Free Spirit - a small slaughtermap

[Lorenz0]

Free Spirit is my first proper attempt at slaughtermapping. I mostly focused on combat this time, not paying much attention to the visuals. The wad is zdoom-compatible and has been made with Otex textures only.

 

Download: https://github.com/NCDaiya/Free-Spirit

 

 

My previous projects:

 

 

 

 

Edited February 11, 2020 by Lorenz0

[RonnieJamesDiner]

Below is my FDA on ultra-violence, using GZDoom. (I apologize for the audio, it got a little messed up during recording somehow).

 

Spoiler

 

 

I’m just slowly breaking into slaughter maps, and I found this to be a very palatable experience for a new student of the genre. It’s tough, but very fair, and I think that came down mostly to how generous you were with ammunition (perhaps a bit too generous). Rockets, for example, were in such high abundance that I never felt pressure to be mindful of their use, which may be a missed opportunity for extra depth in the overall gameplay – that said, it made for a very cathartic journey of exploding demons.

 

Most of the arenas felt engaging in their own ways, offering up some kind of interesting setup or restriction. The more memorable ones for me were:

• The yellow skull arena -- I loved having to overcome that initial cramped space, and then ascending the different tiers to gain more control of the room (and ultimately the high ground) against the ever watchful Cyberdemons, felt very rewarding.
• The 3 keycard ice pit – I really enjoyed the idea here, and thought it played very well in practice. It was pretty intense having to be mindful of the icy black pits as you slid around dodging the constant barrage of fireballs, and the mix of enemies (notably the horde of HK’s, and the two gangs of Shotgunners teleporting into both ends of the pit) made for a fun little combat puzzle (if that term is appropriate here). Needless to say, your decision to put two stimpacks and a medkit here were an absolute godsend, and I think I may have been restarting the map without them.

The only arena I wasn’t very fond of was the red skull room, with the Baron, HK, and Caco fight. This just felt like more of a grind than anything else, and seemed to be missing that “interesting mechanic” to the fight that the others had.

 

As far as visuals, you stated that this wasn’t as much of a priority as gameplay, so I won’t go into a big thing. In general, I thought the map was quite pretty to look at. I loved the whole “fortress deep within an icy cavern” theme, and the textures/colour scheme were fairly consistent and beautiful. The environment was appealing, without being “over-detailed”, which was extremely helpful in communicating a sense of space in the heat of the moment.

 

Though not a very long map, I had a great time. I’d love to see more slaughter maps from you.

[Lorenz0]

@RonnieJamesDiner

Thank you for your words, I wasn't too confident in this map, so I'm glad you had a good time with it.

 

Your video was very informative, now I have some plans for an update, which may include:

- increasing the amount of health in the ice pit

- making sure you can't accidentally walk into the exit

- lowering the walls after the final fight

- perhaps balancing the amount of ammo

 

I also think that the red skull room is the worst part of the map and I can't think of many ways to improve it without rebuilding the whole fight. It was the first encounter I designed, meaning to copy what I imagined most slaughterwads to play like. Only after that I moved on to more unique ideas, like making a slippery arena with holes in the ground which instakill you lmao

Edited February 5, 2020 by Lorenz0

[Arbys550]

I liked this map overall. Visuals were pretty good, I liked the outside area the most and the indoor areas were pretty good too, but kinda weird looking with the curves and such. As for gameplay, my favorite part by far was the last encounter, although I will say I almost ran out of cells to kill the cybers because I had been picking up cell ammo from there beforehand in between indoor fights. I also liked the middle of the three indoor rooms, the red key arena. My strategy was to rush back and kill the AVs as soon as possible to get a foothold on the caco swarm.

 

The fights I didn't like as much were the slippery death hole one and the blue key one. I'm gonna be honest, I almost universally hate gimmicky fights, especially slippery floors, so this fight wasn't as strong for me, but still pretty well made objectively I guess. The BK fight I just kinda thought it was annoying, I just rocketed the arachs for a little bit then ran to the other side of the hallway and into the safe circular stairway.

 

Most of my criticisms were probably accentuated by the fact that I almost never play in GZDoom, so I felt all wonky and awkward and pretty much had to re-learn aiming and moving and such. Overall I enjoyed the experience though, and would definitely recommend it to other doomers.

