Uberskunk

18 minutes ago, spiritmaze said:

Totally agree with this. I almost never play Doom 2. It doesn't take me on an immersive journey anywhere close to what Ultimate Doom achieved

I prefer the original Doom for it's better level design although when I play it, I do miss the more varied Doom 2 monsters, since the ones in Doom 1 have little for variation in their attacks. Throw stuff at you, or hitscan. I guess it's more or less the same with Doom 2 but even the multi-directional volleys of the Mancubus' fireballs or the repetitious speed of the Arachnotron's plasma cannon offer more interesting challenges. And, of course, the Revenant's homing missile and the Archvile's immolation thing. But...the level designs are pretty drab with few exceptions. "Inferno" felt like you were truly in hell, while the end of Doom 2, despite supposedly being hell, is just...weird. The Spirit World is nice and hellish but the rest? Eh...

23 minutes ago, spiritmaze said:

Definitely beatable on UV with only chain gun and shot gun....and I'm only an average doomer. I died about 10-15 times and took me 2-3 hours to beat this map. Another important strategy, aside infighting, is familiarizing yourself with which houses are best for cover and items/health.. Getting the backpack early on is essential too. 

I forgot to mention I also really enjoyed the enemies spawning in after each key is collected. It really felt like a war zone.

Most of my maps are tougher than I expect them to be, given that I generally aim them at the more casual fan. Hardcore fans of...anything, really, are not where my interests lie. When I first watched friends and family try this one, I joked to them "God, why don't YOU remember the houses as well as I DO?" It was easy for me to know where the ideal ammo and items were having spent a long time building it.

I often like to have a lot of activity in my maps. An exception would be my "Prison" map which was decidedly low on monsters in favor of atmosphere. Either way, that "warzone" feel was a lot of the feel I was going for and often go for. I like for the player to feel like just one piece in a big, moving machine. The key-spawning thing seems obvious in hindsight but it wasn't my original idea. I realized after a while that skilled players would be able to clear out the map before ever collecting a single key and then have nothing to do for the rest of the map, so it was a way to ensure that there was always something to fight, throughout.

Thanks for the additional feedback, appreciate it.

49 minutes ago, jdagenet said:

rofl why did you make a thread in the wads and mods section if it's something you're not going to release.... this is like something from your journal entry.

Wow, that's one funny difference of opinion on where the ideal location for this topic should be. If only I could be so jovial.

5 minutes ago, hardcore_gamer said:

Possibly one of the worst levels in the game for me would be refueling base. Even the music is depressing.

 

EDIT: Actually, some of the later levels are way worse. I just don't remember them that well because I rarely make it to them.

Funny you say that because I was going to list Refueling Base as one of the ones I like in Doom 2 but couldn't remember the name. I probably like it because it's a holdover from Doom 1, and it kind of shows, it doesn't look like the other Doom 2 maps.

I've never felt compelled to do that, I'll just play them all the way through, generally. But there are certainly levels I don't care for. Overall, when it comes to the commercial maps I prefer the original Doom, as Doom 2's maps all appeared rather samey in design. When I think "Doom 2" I think, the color brown. And that's never a good equation. Doom 2 has more maps that I think of as a pain in the neck. I'm alright with the TNT maps. Plutonia's maps don't thrill me from a design aspect and can be a bit "much" in terms of combat. I mean, that's the point of Plutonia but it can still feel like more of a slog than anything.

If I had a "playlist" it'd probably be the same basic order of levels with certain annoying ones removed. I never cared for E1M6, for example. Also not nuts about Unholy Cathedral. In Doom 2, I'd like to replace basically all of the maps with one that was identical but with, you know...interesting textures instead of, once again, the color brown.

1 hour ago, spiritmaze said:

I enjoyed this map. The highlights were the strategic infighting, especially with the spider mastermind and the barons. The archvile was a challenge because of my weak arsenal. I only ever obtained the rifle and the chaingun. I don't know if there were more powerful weapons hiding about, but I never found them.

I probably only killed about 15% of the enemies in this map, the rest died from infighting.

Thanks for giving it a play. Infighting is definitely a strong strategy to take. The shotguns and chainguns are the easiest to stumble upon. I made sure to play the level with only those to ensure that it could be realistically beaten with weaker guns.

17 minutes ago, Albertoni said:

Pretty fun stuff. Not too easy, not too hard, finished with one rocket remaining, 400 bullets and 100 shells, so I think Scotty might want to cause some more infighting. :)

Found all secrets, too. Love the garage one.

