2-map demo for "Bloodbath" - a hell-themed WAD I'm working on (updated)

[KeaganDunn]

Perhaps it's just because I'm too excited to get this thing done, but I wanted to share some of the completed maps for my second WAD - "Bloodbath". Using the stock textures as best as I can to create very abstract hell-themed environments.

Every health bonus you see is actually 24, 16, or 8 stacked on top of each other depending on your skill level. Armor bonuses are actually 5. There are no medikits or stimpacks, and no hitscanners.

 

Difficulty for these two maps is comparable to E3 of Scythe, so strategy and movement are important. These maps were designed around Ultra-Violence, and later tuned up for that difficulty, so UV is actually hard here. For me, at least. I wanted to get this stuff right, so let me know if there's a problem with the skill levels or difficulty in general. And if you have or know of any music I could use for these maps, let me know!

 

MAP01: Relatively small, and very red intro map. Not real hard if you're competent and moving around.

MAP02: House of Pain-esque map with a series of "trials". Come prepared!

 

In general, feedback and criticism are greatly appreciated! Full 6-map set coming soon.

 

IWAD: Doom 2

Map format: Boom (-complevel 9, I think)

Maps: 01, 02

Tested in: GZDoom 4.5 (primarily), GLBoom+

(Works in DoomRetro, but items won't teleport in for some reason, most of which are crucial for survival.)

Play Time: Each map takes about 5-10 minutes for a UV-MAX with knowledge of the map. Blind playtests so far have been around 20 minutes for each map.

Jumping/Crouching: No. Pls. I beg you.

 

SCREENSHOTS:

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

OLD: Bloodbath demo.zip

 

V2 (record demos on this one): https://doomshack.org/uploads/Bloodbath demo v2.zip

Edited January 17, 2021 by Dunn & Dunn
Released v2

[KeaganDunn]

Just now, Reelvonic said:

i also love how it's hard, but no hitscanners. That makes it ever more fun, cause you gotta focus on movment

Thank you! We all hate hitscanners, right? And how could they be in Hell?

You can get back to me when you're finished. :)

[BoxY]

Would you mind reuploading the wad archive as a zip instead of a rar? I was going to try out the maps but rar isn't supported by most other archive software and I really don't want to install winrar to unzip a single file.

[KeaganDunn]

1 minute ago, BoxY said:

Would you mind reuploading the wad archive as a zip instead of a rar? I was going to try out the maps but rar isn't supported by most other archive software and I really don't want to install winrar to unzip a single file.

Got it fixed! Sorry about that, I completely forgot about the zip.

[Clippy]

This was terrific I had a great time hope my video is helpful I didn't even drink while playing

 

That ending was BS tho but everything else was top notch

 

I am jealous of your base texturing skills

 

 

[KeaganDunn]

@Clippy Hey, thanks a lot, man! I was really nervous what you would think of these, considering UV is actually tuned up to 10 in these maps. There are no Pain Elementals in either map on lower difficulties, for example. ;P

 

I honestly did not think you would survive the first map with how many secrets you missed, several containing health and shells, and one having a berserk. Honestly makes me question my skills a little, haha.

Buy that lottery ticket.

 

MAP02. A series of trials. You have no idea how much I was hoping you would find the BFG in the outside secret. That penultimate fight is tough as nails without it. Overall you did really well. 

The final octuple-Archvile fight is actually just revenants and imps on lower difficulties. Here you have to be super aggressive, up close and personal, with the BFG, which took you a few tries to do just that. It’s tough, and there’s plenty of ways to manage each fight like you did. XD That should give you an idea of what we’re going for here, and even then each fight was all the more difficult on UV before.

 

 

Well done, and thanks for playing. If you plan on playing the rest when I have them done...Bear in mind that I will have the difficulty settings tested and accessible if it’s too much.

[Nootsy-Nootsy]

These were a good two maps to come back on. :)

 

The difficult balance felt great for me. I was consistently on death's door but somehow didn't give in (edit: meant to mean somehow didn't die, bad with wording). I loved the lighting too; infinite blackness surrounding the area is always fun.

Edited January 3, 2021 by Nutsy-Nutsy

[KeaganDunn]

3 minutes ago, Nutsy-Nutsy said:

These were a good two maps to come back on. :)

 

The difficult balance felt great for me. I was consistently on death's door but somehow didn't give in. I loved the lighting too; infinite blackness surrounding the area is always fun.

