Redemption Of The Slain Beta 1.0 Release and Download

[TheCastle]

Hey its been a super long time since I have posted here. So I have been cooking up a new Doom 2 level and its in beta phase right now. Its a fairly large level with a ton of scripting. This is my first Doom 2 project in years. Ever since I did NRFTL...

https://steemit.com/gaming/@thecastle/doom2-redemption-of-the-slain-beta-1-0-release-and-download

The link includes 11 minutes of footage where I am playing through the level as well as download link and instructions on how to get it working. The level is in beta and lacks some stuff like proper support for difficulty settings.

I really need to get feedback so I can polish the level further. I would really love to see video recordings of your play through as those give me so much more info on everything. I can even do commentary of the video and such.

All feedback welcome!

[Fonze]

Hey there TheCastle, I really appreciate the hard work you and squibbons put into NRFTL, they were all very fun maps with great ideas in them.

It's cool to hear that you've been working on a map here recently and I must say it looks fantastic; I can't wait to give it a shot later on :)

[Sayok6]

Will there be another 'THE CASTLE WAS HERE' secret? Like your videos, btw.

[40oz]

Nice work, TheCastle! Its cool to see you mapping for Doom again!

[TheCastle]

Sayok6 said:

Will there be another 'THE CASTLE WAS HERE' secret? Like your videos, btw.

There is one in the level currently but it is super hard to find. Not only do you have to work a puzzle section of the map but you also need to complete a secret level within the level which is a brutally hard fight that I can barely complete myself.

[TheCastle]

40oz said:

Nice work, TheCastle! Its cool to see you mapping for Doom again!

Its nice to be back but I feel this level is likely my final Doom 2 map in my lifetime. Doom 2016 snap map maybe will get another level though.

Fonze said:

Hey there TheCastle, I really appreciate the hard work you and Mr. Heath put into NRFTL, they were all very fun maps with great ideas in them.

It's cool to hear that you've been working on a map here recently and I must say it looks fantastic; I can't wait to give it a shot later on :)

Hope you enjoy. I really need to get some feedback and if at all possible video footage of a play through.

[VGA]

Omg yes! I just *know* I will like this one!

[vespa]

Sweet, a level designed for BD, gonna give it a try in Classic Mode later.

Jumping and crouching allowed, but is it necessary to complete the level? Other than that first short duct at the start.

[VGA]

vespa said:

Sweet, a level designed for BD, gonna give it a try in Classic Mode later.

Jumping and crouching allowed, but is it necessary to complete the level? Other than that first short duct at the start.

That's why it has the duct, to make sure you use crouching.

[TheCastle]

VGA said:

That's why it has the duct, to make sure you use crouching.

lol, I had grand plans to use crouching and jumping all over but then it dwindled down to crouching in the first area annnnnnnnd that was about it. As far as jumping you need it to find some secrets and its generally just nice for movement in general. Otherwise you can play without using them very much.

[40oz]

TheCastle said:

Its nice to be back but I feel this level is likely my final Doom 2 map in my lifetime. Doom 2016 snap map maybe will get another level though.

Hope you enjoy. I really need to get some feedback and if at all possible video footage of a play through.

I hope you change your mind! Its cool having you around. You give excellent mapping/game design advice and have always made pretty awesome stuff :)

[TheCastle]

40oz said:

I hope you change your mind! Its cool having you around. You give excellent mapping/game design advice and have always made pretty awesome stuff :)

Well, one of the things I have been kicking myself about is that, there needs to be new games with this style of level design and play. One of the main things I did with NRFTL and this new level I am doing now is toy with modern design philosophy without giving up the classic game play of Doom.

If you pay attention to the flow of this Doom 2 level you will see that its actually an entire episode of tiny levels strung together in the shape of figure 8. The players direction is always forward but you also loop back through areas you have already been.

Doom 2016 does a good job of producing a modern FPS that shows people do like the combat. But I dont feel it went far enough to stay true to its roots in every way.

This will be my last Doom 2 level, but its not going to be my final Doom 2 style level.

[VGA]

Noone has the balls to create an FPS with Doom's crazy fast and sliding movement.

I haven't played the new Doom yet but from the gameplay vids it seems every 1.5 seconds you press an "awesome" button and destroy a glowing demon like it is made of clay. Then it bursts and drops colourful stuff like a pinata.

[Fonze]

I had a chance to play this level a bit; it's interesting and quite nice-looking, but there are a few things that would probably be best if changed. For starters, here are a couple videos for feedback; no commentary. Excuse my terrible playing; I'm rusty with Brutal Doom, heh.

