Gateway to Shangri-La - The map to destroy your bitrate

[Xulgonoth]

So this is technically my second released map. The whole thing started out as a joke - someone in a Discord server suggested making an entire map using only fireblu as a texture, then someone else started converting Doom 2 textures and flats into fireblu and then I came in deciding to try to make a serious map using those texture. And so here it is - a map consisting entirely of fireblu. It is also intended to be a map for the decino viewer submissions.

IWAD is Doom 2, complevel is 9, GLBoom is recommended. Works in PrBoom and GZDoom as well, but doesn't look as good. If someone still wants to play this in GZDoom, I strongly suggest switching to "Dark" sector light mode.

The wad includes redesigned sprites, which aren't compatible with the sprite fix.

Additional credits:
@Anarkipls - the artistic mastermind behind the fireblu texture pack and the title screen music (MIDI rendition of the title song from Ashguine on MSX2)
@stewboy - original music track titled "Sleep Soundly"
Mark Klem - intermission music (taken from Memento Mori II MAP27)
@antares031 - fixing some bugs and essentially being the sole reason behind the map being compatible with software renderer
Kaminari, @KUBA18i, @Karma_1233, @eirc, @Peter - playtesting

Screenshots:

Spoiler

Download:
Now on Idgames: https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/s-u/shangril

Old versions:
shangril00.zip
shangril01.zip (for koren's demo)

Changelog:

Spoiler

Update 1:
 - "fixed" the plasma rifle and BFG potentially not spawning in (they can still get stuck, but you'd have to block the destination for a couple seconds)
 - added some more lines on the teleporter to the blue key section, which will hopefully prevent at least some missed teleports
 - made the cyberdemons and mancubi in the final fight spawn a little faster
 - added one more enemy to spawn in after you press the fireblu skull switch... just to spice things up a little bit ;)

Update 2:
 - fixed the chaingunners in the SSG room that were stuck on a ledge when they teleported in
 - added monster-blocking lines to the dam for pain elementals to not fly off into the distance
 - fixed the archviles not spawning in on the dam after the red key is grabbed (I don't know what I was doing there in the previous versions)
 - prevented players from killing off the archviles in the barrel hallway before releasing the imps
 - redesigned the imp slaughter section - now with more slaughter! (cacodemons and pain elementals now spawn from the towers at the start of the fight, followed by mancubi after a set amount of time; flying enemies are now unable to fly off into the distance)
 - added two more revenants into the final area just to round the monster count to a nicer number

Update 2 hotfix:
 - fixed the red key not appearing on lower difficulties
 - fixed the rocket launcher area potentially having the rocket launcher locked in the ceiling

Update 2 hotfix 2:
 - fixed the horrible light glow effect errors present throughout the entire map (why has the main selling point of the map been bugged out for so long? don't ask... for the love of god please just don't ask)

I also have a permission from Anarki to post this here:
fireblu.zip
It's the texture pack he created for the map. It is already integrated in the "shangril.wad", but I'm posting it standalone in case anyone wants to try making their own map using the textures. 

Spoiler

And I'm definitely not doing this to maybe potentially start a community project. 

 

Edited September 14, 2020 by Willy W.

[El Inferno]

Awesome! Will play it later today. Enemy count is a bit frightening though, how long is this map?

[Xulgonoth]

5 minutes ago, el_inf said:

Awesome! Will play it later today. Enemy count is a bit frightening though, how long is this map?

 

Thanks for the interest :)

It turned out a bit longer than I expected - par time is 30 minutes. But don't worry about the monster count, I think the hardest encounters are actually the least slaughery ones.

[CBM]

never understood the fascination wih the fireblu texture... LOL

[Jimmy]

:D

 

This is a bold fucking move.

[Aurelius]

One of the most entertaining maps that I've played this year, well done.

 

Played it with Woof 2.1.0 and had hardly any performance issues. I think the only time it actually stuttered was when I looked back at the level from the final area. I'm guessing it's due to the fact that Woof supports hardware acceleration. Definitely recommend it for people who like a crisp software renderer look.

