A Boom-compatible Slaughter map:The Mucus Empire [Final Version]

[Nefelibeta]

IWAD: Doom II

Map Format: Boom

Ports Tested: Prboom+, Glboom+

Track Used: The Mucus Flow - B.P.R.D

Textures: Sunlust, UACUltra, Community Chest2

Difficulty Settings: Yes

Multiplayer Placement: No

No jumping&crouching

=========================================

Inspiration: Flotsam map 09&11, Community Chest map24

Playtesting : GarrettChan, liveincity

A fairly challenging slaughter map by me.

It could be a little difficult for beginners or somebody who prefer more relaxing gameplay, you can just lower the difficulty.

Have a good time!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/y79oc4a1c00w8i3/mucusempire.wad?dl=0

=========================================

[An unnecessary change log]

2021/2/6 -Fixed few bugs & Added a carefully hidden secret

2021/6/28 -Fixed lots of misalignment; Replace the BFG fight with a new one; Fixed otherstuff.

 

 

 

 

Edited April 29, 2022 by Nefelibeta
ey you can actually download now lmao

[PeceMan]

13 hours ago, Nefelibeta said:

A fairly challenging slaughter map

"Fairly Challenging"?????????

0mucus-1.rar

 

Here's a demo, at least of how far i got

 

I mean I know I'm shit at the game, but I was playing on Hurt me plenty, and i still couldn't do it. Do not watch unless you're mentally prepared to see me die repeatedly.

At the beginning you can see me being shit at the game, and i die a lot, but it doesn't really start to grind my gears until the first cyberdemon.

 

You know, I think this will be the wad that made me go "You know what? I don't like Slaughter Maps."

 

So at the end of the day, when it comes to gameplay, my opinion is probably best ignored on this map, but i have a couple other coments as well

 

 

Firstly, the map is honestly really beautifull. The music is great, and the detailing is really good as well. It's just a neat looking map. And in my demo you can sometimes see me stop and look at the architecture. I just really like the way this map looks.       Having said that, your mucus wall texture,

Spoiler

this one, is really ugly.

 

In other notes, there are multiple places where you can softlock yourself, especially if you're not jumping, and there is a small problem of inconsistency when it comes to damaging floors. I noticed those in my demo, as well.

[GarrettChan]

The exit sign looks like Chinese to me. Are those Chinese? :P

[Nefelibeta]

3 hours ago, GarrettChan said:

The exit sign looks like Chinese to me. Are those Chinese? :P

haha yes.

Those aren't my ideas actually, liveincity told me to do that.

 

btw sorry for misspelling your name.

[Nefelibeta]

5 hours ago, PeceMan said:

"Fairly Challenging"?????????

0mucus-1.rar

 

Here's a demo, at least of how far i got

 

I mean I know I'm shit at the game, but I was playing on Hurt me plenty, and i still couldn't do it. Do not watch unless you're mentally prepared to see me die repeatedly.

At the beginning you can see me being shit at the game, and i die a lot, but it doesn't really start to grind my gears until the first cyberdemon.

 

You know, I think this will be the wad that made me go "You know what? I don't like Slaughter Maps."

 

So at the end of the day, when it comes to gameplay, my opinion is probably best ignored on this map, but i have a couple other coments as well

 

 

Firstly, the map is honestly really beautifull. The music is great, and the detailing is really good as well. It's just a neat looking map. And in my demo you can sometimes see me stop and look at the architecture. I just really like the way this map looks.       Having said that, your mucus wall texture,

  Reveal hidden contents

this one, is really ugly.

 

In other notes, there are multiple places where you can softlock yourself, especially if you're not jumping, and there is a small problem of inconsistency when it comes to damaging floors. I noticed those in my demo, as well.

Maybe it's just because I'm not good at difficulty settings.

And could you tell me the places that you can get softlocked? To be honest, I didn't find them during my playtest.

