[Doom II] [complevel 9] Temple of the Marshes

[wallabra]

 

Single-level WAD for Doom II, tested with PRBoom+ on -complevel 9. Supports singleplayer, coop and deathmatch. Playtested thoroughly.  Supports all difficulty levels, in both monster and item placement. Sports custom music sequenced by, you guessed it, yours truly! I have been testing the map with friends, and it seems fine. It has a "plot twist" near the end -- the only thing I'll tell ahead of time is that it is not very Euclid friendly!

 

Right now I'm scrambling to put it out. I realized there's a lot of stuff that I had been working on but hadn't put online, not even in the cloud or something. I had an annoying headache earlier. It is passing, but it made me realize how much I procrastinated to publish my work, how much potential legacy squandered, even regarding things I've otherwise finished.

 

Still, I hope you enjoy! I had a good and fun deathmatch match with @TDRR here, full of twists and joyous craziness, so I'm sure you can too! By the way TDRR, yes, I fixed the lava lift lol. I don't know how I broke it but it was in a kinda dumb way. There was something else that was broken that I had fixed, but I forgot what, but either way it's fixed now. On second thought it must've been opening the red door from behind, in deathmatch. So yeah.

 

TMarsh.wad.zip

 

All screenies

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also I don't care that I'm late for the 'wards, that's not the point of the scramble. This is a kind of short map and it took me several days to iron out all the kinks and refine it, and I still forgot I planned to detail it more. I am embarassed about how late it took me to put this out, and it probably looks a little half-assed, but I hope you have fun anyways.

 

Edited December 16, 2020 by Gustavo6046
less drama lol

[Mr. LBN]

FDA DEMO stats

82% Kills

33% Secrets

0      Deaths

5:42 Time

 

Definitely not good at giving feedback since this is my first FDA I uploaded I believe?  I'll try though.

 

• Music and map mood go great together.  Don't change the darkness nor the music because it felt like I was about to enter some abandoned temple or somethin'.
• The rockets and rocket launcher directly at the end were not very useful at all unless they were specifically meant for DM.
• Layout is very connected and easy to read (at least to me), but it feels...empty (Maybe you wanted sparse enemies to set the mood?)
• Gameplay is easy/relaxing and feels like a normal DOOM II experience, but it's missing something that would put the player on edge (I did miss a few enemies though so there's that).  Maybe some Revenants here and there, and maybe an Archvile or two towards the end.
• Invulnerability felt underwhelming since there's nothing in the map that makes it feel necessary although it would be cool to do a UV-Max route plowing through this map with it.

Neat map though, and the music...keep it.

TM-FDA.zip

[wallabra]

4 minutes ago, Mr. LBN said:

FDA DEMO stats

82% Kills

33% Secrets

0      Deaths

5:42 Time

Definitely not good at giving feedback since this is my first FDA I uploaded I believe?  I'll try though.

 

Thank you, I appreciate it one way or the other! :)

 

Quote

• Music and map mood go great together.  Don't change the darkness nor the music because it felt like I was about to enter some abandoned temple or somethin'.

 

Yeah, that's kind of what I was going for. Moody, and not very uniformly paced -- some parts it would keep the player more on the edge.

 

Quote

• The rockets and rocket launcher directly at the end were not very useful at all unless they were specifically meant for DM.

 

They're for UV, probably. I think I should change it to something else on HMP. SSG maybe?

 

Quote

• Layout is very connected and easy to read (at least to me), but it feels...empty (Maybe you wanted sparse enemies to set the mood?)
• Gameplay is easy/relaxing and feels like a normal DOOM II experience, but it's missing something that would put the player on edge (I did miss a few enemies though so there's that).  Maybe some Revenants here and there, and maybe an Archvile or two towards the end.

 

There are more monsters in UV. The other difficulties are a breather -- HNTR for more casual players, HMP for decently skilled players who nonetheless want a breather from being quartered a-Sunder. You might be looking for UV.

 

Quote

• Invulnerability felt underwhelming since there's nothing in the map that makes it feel necessary although it would be cool to do a UV-Max route plowing through this map with it.

 

Either the red key ambush or the outdoors one, in UV.

Quote

Neat map though, and the music...keep it.

 

Thank you! I'm going to watch the FDA. Expect an edit coming from me soon!

 

[Mr. LBN]

I just realized I never put in the skill level and thought I was playing on UV.  Disregard some of what I wrote. 

 

5 minutes ago, Gustavo6046 said:

They're for UV, probably. I think I should change it to something else on HMP. SSG maybe?

Don't know since it's the end of the map, unless you plan on making a few maps following this?  Would you prefer a UV demo?

