SlaughterMAX. Now on /idgames!

[tmorrow]

I really like how this project has turned out. The provided demos really showcase the wad. Having both the mapper and fastest uvmaxer's name immortalised on the map end tally screens certainly encourages both mappers and players to contribute to the project.

 

I can appreciate how some mappers want to be able to make changes without having a uvmax lock them out and there's a plethora of projects out there for them but I feel there's room for projects like this one which want to get a wad completed on a faster, more reliable deadline.

 

As for coop-compatibility, perhaps that can be included as a requirement in the next project like this one.

 

Ok, I'm off to play some of these maps and watch the demos!

 

BTW - how was the map order decided in the end?

[Benjogami]

1 hour ago, tmorrow said:

[...]

 

BTW - how was the map order decided in the end?

Thanks, I hope you enjoy!

 

My goal for the map order was kinda vague. I wanted a greater proportion of "accessible" maps (whatever my gut told me about that) in the front of the wad while still having variety throughout. I didn't want two maps by the same author in a row, but I did want small clusters of kinda-similar maps. Map 1 and 29 were the hardest choices. The Eclipse of Betelgeuse and Skindustrial Sector 04 were the obvious choices for 29 for their epicness, but I had to go with Skindustrial because it's longer and more difficult, basically. :P And it also fits more with Bugger This, thematically.

 

I originally had Velvet as MAP15 because it's a secret-y map, and I made a demo-safe secret exit for it that was nifty, but too hard/arbitrary to find and too obnoxious to execute, so I just put a quick and lazy one in my own map. I did pay a bit of attention to the episode breaks as well, and because The Mouth of Madness has a death exit, I put The Outhouse after it. :P

[Archi]

Fireblumax.

[damo]

6 hours ago, Benjogami said:

- Most of the maps are not coop-compatible, and making them compatible would desync the max demos. If there's interest in a coop compatible version, I think the best solution will be to have a separate wad containing any changes necessary, and it can be released separately.

I'm sure there will be interest for this. I know I am interested in this!

[Spectre01]

8 hours ago, Benjogami said:

- If you would like to write some comments about your map or max which will be included in the credits text file, feel free to post them in the thread (it's not required).

Don't mind if I do!

 

Map Comments:

*HNTR is the intended difficulty!*

Large, abstract "skin-tech" city that's partially submerged in an ocean of infected blood. Designed to be played from a Pistol Start. Originally intended for DMP2017, as a sequel to my map from the previous year, this level ended up here instead. The goal was to make a map which pushed difficulty to the limit of what I find enjoyable in Doom: Medium-scale, high-threat encounters that limit the player's mobility; whether through high monster density, environmental hazards, or dangerous turret monsters (hence the 4 Cybers in the central tower at the start). I also wanted an epic finale, which lead to the creation of the sandbox-ish, macro-slaughter fight to wrap up the map. Considering how long the map ended up, while maintaining a high level of difficulty, it wasn't very friendly from a saveless/speedrunning perspective. I ended up moving the intended difficulty to HNTR, and the more reasonable HMP to UV, so the map could qualify for this project.     

 

Demo Comments:

It was still way harder to get a successful exit than I expected. Playing consistently for a long period is not my forte. The demo ended up being 94 minutes long, largely due to extremely conservative play in the final area (also platforming in Doom). Also, -shorttics really suck. 

[Bdubzzz]

Blood and Stones: My first map I completed. The focus was more on gameplay that I find enjoyable/challenging and not map design/detailing/layout. There definitely would be a few things I would change looking back at the map but I think its better to leave early projects untouched and look back at them.. Did I improve as a mapper? :thinking face emoji:

 

Swiss Cheese Strike: 2nd map I made that again mostly focuses on gameplay. The textures used throughout are kind of random. This map has a couple encounters that ended up being pretty cool but maybe a little extreme for your average doom slaughter player.

 

BacknForth: 3rd map I made where I actually thought of a concept before making the map. You go "back and forth" to a new encounter at the end of the map each time and when you go back something changes on the map/monsters appear etc. This was harder to do then expected and ended up just being small encounters with more monsters. I also tried to stick with a "theme" for the map. (marble/hell textures) 

DEMO: This map was by far the hardest to get a UV-Max demo for. It eventually came down to nerfing some problem encounters.

 

Castle of Hell: 4th map I made that is themed outside of a castle ( ended up being the smallest and undetailed castle ever). The idea was you eventually go to a hell like area in the map. I wanted this map to be short ( so it was easier to MAX) but to still have an epic final fight, which I think it does ;)

 

Rocketfest2018 demo: This demo was the most fun to record and the time ended up being pretty good for me since I'm not a speedrunner :D

 

Abscess demo: I put the most effort in to getting a FAST time for this map because it was turning out to be a little friendly competition ;p 5:2x was my goal and it ended up being 5:18. I think to  really improve it anymore it comes down to infighting RNG with the first encounter that you skip. (sometimes when i went to the final encounter there was barely any hell knights left, other times there was a lot left and a cyber) Also screw those mancs on the cliffs :p

