New map: Atrocious Comb of The Satan

[mgr_inz_rafal]

Hi!
Here's another map in the "...of The Satan" series :) This time plot is built around the very atrocious comb (of The Satan).

It's a vanilla-compatible map (except for the savegame buffer overflow). There are, however, places when I reach more than 100 visplanes (see below), but only in the room at the beginning of the map, before I realized that adding more details makes the map looks worse in vanilla :)

As usual: single player and coop only, no difficulty settings implemented.

Trivia:
- I reused the "chaingunner trap" :)
- Contains few TV screens thanks to the Icon of Sin texture
- Contains an actual comb

Map is available for download from here: http://chabowski.eu/DOOM_custom_maps/The_Comb/comb.wad

Enjoy!

Time for some pictures in native vanilla resolution and some spoilers.

  

  

  

  

  



And here we are close to crash the engine. Luckily enough, the doors are now closed:

Spoiler

.lmp file for zDoom: http://chabowski.eu/DOOM_custom_maps/The_Comb/comb_(zDoom).lmp

Playthrough:

[Walter confetti]

looks pretty cool!

[Memfis]

I think you could improve the texturing by thinking about the overall theme more carefully. Why are there tech floors next to gothic crosses? That's not right. It feels a bit too varied too, with new textures being introduced all the time. Also, the lighting could use more contrast. In the main outdoor area you have 240 brightness for the sky and 208 brightness for the "shadow". I can barely see any difference, and as a result the whole location looks rather flat.

The map was enjoyable enough otherwise, with plenty of action.

[mgr_inz_rafal]

Thanks for comments!

Regarding the overall theme, yes, you're right. But there are so many cool textures I would like to drop into the map :) Fortunately, there is an universal excuse for such things in the DooM lore - The Hell. Hellish forces can mix techwalls with marbles :)

Actually, what I like about the classic (vanilla) DooM is that it is just NOT powerful enough to build realistic worlds, so you can mess up a little bit :)

I will try to keep that as well as the contrast issue in mind for further maps, anyway.

[RyoAsuka]

You should change the sky, it doesn't seem to fit with the whole hellish "...of The Satan" thing your going for, at least in my opinion...

[mgr_inz_rafal]

Where do people usually get the new sky graphics from? In order to update the map I tried to create some paintings myself, but the result is far beyond any acceptance threshold.

[Dragonfly]

I'm unable to play the map right now, but from the shots most of it lookes great, but inconcistent. I would have not thought they are in the same map but rather several different maps - why is STARTANx used?

I do understand the sheer scale of the map, but even then the theme isn't 'maintained' in a believable way.

Looking at random chunks of the the video - You're playing a vanilla map in ZDoom, which is a pretty bad idea if only for the sake of infinitely tall actors. I saw you grab the greenarmor secret by standing on the stalagmite, which isn't possible in vanilla.

All in all it looks like fun though and that is what it's all about! :)

[BigDickBzzrak]

mgr_inz_rafal said:

Where do people usually get the new sky graphics from? In order to update the map I tried to create some paintings myself, but the result is far beyond any acceptance threshold.

There are a couple of sky texture packs on /idgames. My favourite ones are "plums's skystravaganza" and another one which was made by Eye del Cul, but I can't remember its name.

[mgr_inz_rafal]

Thanks bzzrak,
Will check plums' skystravaganza this evening.

@Dragonfly
Thanks for the valuable feedback. I know that mood consistency is something that my maps lack a lot. This is what I am taking special care of while creating new maps. The more I know the texture sets the easier it tends to be.

I recorded the map in ZDoom just for the sake of video quality. The map is completely tested and playable with vanilla, or ChocolateDoom to be precise.

[Voros]

If you're going to make a demo (lmp file), then PrBoom+ is the best.