Edited December 16, 2020 by Mr. LBN

[wallabra]

10 minutes ago, Mr. LBN said:

I just realized I never put in the skill level and thought I was playing on UV.  Disregard some of what I wrote. 

 

Ah lol, it's okay. Most levels nowadays are designed "for UV", kind of. I felt like I wanted to be more inclusive and appeal to multiple audiences at once -- I mean, that's what difficulty levels are for to begin with, right? I implemented difficulties for both item and monster placement, and also deathmatch-only items. It is fun in DM, but I don't know how you'd test that. I might node it for the ZDoomBot (the outdated one) someday.

 

Quote

Don't know since it's the end of the map, unless you plan on making a few maps following this?  Would you prefer a UV demo?

 

Hmm. Maybe try it in UV, whether you record or not is ultimately up to you. I don't really plan to append more maps, although it might go alright with another one I've made recently. We'll see.

 

And did you notice the silent teleporters?

 

Also you narrowly missed one of the secret shootable switches then didn't after retrying, oops

 

Edited December 16, 2020 by Gustavo6046

[Mr. LBN]

I noticed the silent teleporters after watching the demo looking in the automap towards the ending I believe.

 

Also my ability to locate secrets is terrible.  For some reason I can hunt down most if not all enemies (outside secrets), but secrets...forget about it without an editor or cheats. 

 

Oh, and UV completely makes my comment regarding Revenants/Archviles irrelevant.

[plums]

Overall I liked this map, it had a cool opening and theme, and was short enough that any flaws didn't really detract from it too much. I also really liked the music.

 

That said, there were a few things I thought could have been done a bit better. The biggest thing is that I often didn't get the relationship between the actions I was taking and the way the map progressed. At the start this was mostly limited to secrets -- I shot a bunch of semi-hidden switches and I guess these opened up some things? -- but towards the end with the silent teleporters I felt like I just bumbled my way along to the exit more than anything. Again, for a short map this isn't that big of a deal, it's not like I got lost or anything, it just detracted from the exploration feel that I think is the map's main appeal.

 

The silent teleporting is visible because of the difference in y-offsets on the surrounding walls. It might be better to leave this as-is though, since it helps to orient the player a bit more by giving them a clue as to when they walked through one without looking at the automap.

 

Visually it also seemed a bit sparse, the entrance to the temple is great but the interior seemed kind of bland and/or oddly textured at times. For the most part it did the job well enough.

 

I found all the secrets and it made for a pretty easy playthrough overall on UV. I didn't need the rocket launcher at the end, everything was dead by the time I even found it. I'm guessing it's a lot tougher without any of them, especially that invulnerability for the red key fight.

Edited December 16, 2020 by plums

[wallabra]

I appreciate the feedback, this is very nice stuff to hear! Especially since I never got the map to look quite as pretty and intuitive as I wanted it to, despite the effort I put into it, I always seemed to be two steps away from 'better'. I did dedicate quite a bit of time to constructing it, even little details like the shootable switch at the main indoors area that sort of reveals itself when you shoot it. But even still, it always seemed bland to me too, particularly the indoors. I'm not very good at making pretty architecture. I assume if I could run Doom Builder it'd be easier, but eh, Eureka for Linux works fine. :P

 

And I tried to balance the secrets a bit, but it's hard to do so without making them worthless or pointless, especially on UV. Plasma rifle on MAP01 is too much, but hey, this is a single level WAD, so I assume it's not a big deal?

 

I'll respond to the points individually (and in more detail) after a good sleep. It's 2:30 AM here :P

 

If nobody else bumps the thread, expect edits addressing your points anyway!

 

[plums]

1 hour ago, Gustavo6046 said:

I did dedicate quite a bit of time to constructing it, even little details like the shootable switch at the main indoors area that sort of reveals itself when you shoot it. But even still, it always seemed bland to me too, particularly the indoors. I'm not very good at making pretty architecture. I assume if I could run Doom Builder it'd be easier, but eh, Eureka for Linux works fine. :P

It's funny because I went back to it and I could tell that you definitely put some effort in, but at the same time, it just doesn't feel that visually exciting. I think it's a combination of a lot of brown textures in low lighting, without too many eye-catching variations etc. The entrance looks good like I said, and areas with lots of colour contrast like the lava are nice too.

 

BTW I'm also a Linux user, I find SLADE a little easier/full-featured for map editing than Eureka, but if you're good with Eureka that's fine. (The latest version of SLADE also has some bugs that make it basically useless for map editing anyhow...)

 

Quote

And I tried to balance the secrets a bit, but it's hard to do so without making them worthless or pointless, especially on UV. Plasma rifle on MAP01 is too much, but hey, this is a single level WAD, so I assume it's not a big deal?

