DooMer 4ever

ToD might be my favorite map author working today. I don't even try to play his maps though, but the map design, the architecture, the texture use, everything is just very beautiful in it's uniqueness, and I just love watching the demos of the maps. So, keep up the awesome work!

Well, it's not exactly how I would approach the concept myself. To me this felt almost like a typical Doom map that takes place indoors but with sky always as ceiling. And because of this, there are plenty of awkward visuals with disappearing walls when the ceiling always when the ceiling height changes. I'd try myself to keep the ceiling height always the same if possible, and think of other ways to make height differences by having different floor heights. Also, you don't always have to have the walls at the sides reach the ceiling. On the plus side, the gameplay of the map was ok. But thanks for the map! It was interesting to see one map with my idea, even though I didn't like it all that much.

Ok, so here's an idea I've been thinking about, inspired by the 5 rooms of doom project. I was thinking about how I like the idea of that project a lot, but how I found the concept kind of hard to define. What is a room and what is two rooms and so on? And I'm not saying that it's a poor project, on the contrary I'm very much looking forward to how it turns out and I'm expecting a lot of great maps. But, I was thinking of a way to make a project with a bit of the same spirit, but with really clear rules on what you can do and what you can't. One idea would be to make a 1 room maps, but even then it would be debatable if you could use high walls that don't reach the ceiling but divide different areas and so on. So I came up with this idea: It's only allowed to use sky as a ceiling, and NEVER anything else. And yeah, that's pretty much the only rule you need and there should be no need to debate what is allowed. Other than that, you can do anything you want to. And personally, I would go for Boom compatibility. At least I think it would make a really interesting concept for a community project. Think about it: majority of Doom maps tend to mainly take place indoors and it could produce some really unique maps. And it would also be an interesting challenge for mappers to come up with nice looking maps with good gameplay using this rule. Obviously some new tree sprites and such would be a required, and a grass texture like the one I remember seeing in Vanguard at least would be nice too. And new sky textures of course. I'm starting this thread to find out if there are people interested in this. BUT, I'm NOT going to lead such a project myself. Unfortunately I don't have time nor the skills for it. But if there's a person who's interested in starting and such a project, please do so and start a new thread about it! And perhaps I could have a small mention in the final text file of the finalized project as the father of the idea, if this thing ever happens.

Well, one has to remember that probably the majority of Doom players play using Zdoom or another source port that supports mouselook and have it turned on and don't consider it cheating so that could be a problem. Then on the other hand, this is meant to be Boom compatible project so I wouldn't worry too much about it. I would really like to try myself making a short map with this idea. I probably won't have time before september as I'm shortly leaving for a longish trip but maybe after that. There does seem to be at least some interest in the project though as expected the idea is a bit polarizing. But yeah, if someone wants to be the project leader, then please, do start a new thread about this. Or I guess I could try being the leader myself too after all if no one wants to do it. I just don't have much time like I told and I don't have the skills to do stuff like compiling the final wad with different resources and so on. But I'm sure someone would be nice enough to help with all that. But if there are people who have already started making a map for this, be sure that it will be arranged that those maps can be put together for a wad :)

Yeah, this is true of course as it limits all kind of overhanging ledges of building and cliffs and so on. But I'm kind of partial to wether it should be phrased "every areas must be outdoors" because then a part of the interesting challenge of mapping with limitations would be lost and it would also be again less clear what is allowed and what is not. But I guess one possibility would again be to allow both kind of maps and then divide the wad with the different types.

Of course! It would be even possible to divide the wad with vanilla compatible and Boom compatible levels, the vanilla maps probably appearing as the first levels of the wad and the Boom compatible as the rest. Also, as a general tip to everyone: Keep in mind that you can still do all sorts of constructions to the maps with this concept, so it doesn't have to be just canyons, plains, lakes and whatever. You could even make a city map with some of the buildings half destructed with no roof you could enter, and so on.

Yeah it's a gimmick, but at least I for one am fascinated by gimmicky map concepts. And the popularity of similar ideas, such as the congestion 1024 maps, 10 sector maps, 100 lines maps, 5 rooms maps, 1 monster maps and so on does prove that there seems to be an interest in this type of concepts :)

Boom compatibility is what I suggested in my opening post. So yeah, it turns out keys can be used after all, thanks!

Yeah, no doors with keys possible I guess. Unless perhaps an invicible force field that disappears into the sky or something like that might be possible? I haven't made map editing in years so I'm not trying to figure out if it's doable :P But even if not, there are plenty of ways to make a good unlinear gameplay without keys. It's just another challenge for the mapper really, and part of the fun!

Yeah, sounds great and clear enough to me at least, thanks! :)

Haha, shows how much I remember/know about advanced map editing. But I'd say allowing any trickery to produce fake ceilings would be against the concept. 3D bridges and such could perhaps be allowed but only so that you can actually get on them and not only used as ceilings.

Wow, that was incredible! And woah, that rocket was really close to end your run when you went to kill the two cybers. Seeing this aggressive playing in a map as long as this never ceases to amaze.

Haha, awesome. UV-Max demo anyone? :P I also wonder when someone actually does make a demo of this killing only the monsters and not caring about the secrets, if Andy uploads it on DSDA as "UV-Max attempt, misses 31578 secrets" or something like that :D

Wow, what a beautiful (huge) map and great playing! My favorite demo of the year so far.