 

SlaughterStein Demo: Mostly a casual Max with a couple of fast strats I practiced. Nothing to impressive ;p What was fun about this map is there's a lot of ways to go so you had to think about "whats actually the fastest route to go for a  UV-Max? "

[Nirvana]

Abscess:

I was originally going to make the map a much more wide open, canyon-like space, utilising the contrasting rock textures you see in the starting area throughout. However, once I built the entrance to the main building, I decided I liked the idea of a river of blood pouring out to form a large pool and the concept became "where is this blood coming from?" I'm a big fan of using the default Doom 2 textures (it's one of the reasons I was drawn to this project), because I think it forces you to think outside the box in terms of textures-use. In this vein, I was inspired by the gaping maw in Sunder map 2 and decided I would design my own giant demonic mouth using the Icon of Sin's big ugly teeth. I really like how it turned out and love the Doomy boxiness of it all.

 

This big mouth inspired the rest of the room, with the skin and brain textures overtaking the area and this room inspired the name of the map; the demonic presence sort of eating away at the rest of the world. If I had, had more time to edit the map I would have altered the final fight to be a bit more exciting, but I was happy to punch out a little map without too many hangups. At least Bdubz enjoyed it :D   

[Xyzzу]

Slaughterstein comments:

...what. I literally made this random throw-away map (that I probably wasn't even planning on releasing) over a year ago to deal with mapper's block I had at the time, and somehow it's now part of a much larger project?! ._. Regardless, I am immensely content it found a home here; making it qualify for this project really opened my eyes to the world of slaughtermapping, and now I hope to make more slaughtermaps in the future! :D

 

Anyway, the idea behind this map was to just make a challenge map, totally styled to that of Wolfenstein 3D. I always loved those secret maps in Doom II and decided to make my own! The various encounters in this map used to be much easier, but they all had a similar theme: a fight that forces the player to work with the limited space they have in each room and incentivize the player to herd the monsters and find ways around them to access ammo. I think the final version of Slaughterstein by Benjogami still has that aspect intact, which is a relief! I went all out on making this as "wolf" as possible by having ZERO light variation, items and monsters arranged in a grid, large secret areas, and I even simulated vines that are hard to see through like the ones from that game. The thing I like the most about this map is its simple nonlinearity; you can make your own path through it by choosing which door to open next. I think about the only thing I would change about Slaughterstein, looking back at it, is making those secrets less generous than they are. ;)

 

I gotta say, for a map that I wasn't really taking seriously while building it, it's becoming one of my favorites! I should make more like this one...
Oh, and thank you Bdubzzz for maxing it! You got this map accepted after all.

[Player177]

I managed to run through the demos and it turned out for me that maxdemo for map13 isn't sync so I'm asking this to check. Everything else seems to be normal 👌

[Benjogami]

14 minutes ago, Player177 said:

I managed to run through the demos and it turned out for me that maxdemo for map13 isn't sync so I'm asking this to check. Everything else seems to be normal 👌

Good catch! I see it too. I must've messed something up while implementing the difficulty settings, and then didn't watch far enough into the demo. It'll get fixed for RC2, one way or another. :D

[Tristan]

Well..thank god we can disable infinitely tall actors...

[Degree23]

18 hours ago, Benjogami said:

Compiling the set didn't desync the demos. The "demo thingy" is important to the project.

Making the maps coop friendly, and therefore more likely to be played and enjoyed by more people, is something that I would have said is more important than a demo. Demos can easily be recorded again.

[Benjogami]

3 minutes ago, Degree23 said:

Making the maps coop friendly, and therefore more likely to be played and enjoyed by more people, is something that I would have said is more important than a demo. Demos can easily be recorded again.

Well, since there's clearly a demand for it, it will be done. Quoting myself:

 

Quote

If there's interest in a coop compatible version, I think the best solution will be to have a separate wad containing any changes necessary, and it can be released separately.

Instead of being released separately, it can be done and included in the initial idgames release. Surely an extra 10MB of disk space isn't too much of a sacrifice?

[Tristan]

We're on ZDaemon right now collecting notes about co-op. First off MAP07, 17, 20 and 23 use extended nodes but it seems they don't need them (only 29 does), this means ZDaemon can't load them because for some reason it still doesn't support extended nodes yet...

 

Some other things off the top of my head:

 

MAP11: We might need to investigate this one further, but the blue key room (tag 80) never lowered when a player went through the conveyor belt tunnel that appears to trigger the mechanism to open it. Dunno if it could be a line skip when the linedef in the tunnel is slanted. In the end I lowered it manually with a script.

 

MAP16: Sector 84 (tag 4) raises when the player enters the southern area. If a player dies in there, the map is broken (and in general being stuck outside areas is a bit lame, regardless of the map gets stuck or not). Again, script to the rescue here. Maybe it can be made lowerable from the outside?

