Doom II - Hellscape :: RELEASED (with new link)

The architecture here absolutely blows me away, this is insane D: Played up to half of map23 so far and really loving it. This is such inspirational stuff

Here's another spot in which you can get stuck, in map 28 :


And a minor texture misalignment while we're at it :

WH-Wilou84 said:

Here's another spot in which you can get stuck, in map 28 :

Good catch, WH. Out of curiosity -- and in seriousness -- are you TRYING to get stuck? Or did you accidentally stumble into both of those situations? 'Cause if it is the latter: wow, that is awesomely bad luck :)

Stuck. Saw a mad chaingunner... and stuck:

WH-Wilou84 said:
Here's another spot in which you can get stuck, in map 28 :

Well, I guess I need to change the difficulty level because I'm hiding too much and counting bullets... also, I'm enjoying visuals and detalization too much. This re-imagining maps are very interesting! Thanks a lot, Lutz!

"This looks hellish. I can tell from some of the lava and from playing quite a few hell maps in my time."

As devoutly hoped, MAP28 is almost worth the proverbial price of admission all by itself. The starting area gave me a very Quake-y feel (in a good way), with attractive shades of brown used for both masonry and natural rock, and some slick lighting to boot. Elsewhere, this is probably one of the better maps at clearly conveying the aesthetic resonance with the original while updating it to modern standards. I know you've said that wasn't necessarily an overriding goal of yours, but it's good where you can do it, and you definitely did it here. It probably helped that Sandy's original work in this map was probably some of the best in DOOM2.WAD at conveying a sense of atmosphere, second only to The Living End in my book for having a coherent sense of place in mind and communicating it to the player.

Lutz said:

Out of curiosity -- and in seriousness -- are you TRYING to get stuck? Or did you accidentally stumble into both of those situations? 'Cause if it is the latter: wow, that is awesomely bad luck :)

Hehe, nah I was actually looking for secrets. :)

I tend to put myself in "playtester mode" whenever I play casually or record FDAs, and therefore I'll always try to check for bugs or stuck spots while playing.

Since your maps tend to feature a lot of terrain variation and decorative (blocking) elements, I'm sure there could be other spots elsewhere.

I've played through the whole thing, and this is truly a fantastic job, totally worth the wait. I'm a sucker for well-made hellish themes and this wad delivers in spades.
Would have hoped for a new reinterpretation of map 29, but "The Dying End" is still an awesome map and fits in well with the others.
Haha, realizing that this map is almost 10 years old by now doesn't makes us feel any younger.

Gameplay-wise, I think the extreme ammo starvation detracts a lot from the gameplay (at least for me). The most severe case was map 27, which is otherwise my favorite in the visuals department.
Maybe there's more ammo in the secret areas, I don't know (only found like half of the secrets in each map). I'd have appreciated more ammo for the "basic" weapons here and there (I've played on UV skill with ZDoom 2.7.1).

Man, 2017 is shaping up to be a very good year, with all these quality releases all around - Counterattack, this, Altitude, Saturnine Chapel, Brigandine, dead.air, TNT Revilution etc... :)

map22: linedef 861 is tagged 0 and won't work without *zdoom or the "linedefs w/o tags apply locally" pr+ setting. This makes 100% kills/secrets demos impossible.

map24: Uhhhh... no wonder the map won't run in prboom-plus, it's not built. edit: ZenNode can't handle it because of seg count. As saski mentioned, gotta use zdbsp on it.

dew said:

map24: Uhhhh... no wonder the map won't run in prboom-plus, it's not built.

Is that a problem?

Dammit -- either I merged in the wrong version or the merge got f'ed up somehow. Anyway, given some of the other issues, there was shaping up to be a version 1.1; this certifies it.

Anyone else suffering from "extreme ammo starvation" like WH? I tended to either be stupidly flush or generally okay depending on monster infighting, but of course I have a slight advantage in knowing where everything is and what's around the corner.

Finally, thanks to all for the feedback!

I was only mentioning the critical bugs, but if a 1.1 tuneup is a possibility, yeah let me whine a little! I really wanted to join the testing team back in October (?), but it was Cacoward season already and I had to grind through some 2016 releases. Sorry! Fair warning, I'll be very ranty, because this late in development I feel like I need to reason for every change, heh. Short version: Yes, there should be more ammo! Now map by map...

map21: Mild ammo drought.

