Counterattack - Now on /idgames!

Mechadon said:

I'm considering removing the BFG in favor of an Invuln and throwing in a ton more monsters in that fight, and then moving the BFG to the final area of the map.

You should also consider adding more monsters for the M4 final fight, the area is really huge and it's not very hard to outrun the hordes. Also the M3 final fight felt a bit underwhelming if you ask me but perhaps others disagree.

Anyways finally had enough time to finish the other 2 maps and yeah absolutely fantastic stuff. Especially the key fights and all those corresponding reveals were amazing. Wish i could play another 4 of those.

Didn't stumble upon any other bugs.

I'm very happy to hear you enjoyed the mapset tourniquet! Thanks for taking the time to leave some bug reports and feedback. I did add some more monsters to the last fight in MAP04 (namely more Revs and some Demons). I've also attempted a few changes to the end of MAP03, which was something I was very dissatisfied with.

Speaking of changes, you can read the current changelog for the changes coming in Beta 2. I'm going to hold off a while before releasing the next beta since I would like to get some more feedback and watch some more demos if possible. There's also a couple of extra things I'm looking to add as a surprise :D

While I'm here, I'll share some unused sky textures with everyone. I made some of these as candidates to be used in this project, and a couple of others are older ones that I considered using. Maybe someone will find them useful.

Old MAP03 sky.


A candidate for MAP02, which actually originates from my first attempt at a 50 Shades of Graytall map.


A generic evening cloudy sky with a few color variants.





Anyways, keep the feedback and demos coming guys!

Mechadon said:

http://i.imgur.com/WCnUJHl.png

Counterattack is a 4-map mini episode for Doom II that I started on in the beginning of September 2016. The maps will be Boom compatible and focus on singleplayer (and possibly COOP). Gameplay will likely consist of my standard, medium-paced difficulty with an emphasis on exploration and semi-nonlinear flow. The map sizes will range from medium to large, with the largest taking around 30-45 minutes to complete.

This started out as a single map for the Vinesauce mapping contest (I'm a fan of Joel's streams), with the stipulation that I would restrict myself to using only stock Doom II textures (apart from new sky textures). But after finishing the map, I had the urge to do another one. And thus this project was born!

Questions and comments are always more than welcome!

Releases:
- Counterattack Beta 1 [5mb] (readme included)
- Leftover sky textures


Progress:
MAP01: Aggilus - DONE
http://imgur.com/iMrEf4Mhttp://imgur.com/XEp3EgGhttp://imgur.com/ECr77ar
http://imgur.com/TzqL97fhttp://imgur.com/JoTwJvmhttp://imgur.com/AShf7ds

Random observation: the sky background for your first map resembles the album cover for Tangerine Dream's "Zeit."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeit

Just finished it, took roughly 3h, played continuously without pistol-starting. Generally it was pretty amazing, as expected from Mechadon. Fantastic architecture and great use of lighting, gameplay that's not unreasonably murderous and obviously a nice treat for fans of Vela Pax. ;) I did get lost a couple of times, especially on Maeror though I feel like this is an inevitable side effect of having maps this big and complex. It's just easy to lose track of places that are yet to be visited when you've got so many areas to explore.

Sorry I don't have a lot to say in terms of specifics but I've only played it once so it'd take at least another playthrough to really test it out. I will probably pistol-start everything when you release the next beta. Either way, I enjoyed it a lot and it was yet another great set of levels, Mechadon. :) Also, I really don't want to say it but... come on, you know what everyone's waiting for. ;)

Thanks a ton for the kind words Touchdown, I'm happy to hear you had a good time playing :D. Also I was wondering if anyone would have noticed the Vela Pax connections, heh.

I'm not surprised to hear that you got lost in MAP04 (or really in any of these maps, its something I'm used to by now). I have made a few changes in places which, I hope, will give some good directional cues when you flip switches. But I have noticed that sometimes it doesn't matter how good a cue is. If you give the player a choice to go in 5 different directions at any given time, those cues tend to get lost in the action and noise. Nature of the beast and all, so I'm just trying to polish up any really big problem areas right now.

Anyways, I have a few more goodies to share with everyone. I had some extra sky variants sitting in a different folder that I forgot about, so have some more!

Older MAP01 sky attempt.


Older MAP03 sky attempt, I don't remember if this one looks good in-game or not.


Color variants of the MAP03 sky, again I don't remember how these look in-game.

Master O said:

Random observation: the sky background for your first map resembles the album cover for Tangerine Dream's "Zeit."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeit

Interesting! I kind of like Tangerine Dream so that's pretty cool :)

Mechadon said:

Also I was wondering if anyone would have noticed the Vela Pax connections, heh.

