Heretic Speedmapping

[Jaws In Space]

In recent month's speed mapping for Doom has really exploded with the emergence Eagle & Pigeon, along with the return of ASS. Seeing that speed mapping is so popular right now I'd like to take this opportunity to start a new session, but instead of using Doom as the base game, this one will use Heretic. It seems to me that Heretic is viewed as a somewhat flawed game around Doomworld, so not a lot of people really go out of their way to make maps for it. A speed mapping session though is a great way for those who are hesitant to map for Heretic to give it try for themselves.

 

Since this will be the first outing I want to keep things simple, so this will be a limit removing wad using only stock textures. Custom music is allowed.

 

Okay everybody lets get this thing going.

 

Theme - A canyon village

Restriction - The highest playable area & the lowest playable area must be a height difference of at least 500.

 

For those who like to chat while mapping.

https://discord.gg/d55hch

 

Mapping ends 8 hours from now (1:00am est). You can leave early or you can arrive late, but try to at least put in 2 hours of mapping.

Edited January 19, 2018 by Jaws In Space

[SOSU]

I will try to make a map but i know i won't be able to finish it... atleast i will make my dream come true and ask you if you could call this the "Raven speedmapping session" :)

[leodoom85]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Bad timing in my case for sure. I'd love to make a map but I'll be tired thanks to job :(

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

Sounds fun, hopefully I'll be able to take a shot at this.

[Walter confetti]

Cool, looks interesting!

So is for today, if I get it right?

[Jaws In Space]

8 minutes ago, Walter confetti said:

Cool, looks interesting!

So is for today, if I get it right?

Yes, it starts a little over an hour from now.

[therektafire]

Sadly I won't have the time to make a map for this session :( Plus I am working on my 4800 hell knights map right now because I haven't been able to work on it in a while and I need to do that.

[Obsidian]

I've actually tried Heretic speedmapping in the past with a friend, but personally I reckon Heretic thing placement takes a bit more thought than Doom (the monsters are a bit more out-of-the-box at times, the inventory, etc) and I had a decent amount of difficulty when it came to making something remotely presentable. Then again, we were doing a relay...eh, maybe not this time but I'll keep an eye out.

[Jaws In Space]

Okay everybody lets get this thing going.

 

Theme - A canyon village

Restriction - The highest playable area & the lowest playable area must be a height difference of at least 500.

 

For those who like to chat while mapping.

https://discord.gg/d55hch

 

Mapping ends 8 hours from now. You can leave early or you can arrive late, but try to at least put in 2 hours of mapping.

[Master O]

1 hour ago, Jaws In Space said:

Okay everybody lets get this thing going.

 

Theme - A canyon village

Restriction - The highest playable area & the lowest playable area must be a height difference of at least 500.

 

For those who like to chat while mapping.

https://discord.gg/d55hch

 

Mapping ends 8 hours from now. You can leave early or you can arrive late, but try to at least put in 2 hours of mapping.

 

So what if someone only puts in 1 hr and 59 minutes of mapping?

[Jayextee]

Fuck. I'd be totally down for this if the 8 hours weren't coincidentally overlapping the time I plan to spend sleeping. Timezones innit. :/

[leodoom85]

15 minutes ago, Jayextee said:

Fuck. I'd be totally down for this if the 8 hours weren't coincidentally overlapping the time I plan to spend sleeping. Timezones innit. :/

same!!! >:(

[Jaws In Space]

22 minutes ago, Jayextee said:

Timezones innit. :/

The bane of every speed mapping project :/

[Walter confetti]

I hope to get the theme well...

 

village.zip

 

Title: Skeleton Head Village

Build Time: 1 hour, more than less (started at 00:50 am, finished at 01:40 am)

New Music: Jazz Jackrabbit - Tubelectic

Edited January 20, 2018 by Walter confetti

[Adahn]

I havent made a heretic map before so I figured it would be fun to try, this is what I came up with. Hope you like it :)

 

Canyonvillage.wad

 

Build time: approx. 4 hrs 

Title: Winding Valley

Edited January 20, 2018 by Jthom : changed map title

[Jaws In Space]

Well Here's my own map. Canyon This is my first ever map for Heretic. I've not spent nearly enough time playing Heretic to be completely familiar with the monsters & items, but I gave it my best shot.

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

"Dark Spirits Gulch"

Kind of a tricky theme to do without being able to stack floors so I went with some Anasazi inspired cliff dwelling type things.

No difficulty settings.  No secrets though I know a place or two I'd stick one in if I had more time.  Gameplay balance might be a bit whacky but it's beatable as far as focusing on making a break for the exit rather than killing everything.  Dunno about max runs.

Once you jump down into the arena at the end, the only ways out are to exit the level or die, unless you kept the chaos device.  Possibly a questionable decision, but kind of on purpose.

 

I didn't bother to spend time picking a different music track, so it's the same old E1M1 although something like E2M2 would probably fit better.

 

dsgulch.zip

[Jaws In Space]

Alright times up! I'll compile the submitted maps in the morning.

[SOSU]

Sadly i could not join the project :'(

[Guest DILDOMASTER666]

And nobody told me about this because???

 

Seriously I would have liked to join, Shadow of Drangleic is basically all speedmaps and I want to do more Heretic content. How about another round

[rehelekretep]

what with timezones why dont speedmapping sessions last a full 24hrs?

maybe im missing an obvious reason!

[NaZa]

Another one bites the dust!

 

I'd have loved to join in on these as I love Heretic, but it seems I missed out :P bummer.

[Jaws In Space]

12 hours ago, Jthom said:

I havent made a heretic map before so I figured it would be fun to try, this is what I came up with. Hope you like it :)

 

Village

 

Build time: approx. 4 hrs 

Title: Winding Valley

Fun for the most part, but I would like to see a couple things fixed.