The very first room is actually already quite tight on ammo for a first timer, because it's dark and unless you lure the imps to the center, it's quite probable you'll whiff a few shots. The top picture is prboom-plus gamma 0, the bottom one is glboom-plus gamma 0 (completely ridiculous haha). Bumping gamma in gl+ helps a lot, but in pr+ you just get washed out grey fog, not better visibility. For this reason an extra pair of shells wouldn't hurt, imo.

Then the player stocks up on shells nicely in the shotgunner area, but could you please add a simple shotgun pickup before the fight starts? I know the one in Nirvana is MP only, but its shotgunners are clustered and easier to take down. Your area is actually very dangerous and you HAVE to pick up/switch weapons mid-fight while more sergeants trickle in.

After that it's pretty much counting shells. The CG gives you less than it takes away, then you actually give me one less rocket for one more manco than Nirvana, haha. But the real issue with the manco staircase are (surprisingly) the sniper imps at the sides, imo. I use the two rockets to aggro the mancos, but I can't go finish them off up close, because that means fireballs in the back. If I take care of the imps first, it means even worse fireballs in the back. Basically the best strat is to wait what crawls up into the SSG range, which rather sucks. Get rid of the imps, imo, they're dangerous for the wrong reason! Also an extra rocket or two would be a boon, because it'd mean more hitscan ammo for the YK room where you gotta scramble to get the PEs down very fast.

Then the final area. Visually it kinda reminds me of some Whispers of Satan e3 maps, btw. It's quite okay if you have the mega, but a player who didn't find the secret is totally screwed. I mean, you start pretty close to a chainer, so it's quite possible you'll lose 50%+ before you even check your surroundings, heh. Generally the chainers are annoying as hell here. In nirvana they're neatly stuck in a self-destructing cluster on one side, here they're a terrible sniping force. And all the good ammo is in the worst places. Actually the RL stash in the lava isn't all that dangerous, but convincing a first time player to just dive into lava isn't exactly an easy task, heh. And the two bullet boxes are in one of the hardest to reach places, by the manco. Basically my advice here would be:
1) Frontload the bullet boxes somewhere more reachable, so the player can do sniping of their own.
2) Give the player a GA. Or actually move the soulsphere to the teleporter room so players can't miss it - right now it's half-secret (easy to miss switch in the staircase room) and players who know about it will go for the mega anyway.
3) Probably replace the first chainer with something a bit slower to damage you?

Oh and I tried to break your map somehow, here's a segmented nomo demonstration of what a speed route could look like, heh. The rocket jumps just save some platforming and one switch press, the mega bump is just for show here (the BA would do as well), but it'd come in handy with monsters. You can also bump the YK, but I had to use a rocket boost and it saves maybe a second. Basically the map shouldn't get too broken.

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map22: Extreme ammo drought.

I'm a big fan of The Catacombs and their quirky abstract design, but this map infuriated me. I don't mind any of the "reinterpretation" (except one), it's the gameplay that pissed me off. :)

The central room is extremely difficult. Your setup is very tough to crack, the monsters (particularly revs and chainers) are perfectly placed to destroy the player if he chooses to stand still for too long and clearing parts of it hurts a lot. This is greatly helped by the player's lack of guns and ammo. The original is only comparable if the player gets none of the start secrets, but the opposition isn't quite as formidable. With secrets? GA+sphere, PG+100 cells and a perfect position to unleash spam. Quick brutal cleanup. You on the other hand replace the GA/sphere with a SSG - fair, though that's a very limited choice against the snipers in the central room; and you block the PG secret for much later use!

This is a serious game changer that I strongly dislike. Even if I couldn't mop up the central room (I can totally get behind the idea of pushing the player forward by insurmountable odds), I at least want a fair chance if I fall into the nukage or something. I'm also a big fan of having to switch weapons as you manage a small stack of shells and cells, not just constant SSG droning. Consider allowing early PG access + some minor cell drops in the NW tangent, it would greatly alleivate the ammo woes that are felt there the hardest.

Another issue I have with the main room is the central platform itself. I know it's challenging to make the abstract nonsense look believable, but by being too natural your island is a menace to the player by itself. :) Here's a screenshot with some comments: link. Basically, it should be obvious where you can climb and where not. It should be easier to walk around it. Getting stuck on stuff and wasting time trying to climb on the island means dying for the wrong reasons - and there's quite a lot of them in that room anyway!