Well, it was kind of hard to miss, considering the starting room of Aggilus. ;)

Here are some more FDAs for all 4 maps : here

Gotta say, these are the first Doom maps I've played in 2017, and man, what a way to start things off. :)
Fantastic mapset. The replay value is high with so many well-hidden secrets, and obviously you put a lot of work and care into lighting and detail, these maps simply look wonderful. There were a lot of spots where I just stopped for a while just to admire the scenery and eye-candy.

Noticed a couple texture misalignments here and there ( in maps 02 and 04 from what I recall ), you'll surely see what I mean from my demos - provided you don't fall asleep / get sick watching them !

Map 01 almost caught off a rusty, off-guard me with its well-placed Arachnotrons and hitscanner packs. The gameplay style is quite unusual for a map01 slot, with its emphasis on exploration in dark outdoor areas. Pretty cool !
Loved the crusher fight and the multi-tiered areas.

I dunno what to think about removing the secret BFG in the slime in map 02, as it helped me a great deal against a Revenant pack later on. Maybe leaving it in but reducing the available ammo could be an alternative solution... ?
It's another great map btw, I liked the verticality, the green theme and the clever, overlapping layout ( but this is a common thing in all 4 maps ).

Map 03 had me puzzled for quite a while, didn't figure out how to get the BK for quite some time before stumbling on a new path almost by accident. A common trope with non-linear maps, there's not much one can do about it sadly.
The outdoor blood field brawl is awesome :)
I also liked how you could approach the faraway Cyberdemon from many directions, although some positions can neuter the Cyber a bit too easily ( like the one I found in my demo ).
Cool theme and exellent CEMENT texture usage, there.

Map 04 feels like a proper ending map with its overall higher difficulty - these early Arachnotrons are quite a pain ! :)
I liked how the weapon curve could vary a lot depending on the player's path choices, although getting the BFG9000 from the dreadful RSK part makes most of the remaining areas a tad too easy indeed, most notably the YSK arena.

Now, if I were to compare this mapset with Vela Pax, I'd say that the maps here are definitely shorter ( Vela Pax maps still take me ~2 hours each even after 3 or 4 playthroughs, while Counterattack levels only took me ~50 minutes each ) but still as confusing - not a bad thing, and it's expected from maps this size.
Counterattack maps are also less orthogonal, it's amazing to see you're still experimenting new styles, shapes and ideas even after all these years. Can't wait to see what you have in store for us after that !

Now, to create something like this in like 4 months... You're a freaking machine :)
Thanks a lot for the release !

Awesome, thank you very much for those FDAs and your feedback Wilou! I will be watching these very soon. Very happy to hear you enjoyed the maps too :)

I'm still debating whether or not I should totally axe the BFG in MAP02. As of right now I've replaced it with something else, but with some tweaks I could possibly add it back (talking about the one in the nukage pool area). MAP02 on the whole is a little bit more difficult now, so maybe it would make sense to bring it back.

Oh, while I'm here, I'd like to ask for a bit of help. Does anyone have any recommendations for a replacement track for MAP03? The current track was sort of a fallback pick because I couldn't find something I liked. And I think it might be a bit too repetitive. So if anyone has any good suggestions (something similar in feeling to the current track) that would be very helpful :D

I've got a couple of updates for you guys. Beta 2 should be done sometime around the end of January at the latest. It might come sooner than that if I can keep up the pace, so we'll see how that works out.

I've updated all of the maps based off of feedback and demo watching. So thanks again to everyone who recorded demos and helped out, I really appreciate it! I'm pretty sure I've ironed out most of the issues, but if not just let me know when Beta 2 drops.

And finally here are a couple of surprises (and also the main reasons why Beta 2 isn't out yet :P):

Wow Mech those shots are amazing! I can't wait to play beta 2.

Thank you Fonze! It shouldn't be too much longer now. I just need to finish up the gameplay pass on this map and do a couple extra things. And then Beta 2 should be ready to go :)

So Joel (Vargskelethor) finally got around to playing my map in his recent contest stream. It was a 6 hour stream, but he's already got the VOD up. So if anyone wants to watch it, just click here (it starts around 35:50). Of course I was asleep when he streamed this, which sucked...I caught every stream except for the one he played my map in :P

To my surprise, he actually played it fairly well! Him getting lost was pretty inevitable and, in hindsight, I wonder why I didn't make something way more linear for him. But he seemed to have fun playing it and that's all I was really after. And I got a big laugh out of him trying to play my super dumb slaughter speedmap at the end, heh.