 

Since it was dead obvious getting the keys would spawn monsters, I made a run to get all three as fast as possible, and the map pretty much changed name to Infight City.

 

Couldn't find the SSG, but I did find a blue armor in a drawer, which was kinda cool but also pretty unmarked.

Infighting is certainly an ideal strategy. While I had friends and family trying it, they noted that running around outside for a while to stir up trouble between demons helped a lot. Nice job on the secrets. I felt inspired when I came up with the one you mentioned.

Thanks for giving it a try, really appreciate it.

2 minutes ago, Scotty said:

You should fix up all the tags so more people can play the map, cause i thought it was pretty fun.

 

The only thing i didn't like was the burning barrels in the floor which blocked me in a bit of an annoying way. I liked the pressure of being pretty swarmed from the start with no real way of fighting back and having to go into houses for (very limited) resources, ammo was ultra tight here and the fact that the SSG was the best weapon available (at least from what i found) added to this kinda zombie apocalypse type feel of the map. At one point i was down to 4% after an incident with a vile, and having to enter houses became pretty scary for a bit after that, it was neat. I also liked the 'possessed' exit house.

Thanks for checking it out. I was thinking about fixing the tags but there are so many doors it seems...unrelentingly tedious. BUT...I might. I mean I did think I might repost it again with some edits down the road.

I was unsure about the in-floor fire barrels. If the "actors indefinitely tall" tag is on then, yeah, they can get kind of annoying. They create a cool visual but it depends on what kind of settings the player has. I figured I'd leave them because they weren't level breaking but if I do a new version I might move them all to locations that the player is less likely to traverse.

I intentionally made the guns mostly conventional and kept ammo a bit scares. As you said, it has the "zombie apocalypse" feel and I didn't want the player to ever get too comfortable with his supplies. Nice to know that the feel was well-received. Glad you found the Super Shotgun, by the way. Wasn't sure if players would think to do that which gives it to you.

Thanks again for giving it a look, and thanks for the feedback.

16 minutes ago, Fonze said:

When you act the way you are acting, shitposters will sense blood in the water and swarm like a pack of sharks. Shitposters are attracted to shit posts, which you introduced into your own thread from your response to rd's warranted (and helpful) reply. My guess is Cynical saw that and followed your already-established lead. Doesn't help what you said about DW in the OP, even if that was a joke purely in the spirit of fun.

 

That said, best of luck to you; I love cute sector furniture :)

EDIT: Well I mostly respond to what I'm given. Don't mind being corrected. The rest didn't seem so necessary. If the opening post is that inflammatory, well, I removed most of it in the hopes of keeping the focus on the map itself. Didn't seem that bad, but, you know, internet. Forums. It's all an ordeal.

1 hour ago, Cynical said:

 

lol

I said classic, not "vanilla." Even if the 0-tag thing wasn't present, it'd surely crash a vanilla-doom based port. I more meant it shouldn't be played "brutal" or what have you.

51 minutes ago, rdwpa said:

- Plays on the map 27 slot. 

- Almost every action is 0-tagged, so will probably need a ZDoom-based port. 

 

Colorful descriptions are always cool, but including essential info is even cooler. 

 

It's been added. I trust the lord will forgive me for the momentary lack of info.

It's a doom map. Based on suburbia. Nothing at all contentious about that.

Play it on a Z-Doom based source port, map 27. REQUIRES TNT RESOURCES.

Link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zusl5rwwfkd1p35/Maple.wad?dl=0

General Tips:

-Salvation is indoors! Visit the houses often, as most of what you'll need to survive are only indoors.

-Don't stay inside for long! It won't take long for a house's perimeter to be swarmed with monsters. Get in, get your supplies, and then get the hell out.

-Windows are solid! It would seem the residents of this little neighborhood are used to American life by now and have bullet proof panes. Don't bother trying to shoot monsters through them (but it's a good way to see what's happening outside).

-Think creatively about secrets! There isn't a lot of room for a simple hidden door in a place like this. Take a good look around to find some good bonus stuff.

@Jaska, InfernalManiac, Gaspe, walter:

Thanks for the compliments, and thanks a ton for giving it a look.

@Albertoni: I never imagined people would find that room as confusing as they do. Thanks for warning me about the secrets, I've since fixed them, though I don't recall if I replaced the current file with the fixed one.

I appreciate everyone who's given it a try so far, thanks guys.

Use3D said:

Whoa almost missed this one. Your description sums it up well it's a really spooky oppressive place. A Doom level hasn't made me jump in a while (when it does it's usually 2 archviles popping out at you), but this one did, on a couple occasions. Some of these special effects I hadn't seen before, so kudos on that level of creativity too, I don't want to spoil anything so I'll leave it at that. Awesome work.