[Pseudonaut]

Here's my UV playthrough attempt with saves. Very impressive map. It starts deceptively non-hard, and ramps up a little over time. That fight with the two archviles (shown at 27:20 in the video) is the first big difficulty increase, but then shit gets really real with the encounter at 30:50. This map is a bit beyond me, so I died a million times but kept trudging through it until the blue key fight, where I stopped. I could probably finish it, but I've had enough for a while. Most of my deaths were the result of bad strategies that I kept trying over and over again, as in the rev/vile/PE fight (shown at 1:03:50) where I initially tried to kill the archviles first and ignore the pain elementals. When I eventually switched to killing the pain elementals first, it went a lot more smoothly.

 

3 hours ago, Nefelibeta said:

Maybe it's just because I'm not good at difficulty settings.

 

I played a little of HMP after recording, up to and partially including the first cyberdemon area, and it's a pretty significant step down from UV, but maybe that's just because I had already developed strategies for the UV versions of those fights.

[Nefelibeta]

37 minutes ago, Pseudonaut said:

Here's my UV playthrough attempt with saves. Very impressive map. It starts deceptively non-hard, and ramps up a little over time. That fight with the two archviles (shown at 27:20 in the video) is the first big difficulty increase, but then shit gets really real with the encounter at 30:50. This map is a bit beyond me, so I died a million times but kept trudging through it until the blue key fight, where I stopped. I could probably finish it, but I've had enough for a while. Most of my deaths were the result of bad strategies that I kept trying over and over again, as in the rev/vile/PE fight (shown at 1:03:50) where I initially tried to kill the archviles first and ignore the pain elementals. When I eventually switched to killing the pain elementals first, it went a lot more smoothly.

 

 

I played a little of HMP after recording, up to and partially including the first cyberdemon area, and it's a pretty significant step down from UV, but maybe that's just because I had already developed strategies for the UV versions of those fights.

Very impressive playthrough!

 

btw about that hom at 13:58, I think it's because a linedef is placed in that sector by accident, maybe I'll fix it if I have time.

[LadyMistDragon]

I'm not sure if you've had the chance to fix anything, but I decided a Mucus Flow homage was worth a playthrough(it was!!), so I'll just go over a couple of things.

 

First, in the chasm with the torch bridge leading to the castle, there are a few spots where it's possible to fall into certain sections of the hilly areas and have no way to get out. Might want to check the detailing there.

 

Second, ITYTD should probably be more akin to something like Grand Bleu or Ou Est la Berger from 180 Minutes Pour Vivre in the sense of the encounters generally feeling like little more than romps, albeit adjusted for the particular design of your map. 1225 enemies is still quite an intimidating number and I'm playing on Hurt Me Plenty, so it's not like I can't handle more, but it's worth keeping in mind.

 

I might point out more issues as I play because I'm not really playing this in a single session due to various megawads taking up my time, but I thought you might like to know if you decide to put this on idgames.

 

You might have a couple of boxes of shells in the green key arena to cut down the risk of blowing oneself up.

The fight with the invulnerbility and Arch-viles is made needlessly aggravating when you telefrag when you're standing in the corners just a split second too long. I think this is intended but most people get annoyed by shit like this. I think youi just want players to feel like they're not entirely safe, but that's quite a bullshit move.

 

If anyone makes it to the last fight, I could see some bitching about there being too much cells or something, but honestly, look at the space. It's still a massive fight no matter how you look at it, but strategy does kind of break down at a certain point. At the end of a map like this, I feel gratified.

Edited March 26, 2021 by LadyMistDragon

[Arbys550]

I'm about to play it, but one thing I will say is that in the text file you should say "boom-compatible" in the "advanced engine needed" instead of "Vanilla Doom" if it's a boom project.

 

Edit: DNF, my thoughts below:

 

Bugs:

Spoiler

There are softlocks everywhere. Examples include falling between the train and the platform, falling into a crevace outside the main building entrance, and going counter-clockwise around the first square arena and falling into a monster pit.

 

There are a lot of misalignments inside.

 

You can wake up monsters in monster pits before they raise up in the first square fight and have them kill each other.

 

Subjective Thoughts:

Spoiler

It started off very mildly. The fights in this part I think were a little too flat. I also think a backpack could have been given out here because there were often boxes of shells lying everywhere.