Now the NW section.. that's where I felt the ammo woes the most. I'd fix it with the PG access, but if you want to keep your progression, boost shells and bullets both, obviously. The northern lift room is REALLY tough and running out of ammo there means you gotta improvise against monsters in very advantageous positions - not good! Also the 'zerk is in a bad spot, imo. I saw Tarnsman's stream where he picked it up and only got hurt by lava once. I could never replicate this in prboom-plus, actually I almost always get hit thrice, which is pretty damn punishing. The 'zerk is still worth it, because tysoning anything non-hitscan is my lifeline for ammo savings, heh. Maybe one tiny island in the lava to reduce the burning?

Now the worst part that's just unfair: teleporting to the BK. The revenant there is most likely alive by now, so he's mulling about and he'll get a punch immediately after you get in. And possibly more or a retaliation rocket after you start dealing with him. And sidestepping there means going into nukage. It's ridiculously unfair - unless you telefrag the bugger, which is pure luck. I'm not sure about a good solution here... how about the teleport destination pad is slightly elevated and has a W1 monster teleporting line at the edge... and as you move in the hallway leading to your teleporter, the pad lowers and the rev ports in to fight you in the northern section? Not trivial, but I insist this needs to be addressed somehow!

The eastern section... first a small issue. Sector 1832 contains a bunch of chaingunners. They're completely isolated by pairs of soundblocking lines. If I flip the switch, open their closets, but don't move... I can just snipe them off one by one and their partners won't wake up. This felt really funny, heh. Maybe the sound blocking is unnecessary here?

And the big issue: the RK arena setup is bad. For two reasons actually!
1) The hitscanners on the towers don't do much except hit the monsters in the nukage, which means those in turn go fight the hitscanners, except they can't hit them from below. The entire place is instantly neutralized by itself! Those guys should definitely be projectile throwers, imps could suffice!
1.5) Also the "third" spawn (teledest thing 627) behind the corner is pretty much useless. Their angle on the player is super-limited to just the few instants the player runs through the nukage. You should actually put them on the walkway, back from where the player came.
2) The "reinforcement" fliers come too late and don't do anything useful. The player has to wait and stay before any fighting occurs, much saner strategy being just leaving and conserving ammo, heh. You hand out a mega and some ammo here, go wild and release them as the player picks up the sphere! It will be a more engaging battle!

I quite like how the map looks visually, it's an interesting reimagination, but it really rubbed me the wrong way on the gameplay front. I hope implementing some of my propositions could pretty much turn that around, I also hope I don't sound too self-important, haha. Btw, I found your interpretation of the last room clashing with my head canon, heh. I always assumed it was a cargo ship or a subway train or some other transportation device that you use to escape the... catacombs. Though this is probably the first time I paused to think about it, heh.

MAP29 we've seen before, of course. It feels like it's showing its age just a little, like it's not quite up to the very high standards set by all the others. Can't put my finger on exactly why, though. Still a beautiful map in any objective sense.

MAP30 is MAP30. One-trick Icon maps don't really do it for me that much anymore, but this one is as pretty as they come. The opening area drips atmosphere, and its hellish outdoor ruins motif reminds me of Speed of Doom map 29, or possibly the intermission maps from BTSX E2.

dew said:

<many smart things...>

This is awesome -- I appreciate the thought (and time to type it up).

I have no particular response except that I must play much differently than some (most?) in that I am EXTREMELY cautious; I am very much a "peek around corners and snipe a few guys/lead them back to a choke point" sort of player. The central room in MAP22 is a effort to defeat/combat that sort of play-style, not so much in that it forces one into a vast open arena, but that it (at a minimum) mandates some flat-out sprints through very hostile territory without the opportunity to lead the fight somewhere safe. That isn't to say that your commentary isn't on point -- it's just that I would have never experienced some of the frustrations you have encountered due to the way I approach levels. Also, I apparently had great luck telefragging the Rev on the blue key pedestal :)

Again: thanks!

Hah, thanks for the praise, it means a lot when mappers react positively to feedback. And yeah, I can see how different player mentalities come into play, so I'm not claiming my truth is the only truth when it comes to gameplay. It's a perspective worth considering though, particularly because I believe you can never truly eradicate the camper/corner mouse style unless you forcibly lock the player into an arena. But that's a controversial approach when overused as well, so I kinda favour the balanced approach where you just put out an irresistable bait, then accost the player and leave them to their own devices. If they manage to turn it into a corner camp anyway, oh well. :)


map23: Almost fair ammo placement.