Thanks a ton for looking, I sort of figured I wasn't going to hear anything about this one. I know it's an odd level but it was fun to make, I'm glad you enjoyed the effects.

Got stuck behind this chair, I had to jump.

I also had some trouble thinking how to get out of the green marble room that traps you in, so I crawled out of the ventage and then idclipped outside.

Thanks for letting me know about that chair, Joe. You know, now that you mention it, I think that might have happened to me too ages ago. I thought I fixed it but maybe I didn't save or something. I'll get that fixed. As per the marble pillar area, I HAVE had a previous issue with that being confusing. The hint is the clips in the room. Thanks for your input though, and thanks a lot for trying it out.

@Fonze & Walter

Thanks for giving it a look guys.

walter confalonieri said:

what is a piggysback?

That's just a term I use to say that the level mimics a certain map in terms of position, in this case "Open Season" from TNT. Although the level that gets played is mine, the map name, music, sky, and par time are taken from the Open Season map. There's surely a way for me to change all that but I'm not an advanced enough nerd to know how yet. I could probably look it up but I tend to be a more hands-on learner and get easily overwhelmed from reading a set of directions.

This is an odd map. A relative, whom plays all of my doom maps, commented that she never found Doom to be scary, or really any other shooter. I had to agree but the idea of making a creepy map seemed like a fun challenge. Originally this was going to be a "shores of hell" style map, mixing man-made and hellish concepts but then I went in a bit of a different direction with that idea, and ended up with this map here, The Prison. It's inspired in part by the Silent Hill games and utilizes a lot of weird tricks and gimmicks. So much so that it might not even function as exactly desired in certain source ports. I'll explain that more but first, some screenshots:








The PWAD: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3lmg9q86e27qd0q/The%20Prison.wad?dl=0

The PWAD requires TNT as a resource, and piggybacks on Map 06 of that WAD. This was tested with ZDoom and ideally should be played with that. It'll work with others but some of the visual effects might be adversely affected, one reason I didn't share it before; it's not the most compatible map out there. It's meant to be played mostly Vanilla style but Actors Indefinitely Tall should be OFF. There are probably some misaligned textures but I tried to clean up the mainly visible ones. Probably the easiest way to play it would be to throw it into Doom Builder.

This level could be considered a celebration of doom bugs, many of which were utilized to create some of the effects. It's intentionally light on combat except in certain spots and is light on supplies, the level wouldn't work quite as well if supplies were plentiful. It's also intentionally low on details, notable as my maps tend to be very high on small details.

Basically the upshot here is that this is a weird map and I've known doom fans to be finicky about odd maps so I'm just copping to that now so at least you're aware that I'M AWARE that the gameplay here is odd along with everything else about it. Think of this as more of a fun little pet project of mine, not a serious contender for some kind of IWAD project.

That said be on the lookout for occult-inspired effects and secrets. There's probably a lot to criticize but if you're forgiving of it, it could possibly be a fun little map to explore. Let me know what you think, and thanks for looking.

Made changes to the WAD based on some suggestions here and some issues I noticed independently. Some changes include:

-Many textures properly aligned

-Minor edits on texture mapping

-Some unnecessary vertices removed

-A few additional monsters if played on Ultra Violence or Nightmare!

Thanks for the feedback so far, especially JerrySheppy for taking the time to be so thorough.

JohnnyTheWolf said:

I like the idea of having to go through several challenge rooms before fighting the Cyberdemon. I just wish there was more of them. Like, a room for each enemy type. I also think the map could use a lot more enemies to fight and also more hazards to be wary of. For example, monsters could be hiding behind walls, waiting for you to get to the center of a room to ambush you.

I did consider adding more rooms but as I said before, I like Boss levels to mostly be about the boss and so I didn't want too much distraction. Plus, I tried to keep in mind that although it's a standalone PWAD, this is only the 2nd Boss of the game (assuming you count the Bruiser Brothers), so I decided that I could hold back a little, like if for example I decide to try the same thing with "Dis," then I'd
want more to fall back on. I'm trying to convey that I didn't intend for the level to be a new challenge for very experienced players, I mostly designed it to be a realistic alternative to the original, not so much harder that it feels out of place among the rest of Episode 2, but not as easy as the original either.

