Ol' No Name (4-map set)

New shtuff, Boom format, for Doom II, Maps 1-4. Probably some dumbass bugs and slime trails, though of course I tried to catch 'em all. Demos/comments/hate mail welcome and appreciated! Also, it's called Ol' No Name because, well, I couldn't think of a name for it. Might change, might not. For some reason I like calling it Ol' No Name though, may just keep that...

Screenshots: http://imgur.com/a/YJmVD

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/download/mvc4kbnrq4g9r7e/Olnoname.zip

Thanks to Demon of the Well, dobu gabu maru and Scifista42 for testing, demos, help and patience.

Pretty cool looking screenshots here. Might have a look at this.

At least you're more creative than this dumbass

Wow! More Octavarium maps! Can't wait to try these :)

Awesome work! I really like the level design and texture work. The only thing I don't like about it is... Those goddamn teleporting monsters. It felt legitimately frustrating.

"Ol' No Name", eh? I was going to suggest "The Gloaming", but perhaps what you've got is more fitting than you know. "The Nameless Project", anyone? ;)

As I've already said, fine use of a rather quirky/specialized set of assets, and a fine blend of adventure/exploration with heavy bloodletting over the 4-map duration (this one can be a deceptively harsh mistress on skill 4!).

I can't download b/c I can't read the weird wavy letters on the authorization code.Sorry.

grouchbag said:

I can't download b/c I can't read the weird wavy letters on the authorization code.Sorry.

You shouldn't have to do a captcha to DL the WAD, it's just a basic mediafire link. Many such sites have banners and popups and other detritus littered around their download pages that try to casually pose as the actual download link as a vaguely deceitful way of generating revenue (for somebody somewhere). On this particular page, the green "Download (5.09MB)" button should pop the actual DL dialogue, no captcha or other stuff required.

Yeah,I know I shouldn't have to,but it's still doing it anyway.Did a hard reset on my laptop on Sun.,could that have anything to do wit it?
Finally got it.Switched to anther wifi network.

Couldn't beat the first level. 10/10

Demon of the Well said:

"Ol' No Name", eh?

Indeed, I was quite surprised to see it's final name as well. Anyway, people should definitely download this and give it a peek—there's a lot of carnage and plentiful visuals throughout.

Cool, the map you've posted a few months ago was pretty impressive, gonna give it a try later.

Remarkable, thats some damn harsh gameplay combined with really stunning visuals. Damn i only played map01 so far and it was pretty exhausting but also really fun.
FailedFDA's for map01, curse the Vile/Baron duo at the exit.
Gonna try the other maps too though i better play with saves..

btw IMO the current name is very unpretentious

Whee, more replies than I expected! I probably should have mentioned, it's... kind of "hard". Moreso than the average map, I hope. Or maybe not. Who knows? But they do have difficulty settings, so if you're having trouble you can always drop down.

...Is unpretentious a good thing?

Hmm, "The Gloaming" does have a nice ring to it... Quite a naming pickle I'm in here.

Anyway, thanks everybody!

the shots look awesome! so glad to see some usage of darken 2 textures, I love those textures. or some of them, I should say, as a good handful of them could probably use a modern update

First map is pretty intense. The second map is huge so I'll have to allocate some time for it. :)

Failed FDA: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vop0adpd65qmasp/Olnoname-NerdTurtle.lmp?dl=0

It first I ran it in UV but died after hitting the switch that unleashes the chaingunners and shotgun guys, dumb hitscans. The FDA is on HNTR and I had some bad luck. That first chaingunner got some nasty shots off before I could saw him, and lots of Mancubus bullshit kept me from progressing. In the end it was the Archvile that killed me because the fatass Cacodemon was in the way and I couldn't move haha

EDIT: I'm not normally this bad :)

giving this one a try

twitch.tv/kingdime

Okay serious question, how long did it take to make these maps? If it's less than a month I'm going to cry. These are very well done and very well detailed.

10/10

Dime said:

giving this one a try

twitch.tv/kingdime

Shit, I wish I'd been around to see this. I was pleased that you had a fairly challenging time, and humbled by your perseverance. Made me feel better about dying 50 bajillion times (40 bajillion of them on the old draft of map 02) while playing the original version, and then 10 bajillion or so more on this later version. Kudos!

My other observation is that MAN does this WAD look better in a software renderer with simulated contrast. That's hardly uncommon, of course, but it seems to be particularly pronounced with this resource set.

Also thanks to Tourniquet and NerdTurtle2 for FDAs, I'm keen to see if certain machinations affected you as they did me.

That very first part to map 1 took some time to figure out demon haha. It's such an aggressive start and easy to run yourself into more trouble.

Interesting wad, here's a couple of FDAs
http://www.mediafire.com/download/8quycptsb2ank6q/noname-mouldy.zip

I gave up on map 2 after that ridiculous hellknight trap near the plasma rifle. Given how little ammo I had to deal with stuff I'm guessing i missed a rocket launcher somewhere. By then I had come to realise that I won't enjoy these maps anyway, which is a shame cos I can really appreciate the craft and thought gone into them. The trouble I have is they are so cramped I keep getting snagged on scenery and twisting my ankles on uneven floors. Coupled with the claustrophobic gameplay which I am not a fan of I can see this isn't for me, but there is definitely an audience out there for this stuff.

I find that interesting mouldy, because my first thought playing this is how much it felt like going down in respects. Pressure with lots of teleporting traps.

