(Boom) - Land of the Imps

[Valhen]

Hey everyone,

This is a small tech base themed level for Doom II. It's Boom compatible, so jumping and crouching are not allowed. Tested with PrBoom+ (-Complevel 9) and Zandronum. Any feedback, as always, is appreciated.

 

Here are some screenshots:

Spoiler

Download link:

LOTI.zip

 

Previous versions:
 

Spoiler

 

Older version:

LOTI.zip

Oldest version:

LOTI.zip

 

 

Credits:

- Dark Imp sprites from Skulltag (skulltag_data.pk3)

- Textures from 32in24-15_tex_v2.wad

- Music from the game "Alien Sky" by KraiSoft Entertainment

- CWILV00 created using Doom Writer

 

Edited April 18, 2021 by Valhen
Added Doom Writer credit -Updated the link -New surprise version!

[Plusw]

Quite a fun map! I played on UV and had a pretty good time. The looping progression was satisfying and the combat was cramped but not stifling. The dark imp does a lot of work here, being a monster that goes down relatively easily but challenging your space more than a standard imp, making it possible to balance available resources around low/mid tiers without simply upping the monster count or starving the player too much to deal with healthier monsters. I also appreciate the little bits of flavor that add a nice sense of place to an otherwise abstract map (Those lava spouts turning on and acting as archvile cover are an especially good touch.)

 

My only major complaint is that some of the ambushes were a little mean, not giving very much time to asses the situation before you were as good as dead.

[Biodegradable]

Look out, kids, Valhen's got a mean-streak. You made mince-meat out of me over a dozen times, mate. Especially that one room, I won't spoil it, but watch my vid and you'll know which bit gave me the most trouble haha. This a wonderfully-crafted techbase filled to the brim with vicious nasty traps, but you balance your cruelty very well with your pickups. At no point did I think anything was stupidly mean or downright unfair, though I will agree with Plusw that it does rely probably a little too heavily on attrition/trial by error, but it's not to the point of making the map unenjoyable. Really good innings here, dude. Excellent work.

 

 

[Valhen]

Glad you both enjoyed it! I might later go and try to balance some rooms a bit more so that they aren't too trial and error-ish.

Edited March 22, 2021 by Valhen

[Valhen]

Quick update: Balanced out the room from screenshot 3 so that it is more fair. Unfortunately, while testing the room, I found what seems to be an unfixable bug, where if you stand under the lavafalls after flipping the switch you can actually survive and get an ugly HOM effect. If anybody has a solution for it, please tell me.

Edited February 19, 2021 by Valhen

[LVENdead]

I've got a video uploading and some thoughts to come, but I wanted to pop in early to say I absolutely loved this map. I don't really know how to be succinct about it, so I'll save specifics for my writeup but man, it's just fantastic.

[ElPadrecitoCholo]

Land of Imps

 

Ultra-Violence || Zandronum || Vanilla

 

Status:

-Deaths → 8 (3 by dark imps; 2 by Hell Knight; 1 by Revenant; 2 by Cyberdemon [The two bastards])

-Saves → 2

 

 

Really good map, really challenging, but that... it has certain things that make it somewhat uncomfortable to play, first of all, in the architecture design, some things are very well done, for example the walls of some of the areas , the way the traps are designed in each of the rooms, and also the design of the great backyard that that place had, although... to be frank, not everything has really been wonderful here, most of the rooms they were closed space, somewhat limited in mobility over the fighting, especially the room with the trap of the Dark Imps and the Hell Knight, abusing the Archvile is also something that does not make it very enjoyable in the games, because each a certain place you come across one of these, as soon as you go through half a map and you already have one in front of you, along with some Revenants, which is already a really classic combo to see on maps, and to end my inconveniences, I can say that the final scene It was not the best thing I expected to see from the map, tremendous closed space and with drawbacks, and I know you could tell me that you could have done worse, changing the Hell Knight for the Barons of Hell, and I understand, it would have been a lot worse that, but here I only say for the space nothing more. Anyway, after expressing my brief complaints, the rest was good, great fights and entertainment wherever you can see it, so what a great job you have done here, but I hope in future maps you get to take into account the things that I have done. said, although most likely you will not take them into account.

 

PD: The secrets here were really difficult to find, almost impossible, fixes are needed in this section please, that using "idclip" to search for them is not really comfortable.