I've seen multiple things about how people regard the original "Tower" and "Dis" maps as boring and easy. I think the thing to remember about them is that at one time, we were all new to Doom, and most of us at the time probably didn't think "Geez, E2M8 could really use some more texture mapping" but rather, we thought "What the hell is THAT?" and our faces were exploded while we were trying to figure it out. While doom as cultivated an impassioned community of die hard fans, the original games were made for the casual PC gamer. And in that way, the maps are what they are.

rdwpa said:

Map doesn't really put any pressure on you -- I was able to reality it (beat while taking no damage) quite easily. I think the caco encounter is okay-ish as a warm-up but the all pinky mob and baron setups would be better off being mixed-species fights, with a smattering of threatening monster types (lost souls, sergeants, etc.).

Fair enough, it wasn't necessarily designed to be a super challenging thing, just more so than the original. Although I recently have tried sharing them here, among the more die hard doom fans, I typically show these off to the more casual fans and try to keep the difficulty in check. Among friends and family I'm the only one who ever felt the interest in actually playing through Plutonia so I try to keep that in mind when making some levels (though I do have some that can reach out and bite you). I admit that the rooms could perhaps do with some varied monsters, though I sort of tried to keep every room "themed" with this one and relatively simple as I just wanted these rooms to be little appetizers before the end. I did consider adding in some additional monsters that would only appear on higher levels, such as lost souls in with the Cyberdemon (an homage to the original map) and some imps up in the cages of the blue key room.

All the same, thanks for giving it a try.

PS. if anyone grabbed the file in the last few minutes and got a version which goes straight to the boss fight, I apologize, it's possible that got uploaded by mistake, I've since fixed it.

@JerrySheppy Thanks for looking. The map wasn't visually perfect and I knew that, but I figured on posting the "rough draft" first which would give me a better idea of where the errors most stand out. I'll address the necessary concerns in order:

Texture misalignment under the windows annoyed me to read because I totally meant to align them and just forgot. I'm also reminded that I meant to change some other things in the starter room.

I see your thing about the blood fountain. The explanation there is that the floor originally had the blood stains all the way down but when I added the cages, I could no longer line it up correctly and then never went back to edit the fountains. I also noticed that I forgot to change the ceiling texture above the blood canal in there.

I guess there could have been a switch but I preferred the running theme of collecting all the keys. Personal preference.

I know most players wouldn't like using the door texture as a wall but that particular texture is just something I've always used interchangeably for doors and walls, I just happen to like it for both. I don't always adhere to the norms even at the risk of criticism from players.

The Plasma gun secret is one I sort of mulled over. Basically, the level is designed to be played both as a stand alone AND as the conclusion to the Shores of Hell. This means that the plasma gun secret is for players playing it from scratch and gives them a worthy item to find. However, if they played the previous levels, then they don't really need it and that's why there's 40 points of health in there too, so it's useful either way. The Cell is there mostly as a hint for the players who need the gun, and a nice chunk of ammo for players who do or don't need the gun (Plus the Plasma gun is missing from the original Tower of Babel. I included it here but figured I'd hide it a little).

Glad you liked the dark stair room, I spent ages worrying about how that would come off.

As for the supplies in the boss fight...I did notice that you can get hung up on the pedestals, I myself ate at least one rocket while doing it. I'm not sure if I'll drop them or not (It was mostly a decorative choice so the important items weren't just on the floor, so I might just make it so they can be climbed over but still high enough to see from a distance), but I will say that I intentionally left the supplies in that area. My intention was to make the fight harder in several ways and one such way was to make it so that you had to put your neck on the line a little in order to fuel up. Yes I give the player those nice things but I don't exactly give them away.

Most of my levels would have more connectivity than this (I have 3 other maps in an earlier thread if you're curious) but as I said this is a boss level and I kind of designed the parts before the Cyberdemon to be kind of a series of "trials" so to speak. If it feels "setup" that's kind of how it's supposed to feel. Like a mini game in and of itself "Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, Boss" that kind of thing. As for needing more health, I was very undecided on whether or not I wanted to include more so that's another reason I posted it as is, I figured I'd see if there are complaints about the lacking health (though there ARE 260 points of health available in the level, but 120 of them are in secrets). If there are enough, I'll toss some stacked health bonuses in the Caco Room.

I'll certainly have a look at some of those texture issues (I admit, I'm not the best when it comes to texture alignment, that kind of tedious works tests my focus problems). I'm more or less content with the actual gameplay elements for better or for worse, I know I can be a bit of an oddball when it comes to map features but hey, every fan made map should have some personality, eh? I'll think the pedestal thing, whether to keep them as is or make them easier but I do prefer to have all those supplies up where they are.