I think it's fine. If anything I would suggest making a map like this harder on UV at least, balancing for a player that finds most or all of the secrets. Not necessarily worth redoing this one though, unless you really want to.

 

Anyhow I went back and recorded a "casual UV speed" demo, by which I mean I didn't push too hard and took my first exit, 1:13. Quite a lot of the map is really optional!

 

tmarsh-speed-plums.lmp.zip

Edited December 16, 2020 by plums

[Biodegradable]

It's a reasonably solid little map, Gustavo. It's certainly enjoyable, but I do have to echo Plums' assessment that the progression feels weirdly cryptic and indeed feel like you're kind of bumbling around, not really knowing what it is you're doing or where you're going. The few hidden switches seemed rather odd as I had no idea what any of them supposedly did and couldn't hear anything opening or closing. Besides that stuff though, the combat was a little bog-standard but nothing tedious or ridiculously hard. I did find it a bit easy though because, even on UV, you're far to generous with your ammo/health/armour pickups as I was pretty OP by the time of the larger battle outside, which appeared to be entirely optional because had I not noticed them in the doorway there, I would've carried on with the exit and left them all behind. Bit of an odd choice there. It's a good effort regardless, man. Hope to see more! :^)

 

 

Edited December 16, 2020 by Biodegradable

[wallabra]

Thank you guys for the awesome feedback!

 

@plums much of it is indeed optional, and in hindsight I should've made the raised ledge more important, like maybe the lift past the red key door would start in the bottom and you'd have to raise it using a switch in the raised room in order to make it operational?

 

@Biodegradable Watching your run makes me realize how cruel the blue wire coming out of the switch in the room with the rocket launcher is, and the switch being repeatable for some reason being the cherry on the cake. I must've done that by accident, maybe I should update the level? That switch actually raises the bridge in lava. The ledge with monsters next to it is actually a lift, and there is a conspicuous hole in the wall in that room that you might want to shoot through as well. Maybe.

 

Yeah, all in all I realized that some of the secrets don't make sense in the activation, but are easy to accidentally get later on at the same time. Like the first shootable switch you come across, Bio shot it earlier than he was supposed to (maybe he would hear the blue armor door opening if he shot it from the raised room as intended). And the runs I watched really do feel like a player lost in a maze, although that's pretty interesting for such a small level. I did want to make exploration kind of a theme, and I guess non-linearity too, but not making the player feel outright lost. I did not expect that to be even possible, how many rooms are even there in this map, like under a dozen?

 

Still, I had quite a few chuckles watching each first attempt, and overall enjoyed the array of emotions. One of the things I wanted to play with was a more "dynamic" pacing, some moments being calmer to give the player time to look at the environment, some more active or tense, some outright clutchy and with a sense of dangerous urgency (no matter the actual danger, an arch-vile teleporting behind your back is always a reason to despair!) And that did seem to work. The red key trap must've scared the living heck out of players who preferred to go straight rather than turn to the arachnotron/lift room. (If you get to lower the invulnerability in the raised room via... some secret... you can use it to kind of cheese out the aforementioned booby trap.)

 

Thank you for putting yourselves up with playing the map, and recording it, whether it be demos or videos -- they're all fun to watch, but most importantly, very insightful! :)

 

Although, more importantly, for the moment anyway -- I should focus on making my levels less visually boring. Maybe less confusing layouts too.

Edited December 18, 2020 by Gustavo6046

[Roofi]

Hello

 

I played your map and really enjoyed it! I really liked the very rustic atmosphere that emanates from the theme and the music.  You also worked at setting the scenery, especially at the beginning when the temple is seen from afar.

 

The level contains few monsters but they are placed in a rather efficient way. The secret of the red key is particularly brutal but quite easy to escape in the end.

 

The level has a certain atmosphere and the darkness gives a certain charm to the level. The secrets to be found are also very useful, even too much so. I think invulnerability is too powerful for such a short level.

 

In any case, to summarize, it is an easy good easily, using intelligently the stock textures.

 

Here is my FDA DEMO

 

Roofi_TMarsh_FDA.zip

 

Just one remark , I think this switch shouldn't be shot since you can reach it by hand , so I recommand to use a S1 action instead.

 

Spoiler

 

 

[wallabra]

Hey Roofi, thanks for the nice feedback! It's pretty positive, considering the map :P. You did seem to be a little lost, particularly with the last two secrets -- I should change the texture of that lift/ledge in the bridge raising switch area, and make the latter S1 instead of SR.

 

Yeah, I can see how that switch near the lava bridge can be a bit confusing. I feel like shooting it from the bridge is more convenient than having to walk in lava to flip it. I might raise it instead, I still want it to be kind of like a minipuzzle. Although it would be better to change those secrets entirely to begin with.

Edited December 20, 2020 by Gustavo6046