Anyways, while I'm here, I guess I'll share one last screenshot of the new map.

I played some of your maps before the stream began, pretty good aside from getting lost often.

Hey thanks Spocks_Beard! I have a habit of making maps that are easy to get lost in (usually some flavor of non-linear flow with a large layout). So that's definitely criticism I'm use to hearing. I probably shouldn't have made a map like for Joel considering he has to focus on the stream and play at the same time (also its hard to keep his attention, heh). But all things considered, he got through it just fine, and I even gleaned some good feedback from his playthrough which I'll use to update the map.

While you mapping is beyond doubt excellent, I just cant seem to get enough of your sky's.

I'm off to play your beta!

Thanks for the kind words Liberation, I'm glad someone can get some use out of my sky textures :D. After this project is finalized, I think I'm going to organize all of the sky textures into one package and release them. Right now I have them scattered all over the place.

And finally, here is Beta 2!

Counterattack Beta 2 [8mb]
The hefty changelog

Like last time, there's a readme included which should cover a few important details, so please read that if you can.

The big additions in Beta 2 are the new maps; MAP05, MAP31, and MAP32. There are two other maps (MAP30 & MAP06), but those aren't meant to be played. MAP06 is there for story purposes and cannot be completed. MAP30 is there as a way to get around the potential for the game to crash since I used some IoS frames in the bex.

There's no way to exit to MAP31, so you'll have to warp to it to play it.

MAP05, MAP31, and MAP32 are the ones that need the most testing attention. I tried a few things I don't usually do in MAP05 gameplay wise, so I definitely need some feedback on it.

With this beta release, the project should be feature locked now. I won't be adding any new maps. So I just need to get some good feedback on this beta, and then I might do one more beta release before finalizing this. There is a question of making the maps more COOP friendly, which I can do if you guys would really like me to.

Thanks for the awesome help so far guys! I'll be looking forward to hearing more feedback :)

Wow Mech; 2 more maps? Nice!

Idk if/why you'd want to hear more feedback from me, but I'll definitely give these maps a try (map01 also since that was but a layout when I last saw it) and clutter up this page with my unhinged ramblings when I get the chance. I'll be sure to quote the quote of a quote from the longest post I can find in the thread so my message is lost in translation, too.

Maybe we can break the forum software again if we nest enough quotes in one post, heh :P

Of course I would love to hear your thoughts Fonze! The more feedback I can get before I finalize this, the better.

I love how you are making a mapset made of big-ass maps to procrastinate from finishing another mapset that also has big-ass maps. :)

Cool, more of these maps are pleasant surprise. Here's a FDA for Map05, contains a lot of circle strafing so i hope you can bear watching it. Another fabulous map, i suppose it's meant to be the final one.
The invulnerability in the second area seems rather redundant and i'd recommend to remove at least 1 in the final encounter.
You may notice that it's possible to hide in the chamber with the invulnerabilities and cheese the final encounter. The 4 switches in the NE,NW,SE and SW corner could be a bit more obvious, it's pretty dark in there.
Same goes for the Rocket and cell ammo in those branches.

Edit: Just realized that i've completely overlooked the BFG, oh well...

Thank you for the demo tourniquet! You were right, that was a lot of circle strafing :P. I need to credit you, and everyone else who has recorded demos, in the readme. They have been a ton of help!

I'll remove that second invuln from UV and maybe HMP too. Also I think I can probably get away with making the doorways of those cubby-holes larger, that way the monsters can get in at the player.

Should I make the BFG more obvious? The idea I had was that crafty players could push through and grab the invuln+BFG to clear out the fight in the 2nd arena. But I don't know if that actually works well considering where they are placed. And in hindsight, the BFG kind of blends in with its surroundings.

Firedust said:

I love how you are making a mapset made of big-ass maps to procrastinate from finishing another mapset that also has big-ass maps. :)

I know, the irony burns :P. As usual, this project wasn't meant to be as ambitious as it turned out. But that's a theme with anything I try to make these days.

Awe-inspiring maps, these. I think 01, 03, and 04 are my favorites.

Some bugs with 31:

I got stuck in this lift because my head hit the ceiling behind it. You're not fooling me, this is not a door. :D (That HUD is there just for screenshots, I normally have ammo displayed.)

