Recycled Community Project (RC available)

[Misty]

I'm resurrecting this thread and I would like to hear about this map changes. Maybe, I need add something or change something in this map. Well, I changed download link for this too. All  changes are in text file(and old wad versions too)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/s7tr0na4rltw587/Beta Alapolgy.zip?dl=1

[Nine Inch Heels]

22 hours ago, MysteriousHaruko said:

I would like to hear about this map changes.

Alright, had a look. I like the visual changes and additions overall. Map is a lot more "moody" now. One small thing I would like to point out is the lighting in the Baron/revenant room. The blue firesticks there seem to have quite a small "light radius". It might be a good idea to extend that light radius and maybe fiddle with the overall lighting in that cave section just a little. Other than the blue firesticks, I think the map is in a good spot, compared to its "base material".

 

The floor detailing in the final room is nicely done as well, if you want, you could try and work with the texture alignments of that floor detail a little bit, to squeeze some more "realism" out of it, or perhaps try some different textures there. But only if you want.

 

It plays properly, I didn't find any mechanical issues that would break the map. That being said, I think it's done in terms of all the important aspects. :-)

[ShoDemo]

@MysteriousHaruko, I played your map once and got all the secrets. I also tried out the original two maps before that and while they were ok to play, they seemed to be very short and had some problems (for an example, the descending ceiling in the second map could ruin your run if you didn't know what to do).

 

Anyways, the new music is suitable with the level and provides some good atmosphere, the visual aspect of the level is greatly improved over the original (the torches and the rocky landscape were nice additions), the enemies are well placed (in the original first level's start, I got to 42% health due to the amount of Zombiemen I had to snipe at the same time) and merging the two levels in one was the best course of action for such short levels.

 

Overall, I enjoyed the remade map.

[ShoDemo]

Ok, so I finished testing my map some time ago, because I lost most of my courage to do so (I have to play the map every time for each small change and it very long) and I need some instant guidance in what I can fix in the level (right now I feel kinda lost).

 

Here is the original: https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/a-c/axix

And here is the rework of the map: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ubzj653f5t9gpyn/AXIXv2.wad?dl=0

 

The map is approximately 30-45 minutes, if I could guess and it has several traps, so saving is encouraged. Also, the use of the Chainsaw is heavily advised.

The map's graphics aren't that much modified (except some annoying for the eye parts), since it was beautiful enough from the beginning, but the gameplay had to be changed a whole lot. And music is not added yet (I will add it when I get sure that the level plays fine).

 

Maybe I can tweak some more the final boss fight and the platforming section early on. And I could move the Chainsaw's location once more, in case someone isn't able to find it (somewhere a bit more visible would be ideal), since it is an essential item for the map.

 

What do you guys suggest?

[baja blast rd.]

Gave it a spin yesterday (got through in 40:00 without saves, essentially an FDA past the first few areas). Didn't see it as time well spent. It's a lot better than the original version but still quite bad due to the preponderance of 'meat in front of thresholds' fights. Probably the most egregious was a fight with a lot of cacos (and a few HKs) that are rocketed through a 64-wide doorway. The layout isn't well suited to fights bridge between multiple areas, because connections between said areas are often doors or narrow openings. If you aren't planning to tweak the layout quite a bit, I'd suggest culling as many door-campable groups of pinkies and mid-tiers as is possible -- reducing their numbers drastically or replacing them with less grindy low-tiers. The success formula for a layout like this is essentially to space out lock-in fights or in self-contained arenas throughout the map (such as the last fight, as an example) and to use the more complex/open areas for lengthier fights if possible, but to use as few monsters as you need to in the campable areas based around corridors and small rooms, unless you are giving the player lots of weak fodder to mow down. (Lots of pinkies to be chainsawed/punched counts more as 'meat' than 'weak fodder'.) With frontal combat, less is often more. In the tekwall tunnels with strobing lights, for example, do you really need each small chamber packed with an identical group of revenants and imps that is camped in the same way? Probably not -- just a low-tiers for flow in each cavity is all you need. Ideally not identical ones. This part would be bad either way, though -- moving around those hallways just isn't fun. 