Thank you! The gradient lighting stuff I usually get from Ribbiks' maps, such as Swim with the Whales. Glad to hear you didn't give up - but MAP01 will most likely the first map to the rest of the WAD and MAP03 a halfway point...

[Clippy]

If you thought I wouldn't survive the first map without the secrets that might not be a good thing

 

I always test to make sure that my maps are always able to be defeated without finding any secrets because I always plan for the worst scenario that players might not find any

[KeaganDunn]

4 minutes ago, Clippy said:

If you thought I wouldn't survive the first map without the secrets that might not be a good thing

 

I always test to make sure that my maps are always able to be defeated without finding any secrets because I always plan for the worst scenario that players might not find any

 

Yeah, I've always had a bit of trouble with the balancing of health items. I don't want the player to be stuck at 3% health approaching a fight and having to restart the map, but I don't want to shower them in health, armor, and ammo pickups either, or have secrets that make the map ten times easier. That's also why blind runs like yours are important, and I have had only one other playtester whom I actively talk with over Discord, so he can stream it live.

I did test the map a couple times without secrets and it was definitely plausible, albeit tough. I might nerf it a little, later on when I have more maps in the WAD done.

After all, this is a bit of a beta thing, so it was good to get some feedback and see how others went about the maps, secrets or not.

[Biodegradable]

 

[Hitboi]

I didn't like MAP01, it's too harsh for UV-fast.
I got killled in the room near the red key door (because of 2 Imps and a single Pinky, they killed me quickly)
The 3 Mancubi room has also the same problem. Playing with normal UV is way better.

[KeaganDunn]

5 hours ago, Biodegradable said:

 

I said Boom-compatible and I thought that would mean no jumping or crouching. I'll specify it right now, and probably put it in MAPINFO.

 

Thanks for playing, man. Sorry to hear you had a rough time with UV, but it was still great seeing how you went about the maps on HMP. 

Spoiler

I've already made some changes to the first map on that difficulty. The Hell Knight blocking the door in the lava pool is an imp on HMP and below, for example, and that lava pool (15:36) will have a little platform for you now.

 

That platform at 27:50 you just simply interact with and it will lower. Not that you really needed it. XD

 

I can definitely see how you enjoyed the second map more, although I think that's because the secrets are easier to find. Good luck with the penultimate encounter without a BFG. Interesting, because Clippy played both on UV and enjoyed the first one more. 

Overall, it was still great seeing you give HMP a whirl. I'm very glad you had a better time on it, and it helps in balancing the lower difficulties. 👍

 

[BoxY]

Played a few days ago and finally got around to writing my thoughts. HMP almost-FDA here: bb_bx_fda.lmp

 

Almost-FDA because I tried the start of map01 for a few minutes on UV but decided against it because it was pretty clear that if you go the wrong way at the start or miss any pickups you kinda just die, and I didn't want to make an ugly franken-demo of me reloading saves and messing around until I could find the progression. HMP was very fun anyway so I don't mind, I'll probably go back and play UV soon.

 

map01 thoughts: fun, good looking map, with some progression problems. The first one is that even though the map is laid out with all areas going out from a central hub which makes it look like you can explore the rooms in any order you want, you actually need to do things in a specific order that's basically trial and error. Particularly the door to the room with the mancubi is right in front of your face when you start, but if you go in with just the starting resources there's no way you'll have enough ammo to survive. Same deal with the blue key room if you don't grab plasma first. A simple fix I think would just to give slightly more resources at the start, maybe just an extra box of shells, that way the player at least has a chance to survive on their own by just exploring. Either that or lock more rooms behind key doors to make the player progress in a more guided way that won't get them killed cheesily.

 

Second issue was marking the switch behind the BK door with the red skull key texture: I thought that this meant I had to find the red key somewhere else in the map to activate the switch (it's boom format after all), so I ended up leaving the room and wandering around until I ran out of ideas and hail-mary'd the switch to eventually find that it actually opens a random door hidden across the map, to reveal a blue key switch which then allows me to get the red key. This is a bit Rube Goldberg-esque for me. I guess the red skull texture was supposed to hint that it indirectly gives access, but it's way more misleading than helpful. I think two good changes would be to get rid of that red skull texture, and change the door to bars, so the player can at least get a chance to see the switch they are supposed to find.