 

Aesthetically the map is superb. Focusing on a single texture throughout, the use of lighting effects becomes paramount to create a good atmosphere, and you step up with some crazy light glow setups. And ultimately I don't think it's even important it's fireblu; it is definitely fitting, but the visual heavy lifting is done with light levels and effects, and the texture is mainly just there as a background. I feel more people should really try this single texture approach, exactly because it teaches about all the other neat things available.

 

Gameplay was fun throughout. There were decent challenges, varied encounters and tactics required. A lot of unique ideas overall. I think the circular room with the AVs in the middle was one of my favourite Doom fights of all time, although:

Spoiler

Cleaning up the AVs with the help of cyb took ages. I don't think there needs to be that many AVs to get the point across :P

The last encounter was pretty meaty, but resources were plentiful, although I had to yolo the very last part because I had hardly any ammo left (charge and hope for the best worked on the third try.)

 

Small things I noticed:

Spoiler

- I missed the silent teleport to the red key room multiple times. Don't know if you could make the teleport lines a bit wider, or would it ruin the effect of "falling" into the pit?

- The BFG in the red key room failed to appear if I shot the switch with the SSG. I don't really know why it happened, but I always had to use a pistol if I wanted it to teleport.

 

Very impressed with this map, great job!

[Xulgonoth]

54 minutes ago, Aurelius said:

One of the most entertaining maps that I've played this year, well done.

 

Played it with Woof 2.1.0 and had hardly any performance issues. I think the only time it actually stuttered was when I looked back at the level from the final area. I'm guessing it's due to the fact that Woof supports hardware acceleration. Definitely recommend it for people who like a crisp software renderer look.

 

Aesthetically the map is superb. Focusing on a single texture throughout, the use of lighting effects becomes paramount to create a good atmosphere, and you step up with some crazy light glow setups. And ultimately I don't think it's even important it's fireblu; it is definitely fitting, but the visual heavy lifting is done with light levels and effects, and the texture is mainly just there as a background. I feel more people should really try this single texture approach, exactly because it teaches about all the other neat things available.

 

Gameplay was fun throughout. There were decent challenges, varied encounters and tactics required. A lot of unique ideas overall. I think the circular room with the AVs in the middle was one of my favourite Doom fights of all time, although:

  Reveal hidden contents

Cleaning up the AVs with the help of cyb took ages. I don't think there needs to be that many AVs to get the point across :P

The last encounter was pretty meaty, but resources were plentiful, although I had to yolo the very last part because I had hardly any ammo left (charge and hope for the best worked on the third try.)

 

Small things I noticed:

  Reveal hidden contents

- I missed the silent teleport to the red key room multiple times. Don't know if you could make the teleport lines a bit wider, or would it ruin the effect of "falling" into the pit?

- The BFG in the red key room failed to appear if I shot the switch with the SSG. I don't really know why it happened, but I always had to use a pistol if I wanted it to teleport.

 

Very impressed with this map, great job!

Thank you, I'm very glad you enjoyed the map :)
As for the spoiler comments:
 

Spoiler

The archviles in the northern arena don't need to be cleaned up. There's so many of them exactly because you're not really meant to do that without running completely dry on ammo. When you press the final switch after the cyberdemon spawns, all the archviles get crushed - both the ones in the centre and the ones in the closet waiting to teleport in. I admit that it's a little BS and there's no way to know this, but I never really expected anyone to use the cyberdemon to kill all of them, so you're sort of supposed to find this out by it simply happening, if that makes sense. Same deal is also with the barrel hallway - if you just move on, the archviles in the closet waiting to teleport in are crushed.

Making those lines bigger will ruin the effect, they're really as small as they can be. The way to fix this would probably have to be making the pit bigger, but to be perfectly honest, balancing the sizes in order to make the effect work took me way longer than it should have and I don't really want to mess with it further. But you're right, I probably should...

The BFG not appearing is... odd to say the least. The trigger is G1, so I wouldn't have thought that it being hit by multiple lines instead of one could somehow affect the functionality. Do you think you might be able to replicate that glitch and then noclip to the sector the BFG is stored in? It should be just south of the starting room and I would like to know whether the issue is with a door still blocking it, or the teleporter line not being triggered.

 

Edited August 18, 2020 by Willy W.

[Aurelius]

Spoiler

39 minutes ago, Willy W. said:

The archviles in the northern arena don't need to be cleaned up.