 

My biggest complaint about this map are egregious blocking lines that make combat extremely awkward. In the first square arena I had death after death because I got hung up on torches on top of walls or on pillars that grabbed me when I brushed them. There are also some weird impassable lines here that killed me because I tried to go to areas to avoid rockets only to get caught on them. One of the biggest instances of this was an L-shaped hallway where barons and two archviles come out, shortly after the blue door. This part has weird invisible lines that are totally unfair in my opinion and caused some deaths.

 

The fight for the green key started off nice but I think got way too luck-based. I don't know how anyone is supposed to come up with a reliable strategy to get pased the revanant+cyber wave.

 

The last straw for me was the next fight with the archviles and invuln which I thought was just bullshit.

 

Edited March 26, 2021 by Arbys550

[Blip]

The map looks great, but I think there's a point where putting two extremely annoying pain elementals in every fight is too much. The two cyberdemon fight with the zombiemen and revenants is stupidly awkward because of the torches blocking you randomly when trying to clean up. And then the fights with all the hell knights and revenants appearing out of nowhere could maybe have the trigger line a bit further to avoid getting instantly hit by a revenant melee attack (at least the ones before the last switch for the blue key).

 

I was done by the four barons and two archviles because the frustation factor was through the roof by that point (mostly because of the pain elementals).

[Nefelibeta]

On 3/26/2021 at 10:16 AM, LadyMistDragon said:

I'm not sure if you've had the chance to fix anything, but I decided a Mucus Flow homage was worth a playthrough(it was!!), so I'll just go over a couple of things.

 

First, in the chasm with the torch bridge leading to the castle, there are a few spots where it's possible to fall into certain sections of the hilly areas and have no way to get out. Might want to check the detailing there.

 

Second, ITYTD should probably be more akin to something like Grand Bleu or Ou Est la Berger from 180 Minutes Pour Vivre in the sense of the encounters generally feeling like little more than romps, albeit adjusted for the particular design of your map. 1225 enemies is still quite an intimidating number and I'm playing on Hurt Me Plenty, so it's not like I can't handle more, but it's worth keeping in mind.

 

I might point out more issues as I play because I'm not really playing this in a single session due to various megawads taking up my time, but I thought you might like to know if you decide to put this on idgames.

 

You might have a couple of boxes of shells in the green key arena to cut down the risk of blowing oneself up.

The fight with the invulnerbility and Arch-viles is made needlessly aggravating when you telefrag when you're standing in the corners just a split second too long. I think this is intended but most people get annoyed by shit like this. I think youi just want players to feel like they're not entirely safe, but that's quite a bullshit move.

 

If anyone makes it to the last fight, I could see some bitching about there being too much cells or something, but honestly, look at the space. It's still a massive fight no matter how you look at it, but strategy does kind of break down at a certain point. At the end of a map like this, I feel gratified.

 

On 3/26/2021 at 11:00 AM, Arbys550 said:

I'm about to play it, but one thing I will say is that in the text file you should say "boom-compatible" in the "advanced engine needed" instead of "Vanilla Doom" if it's a boom project.

 

Edit: DNF, my thoughts below:

 

Bugs:

  Reveal hidden contents

There are softlocks everywhere. Examples include falling between the train and the platform, falling into a crevace outside the main building entrance, and going counter-clockwise around the first square arena and falling into a monster pit.

 

There are a lot of misalignments inside.

 

You can wake up monsters in monster pits before they raise up in the first square fight and have them kill each other.

 

Subjective Thoughts:

  Hide contents

It started off very mildly. The fights in this part I think were a little too flat. I also think a backpack could have been given out here because there were often boxes of shells lying everywhere.

 

My biggest complaint about this map are egregious blocking lines that make combat extremely awkward. In the first square arena I had death after death because I got hung up on torches on top of walls or on pillars that grabbed me when I brushed them. There are also some weird impassable lines here that killed me because I tried to go to areas to avoid rockets only to get caught on them. One of the biggest instances of this was an L-shaped hallway where barons and two archviles come out, shortly after the blue door. This part has weird invisible lines that are totally unfair in my opinion and caused some deaths.