 

Other than that I had no real issues, and easily my favourite thing about the map was the secret rocket launcher fight that I was lucky enough to discover. I'm a big believer that secrets should have something more interesting than just humping walls for random pickups and this one delivered perfectly, it was easily the best fight in the map which almost makes it a shame that it's a secret. Also, I found it way too late for all the extra rockets to actually be useful in the map.

 

The exit room with the four revenants and bars didn't make much sense to me as a fight, since the revs can't really hurt the player behind the bars and it's sort of annoying for the player to hurt them either. I ran low on hitscan ammo so I tried killing them with rockets between the bars but I got blasted into the exit tp, oh well.

 

map02 thoughts: I really liked this map. It's bigger and more complex than map01, but is more natural to navigate. It has a unique and distinct atmosphere with the nice contrast between flesh, hell and void areas, really a great use of stock textures. I didn't like the thing with the switch and door at the start because it doesn't really do much except to slow the player down for a few seconds, but it's not a big deal. I did get lost briefly at one point where I couldn't find the tiny brown cubbyhole with the switch in the pillar room, that could definitely be more obvious, but other than that no major problems.

 

I liked every fight, they were all well scripted and pretty creative, but resource placement was a bit uneven at times, like in the plasma gun room where you get a free soulsphere, then a mega, then another mega when you leave (?!). Even for skill 2 that would be way overkill for that fight. Same with the exit fight, I don't know if all those resources would be needed on skill 4 but it seemed quite overkill on skill 3. That said, the vile might have caused problems if I didn't get the early BFG from the nice secret area. Also the cyber that silently teleports in behind you in the pillar room gave me a big spook, that was a lot of fun.

 

Overall I liked the maps a lot, fights were mostly interesting and well balanced, I think it just needs a couple of rough edges knocking off the progression to be slightly more friendly to a blind player.

Edited January 6, 2021 by BoxY

[KeaganDunn]

1 hour ago, BoxY said:

Spoiler

 

Played a few days ago and finally got around to writing my thoughts. HMP almost-FDA here: bb_bx_fda.lmp

 

Almost-FDA because I tried the start of map01 for a few minutes on UV but decided against it because it was pretty clear that if you go the wrong way at the start or miss any pickups you kinda just die, and I didn't want to make an ugly franken-demo of me reloading saves and messing around until I could find the progression. HMP was very fun anyway so I don't mind, I'll probably go back and play UV soon.

 

map01 thoughts: fun, good looking map, with some progression problems. The first one is that even though the map is laid out with all areas going out from a central hub which makes it look like you can explore the rooms in any order you want, you actually need to do things in a specific order that's basically trial and error. Particularly the door to the room with the mancubi is right in front of your face when you start, but if you go in with just the starting resources there's no way you'll have enough ammo to survive. Same deal with the blue key room if you don't grab plasma first. A simple fix I think would just to give slightly more resources at the start, maybe just an extra box of shells, that way the player at least has a chance to survive on their own by just exploring. Either that or lock more rooms behind key doors to make the player progress in a more guided way that won't get them killed cheesily.

 

Second issue was marking the switch behind the BK door with the red skull key texture: I thought that this meant I had to find the red key somewhere else in the map to activate the switch (it's boom format after all), so I ended up leaving the room and wandering around until I ran out of ideas and hail-mary'd the switch to eventually find that it actually opens a random door hidden across the map, to reveal a blue key switch which then allows me to get the red key. This is a bit Rube Goldberg-esque for me. I guess the red skull texture was supposed to hint that it indirectly gives access, but it's way more misleading than helpful. I think two good changes would be to get rid of that red skull texture, and change the door to bars, so the player can at least get a chance to see the switch they are supposed to find.

 

Other than that I had no real issues, and easily my favourite thing about the map was the secret rocket launcher fight that I was lucky enough to discover. I'm a big believer that secrets should have something more interesting than just humping walls for random pickups and this one delivered perfectly, it was easily the best fight in the map which almost makes it a shame that it's a secret. Also, I found it way too late for all the extra rockets to actually be useful in the map.

 

The exit room with the four revenants and bars didn't make much sense to me as a fight, since the revs can't really hurt the player behind the bars and it's sort of annoying for the player to hurt them either. I ran low on hitscan ammo so I tried killing them with rockets between the bars but I got blasted into the exit tp, oh well.

 

map02 thoughts: I really liked this map. It's bigger and more complex than map01, but is more natural to navigate. It has a unique and distinct atmosphere with the nice contrast between flesh, hell and void areas, really a great use of stock textures. I didn't like the thing with the switch and door at the start because it doesn't really do much except to slow the player down for a few seconds, but it's not a big deal. I did get lost briefly at one point where I couldn't find the tiny brown cubbyhole with the switch in the pillar room, that could definitely be more obvious, but other than that no major problems.