Edited February 20, 2021 by ElPadrecitoCholo

[Valhen]

16 minutes ago, ElPadrecitoCholo said:

Really good map, really challenging, but that... it has certain things that make it somewhat uncomfortable to play, first of all, in the architecture design, some things are very well done, for example the walls of some of the areas , the way the traps are designed in each of the rooms, and also the design of the great backyard that that place had, although... to be frank, not everything has really been wonderful here, most of the rooms they were closed space, somewhat limited in mobility over the fighting, especially the room with the trap of the Dark Imps and the Hell Knight, abusing the Archvile is also something that does not make it very enjoyable in the games, because each a certain place you come across one of these, as soon as you go through half a map and you already have one in front of you, along with some Revenants, which is already a really classic combo to see on maps, and to end my inconveniences, I can say that the final scene It was not the best thing I expected to see from the map, tremendous closed space and with drawbacks, and I know you could tell me that you could have done worse, changing the Hell Knight for the Barons of Hell, and I understand, it would have been a lot worse that, but here I only say for the space nothing more. Anyway, after expressing my brief complaints, the rest was good, great fights and entertainment wherever you can see it, so what a great job you have done here, but I hope in future maps you get to take into account the things that I have done. said, although most likely you will not take them into account.

 

 

PD: The secrets here were really difficult to find, almost impossible, fixes are needed in this section please, that using "idclip" to search for them is not really comfortable.

Thanks for playing! I appreciate your feedback. The combat in my maps is something that I'm trying to get the hang of, so I will totally consider your points for future wads. I'll also try and make the secrets more easy to find. The reason they are so hidden is because in my last map, they were pretty easy to find. I will try to balance them a bit.

Edited February 20, 2021 by Valhen

[LVENdead]

Here's my video playthrough with commentary

 

 

As I previously stated, holy shit this map is fantastic. I mean, I've been playing a lot of Doom lately and this map really stands out. An intense ride that has great pacing and some spectacular fights. I would almost dare to say that it suffers from "Everything's a trap"-itis as I'm apparently starting to call it, but the way that each of the traps plays out keeps it from really being a detracting factor at all. I never felt like any of the traps was total bullshit unfair, and generally it was my mistake (and I made QUITE a few in this playthrough, let's chalk it up to being the end of a long week and say nothing further about it!) when I died. You did a good job of anticipating the player without making the mistake of being overly heavyhanded with "countering" every single move the player might make. 

 

The way the map transforms constantly is also super cool. I noted some very adept Boom "scripting" you employed that was excellent as well. The map just felt like this active, responsive thing, as if the level itself were struggling against the player as much as the monsters within it were. That's the kind of thing that defines top-tier Doom in my opinion. Between the level design and the combat design, I loved how important positioning/footwork ends up being, and how you have to be aggressive at times but not reckless. This map punishes poor decision making

 

With everything that's been said, I have to say that the visuals almost fade into the background - but I don't mean this in a negative way at all. I appreciate that you've gone for this quaint classic-esque style that doesn't need to be this modern art project, and so it's never really distracting. Nothing about it is an eye sore in any way, and it is actually pretty visually interesting; it's just not trying hard to be flashy which I appreciate, even though I can tell you went to a lot of effort on the visuals all the same.

 

I also need to take a second to point out the midi. The midi is a prime choice here, it's just so good! 

 

Overall, this map is one of my favorites that I've played in recent memory. Outstanding work.

 

[Valhen]

@LVENdead Thanks for playing! I finally got a Youtube account, so I left a full detailed answer in the video.

Edited February 20, 2021 by Valhen

[ElPadrecitoCholo]

8 hours ago, Valhen said:

Thanks for playing! I appreciate your feedback. The combat in my maps is something that I'm trying to get the hang of, so I will totally consider your points for future wads. I'll also try and make the secrets more easy to find. The reason they are so hidden is because in my last map, they were pretty easy to find. I will try to balance them a bit.

 

First of all, thank you there for considering the things I have written in my post, and second, it is ironic what happened with the secrets, but hey, thank you there again for the trouble.

[TheGreenZap]

I played this because of LVENdead's video and I think it's a very fun map. The tight quarters does get a little cramped and I could have used some health in the room where all of the lava pillars come down. However, I liked the combat and I love the look of the map. The way the different areas are designed looks really nice and I like the hall with the red light and I like the room that has the orange lights flowing around the switch. Very cool stuff. The outside area with the green looks great as well. I'm actually a tech based map fan, so I love this environment.

 

 

Edited February 21, 2021 by TheGreenZap

[Suitepee]

https://youtu.be/Gsiur1TMl0k

 

My playthrough starts at 50:10. This was a surprisingly good map!