The map starts with an important disappointment: the barrels are laid out too scarcely and very often don't blow up in a single chain. Standing on the firestick pillars on the start platform lets you escape the chain with very mild damage. There are big gaps between the caches around the shotgunner cages... and maybe there could be barrels in the cages as well? Barrel it up, the explosion chain needs to be visible from space! You certainly need a bigger blast than some stupid vanilla map!

The chaingun area almost works, but your attempt to combat corner campers backfires, imo. Standing in the middle like a superhero only gets you killed, so the best strat is running back and kill the horde trickling in. Now if you remove just one spectre from the GA alcove, things immediately improve and that spot becomes the best place to start blowing up the barrels as monsters cluster around them. And that also saves ammo!

The next segment is surprisingly tough, the PEs are no joke there, but I only have one nitpick: move the SSG more into the path of the player. I totally missed it on my first playthrough, cause I spotted a PE and rushed to silence it up... and then I was in a mess of a situation, heh. The SSG is vital, so it should be more obvious and probably visible from the staircase already.

Skip to the central room, that is where I get reliably ammo-starved. The baron sucks out a lot of the SSG ammo, then the vile sucks out the rest, heh. And you won't get people to rush forward into the teleporters, because the chainer snipers are a bitch. I'd say add just a few more rockets to snipe at the chainer cages, a medkit to withstand their damage... and you're golden. Wasting ammo on the imps or the revs can wait. It's possible to clean the place out, but I'd say the strict tightness actually promotes the scaredy gameplay you're trying to combat.

YK area: two things. I think the place should be more of a sloppy mess. Right now the little guys port in the moment you make a noise in the area, which is planned for the PE "trigger", but can be kinda abused early. I'd say go wild and start a big ol' mess all at once after the inside switch is triggered. All of the little guys pour out along with the spiders and it's one chaotic fight the player has to engage more aggressively - coincidentally after being fed GA/sphere. I bet it's what Sandy would've wanted if he knew about the more modern slaughter sensibilities. ;) (If you do think about implementing this, it may be wise to add tele destinations to speed up the unload process.) Oh and the other thing: GA t. 328 is pretty much redundant as it's handed out very soon after GA t. 945, AND it sits right in front of a switch. If the player is at 99% mega/BA, they'll hate your guts about this forced pickup, heh. Kill it.

Just one complaint about the final area: the chainer right behind you is too much of a dick. The pair that spots you in Barrels of Fun can also fire straight away, but they'll hit barrels first and you can outrun the chain reaction (just barely, the setup is quite unfair). Here, you get shot in the back, so a player at very low health might not be able to react at all. You don't have too much space to add barrels for the same effect unless you sacrifice the red pillars though... maybe port the chainer in after the player steps off the teleporter (and possibly grabs a medkit for the 1% health players)?

This looks awsome, this is right down my alley. I like the screens, impressive and quite cool to see someone else creating new maps with stock textures.

Congrats on the release.

FDA for map21 if you want, recorded in glBoom+ -cl 9 with gamma 2. 18:xx, 100% K 0% S, no deaths but excitement at the end.

Fun map. I complained recently about gameplay with lots of health but a lack of GA, but this wasn't annoying, because it was relatively easy to avoid damage from the heavy-hitters in most spots. That last part, however, ooooomg. I actually kind of liked it, despite normally hating awkward terrain like this. (It's kind of like the area was designed first in the editor, with little regard to how it would feel to traverse in game, and by then so many hours were put into designing it that it was beyond changing. Or maybe this is where ZDoom is significantly more comfortable than prBoom+.)

map24: Adequate ammo... if you know where everything is. :)

I like the reimagining, this map really looks cool. I dig this vista in particular. It's so impressive that it's quite a shame that your view is pillarboxed by the bars - you used the same vista in your promo screenshot, but you cheated and flew outside, haha! How about an impassible 2-sided linedef with a small fence midtex? Or "saw off" the middle of those bars and keep just stubs that will still block Doomguy's 56 units.

This map plays fine when done in correct order. Or rather not done in the wrong order, heh. Some areas can screw you hard if you approach them with not enough ammo - particularly the inside of the central structure. Tons of chainers and demons there to waste much more ammo than is given in that area, unless you access the secret - and even then the pinkies eat a lot of shells. I'd probably drop another shell box there, it won't really affect anything in a map like this where the SSG is uncomfortable to use because of the distances.