FDA
Slightly better attempt which ended from a sneaky stealth AV.
Finished run

Secret spoilers pretty much everywhere inside:

Spoiler

So let's start with the elephant in the room: the stealth AV's. I realize that you've been away for a little while, but 99.9% of people will not be pleased to see not one, but many stealth AV's; I would even go so far as to wager that 50% of people that play this map will quit outright as soon as they see stealth AV's, or at least not attempt again after the current run. That's not counting the DoomWorld geriatrics that will play other maps instead due to their preferred source port's feel and this wad's companion mod, or the folk who can't be bothered to go through a fairly manual install of this wad, what with the update to blood.txt and several separate downloads.

That's not to say it wasn't worth it; the map is very pretty, fun, and has a lot of interesting scripts going on behind the scenes, which I appreciate as a player and as a mapper. Aesthetically it was purdy and the atmosphere was well-cooked. This map is a going to be a good source of inspiration to a good amount of people, I would wager, but at the same time, its flaws are huge in nature and that's going to turn off a large audience, which is a shame. Doubly-so given that you say this is your last Doom 2 map and I can tell you poured a ton of hours into this thing. But it is very much out-of-touch with what many folk consider to be fun on a couple key things, which just kills me to see. I think you would find making simpler maps to be much more enjoyable to make and much less of a time-sink, in addition to being less of a risk/reward type of thing as far as time-invested goes with relation to the feedback you'll receive.

Another example, the switch system found with the stealth AV's; 4 possibilities in 2 rooms, that makes for 16 combinations for this puzzle's solution. So players that don't get it will trial-and-error their way through 3 rooms multiplied by up to 16, only to find they have to do it again (and again for the secret), except that there are also apparently those stealh AV's in the map, too. At this point, I can't stress enough the amount of people that will ragequit. That's 2 big fun-killers back-to-back; Sir Buzz Killington walked into that room in a bad way. And this is a shame, because it's not inherently a bad puzzle, in addition I can tell you spent time making it work and making it cool and all that, but the hint you provided was really obtuse. I get it now, pointing the things towards the various faces, but the trial-and-error work here is sooo tedious with the time it takes to both run between the three rooms and to wait for the things to lower/raise. In addition, I notice that if the player raises the lift before "feeling a cold breeze," the secret cannot be revealed. Idk if that was intentional or not. Speaking of cold things, I think you went a tad overboard on the 'cold' messages through the secret. They appeared every time something happened, to the point that it was commical when the script broke (I'm assuming this wasn't the intention) on the final room of the secret, constantly telling me the same message with each new wave spawned. Also, stealth AV's and stealth HK's. The bulls I can deal with because I forget if Brutal Doom just makes spectres only show eyes or if they're just stealth bulls. The megasphere at the end of this was perhaps fitting, but unfortunately is given far too late to be of much use, imo, given that there is only one fight left (not a big one, either) by that point.

Speaking of scripts, there was a script that failed to run upon entering/exiting the second secret of the map, just outside of the first building.

Moving on to another thing that many people won't be fans of, though I'm a bit ambivalent on it: Doom 4 -styled lock-ins with waves of enemies, some of which I'm pretty sure are infinite, though the infinitely-spawned mobs may be limited only to imps. It seems that most of these encounters spawn imps every few seconds until what appears to be a particular enemy or set of enemies is killed. I like that you included the spawned imps in the count to move on to the next wave in these situations, but while it's cool to have a constant pressure excerted upon the player, forcing him to prioritize perhaps a different set of mobs than would otherwise be intuitive, it feels a bit artificial to spawn endless imps in the back corners of rooms. Really I think this was only in 2 areas, with the second one drug out until I believe the zombie flash mob shows up, but I'm not so sure my feelings on this, especially given Brutal Doom's tendency to allow imps to lunge at players, which proves to be especially deadly given the tight quarters these two encounters take place in. The artificial difficulty feeling was also prevalent in the stealth mobs and the lava, which basically meant death if the player ever falls in, even the indoor lava pits were quite harsh. I would highly recommend lowering damage and providing better, more frequent paths to escape the lava for fun's sake. On that same note, a bit more health in the lock-ins, and perhaps another blue armor in the area with the stealth AV's and switch fiasco would increase the fun factor a bit, encouraging survival after 15 or so minutes of easy, easy, easy gameplay, followed by another few minutes of rather harsh, unforgiving gameplay. After all that, it hurts to constantly go back to the tedium that the beginning of the wad becomes. Being so easy doesn't help it in this regard, nor does the sudden difficulty spike at the 6-switch room.