 

I liked every fight, they were all well scripted and pretty creative, but resource placement was a bit uneven at times, like in the plasma gun room where you get a free soulsphere, then a mega, then another mega when you leave (?!). Even for skill 2 that would be way overkill for that fight. Same with the exit fight, I don't know if all those resources would be needed on skill 4 but it seemed quite overkill on skill 3. That said, the vile might have caused problems if I didn't get the early BFG from the nice secret area. Also the cyber that silently teleports in behind you in the pillar room gave me a big spook, that was a lot of fun.

 

Overall I liked the maps a lot, fights were mostly interesting and well balanced, I think it just needs a couple of rough edges knocking off the progression to be slightly more friendly to a blind player.

 

 

Watched back the demo twice (a demo of a demo lulz), took some notes. You did exceedingly well!

 

MAP01: I've already went back and nerfed the map after Biodegradable played, changing things up a bit in the full WAD. The southeastern green room kind of has that point of warning to come back later, sort of "barring" a path until you get the proper resources to deal with it, but still leaving it as an always-accessible area. I think I might leave that the way it is.

I was worried about that switch with the red-key indicator next to it, I thought people were going to mistaken that for requiring the red key, but I decided to leave it in and see what people did. I'll see what else I can do with that switch and the door it opens.

 

MAP02: Wow...there sure is a LOT of resources. I have recently gone back and changed it up, getting rid of some powerups on lower difficulties. I thought this map was probably the hardest one I've made, but that might not be the case on lower difficulties, especially if you ration your health correctly. You did have a lot more cells than I expected with the last two fights, so I will definitely tune the later half of the map a bit. 

 

Like Biodegradable, I'm glad you gave these a shot on HMP and thus enjoyed them most, but I also am curious to see how you would tackle MAP02 on UV, since a lot of fights are quite different across difficulties in that map and it ended up being quite easy on HMP.

Thanks a lot for playing and I appreciate the feedback! This was also my first time playing back a demo in PrBoom+ (OpenGL) so it was a cool experience.

 

I might post an updated version of these "demo" maps soon.

[BoxY]

On 1/6/2021 at 7:36 PM, Dunn & Dunn said:

I'm glad you gave these a shot on HMP and thus enjoyed them most, but I also am curious to see how you would tackle MAP02 on UV, since a lot of fights are quite different across difficulties in that map and it ended up being quite easy on HMP.

 

Sure! Here's a UV playthrough: bb02_bx.lmp  (plays on the newer version of the file) content warning: save scumming.

This sadly isn't my UV FDA because I messed up a setting and bricked the demo when recording, so this time I played with foreknowledge and strategized on ammo particularly.

I had a good time on UV, particularly the second run, but my main gripe is still with starting resources like in map01. Rationing shells for the rev wave and 2 viles in particular was my obsession, because I already softlocked once during my FDA attempt on them just because I did the natural thing and killed the stuff in front of me with the shotgun provided, which was a beginner's trap, you NEED those shells. It was a bit too survival horror for my tastes, and I can easily see a situation where just getting bad RNG on a few shots would leave a first time player out of ammo even if they played perfectly.

The buffed mancubus spawner fight is quite stressful because they spawn in such a fast and erratic pattern that you can easily get blocked by an unlucky spawn and die instantly. On my FDA I died about 3 times that way, this time I got luckier but still ate random fireballs. Once you can get a circle going around them you're okay but just trying to keep up with their spawns by killing them like in HMP is definitely not an option any more.

The plasma gun fight is similar, on my first attempt I died 4 times in a row where as soon as the viles spawned I would get targeted from both sides, and when I tried to move at all something random (possibly spectres because I play in software lighting and they're legit invisible in that room) would be blocking my back every time and I'd get instantly roasted. I think with this fight I'd just make one vile spawn a few seconds later than the other so the player at least gets a chance to see where they are and start to make a move before getting targeted on both sides. It's a fun fight though.

Everything after that was fine, although I kept up the survival mentality in the pillar room since I was super low on shells and rockets again and spent most of the time running around trying to punch stuff and save more ammo. I wanted to save all the cells to plasma the cyber but then I realised I could just ignore him and go get the BFG which was a lot easier and more efficient. The final 2 fights are still mostly just BFG and cleanup, though how in the hell you would do the first one on UV if you were unlucky enough to miss the early BFG is definitely beyond me.