 

The fight for the green key started off nice but I think got way too luck-based. I don't know how anyone is supposed to come up with a reliable strategy to get pased the revanant+cyber wave.

 

The last straw for me was the next fight with the archviles and invuln which I thought was just bullshit.

 

 

Sorry for the late reply.

 

So I might had come up with some ideas to fix those 2 RNG-based fights.

With the green key fight, I replaced some revs with HKs, and divided the enemies(revs and HKs) into 2 waves so the player won't get instantly surrounded and killed.

The one with archies and invuln, I deleted some archies and divided them into 2 waves(yet again), in that way the player can get enough time to gather the archies together and make those toxic pillars actually more useful.(Tested and it went pretty smoothly)

 

Added a backpack in the beginning area. I'd also like to know if the last fight(the one with archies and PEs) is too overwhelming and RNG-based.Just played through the map and died plenty of times there.(forgive me for spamming archies)

 

Also, about the blocking line problems you mentioned, I really couldn't find them.Could you point out where are they so that I can fix them?

[Arbys550]

Here:

 

I died once because I tried to hide by hugging the pillars but was stopped by the blocking lines. But that's not as big of a deal as this:

There's a line 242 special here that creates an invisible wall but the position the sector is placed is very misleading because I chose to bring the archviles and barons into this room to deal with them. I was blocked when I tried to run around them.

 

 

 

[LadyMistDragon]

I died probably 45 times in the last area before reaching the other end of the room, but I suck so idk. Decreasing the enemy density would be nice, but I think the RNG issue would still remain. I was playing on HMP though, so I dunno if the difference is there are more Cyberdemons and Arch-viles which teleport in later, after pushing the corresponsing switches.

[Nefelibeta]

On 3/30/2021 at 12:49 AM, Arbys550 said:

Here:

 

I died once because I tried to hide by hugging the pillars but was stopped by the blocking lines. But that's not as big of a deal as this:

There's a line 242 special here that creates an invisible wall but the position the sector is placed is very misleading because I chose to bring the archviles and barons into this room to deal with them. I was blocked when I tried to run around them.

 

 

 

 

On 3/30/2021 at 10:22 AM, LadyMistDragon said:

I died probably 45 times in the last area before reaching the other end of the room, but I suck so idk. Decreasing the enemy density would be nice, but I think the RNG issue would still remain. I was playing on HMP though, so I dunno if the difference is there are more Cyberdemons and Arch-viles which teleport in later, after pushing the corresponsing switches.

 

Here is a fixed version.

 

The 2 broken fights are fixed(pretty much), and decreased the difficulty for ITYTD.

mucusempire.zip

[Jacek Bourne]

What map genre is it? If it’s slaughter/ combat puzzles then I may record blind demo with saves.

[Nefelibeta]

5 hours ago, Jacek Bourne said:

What map genre is it? If it’s slaughter/ combat puzzles then I may record blind demo with saves.

Yes, it is.

[Nefelibeta]

Well, here's the final version (probably)

[shit, forgot to fix some problems, here is the latest one]

[Annnnnnd I forgot to build nodes, freaking fantastic]

[Annnnnnd I just realized some fights are bs, here is a new one.]

mucusempire.zip

Edited June 28, 2021 by Nefelibeta

[Mordeth]

The blockmap lump of MAP01 seems to be missing?

[NuMetalManiak]

The pop-up monsters in the blue-key chamber are a big concern for me since they show up when I'm real close, I haven't checked out the rest yet though.

[Nefelibeta]

On 8/3/2021 at 9:06 PM, Mordeth said:

The blockmap lump of MAP01 seems to be missing?

I'm not very sure, the latest version seems to work fine in my glboom+.

[Vile]

This was a great map and I'm glad I heard about it through the memorable maps thread, thank you for making it!

[Nefelibeta]

8 hours ago, Vile said:

This was a great map and I'm glad I heard about it through the memorable maps thread, thank you for making it!

Well if it satisfies you, I'm really happy to hear it!