Now, while I have to say that there are areas of this map's design that I wasn't a big fan of, nor, I'm sure, will many folk (at least here) be, that's not to say it isn't really cool at the same time. I can tell you poured your heart out into this; something random I just noticed, the roof over the exit is a 3D floor. That's cool; I don't think anybody will ever notice it, but it's the little things like that and the care taken to perfectly align every inch of this level, like the tiny wooden supports that stick out 8-16 pixels above the floor atop the wooden lift after the switch fiasco. I see that bold, dark line on the flat that you aligned the textures to; it looks great! That's a little thing, I know, but those little things are everywhere in this map and care was obviously taken to craft every line, flat, and texture.

I love the layout of this map as well as the other 7 secrets; I found every secret with no issues, save the final one because let's face it, Doom Builder and combing through scripts is much faster and more fun than trial-and-error. In the second video, I made it to there for the first time and got fairly lucky with the first switch, but I didn't make it to start on the second switch. The first one was fairly easy and straight-forward, though I did, then didn't really tie it with pointing them towards the faces at the time. I did, however, figure the secret's general location before opening in DB, but I was severely thrown off and kinda miffed at wasting my time in a subsequent run (with saves) after raising the wood-metal lift and then trying some combinations, only for nothing to work, but something I noted, which helped tip me off more to the secret's general location there (aside from the fact that it's totally an obvious setup, what with the switch puzzle there), was that when the buttons are put into the "secret combo" after raising the wooden lift, while the second (south) switch does nothing, the first (north) switch says "nothing happens." It's the only combo to my knowledge that does that after the wooden lift has been raised, which is prolly due to the setup of if/else statements you've used. I understand now, after figuring out the one-time-shot of it, perhaps the problem is that I was in somewhat of a rush and didn't take the time to properly look around and pay attention, which is what drew me to just take the "try them all" approach at first after pointing them at the faces in their same rooms didn't work on the first switch; luckily I then went over to putting them in the same position in the main room and TaE'ed my way through it, just something about it was obtuse at the time. Idk, that's just me, but I'm sure I won't be the only person to say it.

Moving on, the general encounters and whatnot were all nicely made for a zDoom-y map. I think you captured the atmosphere of Doom 4 fairly well with this map, though I'm just not a huge fan on playing with mods, tbh. BFG use was heavily crippled due to the companion mod used with this map, which was a major shame considering how early it's given and how useful it would be for the lock-ins. Still, I just have to wonder how things would be different if you had set out to make something a bit more akin to your NRFTL maps. I don't know if I'd have the patience to make a map like this; it shows an immense amount of talent, hard work, and time, but I know I wouldn't have the patience to make another map like this after already making one like this. GzDoom is a time-sink, in my opinion, but some folk love to make mind-blowing things; more power to them and all, but that's a lot more work, stress, confidence, time, skill, *everything* required than making a simple vanilla, limit-removing, or Boom map. Folk make beautiful maps, easily as pretty as this, easily as fun as this, in far less time than this could have possibly been built; which is to be expected when 3D floors, slopes, and scripting are off the table. Just as with the stealth mobs, the ultra-damaging lava, the endless imps, and the mod, all the artificiality takes away from the core experience for, at least I think, both the player and the mapper. It also sets expectations higher, due to having more advanced tools at your disposal. A map like this cannot truly be compared to an Ancient Aliens et al. because the limitations (and feel) for targeted ports are different, but that's not to say that a map made for (G)zDoom shouldn't generally look better than a typical map made for Boom/LR, of which AA was not, of course, but extreme example for lack of true comparison. No need for that here.

I think this wad would be more pleasurable without Brutal Doom, or at least without the jumping portion of the endlessly spawning jumping circus imps, or with a normal BFG (but the "classic" weapons just feel too slow to fire and the lack of a kick function makes "modern" the smarter approach to this wad, at least for me), but it is still a fun experience.

On the note of balancing, this map felt fairly nicely balanced in terms of ammo and health, though I will note that given the nature of the spawning imps, some more health would make things more fun and less stressful on those two parts specifically. Everywhere else was easy-going. In addition, as stated before, another blue armor would be really nice to see in the switch fiasco area.