Dime said:

I find that interesting mouldy, because my first thought playing this is how much it felt like going down in respects. Pressure with lots of teleporting traps.

I sometimes wonder if I would hate my own maps if I had never played them before. But yeah, I don't think I'd have a problem with this wad if there was a bit more elbow room, because I play like I'm drunk.

I just realised that map02 has a rocket launcher right at the start, the first weapon you pick up in fact, I must have totally forgotten I had one. Man that is annoying.

edit: just played through map02 again with rocket launcher (what a spaz) and its a lot better. I still have a problem with the bumpy floors and narrow walls, but I'll live. The switch to access the exit though, was hidden in rather an obscure place, on a narrow ledge half way up a wall. Took me ages to stumble upon it.

Just thought I'd mention that I'm trying to stubborn my way through Map01 on UV. Like mouldy, I find this map real crampy, and without a flowy layout it becomes a bit Spam-In-A-Can, albeit a very good-looking can. This is intensified because I play keyboard only. I really shouldn't play this on UV, but after grabbing the Chainsaw and gutting the Revvie on my first try, I figured, why not give it a go? Somewhere north of 20 deaths later, I'm still trying. ;)

The red key fight was a real nasty set-up for a keyboarder, with Archie, his Revvie meat shield, plus Sergeants he keeps resurrecting. I'd almost gotten through this battle once when Archie rezzed a Sergeant just before he died, and the Sarge landed the death blow on me. Oh, the cursing! :D I finally made it through that battle when Archie blew me back over the wall and I killed everything from that narrow platform.

After that came 2 dick-traps, first with the revvie teleporting behind me, then the rail-shooter dick-trap with the Mancs and Cacos while I'm fenced-in. You'll get no Christmas presents from me this year. ;D

Coming back, I killed the Archie and Chaingunner up above, then saw the Cacos and PEs, freaked, and made a jump for the red key and hopefully a hop to the PG, only to fall off the platform and trigger a massive teleport trap followed by yet another death.

I always say there's no reason the first map of a PWAD should be easy. You obviously feel the same way, so good on ya! ;) After I get through this, I'll play the rest on HNTR. :)

Thanks to everybody for the demos, and Dime for the twitchplay. Always fun to watch, yet I feel a strange mix of happiness and ass-hattedness when a Doomguy perishes on one of my maps. Odd...

Anyway, yeah, these are somewhat cramped in most places, but that's the way I like 'em, as long as they're not too ridiculously squeezy. Not to say I don't like big wide-open levels, but ones with somewhat limited space have always been my favorites. I am definitely not the best at good flowy interconnected layouts though, something I'm still working on. And yes, dick-traps are always fun :D

Also, that's funny to me that you didn't overly like these, mouldy, 'cause to me at least the motif of big teleporter traps/general oh-shit-run-around-and-try-to-not-die in Going Down was fun as hell, and kind of what I was going for in a few places here (mainly in 1 and 4) except not spread out over the whole map. Though admittedly that doesn't always mix well with crampedness, I suppose.

...And no, I assure you these were not made within a month!

To be fair I was playing in prboom+, afterwards I had a go in zdoom which makes bumpy floors less bumpy and slippery, and it plays a lot better. I think I should stick to zdoom really..

Here are a couple more demos in zdoom (2.7.1) for maps 3 and 4

http://www.mediafire.com/download/x31t5lfnpgkhubh/noname-03-mouldy2.lmp
http://www.mediafire.com/download/dyafg4lq3c54456/noname-04-mouldy2.lmp

Dunno if they will work, or how useful they will be, but I enjoyed these a lot more, despite the start of map03 killing me a zillion times (some armour would have been nice). That map is so damn trappy its ridiculous, I ended up saving after every room almost. Looks amazing. Map04 was fun, though its still too difficult for me to play at anything more than a snails pace. I was surprised to survive the red key trap, although after I escaped leaving all the monsters behind I realised I hadn't actually picked up the red key.

Ah yeah that reminds me, I got a bit lost on map03 wondering where to go, not sure the blue and red locked doors are that well signposted. I figured it out in the end though.

Despite my moaning about space these are a really cool set of maps. I started to get trap fatigue after a while, and the traps seem to be of the kind where you have to know in advance what will happen and try to carve your way out of the scrum of monsters to survive. It does give you quite a sense of achievement to actually survive one first time, but it also feels like a degree of luck is involved for me and makes me save quite a lot. I was playing on HMP, maybe I should whack it down another notch, who knows.. thanks for the maps anyway.

review is up, thank you for this manic adventure

One last bump to say that I should finally be able to stop being lazy as hell and get these maps and the other crap I've made finalized and submitted to the archive... uh, as soon as possible, so I'll shoot for a week or two. Saw a few small things that bugged me on a quick playthrough today. Anyway, thanks one more time to anyone who played these.

kmxexii said:

review is up, thank you for this manic adventure

Cool, I'm glad you liked it. Also glad that the long, epic loveletter to Jade Earth (definitely something for you to put on your mile-long itinerary, BTW ;)) in slot 02 came out okay balance-wise in the end, when I was playtesting it the first version of the map that I saw was a grueling, soul-crushing (yet aesthetically inspiring) nightmare of severe resource austerity, Oct did a great job retooling it from then to now, no easy feat for a map that size and with that much potential variation in route.

Anyway, glad to see the review, like I said. He's a humble dude, but Octavarium's penchant for combining nasty setpiece deathtraps into big, expansive, aesthetically nuanced maps that retain a palpable adventure/exploration aspect is something special, definitely deserves the kudos.