The BK area is fine, tho it really does help a lot if one doesn't miss the 'zerk. There's a lot of demon punching to be done in this map, heh. Same with the NE area, that one actually has shells to spare *shock*. Actually, you might want to pull that 'zerk out of the secret, into the cavern with the big tree so it's there for everyone to see. Put the BA in the secret instead. And the chaingun where the BA is now, the caco can defend maybe the bullet box that's already there and the shells that are now by the corpse in the tree cavern. Just shuffle everything around! This way it's guaranteed even not finding any of the good stuff will not screw you over ammo-wise.

The ledge area... I was afraid of it, because I heard Tarnsman complaining about their detailing/potential bumpiness, but I found it perfectly tolerable. And they're actually less annoying than the original, heh. Can't really complain! The pillars in the NW section are much more awkward, but the real sin there is that you didn't interpret the inverted cross platform at all! :) From the gameplay perspective this is where ammo can get quite tight - I mean in the part with the lowering walls that gives you the mega eventually. You hand out some rockets, but don't forget you snuck the RL into a secret. It could help if you placed another RL in that general area, and a few more rockets, because using explosives there is dangerous but fun, you got that quite right!

The RK area shocked me because it looks nothing like the original. No blue?! Artistic license, I guess! One big issue: if you don't meticulously kill off the first batch of pigs and run up the tall elevator, they will block you with the power of infinite tallness. To minimize restructuring, you could let players use the pinkie teleporters in that room by widening the gaps between the pillars.

A more general issue: the teleporters are slow and a bit unreliable, particularly the final one. The monsters will easily block the tele destinations and some imps may wander around the closet for quite some time. I'd say add more tele lines and tele dests too! Also you can hear the monsters in the closets from various unrelated places. You snuck the closets into the recesses of the map so it looks quite compact, but do you think it's necessary? You don't really have to worry about blockmap size, heh.

And a bonus: I built the map with zdbsp so I could play it in prboom-plus and I've recorded a speedrun for you! Here's both, you'll need to load the map after d2hs, tho prboom-plus should recognize the files from the footer automatically. Anyway, the run manages to REALLY streamline the map, but I actually quite like it. None of the tricks are map-breakers, more like cheeky exploits and create a nice challenging run. Consider keeping it!

Great stuff, dew -- I really appreciate it. And yes, I tried forever to get a little blue in that red key area, but it just wasn't happening...

Map26 - Abandoned Mines appears to be unfinishable on Boom-based ports.
The switch in elevator after red key bars can't be activated, since elevator's SR linedef blocks use.

well I am playing it and I must say very good mapset ... I am at the remake of monster condo now so I hope that it will be a good quality megawad until the end!
please remake the whole doom 2 ...!!

so on map21 i got hella lost and couldnt find the switch to lower the bars to get the blue key for a while, and then i couldnt figure out how to get the red key either. asked around and someone told me to pull a switch, that i've already pulled.


so um, i'm on zdoom, this isn't normal, apparently?

edit: apparently "find shortest textures like doom" must be off in compatflags

map25: Deceptively low on ammo.

Bloodfalls kinda sucks, but one thing's pretty cool about it: if you know all the secrets, you can rrrrip through it with the plasma. On the other hand, if I decide to kill everything on your map, I'll need to know all the secrets just to manage without punching if I'm lucky, heh. I was okay with the north section being rather tight on ammo and hard as you approach it first, that's actually a good way of punishing the player for peeking their nose where it doesn't belong yet. The central room is quite a lot of fun on the first visit, no problems there. The dark caverns are an interesting reimagining, it caught me off guard and I was running around in panic. I'd probably add more ammo of various kinds and slightly more health strewn around the rooms, so the player that wants the resources has to follow the trail while fighting. Also the player should probably not enter the BK room low on health/ammo, heh.

Ffd and we return to the central room and things go downhill. First it's the repopulation caco fight. Honestly, it sucks. The guys don't stand a chance to pose any threat just by themselves and in retrospect, their only contribution was to drain me outta some shells, heh. How about you swap them out with the PEs in the BK room? Something like 3 or 4 cacos by the mega, 4 PEs all at different teledestinations in the central room. I know it's a slight deviation from the original, but:
1) in the central room, the cacos simply don't create enough pressure, while the PEs would be in the perfect spot to start spamming LSs and send players into panic mode;
2) in the mega room, the PEs are super-useless in Boom, because the candles don't let them spawn LSs and even when they manage to do it, hardly anything squeezes out, while more or less static cacos that are very slow to leave their sniper position (but can do it eventually!) would work out much better there imo.
3) It would probably be good to hand out the PG at the end of the caverns/on top of the BK room, plus redirecting a bit of the secret cells there perhaps, so the player can deal with this extra burden (cause the PEs will eat more ammo this way). This is good though, the "long-range" chainsaw is a very good option for forcing some weapon juggling/prioritizing which monsters to kill and it's harder to corner camp with it.