I liked the general setup of encounters, monster usage was both efficient and well-thought. Enemies made sense in their roles and positions. One group of enemies that could have been better was the group of barons that come from the back end, behind all the other mobs, of the exit building's area after the 6-switch room is complete. They were nothing more than ammo sponges; as such, they would have been better suited to be HK's (or revs) rather than barons, or at the least they should be moved to the front of the pack or teleported into the corners of the 6-switch room or the area opposite, near the RSK door, which is the safest place to be as soon as it becomes available. That said, the locations of the teleports were all nicely done, with corners and likely cheese spots being dismantled through use of both regular teleported/spawned enemies and endless imps, except for that last door of the 6-switch room lowering to the exit building's area, where suddenly it was a shooting gallery, which was a fair let-down. The second endless imp/lock-in area was better, though much tougher due to the proximity of endless jumping imps teleporting in just about anywhere the player stands. This is where additional health/armor would alleviate frustration. The setups in the beginning of the map, while fairly easy, were nice and effective; I liked the first outside area's setup of snipers, imps, and scripted stuff. I also liked the use of the one PE, though I wouldn't have been upset to see much more of them and much less endless jumping imps and stealth AV's. As stated, I liked all of the monster placement not mentioned; fun stuff :)

All-in-all, this is a fun, high-quality map which is cool on so many different fronts, but unfortunately it suffers from a small handful of majorly disappointing, fun-killing, and frustration-inducing moments. With those changed, removed, or even just alleviated, this map would be much more enjoyable. I truly, truly hope that you decide at some point in the future to return to Doom mapping, but I also hope that if you do, you set your goals a bit differently; less complicated and more time-friendly, though if this is what you like to do, then I won't complain to find another one of these in 5-10 years ;D

I hope this feedback and the videos are helpful for you, though don't feel the need to watch them (everything eats time); thanks for your contributions to our community and for your work on NRFTL. I'll likely pull down the second video when I make a completed run on this and replace it with that.

[TheCastle]

Woah! so much awesome feedback! I am parsing through it all. now :)

[TheCastle]

just to let you know this is EXACTLY what I needed. Thank you so much for this! I will likely have videos where I mull over the details and talk about ideas on what I will do next ect. I have tons of content to go over now!

is it ok if I use your video play test and add commentary and talk about stuff on my Youtube channel?

[Fonze]

Sure man, go ahead; just be sure to talk all kinds of smack for the stuff I missed or mucked up, heh.

Btw, in my completed run, 15 enemies failed to show up. I IDDT'd there at the end in an attempt to find them, but I didn't see them anywhere in the level.

[TheCastle]

Fonze said:

Sure man, go ahead; just be sure to talk all kinds of smack for the stuff I missed or mucked up, heh.

Btw, in my completed run, 15 enemies failed to show up. I IDDT'd there at the end in an attempt to find them, but I didn't see them anywhere in the level.

I wont be talking smack. More like analyzing things. Figuring out what you might have been thinking and why and finding ways to polish things further.

As far as the enemies not showing up hmm.. Maybe the problem will go away when I cut the imp respawning stuff. Weird.

edit: Warning anything you did that might have cought my attention in the level might result in secrets or easter eggs. No promises but yeah. :D

[Fonze]

Lol. I try to have a good sense of humor about things; I meant that in jest. I do understand the woes of Doom mappers' mechanics being overlooked, and I see a lot of mechanics in here. If you want to chat more, we can PM.

Speaking of, I wanted to see how others approached this level, wound up finding your YouTube channel and I got the chance to watch a video up there; there are a couple comments I'd like to add.

First, the spawning imps: Idk if you should totally remove the concept from the map; given the shape of at least the first arena where they appear, removing them would provide many cheese spots. I think the idea of more health or better armor would allow for prolonged imp spawning without frustrating players playing the map for the first time, still unaware the imps are endless. It might also be a good idea to just slow down their spawn rate. It might be best to see what other Doomers have to say about it.

Second, I also saw the manc didn't spawn in one video; perhaps the solution here would be to either define a secondary location for him to spawn, or to spawn the critical monsters in dummy sectors with teleports over to the level proper, so if the player, or another monster, is standing in that right spot at the right time, it will only be delayed rather than totally failing to spawn.

Cheers man.

[TheCastle]

Here is a 53 minute talk where I go over a ton of information and feedback

https://youtu.be/w-KjMKW_fgI

make sure to give me a thumbs up on steemit
https://steemit.com/gaming/@thecastle/doom2-redemption-of-the-slain-feedback-doomworld

[TheCastle]

Doom2 - BZPlasma Playtest ROTS Beta1 Part 1

https://youtu.be/2QiMGth7xAY

This is the next round of changes after the BZPlasma play test. You can see how the level has progressed and where its going next.

Support me on Steemit!
https://steemit.com/gaming/@thecastle/doom2-bzplasma-playtest-rots-beta1-part-1

Doom2 - Redemption Of The Slain Play Test Commentary (Fonze)

https://youtu.be/MwCPkhmytTQ

Fonze provided a play test video or 2 so I go over feedback and talk about things. I added commentary to your play through!

The level is progressing rapidly and there are big changes involved. I also plan to add another section to the map before the next play test. This will be the equivalent of adding another level.