I'm too lazy to look for particular demos at the moment, but I'd like to instead name most notable speedrunners in the demo scene in my opinion, last year: 1. j4rio: It feels like half of the (great) demos last year were made by the same guy, so it's quite obvious that I'll have to name him as the main guy to keep the demorecording alive. I'm not too much of a fan of watching the extremely high mouse sensitivity, but that's of course just a small thing and not something that everyone would even agree with. Other than that, the demos are great, and I especially love j4rio's skillful use of berserk fist to beat enemies faster than one would with SSG. I also loved following the many competiotions against other speedrunners, most notably Ancalagon. 2. Ancalagon: And this leads to the second best speedrunner of last year in my books. Actually, he has most of the the favorite demos of last year, and only reason I'm placing j4rio ahead is the quantity of lmps. It's just ridiculous how easy Ancalagon makes especially some slaughtermaps look. Best newcomer: Nevan: I love his style! The incredibly smooth mousework is just beautiful to look at. And of course there were great demos from pretty much every speedrunner that actively post here, so thanks for all the hours of entertainment to every single one :)

I actually had an idea of a tricks and traps themed map once in which when you pick up a chaingun a bunch of AVs would teleport all around you and there would be no cover either. But they would die of a shot or two because of the barrel trick :D

Nice runs Cannonball, I would very much like to see more :) I distinctly remember when I was first recording demos for H2H-xmas on Zdoom that there were a few older demos for the wad, possibly from a demo recording competition or something, but I can't find them anywhere. They don't seem to be on idgames and not on DSDA either. Does anyone have any idea where to get those? I remember there were a couple of pretty amazing runs, and I couldn't get even close to those times no matter how hard I tried.

I like the 1024 and 2 monsters idea. But how about restricting weapons to 2 as well?

Ouch. I felt horrible just by watching that :( I can't even imagine what it would feel like as a player when something like that would happen. Well, I hope you have the willpower left to do the run once more.

Yeah. Never got around mentioning that as I don't really care for those old Zdoom demos. Anyway, I would like to have my demos under my username instead of my real name.

Death exit on every map doesn't sound like a bad idea to me. These are the kind of maps most will hate / not skilled enough to play anyway so trying to please the mass seems fairly pointless to me. I mean, just look at the reviews for sf2011 on /idgames. And as for the Cacoward thing, I would be happy to to nominate sf2011 (I think it was released too late for the last year's competition?) just because watching demos of it is awesome. And I haven't even trying playing the thing, as I know it's far beyond my skill level. It's too bad that the Cacowards are like Academy Awards: a winner must be a wad that everyone likes, not something that is well done but aimed for certain group. That being said, not every map in sf2011 was all that great though, even for watching demos for. For what I've seen, it looks like sf2012 will be a noticeable improvement over the previous wad in quality.

Finally completed this with final time of 2h44m, deaths not included. I didn't find any of the glitches Pottus reported so perhaps he used an outdated version of Zdoom? The one on the first picture might be a GL problem too as I played this on the regular Zdoom. Lighting isn't 160 quite everywhere either, though a bit more lighting effects wouldn't hurt. I have a fairly new and powerful computer, but the framerate did suffer terribly when looking in a direction where most of the sectors are, which lead to annoying gameplay as most of the time I had to run around the monsters trying to kill them from an angle where I could actually hit them. Anyway, not a fault of the map. Perphaps in a few years this will be more playable. The texturing could do some work. If you want to use Doom2 textures only, it's ok, but at least remove the wolfenstein doors as they are ugly and look out of place. Doortracks should be lower unpegged as well. Monster placement is fairly boring with monsters sprinkled around here and there. It's ok though as higly orchestrated fights would make the map just even more unplayable with the framerate problems and all. And I did like the sniping cybers idea. Nazis as enemies didn't work for me either. Level progression can be quite confusing sometimes, which is understandable given the size of the map, but sometimes it's needlessly gimicky as well. For example, I got stuck for quite a while after killing the cybers and then found out the jumping to teleporters route by accident. It's silly that you can't see the teleporters and the only way to find them is to look for teleporter lines in the automap. Especially the final teleporter that takes you to the subway area is baffling as I don't think there was a visible teleporter at all. Overall this is quite an impressive achievement but needs some more work imo. Nice job!

I've long had an idea of a map that would be cut in half. The other half would have a a bunch of arachnotrons to kill, the other one mancubi, BUT so that there would be a lot of other monsters and only a limited number of the two. All of the arachnotrons and mancubi would be placed in a hard to reach or a hidden place (though not as hidden as secret areas usually are). Once each of those monsters would be killed, the way to enter the ending battle would open at the center of the map. Name of the map would be Monster Safari or something like that. I'm sure I will never get around to doing it though. Could be interesting for speedrunners to play for UV-speed as well.

I was finally arsed to upload my No Rest for the Living MAP08 UV-Max run as there might be people who don't have the wad file to playback any of the demos recorded on the episode.

1ntru, are you sure you used the latest version? The demo desyncs for me for some reason. Or does anyone else have a problem with playback?