - An E2M7 remake

[Miss Bubbles]

Hello Doomworld.

I've been recently dusting off and playing old levels that I have made and never bothered to finish or release and found this one from last September. As it says right in the title, this map is intended to be a remake/re-imagining of E2M7 'Spawning Vats', a favorite level of mine.

Spawning Vats is probably one of the uglier levels in Doom, but I've always liked the way it's just a giant mish-mosh of just about every theme and texture from the game. So I decided to recreate it for fun. You'll definitely see some areas that are heavily influenced by parts of the original map, such as the silver & blue computer lab sections as well as others, but typically with my own take or twist on them.

Gameplay is pretty straightforward being an original Doom map. I haven't set it up for any other difficulties and I would recommend that you play it on Ultra Violence as this is the difficulty that I intended for it to be played at. I suppose that's all there is to say about it, so if you give it a go let me know what you think!



Pictures: http://imgur.com/a/Z5CLU
Download: http://www.mediafire.com/download/3f715abqgaw3w5t/bpools.7z

Edit:

Doomworld Download: https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom/a-c/bpools

[Nevander]

I just played it and thought it was very well done.

Each area of the map reminded me of the original. I really liked the way the red key room looked from looking into it through the window; great use of textures and the light blink effect there. Played on UV and the ammo balance was just right.

About the only critiques from me would be the end area where all the Pinkies came in, there were a lot of them and I just ran back to the exit spot and killed them there. I've used a lot of Pinkies before in one small area and it felt tedious when I did so I ended up changing it to some Imps and it flowed much better.

The other would be just a small spacing problem I noticed, enemies can get stuck trying to come up and down the stairs in the northeast corner of the map (near the circular nukage pit).

But yea you should make more maps. :)

[Miss Bubbles]

Nevander said:

I just played it and thought it was very well done.

Each area of the map reminded me of the original. I really liked the way the red key room looked from looking into it through the window; great use of textures and the light blink effect there. Played on UV and the ammo balance was just right.

About the only critiques from me would be the end area where all the Pinkies came in, there were a lot of them and I just ran back to the exit spot and killed them there. I've used a lot of Pinkies before in one small area and it felt tedious when I did so I ended up changing it to some Imps and it flowed much better.

The other would be just a small spacing problem I noticed, enemies can get stuck trying to come up and down the stairs in the northeast corner of the map (near the circular nukage pit).

But yea you should make more maps. :)

Thank you very much for the positive feedback!

I agree that the pinkies can be quite tedious. Imps do sound like a better choice, so I will change them. I've noticed that you can either book it for the exit when you know they're coming, or get stuck in a corner fighting them which is pretty boring and not challenging because they're just pinkies lol.

I'll see if I can fix the spacing problem you mentioned as well.

Edit:

Alright I updated it. The pinkies have been replaced with Imps in the final fight and I changed the stairs by the nukage pool to be ascending 8 unit stairs instead of 16 units, so the monsters can now move up and down them as they should.

[TheNerdTurtle2]

My firewall blocked the download

[Reisal]

Consider using Mediafire or mega.nz for file downloads, and upload it to /idgames/ once you work out all the major kinks/imbalances out.

[Miss Bubbles]

Sorry about that guys, I'm pretty sure it's WikiSend just being weird. I've uploaded it to MediaFire instead. Hopefully it will let you download it now.

[baja blast rd.]

I recorded an FDA for the original version. Not sure if you still have that on your HD though. Generally a good policy to "save as" with a new filename whenever a wad is available for DL for any significant time.

[Reisal]

Just a quick note for /idgames/, you need to compress as ZIP and the filename for the text file must be the same as the WAD file. Also, don't forget you will get a notification email when you upload it so be sure to reply to it within 7 days otherways it will be rejected and you will need to reupload it.

[Miss Bubbles]

Glaice said:

Just a quick note for /idgames/, you need to compress as ZIP and the filename for the text file must be the same as the WAD file. Also, don't forget you will get a notification email when you upload it so be sure to reply to it within 7 days otherways it will be rejected and you will need to reupload it.

My bad, and thanks. I didn't know about all that!

Edit: Ok I think I did it all correctly, hopefully. I've never used a FTP before so this is all a bit over my head and I had to follow some tutorials.

[kuchitsu]

...

Did anyone else read the second word on that picture a bit differently?

Screenshots look great. E2M7 has always been one of my favorites.

[baja blast rd.]

Birthing poos!

[TheNerdTurtle2]

I couldn't figure out how to upload to idgames, its really complicated

[Reisal]

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/wsftple.html

I use this to upload, very straightforward.

[Miss Bubbles]

Thanks Glaice :) I think I've got it all sorted out now. I received the email from idgames archive, so it should be up for download there soon.

If anyone else gets a chance to play it let me know how it goes!

Btw rdwpa, is there some place I can view your demo?

[TheNerdTurtle2]

I downloaded the program and am still so confused

[baja blast rd.]

Miss Bubbles said:

Btw rdwpa, is there some place I can view your demo?

http://www.mediafire.com/download/ov368beuz6j4sq6/bpools_rdwpa_fda.lmp

Here's the old version of your wad in case you don't have it anymore: http://www.mediafire.com/download/dt87u86c2zn3n64/bpools.wad

I actually loved the pinkies. I used the shotgun instead of the chainsaw to make it more interesting. I watched demos of the iwad e2m7 recently, and this map looks really similar -- I felt as if I was playing an alternate-universe e2m7.

[Miss Bubbles]

rdwpa said:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/ov368beuz6j4sq6/bpools_rdwpa_fda.lmp

Here's the old version of your wad in case you don't have it anymore: http://www.mediafire.com/download/dt87u86c2zn3n64/bpools.wad

I actually loved the pinkies. I used the shotgun instead of the chainsaw to make it more interesting. I watched demos of the iwad e2m7 recently, and this map looks really similar -- I felt as if I was playing an alternate-universe e2m7.

Haha thanks, that's pretty much what I was going for! I'll check out your demo now.

Edit: Just checked it out. I noticed a lot of ammo conservation and cautious gameplay. I got the impression that you kept expecting some dirty traps to occur when you entered certain areas or picked certain things up lol. You did pretty well, but as I mentioned it's not too hard of a level. Some of the secret items will certainly make the gameplay more forgiving, but it seems that you did just fine without them.

[baja blast rd.]

Miss Bubbles said:

Haha thanks, that's pretty much what I was going for! I'll check out your demo now.

Edit: Just checked it out. I noticed a lot of ammo conservation and cautious gameplay. I got the impression that you kept expecting some dirty traps to occur when you entered certain areas or picked certain things up lol. You did pretty well, but as I mentioned it's not too hard of a level. Some of the secret items will certainly make the gameplay more forgiving, but it seems that you did just fine without them.

I wasn't trying to save ammo, I just didn't feel like killing barons yesterday. Kind of boring. More fun to just slip past them.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/18m22y72e13fqgb/bpoolsnew_rdwpa_demo.lmp

I actually thought I was playing somewhat carelessly. It would have been possible to take a lot less damage. For example in this demo (plays back w/ the new version, assuming you didn't sneakily update it again :D), I take damage from monsters only twice, and even those are avoidable.

I prefer the pinkies, but I didn't check to see if they can actually hurt you if you get backed into the corner. (Obviously if not they'd be inferior.) You can change the map geometry so that's possible.

[Nevander]

Whenever I upload to idgames in the future, I will probably use FileZilla. I've used it before and found it easy to use.