I enjoyed the map overall but felt like the area with the megasphere could have had more exciting combat. I realize the mapset isn't aspiring to be overbearingly difficult, but some of the later fights here (except the ending, which was fun) felt like a letdown in comparison to the big fights in earlier maps, considering how the big pretty-looking areas were foreshadowed at earlier points. I was operating on the default balance, too, since I didn't find any secrets. In the first nukage fight with cacos and some PEs, I was excited, thinking, "I'd better clear all of these out before the door opens and some HKs or something pour through", and then it turned out that it was only those gasbags.

Ok, so here goes my free time for the week-end... :)

I've just played map 31, a very enjoyable ride. Ammo is tight at the beginning, you'll surely run out of everything by the time you're in the YK area if you don't activate that early switch ( linedef 202 ) and if you don't find the RL. I suggest adding some clips or shells near sector 1434.

As rdwpa said, the Megasphere area could be beefed up a bit, maybe by having the Caco / PE wave appear when you actually reach the Mega ( or cross linedef 17662 ) instead of doing so immediately when you enter the area, so that the player could find him/herself in the middle of a pincer situation between these flying enemies and the Revenant group in sector 4202. If you do so and feel that it's too brutal, the number of Revenants could then be reduced by a few.

The ending is perfect, haha :)
Tried not to play cowardly when the exit was at the palm of my hand and got badly punished there.

Excellent map !
Felt like I've missed a ton of things ( RK door, a couple secrets etc. ), so I'll definitely replay it.

Mechadon said:

Should I make the BFG more obvious?

No, the central position is alright i guess. I accidently stepped on the teleporter to the final encounter and probaly would have found it otherwise.

rdwpa said:

the area with the megasphere could have had more exciting combat. I realize the mapset isn't aspiring to be overbearingly difficult, but some of the later fights here (except the ending, which was fun) felt like a letdown in comparison to the big fights in earlier maps

Totally agree and the fact that you can wake up the viles from the higher walkway on the backside of the building kinda spoils the trap. Additionally the rev's have a hard time, getting down those stairs, since the steps aren't wide enough and become a rather easy target.

I also agree with Wilou about the lack of ammo in the beginning. I missed both the chainsaw and the RL during my first attempt and died, with nothing left, down in the sewage tunnels. Besides those things the map is in no way inferior to the previous ones. I still need to figure out how to get the RK so i'll certainly give it another try soon.

Good stuff, thanks guys!

About that BSK area in MAP31, I will definitely tweak those fights. It actually used to be more difficult, but I had trouble getting through it consistently. So I scaled it back, and maybe I scaled it back too much.

I will be addressing everything you guys have brought up. Also Wilou, I'll be watching your demo as soon as possible. Thank you!

rdwpa said:

In the first nukage fight with cacos and some PEs, I was excited, thinking, "I'd better clear all of these out before the door opens and some HKs or something pour through", and then it turned out that it was only those gasbags.

Man, I almost tweaked that fight to do exactly that before I dropped Beta 2! The reason why I didn't was because I thought it could end up being too overwhelming. But I didn't test it to find out. I will give this a try and see how it works though.

Hi Mechadon!

Played MAP01, will get to the rest of the maps another time.

Suffice to say, these maps are gorgeous.

Some of the things I think could work in your favor in future mapping endeavors is to work on using a better economy of monsters. The gameplay is a little too chaotic.
the player doesn't really have much control over what's going on. Often while I was low on health, i accidentally stumbled into a place with a thousand sniping pistol guys in the dark. It was too risky to shoot at the barrels that were planted next to them and as I retreated to scavenge for health items, I already knew the monsters were diffusing all over the map, into caves, behind crates, camping in corners. If I didn't find health (which I sometimes couldn't) I was sure to embrace certain death.

The darkness, the weaving layouts and detailing/visual noise didn't do any favors to assist the gameplay style you were going for.

Your maps would benefit very strongly with more "desolation." The primary interest of this map is pretty obviously the detail, and large spaces of no monsters would really give the player a chance to do some recon on the environment while really soaking up the atmosphere. There's something about way this level (and I expect, possibly other levels as well) is designed that is very intelligent. The level design doesn't really offer anything inherently wrong, but as I was playing I often felt checkmated in ways not directly caused by the monsters. The surroundings tend to require a little more thinking and analyzing to figure out where you can and can't go naturally than your average stupid doom map.

The maps are so eye catching that too much chaos takes away from its charm.
Your mapping could benefit greatly with less innovative thing placement approaches and rather a more "traditional" approach to your monster encounters. Stuff like:

get gun; waves of pinky demons
get armor; revenants pop up
get key; archvile ambush

If the player was allowed more time to investigate his surroundings and figure out the layout before being bombarded with monsters, this would overall be a very thrilling experience. But in it's current state, it seems like I'm not going to really have fun with this map until I beat it first and get a feel for the layout, then beat it a second time.