-The Golems on the narrow ledge right before the Ethereal Crossbow are very annoying, I'd suggest just removing them entirely.

-Line 579 needs to be Switch Repeatable, as I got stuck & had to start over.

9 hours ago, ETTiNGRiNDER said:

"Dark Spirits Gulch"

Kind of a tricky theme to do without being able to stack floors so I went with some Anasazi inspired cliff dwelling type things.

No difficulty settings.  No secrets though I know a place or two I'd stick one in if I had more time.  Gameplay balance might be a bit whacky but it's beatable as far as focusing on making a break for the exit rather than killing everything.  Dunno about max runs.

Once you jump down into the arena at the end, the only ways out are to exit the level or die, unless you kept the chaos device.  Possibly a questionable decision, but kind of on purpose.

 

I didn't bother to spend time picking a different music track, so it's the same old E1M1 although something like E2M2 would probably fit better.

 

dsgulch.zip

This map really wasn't much fun due to heath & ammo starvation. Dashing to the exit only works out if you know where the exit is, so I spent a good 40 minutes dying constantly. Just filling this map up with heath & ammo would do wonders to improving it.

[Adahn]

Heres the updated version of my map:

 

Canyonvillage

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

3 hours ago, Jaws In Space said:

This map really wasn't much fun due to heath & ammo starvation. Dashing to the exit only works out if you know where the exit is, so I spent a good 40 minutes dying constantly. Just filling this map up with heath & ammo would do wonders to improving it.

Yeah, usually my last step when finalizing a map is to run through it a few times and move/add supplies any place I feel like they run down too much, generally aiming for them to appear "just in time", but in the time constraints it only got one iteration of that.  I thought there was quite a bit of ammo around but a lot of it was kind of placed "theoretically" rather than on how the map plays out in practice so some of it may come too late to be of much use.  Health, yeah it's probably on the low side especially if you're not doing the tomed gauntlet grapple.

 

This is the sort of thing where demos would be helpful, though, so I could see where you get misdirected or otherwise stuck.  Did you spend a lot of time/resources fighting the liches down bottom?  Aside from a few items in the far north, the bottom floor of the chasm ended up being mostly a penalty area for falling.  Didn't want to be as harsh as to make it lava but having iron liches down there without much else was probably a bad idea since players will tend to want to kill them.

[Jaws In Space]

44 minutes ago, ETTiNGRiNDER said:

Yeah, usually my last step when finalizing a map is to run through it a few times and move/add supplies any place I feel like they run down too much, generally aiming for them to appear "just in time", but in the time constraints it only got one iteration of that.

While that works in linear maps, it doesn't work in a large open sandbox map like this. I can end up spending all my health and ammo in one area only to find out that I've not gone the right way to progress, but now I'm out of the supplys that are supposed to appear just in time had I gone in the correct direction.

 

I gave the map a second go just now & yeah since I'm now aware of where I need to go in order to progress I find that I do have more ammo to take out the enemies, but low heath is still an issue. The Quarts Flask #330 is pretty much the last significant supply of health that is of any value & even then it hardly did anything to help me both times that I played the map. Once you get to the Blue key there's no point in doing anything except for rushing the exit as there's not enough health to do anything else. Quick note, the 45HP in the exit room might as well not exist, I wasn't able to use it on either play through. There's no one area I can point out as a big health drain, it's just the constant pelting due to all the far off threats & the large number of Disciples & Gargoyles flying around.

This is the sort of thing where demos would be helpful, though, so I could see where you get misdirected or otherwise stuck.  Did you spend a lot of time/resources fighting the liches down bottom?  Aside from a few items in the far north, the bottom floor of the chasm ended up being mostly a penalty area for falling.  Didn't want to be as harsh as to make it lava but having iron liches down there without much else was probably a bad idea since players will tend to want to kill them.

The Liches weren't a problem on either of my play throughs, from your first post I gathered that it was probably just a good idea to ignore them & it's very easy to do so.

[Jaws In Space]

13 hours ago, DILDOMASTER666 said:

How about another round

Well as far as I'm concerned I consider this one to be a pretty big success. Sure there's only 4 maps, but plenty of other people showed interest who couldn't participate. My weekends are mostly busy for the next month, but there will be an opening for me on February 23 where I'll be able to host another session.

 

 

Anyways here's a beta of the 4 maps along with a text file. Heretic Speedmaps I'd appreciate it if some folks gave these maps a playthrough. Also If anyone wants to make a Titlepic or something that would be cool, but I am fine with releasing this without one.

[Jaws In Space]

Last chance for any updates, I will upload this tomorrow.

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

Ack, I didn't know you were waiting on updates.  Here's a tweaked version of my map:

- Added a secret

- Added a music

- Added some skill settings

- General moving/changing of items, ammo and some creatures.  Should hopefully play better now.  There is enough stuff to be able to max it (for me anyway) including the liches and the bottom area has more worthwhile stuff to look for.  Some of the teleporting Disciples were moved to later parts of the map instead of all coming out in one trap, some of the fire gargoyles were changed to sabreclaws patrolling the bottom.  Health/ammo should be better distributed, in a few cases a single big pickup was split into equivalent or greater small ones and spread around as well as a little more ammo and a lot more vials being added.

 

I didn't do anything WRT making it prettier, nor adding some of the areas I probably would if I were to do a bigger overhaul and polishing.

 

dsgulch2.zip

[Adahn]

Here's my updated map. Not a lot of changes, just fixed some texturing errors, fixed a door, improved the traps a little and fixed some other errors. 

 

 

Canyonvillage.zip