 

I didn't feel like anything in the map warranted saves. You had one archvile warp-into a room without cover at a non-obvious trigger location -- it was neither the switch in the room nor any of the objects. Since I was unprepared for it, I tanked a hit (at 100 HP with blue armor) and was left with quite a bad taste in my mouth, but objectively that wasn't dangerous. The map also has an early spot where one has to descend into a very tall pit with pinkies in it. Said pinkies can bite you freely as you drop, and you can land in a bad spot and theoretically get chomped to death. I was lucky and took 25 damage or something. I was tempted to save at the shotgunner crate part to eliminate the tedium of having to go all the way back around after falling, that's about it. The image of all of those shotgunners on all of those crates is a quite a funny one, but picking all of them off doesn't make for good gameplay. 

 

[ShoDemo]

I see. Thanks for testing and I will try to make the fights more interesting. Maybe I will mostly tweak the layout some more (widen some doors or make them completely open), in order to keep some of the mid-tier monsters, though I will replace others, with lower tiers.

[Nine Inch Heels]

1 minute ago, ShotgunDemolition said:

I see. Thanks for testing and I will try to make the fights more interesting. Maybe I will mostly tweak the layout some more (widen some doors or make them completely open), in order to keep some of the mid-tier monsters, though I will replace others, with lower tiers.

Not that you can create areas that are open for monsters, but virtually unusable for players by thing like damaging floors or oth obstacles that flyers can pass but players can't...

 

[Nine Inch Heels]

@ShotgunDemolition One thing I would to add wrt to testing is that when you have a larger map going, don't run all the things from the very start, just because you canged something that is like 15 minutes in. Move the player start where you need it to be, test sections individually, make sure they work roughly as you would expect them to during a normal run. rinse and repeat that for each seperate section. Don't make the mistake of burning yourself out on stuff that already works. Use cheatcodes, or put down the type of stuff you expect to have at certain points, and work from there.

 

The only reason to run maps in their entirety is to check if health/ammo is sufficient over the course of a map, and maybe have a look at how different segments flow together.

 

Just some piece of advice for you, and maybe some other people here, who always run everything from start to finish: Move the player start, make things more convenient for yourselves.

[ShoDemo]

Ah yes, I move the player start most of the time to test the areas one by one and cheat codes really help, but when I finish with the secluded areas, I usually try to test the map as a whole.

Right now I've been changing the Cacodemon/Pinky room, so that it is more open for the player and that door camping is not needed and I am altering the layout for the tekwall tunnels (I am limiting the tunnels and connecting the round areas with doors).

[CzechMate29200]

@ShotgunDemolition maybe another thing that should be changed is the "blinking maze". In every room you enter, there's always a few imps and a revenant. Maybe a better variety there would be good :)

[ShoDemo]

Yes, what is what I meant by tekwall tunnels. I am changing it right now and I will add a better variety of enemies, while making the rooms larger.

[CzechMate29200]

Oh sorry

[ShoDemo]

Nah, don't worry.  :)

[printz]

@Nine Inch Heels I'd like to develop on one of my releases, e_ambush. That's an E3M8 replacement where Doomguy was ambushed by the Spiderdemon while travelling in Inferno, before he could reach Dis. Since it's such a tiny map, I'm considering developing it properly now. It will be for Doom 2 and will inevitably lose the "kill all spiderdemons" mission objective, but I think I can approximate that, especially if it's Boom.

 

The main idea will remain so: as Doomguy is travelling to his destination of Dis, he will enter the Spiderdemon domains. The level starts in the same gorge as e_ambush.wad, but there will be passages and hell castles leading towards Dis (which will have to look grandiose and oddly alien-tech), where the portal to Earth (?) is located. The map will have lots of spiderdemons.

 

Question question question: can we use MBF allies?

[Nine Inch Heels]

9 minutes ago, printz said:

Question question question: can we use MBF allies?

The general idea of having boom as the mapping format is that all these maps can be played in the same complevel in case of PrBoom+ (Boom is -clvl 9), which rules MBF (-clvl 11) out. Sorry.

[printz]

OK, then I'm fine without that. I was going to make the cyberdemons the "good guys" here, but that's not necessary. The cyberdemons can easily be fooled to help you, anyway, let alone spiderdemons.