Heh, whoops. Glad to hear it's not a necessity, but I kind of liked the idea that you survive all the way until the cyb and then use him to deal with the AVs. Good to know about the crushers.

 

Gave it a quick spin, but going directly there spawns a plasma rifle instead and that worked fine with SSG. It might've been just some odd quirk anyway with the BFG. I might look into it again at a better time. You could take a peek yourself though, since you know how to trigger the BFG to teleport instead of the plasma :D

 

[Xulgonoth]

15 minutes ago, Aurelius said:

  Reveal hidden contents

Heh, whoops. Glad to hear it's not a necessity, but I kind of liked the idea that you survive all the way until the cyb and then use him to deal with the AVs. Good to know about the crushers.

 

Gave it a quick spin, but going directly there spawns a plasma rifle instead and that worked fine with SSG. It might've been just some odd quirk anyway with the BFG. I might look into it again at a better time. You could take a peek yourself though, since you know how to trigger the BFG to teleport instead of the plasma :D

 

 

Spoiler

The way the spawning plasma rifle and BFG work is that no matter which order you get the blue and red key in, you always get the plasma rifle first and BFG second. And I just tried those switches in PrBoom and they seem to work fine no matter the order. Maybe it's an issue specific to Woof? I have to admit, I've never even heard of that port until now...

 

[Chip]

@Willy W.

Spoiler

You don't have to quote the whole post. You can quote a section or address the person you're writing to.

 

[El Inferno]

I completed this amazing map. I recorded a (very long) video playhtrough of it and while it is uploading I will write some comments. But I have some strong doubts if it will be possible to watch it...

 

Spoiler

Fights are really creative and interesting to play, very challenging as well. My main problem with this map is that I didn't find RL in it and had to use idfa at some point. Well, eventually I discovered that obscure passage, but really by an accident because I was searching what the fireblu key switch did. I don't mind this if only I could complete the rest of the map without RL, but this is not the case unfortunately. For example in the circular room with 4 switches you get like 100 rockets and I didn't have enough ammo to kill cybers without RL. Though I liked that arena: it was quite fun to run between infighting revs and cyber.

The AV part didn't worked for me though. AVs got stuck with resurrcted enemies pretty much instantly. It feels to me that this is not how it is supposed to work. Maybe some hints how to disable this annoying behavior (pr-boom 2.5.1.4test, I guess)?

I like the Barrel+AV gimmik. I wish that fight would've been designed so that I have to protect barrels from imps, or something) In this version it may work but I found easier to just kill AVs before activating the fight.

"Go Fuck Yourself" fight was cool, but now I hate those switches which do not want to press sometimes) 

In the slaughter part the imp swarm was not really threatening, it was not hard to dodge mancubi and kill them. btw I like how you spawn cacos + PE in place of mancs (though I don't like PEs). The 2 cyber spawner is annoying: it sometimes take quite a while to teleport whose guys in the arena. Perhaps you can make closets a bit smaller or something like that. The teleporting cyber is garbage) but can be killed quite consistently I think. I wish you add some cells / rockets on the cyber platform to deal with AV spam (I had just enogh ammo to deal with them but still). It took me quite a while to pull out that fight (but maybe I was getting a bit tired already)

Also I was not quite prepared in ammo to the AV trap on the key switch island but you can run away easily there so that's not a big deal. Similar things happened to some other traps which I don't remember.

 

Edit: BFG didn't spawn for me as well when I was very close to the switch because an item cannot be spawned inside the player. You can make the switch higher, I guess

 

But regardless of all written above, this is a really really good map)

 

I hope that your submission will get to decino! And of course I hope that he will not reject it because it is freaking hard) (I hope mine submission will get there too but it's not THAT good)

 

Video may take a while to process:

 

Edited August 18, 2020 by el_inf

[Karma_1233]

I'm very happy I got to playtest this map. It was quite the experience! One of the most fun levels I have played this year.

[leodoom85]

Imagine playing this map but by using an actual fireblu shader mod..........................................

[fabian]

11 hours ago, Aurelius said:

Played it with Woof 2.1.0 and had hardly any performance issues. I think the only time it actually stuttered was when I looked back at the level from the final area. I'm guessing it's due to the fact that Woof supports hardware acceleration. Definitely recommend it for people who like a crisp software renderer look.