Edited February 5, 2020 by Arbys550

[baja blast rd.]

Heh, the first thing I did was hop into the three-key pit. Unbeknownst to me, the floor had that friction effect. So a landing that would normally be 100% safe had me slip into an inescapable pit. It is a good idea to introduce new mechanics in a safer area. 

[Lorenz0]

@rdwpa

But...that's what I did. Half of the spawn area is covered in ice.

 

Maybe I'll move the weapons a bit so that you have to walk on ice to get them.

[mArt1And00m3r11339]

I beat your map.

 

[baja blast rd.]

On 2/6/2020 at 6:39 AM, Lorenz0 said:

@rdwpa

But...that's what I did. Half of the spawn area is covered in ice.

 

Maybe I'll move the weapons a bit so that you have to walk on ice to get them.

Ah yeah, it exists, but there is no reason to touch it. When maps want to convey that "X floor is [not] damaging" in an unexpected way, they will include a mandatory walk through it. So a similar principle applies. 

 

Played the rest.

 

Spoiler

 

Leaving out commentary on the smaller fights.  

 

1) Three keycard fight:

 

Strategy: I circled-skated around the very periphery of the arena while holding down M1 with plasma against stuff indiscriminately. 

 

2) RSK fight: 

 

Strategy: Holding out on the safeground with the RSK works, but I found it a lot easier to rush the viles near the entrance first and then free up use of the safer parts of the arena. With 200/200 I didn't care about tanking even a couple of vile blasts. From there on, I sort of improv herded the barons around to not get trapped, which was easy but still fun.  

 

3) BSK fight: 

 

Strategy: I rocketed mancubi while hiding entirely from arachnotrons behind a portion of wall, and then ran out when the barrier lowered and cleared the rest of the arena. 

Extra commentary: The lost souls felt more annoying than anything. The only way they factored in is that I rocketed the mancubi instead of the 'trons because the souls were a non-factor that way, due to spawn positioning. 

 

4) YSK fight: 

 

Strategy: I got cybs to hit arachnotrons and then rocketed barons/HKs from the hidden corner, and then when they approached I switched around to cover beneath the ledge, and then I switched back to the hidden corner. After this I ran up to the top.

 

Extra commentary: Having to hit those four YK switches is interesting too, since you want to figure out how to run so that cyber rocket splash won't inadvertently hit you. 

 

5) Final fight: 

 

Strategy: I bull-rushed MMs (started with firing BFG from far to soften up one) then ran to the side where the BFG was and U-motioned in that safe space, which gets the perched cybs to stay offensive against the mid-tiers and gets me in sight of spawns so the mid-tiers properly appear. Then I booked it when the exit opened up, since I wasn't feeling the fight.  

 

Extra commentary: This fight rubbed me the wrong way at first because using a repeated "Spawn" action to warp dozens of monsters in at the same spot felt lazy. It also makes it so that if you aren't visible to those monsters, they don't spawn in, which looks very weird. (Maybe you can have those alert on spawn.) Then it felt like just about everything being at the top of the room made the fight play statically, since they don't actually path over to the other side all that quickly, and when they do you BFG them easily. Imo it probably is the most functionally interesting fight, although the challenge is more efficiency (getting infights going well, getting the monsters to appear) than survival. 

RSK was my favorite fight, followed by YSK. The rest definitely have some choreography going on but fall victim to easy strategies (three-key, BSK), or are awkward for other reasons (final fight). 

 

 

 

 

Not a bad first attempt. Weapon balance was implemented well.

 

A good rule of thumb: A pragmatic player will try easy strategies before fancier ones. If I can just implement a basic maneuvering plan and win, I'm doing that and not trying anything intricate. Here that resulted in fights that seemed intended for complex play (like the ice fight, with its countless species) being functionally simple. 

Edited February 9, 2020 by rdwpa

[Lorenz0]

The map has been updated!

 

Now the textures are included in the file and you don't have to load otex separately.

 

I've made many small changes to certain fights, fixed a few textures, balanced the ammo a bit, decreased cheesability and added overall quality of life improvements.