Then I went through the BK door and oh boy. The messy, chaotic fight there I really really liked, it's actually my fav room even in the original. It prompted me to get the PG out and start spamming like crazy. That was super-great, 10/10, but then I expected to be awarded my precious cells... and instead got another PG and the secret BFG. But that's just two shots! I wasted both on clearing out the PE-induced mess in the exit-room antechamber (that was a surprisingly tough spot), then I used the rest of my shells to kill the vile, who very luckily walked quickly all the way up to me only to start struggling with the steps to my platform... and then I was out of everything. I was punching a shotgunner so I could get 4 shells to see if I can find anything around the exit room. There's luckily some ammo in the side rooms, but that was dire!

I'd actually take a page from the original here and 1) bump the BFG down to just easy/medium, 2) hand out cells to deal with all the mess (I assume the PG would get moved to the BK jump in my version of events). However the biggest task is to drag the player into the exit room itself somehow. The player absolutely mustn't be allowed to stand atop of the stairs and the vile in particular must "join the fight" once the player has moved well into the exit room. It's almost inviting to do a setup like in the slaughtermaps, reveal the monsters from pop-up pits and walled closets only after the player walks down the stairs - and simultaneously make the floors sink into the floor, so the player can't turtle back. If you don't want to go that heavy on rebuilding it, put more monsters behind stuff so they don't see the player from the entrance and make the sound blockers a bit more refined, so they stay asleep until the player's down. And I'd still get rid of the stairs somehow, haha. Also how about... two viles!

Ok, that's it monster-gameplay-wise, but I have one more nitpick. The mega sits on that nice natural cliff, right? But the cliff, like the central island in map22, looks possible to climb on from below when it's actually not. This is kind of a betrayal of the player's trust, it should be immediately clear that if I don't make the pillar jump, I'm screwed and should circle back instead of desperately trying to run up the tiny platforms while under fire of monsters. The cliff just should look like a tall dropoff, not like a "natural staircase" when it is not one!

I'm whining a lot here, but overall this is a pretty good improvement on one of the weakest, weirdest Doom 2 maps. It just also happens to do some terrible self-inflicted harm that makes it very tough to play. Oh and what's up with the unused area? Alternative exit room draft?

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anotak said:

edit: apparently "find shortest textures like doom" must be off in compatflags

This works correctly in prboom-plus on cl9, so I'll assume Boom redefined the behaviour? And you were running some "simulate me Doom please" comp settings in Zdoom? The comp flag for it is 1, like, it made me wonder if this was the historically first compat setting that was addressed in Zdoom or what, haha. Technically Lutz did nothing wrong, the texture is 128 units tall...

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map26: Ammo not an issue! Woah!

On the other hand, the map's totally broken under Boom compat by the issue floatRand mentions. :) Since Boom compat would be the minimum required (and desired so demos can be made for your maps), it can be easily fixed by applying the PassThru flag on the active linedefs in front of the dysfunctional ones. The vanilla way of fixing it would be spacing them by at least 16 units, of course. They' guilty parties are:
- past the RK bars, linedef 25928 made unreachable by l. 25805
- in the BK area, l. 27180 made unreachable by l. 27183 (which also could be W1 I guess?)
- in the YK room, l. 2283 made unreachable by the WR crusher start linedefs in front of it

Also those switch structures kinda block the lift and make it return down if you're standing right under them, but that can be lived with. I just seem to have persistent disagreements with architecture, heh.

My overall impression is favourable though, I do like the reimagining. The style here reminds me a lot of the detail-heavy cchest3 mid-2000's era, but the less-than-frenetic gameplay never makes make movement too awkward and the focus is more on the explorative, non-linear side. Also I adore the hordes of weaklings waiting for you on return trips from the key sections; blasting through them with the RL is superb fun. I also enjoyed the optional, mazey ventilation sections, I thought that was a good way to reinvent the secrets. Furthermore, the map looks nothing like the original Mines, yet at its core the progression is pretty much the same - cool!