In short, your mapping could really benefit from seasoning your maps very gently with few weak monsters, then save mass swarms of them for when the player does something significant, like acquiring a key or hitting some crucial objective that allows access to more of the map.

If you don't mind me asking, what's your attraction to making these huge behemoths? You could probably be way more prolific as a mapper if your worked on many smaller bite-sized maps and it would give your work a lot more exposure. :)

Hey 40oz, thanks for taking the time to post this critique! This is something I have been looking for so I really do appreciate it.

Monster placement is my current weakness in mapping. At least that's what I would say if you were to ask me what's the worst aspect of your mapping (apart from maybe making confusing layouts). Maybe others would disagree, but its something I feel like I struggle with.

I would agree with you that currently I tend to make the maps very dense with monsters. Partially because I want there to be lots of action throughout; I don't want the player to get bored. I've noticed though, that this can be at odds with how I design the flow. Some player's get distracted at certain cues I've tried to throw in because the monster action isn't aligned well flow of the map. Actually many of these problems tend to be when I introduce a new route opening up; I'll tie a monster ambush to these points in the map, and the ambush takes all of the focus of the player, meaning they miss the visual cue of a route opening up or some other important action happening.

On the flip side, I like to toss in a lot of incidental combat when a map has potential to open up and connect in a lot of different ways. This allows for the opportunity for completely random encounters (this is why I love Cacodemon swarms, I can let a bunch loose and they can wander around and surprise the player in a completely unexpected location). I enjoy that sort of loose play structure where the player isn't pinned down in a set-piece fight. This is a nice aspect for replayability in a map, I think. And I really like trying to work in replayability elements in my maps, that's important to me.

I do setpiece fights too, of course (get gun/get key, fight monster). 4 of the 5 keys in MAP01 are specifically designed fight sequences. Actually this is something I wanted to focus on in this project, because I use to do very little setpiece designs in my maps. Designing cool traps and fights has been on my agenda for a little while now. MAP31 might be a a good contrast here, because that is a map that is mostly incidental fights (apart from a few focused setpieces). It is essentially what I use to make around the time I started on Vela Pax; huge map with a complex layout and lots of incidental fights.

Anyways, I very much appreciate your thoughtful feedback here :). Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm going boil this down to basically say "less grindy/dense monster placement, more traps", heh. I don't know that I will be able to go through and redo the monster placements on these maps, mostly because I feel like they are still ok to play and I've already spent too much time on them. Though if you have any specific instances that you feel like need to be changed, please do let me know!

40oz said:

If you don't mind me asking, what's your attraction to making these huge behemoths? You could probably be way more prolific as a mapper if your worked on many smaller bite-sized maps and it would give your work a lot more exposure. :)

No doubt about that! I guess I enjoy making maps that feel like your on an adventure. Creating big maps with tons of things to explore, with an air of mysteriousness, and lots of replayability baked in appeals to me. But I've been making maps like this for so long, that now I have a hard time trying to make more focused and smaller maps. So this is something else I'm actively trying to work on (especially for Supplice where I want more bite-sized maps). In fact, I turned one goal of this project into an attempt to make smaller maps. I guess I sorta pulled it off? :P

Mek? Needing more exposure?

Are we talking about the same Mechadon here?

Heh, well maybe he meant that I don't have many releases out there that aren't DM or multiplayer. I don't release a whole lot in a given year as far as SP maps go. When I do, its usually a big, complex mess of a map, which in turn burns me out on mapping for a while. So its harder for me to use the iterative process from map to map to improve myself.

Concern for player boredom is totally understandable. Many mappers tend to overpopulate their maps with monsters for this reason. I've given this advice to some other mappers, so if anyone else is reading, sorry I'm repeating myself, but rooms that have no monsters are not boring; they're suspenseful. When a player enters an empty area, that cues the thought that there's something not quite right here. The player expects to find enemies, and if they aren't here, then they must be hiding and planning an attack. In which case it's best to tell the player they're right by ambushing him :)

I could see that you used trap closets in your map in places. I didn't complete the map because I played without saves, and in my last attempt I was about 400 monsters in before I died, and I had other stuff on my next-to-play list and didn't want to spend all day on one map. I do intend to come back to it.

To be clear, this map is by no means boring, or not fun. I just wanted to provide some food for thought that might assist you when doing the thing placement in your maps in the future.

It's very much appreciated 40oz! If you get a chance to play the rest of the maps, I would like to know what you think of them :)