 

MAP18: Linedefs 289-292 are set up as WR teleport, but with tag 0 so it doesn't do anything??? Also the pits in this map are immensely irritating but there's not a lot that can be done about that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[SleepyVelvet]

19 hours ago, Benjogami said:

- I'd like to add some short autoplay demos of people dying in like <1 minute on HNTR, if anyone would like to perform them :D

I'm not sure if I'm the guy for it, but for what it's worth, here's a dump of HNTR first attempts. 

noisy_hntrsmax.zip played on RC1 (prb+ cl9)

I at least saw the start room of each map before playing at some point.  32 deaths total; not all <1 min.

 

 

[Danlex]

Finally! Thanks for letting me be part of this project! :)

Also, i love the "going to the secret maps" texts...

[Marcaek]

Just popping in to say next time you do one of these to take coop compat into account from the beginning, as coop is pretty vital to the lifespan of a project, especially slaughtermaps which enjoy a good bit of coop play.

[Tristan]

Thanks for that...

[Spectre01]

18 minutes ago, NoisyVelvet said:

I at least saw the start room of each map before playing at some point.

One does not simply shoot after the 4 Cybers lower in map29. ;P

[Benjogami]

1 hour ago, Eris Falling said:

We're on ZDaemon right now collecting notes about co-op. [...]

Thank you! This will be very helpful. It was fun joining in for a bit, even though it's terribly broken.

 

1 hour ago, NoisyVelvet said:

I'm not sure if I'm the guy for it, but for what it's worth, here's a dump of HNTR first attempts. [...]

Awesome, thanks :D

 

1 hour ago, Marcaek said:

Just popping in to say next time you do one of these to take coop compat into account from the beginning, as coop is pretty vital to the lifespan of a project, especially slaughtermaps which enjoy a good bit of coop play.

Oh yes, next one will be muuuuch different.

 

[Tristan]

Update: MAP27 and 28 emptied the server with repeated client crashes (this can require forced reboot unfortunately) and insane lag, lol.

Can't believe the server itself hasn't crashed under the strain of 28 yet, heh. As I type this I'm waiting for the thousands of monsters at the end to clear themselves up...

 

Of course we haven't seen all maps yet, and 29 will probably never run in ZD regardless (edit: as is! only 2000 linedefs over 32768...), but overall the WAD seems pretty decent for co-op barring the issues I mentioned earlier and some other problems on other maps. Here's some I remember (Benjogami is probably aware of these to some degree)

 

Linedefs 39-41 on MAP22 are W1 teleports. Need WR.

Ditto for the teleporter at the start of MAP26.

 

Seems you can also get stuck on MAP25 when the bars with sector tag 19 raise. Last fight of 25 was AWESOME, I have a soft spot for not-quite-mindless but relatively easy BFG-fests :) 

 

MAP27 I haven't a clue what was going on here, but I had to manually lower the floors with sector tags 22, 104 and 106.

 

Also quite a few nasty spawnrapes in some of the later maps, where the only way to kill monsters is telefragging on respawn. I took some videos which I'll get around to posting later :P Of course it's too late now to do anything but for future reference when co-op compatibility is being considered - if vast numbers of monsters can swarm the start point, your map kinda sucks for co-op. It's only funny for a short time!

 

EDIT: We reached MAP30. Server says "bugger this" :P

EDIT: 31 and 32: straight up nope.

Edited February 13, 2018 by Eris Falling

[Tristan]

And we're done. The only thing I have to add is emphasis on my point about monsters swarming the spawn and why this shouldn't be a thing in a future co-op friendly slaughterWAD, and this screenshot painting the perfect picture as to why. After about 30 minutes of spawn-die-repeat I realised I could drop rockets on the spawn point just to allow us a damn chance at getting out, so can't even say we beat it without help...Disappointing last few maps compared to the rest of the WAD, I have to say :\

 

[42PercentHealth]

6 hours ago, Eris Falling said:

Well..thank god we can disable infinitely tall actors...

That looks familiar! :-D

 

How the heck did you get back up there?? Is this coop?

[Spectre01]

That appears to be coop, which usually warps you back to spawn after dying.

[Xyzzу]

I came to inform you Benjo that there is a megaarmor outside MAP01.

 

Also those text screens cracked me up :D

[UglyStru]

13 hours ago, Eris Falling said:

And we're done. The only thing I have to add is emphasis on my point about monsters swarming the spawn and why this shouldn't be a thing in a future co-op friendly slaughterWAD, and this screenshot painting the perfect picture as to why. After about 30 minutes of spawn-die-repeat I realised I could drop rockets on the spawn point just to allow us a damn chance at getting out, so can't even say we beat it without help...Disappointing last few maps compared to the rest of the WAD, I have to say :\

 

What source port is that?

[Tristan]

@42PercentHealth: Yeah, it's co-op

@UglyStru: ZDaemon

[42PercentHealth]

Were you playing solonet then? 'Cuz I didn't implement any cooperative starts or anything.

[Archi]

Coop starts are irrelevant nowadays unless you play in some vanilla/boom compatible sourceport.

[Tristan]

Co-op starts are still preferred for ZDaemon because it's initially not possible to spawn if someone is on the spawn point: Starts aren't vital, but map starts are sluggish without them