Now comes the bitching! The very start, when played from pistol, is very stunted and unfriendly. A ton of hitscanners get random hits at you while you're extremely underequipped (just SG, no armor, not much health). The original just hands out the SSG and I have to say your map immediately picks up pace after I finally got to it as well. You don't need to frontload the SSG though, I just think the opening segment is needlessly slow and blocking - how about replacing the first SG with a CG? That would be a much better weapon to deal with the trash hitscanners while on a fairly limited ammo budget. The SG pickups would come from the sarges.

Some monsters struggle with the architecture.
- In the RK segment, it's the demons/spectres in the closets. On UV you have groups of four trying to get out of their rooms and they just take forever... maybe extradite the back pair via W1 monster-only tele lines? You could entrap the player much more efficiently like that.
- Pigs around sector 2189 (in the shafts) are utterly useless, because they can't really get on the lift or through the door on the other side. They're just meat blockers. I'd say go with imps.
- When returning from the BK room, the caco reinforcements have a miserable time trying to pass through the pillars. If they're to be delivered through the (really nice) fireblu portals, I'd say help them a bit with more direct tele lines around the pillars that would deploy them into the room itself (it may affect the initially placed lost souls as well, but that also might be a plus, heh). Right now their only chance to damage me is if I stay around and wait patiently for them to untangle so I can SSG them in the face from up close.

Some more inefficient monster usage:
- The flier ambush at the secret PG is stunted, I'd say give the guys different tele destinations so they get out earlier and are less of an easy target for concentrated PG spam.
- Speaking of teleports, your telecloset design hurts the deployment speed/reliability in this map. The closets are too long and monsters struggle to get out in proper time/the ones already out block the teledests. Basically I'd say split the tele lines into two with two different target spawns and then copy the setup on the tail of the closet too. Or something like that.
- The winding lava/cliff room has issues. It's the iconic moment from the original, but here it's... ineffective. I do like the arach though! He has great LOS and it's hard to take him out from a distance, I'd actually give him a partner half-way through the winding path! Maybe be extra-evil and add a few lost souls at the lava floor for similar effect Romero had. The real problem is the return trip... the cacos are simply pathetic. They take too long to deploy and they don't have teh ability to create enough pressure. If only there was an arach on the other side of the room to bully the open space and slow the player down/make them take cover... heh heh. Any such experiments would probably require a bit of ammo tweaking, if you're interested. On a side note, the YK room itself is set up fine!
- The BK barons are pushovers. In the original, the baron dude surprises the player at super-uncomfortable close range and backing down you gotta take care not to fall into lava. In your map they're just kinda chasing you around the space, UDoom style. Perhaps adding two more revenants into the mix would shake things up? Or perhaps give the barons a few unpredictable WR teleporter lines to zip around the place and surprise the player? Or limit the movable space by blocking the door out/one of the connecting passages at sector 3991 and 4012 with dropdown bars? The enemies just need to be able to corner the player somehow, right now you can run circles around them, both literally and figuratively. :)

Oh and a minor nitpick: sectors 5221 and 5222 (with a backpack, in the ductwork) are errorneously flagged as damaging.

Basically this map doesn't have issues with the entire gameplay concept/ammo starvation like the previous ones, it's just about tweaking all of the scenarios into something more efficient or more fun, or perhaps even both!

These maps are just gorgeous, and mostly tough as nails too.
Thanks Chris.

dew said:

This works correctly in prboom-plus on cl9, so I'll assume Boom redefined the behaviour? And you were running some "simulate me Doom please" comp settings in Zdoom? The comp flag for it is 1, like, it made me wonder if this was the historically first compat setting that was addressed in Zdoom or what, haha. Technically Lutz did nothing wrong, the texture is 128 units tall...

i think i turned it on for a vanilla wad years ago that was breaking, read the description, and didn't understand why i wouldn't want it on, and left it on, and i don't think it came up until now

map27: Back to the Ammo Desert.

The ammo situation would actually be okay if it weren't for the western section that kicks off with the mancubus rooms. I went there all confident with a pretty good stack... and it overequips you on berserks/soulspheres (and lol, two compmaps when you can't even pick up the second one), but it's utterly merciless in the ammo department. Just savage. I wasted almost all of my ammo, including the power weapons there - and then I got into the hitscan hell in the SW lava areas, oh boy! Extremely uncomfortable, I should've run away, heh. The rest of the map was pain & suffering, I only cleared the corpse room by jumping into the soulsphere secret and waiting for the PEs to come to me, then punching them, heh. I used one BFG shot and one rocket on the RK hell knight group, then 'zerked the rest. Yet I still had no ammo to kill all the monsters in the exit room, so I had to run around the baron and two last mancos.