Really fun experience overall, I think balance just needs loosening slightly in a couple places to keep RNG stuff from screwing the player. I wouldn't make any major changes.

 

edit: hehe, on a hunch just did iddt and finally found out you can literally get free plasma in the first room from a secret. That would definitely make the opening like 5x easier, but it's very punishing for someone who isn't a secret scrounger to miss that.

Edited January 9, 2021 by BoxY

[KeaganDunn]

11 hours ago, BoxY said:

Spoiler

Sure! Here's a UV playthrough: bb02_bx.lmp  (plays on the newer version of the file) content warning: save scumming.

This sadly isn't my UV FDA because I messed up a setting and bricked the demo when recording, so this time I played with foreknowledge and strategized on ammo particularly.

I had a good time on UV, particularly the second run, but my main gripe is still with starting resources like in map01. Rationing shells for the rev wave and 2 viles in particular was my obsession, because I already softlocked once during my FDA attempt on them just because I did the natural thing and killed the stuff in front of me with the shotgun provided, which was a beginner's trap, you NEED those shells. It was a bit too survival horror for my tastes, and I can easily see a situation where just getting bad RNG on a few shots would leave a first time player out of ammo even if they played perfectly.

The buffed mancubus spawner fight is quite stressful because they spawn in such a fast and erratic pattern that you can easily get blocked by an unlucky spawn and die instantly. On my FDA I died about 3 times that way, this time I got luckier but still ate random fireballs. Once you can get a circle going around them you're okay but just trying to keep up with their spawns by killing them like in HMP is definitely not an option any more.

The plasma gun fight is similar, on my first attempt I died 4 times in a row where as soon as the viles spawned I would get targeted from both sides, and when I tried to move at all something random (possibly spectres because I play in software lighting and they're legit invisible in that room) would be blocking my back every time and I'd get instantly roasted. I think with this fight I'd just make one vile spawn a few seconds later than the other so the player at least gets a chance to see where they are and start to make a move before getting targeted on both sides. It's a fun fight though.

Everything after that was fine, although I kept up the survival mentality in the pillar room since I was super low on shells and rockets again and spent most of the time running around trying to punch stuff and save more ammo. I wanted to save all the cells to plasma the cyber but then I realised I could just ignore him and go get the BFG which was a lot easier and more efficient. The final 2 fights are still mostly just BFG and cleanup, though how in the hell you would do the first one on UV if you were unlucky enough to miss the early BFG is definitely beyond me.

Really fun experience overall, I think balance just needs loosening slightly in a couple places to keep RNG stuff from screwing the player. I wouldn't make any major changes.

 

edit: hehe, on a hunch just did iddt and finally found out you can literally get free plasma in the first room from a secret. That would definitely make the opening like 5x easier, but it's very punishing for someone who isn't a secret scrounger to miss that.

 

 

@BoxY Checked out the demo finally, and well played! Great to see you managed through it even with foreknowledge of the map. Dodging skills were on point.

I did wonder why you were killing the first couple enemies with a pistol - I've always used the shotguns in the beginning area and, by getting the SSG and distracting an Archvile or two with the Mancubus, I haven't had too much of an issue with ammo even without secrets at all. There's plenty of ways to take care of the double-vile situation however, and accommodating for all of them will be a challenge, for sure. And well done on the last room, too. I've been thinking of tuning those last two fights even more.

MAP02's general difficulty will be changed when I get the full WAD done and rearrange the maps. Can't thank you enough for giving them a try.

Congratulations...? :P

[KeaganDunn]

Updated these maps! https://doomshack.org/uploads/Bloodbath demo v2.zip

Kudos to @Clippy, @Biodegradable, and @BoxY for their playthroughs so far. I have:

 

- Nerfed MAP01, mainly reduced the monotony in most fights. It still isn't easy, but is more friendly to blind players and nonlinearity, as BoxY noted.

- Fixed resource management in lower difficulties in MAP02. Difficulty has also been changed.

- No jumping or crouching, by the way. (I forgot to do this in MAPINFO before uploading to Doomshack so...yeah, pls dont jump or cruch ok thx)

 

Tested with GZDoom 4.5, "Boom" compatibility, and GLBoom+. All good!

 

I've been doing my best with getting the full 6-map set done. Won't be too long.