 

Thank you! Well, to get one thing right, Woof! only does the final 640x400 framebuffer to screen size scale-up with help of hardware acceleration (if available), but even Chocolate does the same, so...

[Anarkipls]

I feel very honored that my silly little project ended up in such a well made, and overall fun to play map.

Spoiler

Just a reminder: you guys can use the texture pack and maybe make a community megawad or something, idk it's just a suggestion.

 

[Xulgonoth]

@LiT_gam3r
I didn't know that was the proper etiquette. Sorry, I'm new here.

@el_inf
Thanks for playing and recording my map :)

Spoiler

The rocket launcher section... I don't really want to change. It is a little obscure, but I don't think it's obscure enough to warrant an arrow or something. Plus I thought the amounts of rockets in the later sections should tell the player that he missed something.

I think the archviles getting blocked by their own resurrected enemies might be a complevel thing. You mentioned in the video that you weren't playing on the right complevel and it works fine when I test it on 9.
The barrel section can be nicely cheesed the way you did it, but your punishment for that is wasted ammo and incredible tedium.

I knew someone would inevitably compare that section to MAP29 of Sunlust :D
But believe it or not, that part was entirely inspired by MAP15 of Eternal Doom.

The imps aren't really meant to be that threatening, they're just on the way, it's the mancubi that are actually going to do the damage. But those imps can still chip away at your health if you get too careless around them.
In the update I made the cybers and mancubi spawn a bit faster. They're actually on both a timer and activated by gunfire.
Also I added some ammo on the teleporting cyberdemon platform like you suggested. I never really had an issue with ammo there, but I guess I shouldn't really punish someone getting too careless with resources there, considering how hectic that part can get.

The BFG and plasma rifle not spawning I fixed as well. Somehow I never realised that items can't teleport onto a player.

 

[WildfieldTen]

Visually stunning map. Fireblu makes it look otherworldly. Making lighting effects must have been a real grind. I thing WW really found himself in this visual style and this is the best looking map he has made so far and I am looking forward for more.

 

I would really recommend this map to anyone who likes challenging, fun maps. It is awesome and fights are not repeating themselves. The author knows my opinion on secret traps and surprises like this and it is only my opinion so I will skip it. I can only hope he will heed my "objectively great advice" on level design and next one will be even better. :P

 

Anyway, that is it for my "serious" review of Gateway to Shangri-La.

 

P.S.

Spoiler

I quote the wikipedia here: "...Shangri-La is a mystical, harmonious valley, gently guided from a lamasery, enclosed in the western end of the Kunlun Mountains. Shangri-La has become synonymous with any earthly paradise, particularly a mythical Himalayan utopia – a permanently happy land, isolated from the world." Well... The author has pretty sadistic view of a paradise. Ah well, heaven for DOOM players I guess.

  

[koren]

Nice map. The texture set is striking and you manage to make some very pretty geometry out of it. The lighting in particular is very nicely done and keeps things from looking drab. There's also a lot of inventive concepts on display with the major encounters, which is always a treat. Here's a casual demo (glboom 2.5.1.5 cl9) and some notes: https://cyberdemon.co.uk/stuff/shangril-kn.lmp

 

 

Spoiler

The chaingunners in sector 1188 spawn in one at a time and end up stuck on the edge of the platform every time.

 

On the approach to the red key fight, some blocking lines for the pain elementals would have been appreciated. On more than one occasion the cyberdemon would pop one with a rocket and they'd sail off to the other side of the map, coughing out skulls all the while and being well out of retaliation range.

 

The red key fight was a lot of fun. The mechanics of it are a bit obtuse, given how the cyberdemons tend to die silently behind the walls, but I managed to figure it out after my first attempt when I immediately released one. I think in terms of ammo pressure this can absolutely screw a player over, but that's okay with me.

The viles in sectors 2657, 2650 and 2654 never spawned in for me. I assume they're supposed to ambush the player after leaving the red key arena, much like the trio in the blue wing?