Thanks a ton for the feedback, helped remind me of a lot of things I need to fix.

Recently I've been making a map which takes place in a suburban neighborhood. Then like a genius I decided every house would be fully accessible and it became very tedious very fast. So as a way to kind of take a break from it, I started a new little pet project, a retelling of the classic Ultimate Doom map, Tower of Babel. I figured that I'd take the plunge again and attempt to share it here. The PWAD can either be thrown into a Doom 1 IWAD or played directly off of Doombuilder or something similar. Additionally, I tested it in Chocolate Doom as I wanted it to be Vanilla compatible and it looks like I finally wrestled it into submission on that front.

Here's the wad: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wb5lnztk7toc9a5/Tower%20of%20Babel.wad?dl=0 Wad requires Doom 1 as a resource if you're using it in an editor.

And some screens:







And now additional information nobody wants or asked for.

I love the original Doom Levels, they're always my favorite, and that includes Tower of Babel, a classic Arena setting for a big fight. However one thing that always rubbed me the wrong way about it: It's not a Tower. In fact there are barely any height differences at all in terms of traversable terrain. So for my version of it, I made sure the player spends plenty of time climbing stairs. Doom's inability to do room over room makes it a bit of a cheat of course, but at least the intent was there. I also conceptualized the Tower to be a place of punishment for both man and demon, although I sort of underrepresented the latter when it comes to the torture-themed decoration. Anyway, all main rooms of this level further the concept of punishment in some way. The level itself is rather short. When it comes to boss levels, I like for them to feel like a boss level, and thusly put the focus mostly on the boss. I don't care so much for those lengthy ones that happen to end with a boss fight. So although there is more to this level than the original it is attempting to pay homage to, it's still rather lean and simple in design.

If you did decide to play it in chocolate doom or actual vanilla doom, the only bug I'm aware of potentially happening is a visplane overflow but that should only happen if you're using the no-clipping cheat, in which case standing on the normally unreachable southern wall of the final room might trigger it if you're near the east or west corner. It's worth noting I myself never triggered it but saw the potential while looking at the Visplane Explorer in GZDoom Builder.

Thanks for looking. If there's anything horrifically wrong with it, go ahead and make it known for all to mock.

Screenshots were added, feel free to point out of they're not sufficient, I didn't want to crowd the post too much. Thanks again to everybody who's taken a look.

@Use3D Yes the combat in that one is very chaotic. One level that left a big impression on me was Odyssey of Noises, Map 29 of Plutonia. The pure chaos of that level was something I couldn't get enough of and it's something a lot of my maps feature. This is certainly a level that I thought could stretch the old doom format more than what it could handle, it ended up being a lot bigger than originally intended but it works for what it's trying to accomplish. There is kind of a cool visual gag you missed out on by not getting past the blue door but other than that, you saw most everything. I'd say the detail of certain TNT levels certainly inspired me in my human-made themed levels so that's an apt comparison. Thanks a lot for looking at these.

@Riley Martin Thanks for the suggestion, I may do that if I can figure my way around the forum commands. Didn't really think to do it at first. As I said, I barely touch forums of any kind. Haven't used one regularly in probably a decade.

@Use3D (Starship)

Thanks again. You'll probably see a lot of short textures on tall structures from me, I like how some of them repeat, but never really considered how it might affect true Vanilla doom. I suppose it might disqualify me from being able to say that they're strictly Vanilla format or at least from saying they're fully functional, although I'm not sure that it would "break" vanilla doom assuming you mean crash it. I'm only basing this on the fact that I probably had similar things happening in my first map which I tested in vanilla doom, and although I did get some rainbowy errors on the vertical tiling here and there, it didn't crash or anything. Again it's something I don't really encounter. Plus as you've no doubt noticed I like large areas so I can't see myself changing those habits, and I've used those various 'steps' textures for all kinds of effects, such as simulating a chest of drawers or mail slots in a mail room.

I guess if it's working with ZDoom and similar ports that's good enough for me, newer computers are necessitating them anyway. Perhaps I should find some kind of term to describe my specific style of map making if it's not completely vanilla-compatible. Sort of like those vegetarians who eat fish have their own word. And after all, I do have some maps that rely on actors not being infinitely tall, which of course is a vanilla feature.

There were a few times when I intended to sound-block but I can't remember if I ever got around to adding those in or at least making certain monsters deaf (some are but I recall the final hoard wasn't for the longest time). That level's also open ended enough to where it plays very differently depending on which way you go. Some people find the rec room immediately, and others don't see it until the very end, the latter scenario definitely leading to door blocking.