Honestly, I don't see ANY downsides to providing rockets to kill out the manco rooms without taking a stack hit. I would love to get more aggressive in the SW section and the exit areas, but I just couldn't. Honestly? Lose the berserks there, put two stacked rocket boxes on each of the stands for 20 more rockets (yes, twenty!). Most of the ammo problems instantly solved! Just add a few more shells to the exit area then, heh.

That's the big stuff, now some minor grievances:
- The lost souls coming from the red window in the library are trickling in awfully slow, split the sector and add another teledest.
- You should improve your teleclosets in general, either adding a tail tele-out for them, or splitting the telelines into different locations for faster "expedition" if the one target is blocked. The flier ambush for the RK area could certainly use them!
- The staircase ambush monsters in the "copy manco room" (sector 3428) is utterly useless for gameplay reasons. It only opens up after you clear out the entire SW tangent and you'd have to return to the copy area specifically just to kill those guys. That's silly, just remove the monsters and maybe just keep some interesting items there for the curious players.
- There should be a few shells in the GA cave in the SW lava section. Two mancos for just a GA, that's such a punishment, haha.

Also this map is missing coop player starts!

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map28: No ammo issues?

This is awkward, I have nothing to bitch about.

Just kidding! But yeah, map28 seems to avoid the ammo/progression issues the previous maps had. Also it's very gorgeous, the caverns are truly impressive. I found most of the fight setups working well and though the map is hard, it seems mostly fair. Good job on that. Also finally we get to spam some cells around, haha.

One fight in particular I did not like at all is the exit fight. I know you can skip it in the original as well, but this was... very underwhelming. I've kept some cells specifically for some nasty vile surprise, but it came in the form of having no viles at all! C'mon, you even hand out a mega for such a Tesco Value ensemble, throw in that vile pair! There's plenty of cover around the room, so it could work nicely. And I guess the player can always just flee, heh.

Also you should trigger the monster closets in the spine tunnels just a bit sooner. Right now a running player will leave the traps in the dust entirely, and I mean almost inadvertantly, without even noticing something happened.

Oh and I suggest replacing the cacos in the chaingun secret with smaller enemies.. maybe a HK and two imps (bonus points for asymmetry). The fat cacos simply struggle too much with fitting through the openings, heh.

And this could be just me, but I thought the lift back from caverns to the start area could be somehow... illumiated so it's more obvious for non-veterans. I can imagine someone running around trying to figure out what the hell to do next, the lift is pretty well hidden in the shadows. I'm starting to nitpick, so yeah, that all I've got for this map. Good work here!

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Well, I guess that's it from me. I won't go into messing with The Dying End, that's a classic. Btw, I don't know if you've seen it, but here's an old speedrun for TDE from me. It takes some preparations, but I break the map terribly! The demo desyncs with the Hellscape version, so I guess you've changed something. If you want to fix anything about the run, I suggest proofing the cyber trigger in the fina area so it cannot be sidestepped trivially. That was calming for my nerves, but very anticlimatic from any other perspective, heh. IoS is Ios. It's really pretty and I like the island in the void reimagination, but I universally dislike playing Icon maps, haha.

I hope some of my feedback helps squashing the complaints!

Great map set! I was really looking forward to this and I was not disappointed. Lutz took interesting spacial concepts from the later Doom 2 levels and transformed them into impressive hell architecture.
Sometimes the result feels entirely new and only vaguely reminiscent to the orginals, sometimes there are some strong Deja-Vus. And everything makes more sense now. Where Sandy Petersen randomly threw hell and tech textures around, here you see a UAC transdimensional research outpost build inside some arcane hell ruins.

map28 ...

1. I think the floor flat for sector 4573 was supposed to be RROCK15

2. Should not lines 27100, 27117, 27136, 27153, 27401, 27418, 27437 and 27454 been flagged impassible ? - uses the texture MIDBARS3.

Thanks, all.

Look for version 1.1 ("the dew edition") soon. Also, +1000 Internets to dew for the awesome commentary.

Just don't overdew it. Good luck!

I never quite finished this when I picked it up a few months ago, so I'm just finally making my way through it again. I think this is the most impressively designed set of maps I have ever played; there's an incredible consistency and quality of detail throughout, with tons of memorable scenes and a really excellent atmosphere. these maps are so fucking cool