 

The barrel fight is a nice idea, but the incentive to cheese it by systematically eliminating the viles before starting the main encounter is overwhelming. It's also going to be natural for the player to test the barrels to see if they're rigged up with viles before setting the main encounter off, so there's a strong probability they're going to clear out a few of the viles early on their first playthrough, if they aren't greedy for the soulsphere. It'd probably be better if the barrels raised up upon triggering the trap, followed by the imps spawning in a few seconds later for maximum dramatic effect and panic.

 

The initial vile fight to demonstrate the barrel mechanic communicated the concept very well, but having the teleporter directly behind the viles spawn position means a high probability of the player being blasted backwards, out of the arena if they fuck up getting behind cover (this happened to me a lot because I'm dumb).

 

My one real issue with the map is the final arena. The wall of imps doesn't really work too well. There's no pressure or threat of them pushing the player backwards and the mancs spawn in far too slowly, so a good 300~ of them can be slaughtered before there's even pressure on the player to dodge, which is straightforward enough to handle by dodging in a tight circle.

 

More importantly, I'm not really sure what the intention was with the fliers popping out of the mancubus towers. There's no real risk of them being accidentally released in the heat of combat, due to the fact there are two mancs queued up to respawn up there and the towers are just too far out of the way to get caught by the crossfire or stray BFG tracers. Fighting them after clearing out the imps is basically devoid of any meaningful challenge or risk, it's just a clean-up job. It's vaguely annoying to have to wait for them all to filter in slowly and then punch holes in them with the BFG. The lack of blocking lines means they can also start floating off out of the arena, and well out of the player's autoaim range, which wastes even more time as you wait for them to return.

 

The rest of the fight is pretty good. It's possible to avoid triggering the cyberdemons in the revenant fight if you hold your fire and back off before engaging, unless i misread the situation and they're on a delayed spawn timer of some sort. The revenant wall itself is sufficiently awkward to deal with due to the distribution of ammo and the tight bottleneck, encouraging some ballsy and aggressive attacks to stay topped up, which is lovely.

 

Looking forward to your future releases. Keep it up!

Edited August 24, 2020 by koren

[Xulgonoth]

@koren
Thank you for recording that demo, it was absolutely amazing to watch!
And you are right about a lot of things in those notes... I'll probably post an update soon, fixing some of the issues and making slight adjustments to the final fight.

EDIt: The map has been updated, (hopefully) fixing most of the stuff you mentioned ;)

Edited August 24, 2020 by Willy W.

[deathz0r]

The shangril.zip attachment is broken and can't be downloaded, can you re-upload it?

 

EDIT: DISREGARD it now suddenly works

Edited August 24, 2020 by deathz0r

[Xulgonoth]

1 minute ago, deathz0r said:

The shangril.zip attachment is broken and can't be downloaded, can you re-upload it?

It works for me. I was just uploading an updated version, so maybe you tried to download the file while I was editing the post? If that's what happened, then I apologise.

[Samuel Slayer]

Bravo! Such a majestic accomplishment with only one texture used and it still manages to convey a strong sense of mood and kinda works. I tip my hat off to you sir or madam!

[HAK3180]

Now that this is bumped,

 

Public service announcement: the red key is absent from easy and medium. I'm sure Willy W. will fix it ASAP, but if you happen to get to it before he does, now you know.

[Xulgonoth]

7 minutes ago, HAK3180 said:

the red key is absent from easy and medium

F*cking goddammit, this always happens thanks to UDB remembering the flags of the last placed thing. I try to catch these, but sometimes a few of them get through. Thank you for pointing this out, I'll fix it right now.

[Samuel Slayer]

1 hour ago, Willy W. said:

F*cking goddammit, this always happens thanks to UDB remembering the flags of the last placed thing. I try to catch these, but sometimes a few of them get through. Thank you for pointing this out, I'll fix it right now.

Let me know when you do. Might as well play it then.

[Xulgonoth]

10 minutes ago, Samuel Slayer said:

Let me know when you do. Might as well play it then.

I just made a lot of embarrassing last-minute adjustments, but hopefully the map should be fully functional now.

[Samuel Slayer]

Okay, nice. Thanks!

[koren]

I made a demo for the new version when I saw you'd done an update. The changes made the final arena much, much better. Attempts at encoding it for youtube have shown that the map lives up to the tag line too.