[Nine Inch Heels]

Sounds good to me. Gonna be interesting to see how your map turns out. I like fights with bigger stuff. :-)

[printz]

Can I add new SWITCHES and ANIMATED entries?

[CrazyDoomguy]

12 minutes ago, printz said:

Can I add new SWITCHES and ANIMATED entries?

Yes. These switches should connect with your renamed texture

 

To Nine Inch Hells: can you add on first page a list of finished maps? 

[Nine Inch Heels]

10 minutes ago, CrazyDoomguy said:

 

To Nine Inch Hells: can you add on first page a list of finished maps?

I'll eventualy get around to that, so far there is only a few maps ready to be looked at anyway. That reminds me that some weeks or so ago, I actually tested your submission for this project. Did you make things a bit less brutal in the meantime? Also, where are all the textures in your wad from, and in case you have some textures in there which are not part of a texture pack, did you already name those textures according the format of the OP, so that duplicate textures can be easier to weed out before compiling the wad?

[Battle_Korbi]

I am going to have to change the map I was going to refurbish. Beforehand, I told you about this collossaly huge walking simulator of a map with dungeons and a Dalmatia-influenced landscape. No one ever saw it so no one should be bothered. Either way this time I am going to present a refurbished version of a self-parody of my long lasting project of Doom mapping. Mostly because it was already balanced for all difficulties and I only have to retouch it for textures and giggles. Plus it isn't that big, so it shouldn't be a drag.

 

I might send a link later, can't right now. Either way I am just stopping by to drop this (un)relevant piece of information.

[CrazyDoomguy]

1 hour ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

I'll eventualy get around to that, so far there is only a few maps ready to be looked at anyway. That reminds me that some weeks or so ago, I actually tested your submission for this project. Did you make things a bit less brutal in the meantime? Also, where are all the textures in your wad from, and in case you have some textures in there which are not part of a texture pack, did you already name those textures according the format of the OP, so that duplicate textures can be easier to weed out before compiling the wad?

On UV is bit harder and I won with 1 load. All these texture are from here. GOTHIC TEXTURE PACK and some like hexen texture (dont remember)

[printz]

I'll be thinking which of my releases deserve refurbishment in the meantime. It's possible I'm going to work on e_dhouse, vault or phobostn instead. Whichever fits best the purpose of this project.

[Nine Inch Heels]

I was gonna make this post a bit earlier, but things got in the way on my end. I was basically wondering what the current situation is like for each one of you. So far I have less than a handful of finished maps, which isn't a problem in and of itself, but I am curious as to what you think in regards to the deadline. I don't have any objections if people would like some more leeway per se, however I would really appreciate if there was a chance to get something like a rough estimate. Because I would like to avoid pushing deadlines later down the line, and perhaps several times over, at least not more than is necessary.

[Misty]

Damn, I forgot to submit that map and I'm still thinking if I added everything in map. I did small changes - just replaced blue torches into small candles around pilliar trap, so player won't be blocked while moving around that cave. I'll add map link later with all required information. Do you have template for map submissions?

[Nine Inch Heels]

5 hours ago, Myst.Haruko said:

Do you have template for map submissions?

If by template you mean a "form" that you fill in some numbers and maybe a comment of your own about the map, then I can certainly provide one.

 

Basically:

Old map (with link)

Overhaul (with link)

Build time (roughly)

skill levels implemented

coop (yes or no)

DM (yes or no)

texture packs used (if any)

MIDI used

 

and maybe some thoughts about your pick and the result that can be put in a readme for the interested people. If you want something more added then let me know before I add a submission form to the OP.

Edited October 8, 2017 by Nine Inch Heels

[Misty]

Thank you, I was thinking how to submit map and provide required information. I'll do this today, because I can forget again and procrastinate until last minute. By any means, can I take another map after I submit the first one?

[Nine Inch Heels]

1 minute ago, Myst.Haruko said:

By any means, can I take another map after I submit the first one?

Yes you can, if you feel you can manage that within the remaining months I'm certainly not going to hold you back. ;-)

[Misty]

Well, I saw some stuff which got my attention recently. Also I can always recycle my first maps and make them playable as intended now.

[R1ck]

Oh boy, I just got into an accident and I broke by right wrist and kinda unable to use the mouse with that hand. I'll stop mapping for Etomana for this because it will take time. :/