RAMP - Rabbit's All-Comers Mapping project [DONE!!]

[leodoom85]

Looks like I'll download the update and see if it's compatible with the old version in terms of saves...after all, I left a save in the hub map.

Edited August 16, 2021 by leodoom85

[Bryan T]

3 hours ago, leodoom85 said:

Looks like I'll download the update and see if it's compatible with the old version in terms of saves...after all, I left a save in the hub map.

The hub was changed so it won't work. What worked for me was loading the last level I played and then warping to the hud.

[Ultima_]

A bit late to the party as usual but it was good fun to work on the map for this project (although I had the majority of it done before RAMP was ever announced due to it being my first complete map that wasn’t just messing in the editor)! I wish I could have done more and been more active as the project developed, but unfortunately my schedule doesn’t often work well with me being able to do things I want to right now. Maybe next time I’ll actually release a more impressive and expansive map ;)

 

Congrats to everyone involved in RAMP and thank you @DavidN for making a project like this reality. I cannot wait to see what comes from more of those involved in the future!

[Pistoolkip]

We hop into some random RAMP maps ironman style: We play at UV. No saves, no cheats, and we play a map until we beat it or die trying. 

First up:
Sand Trap by @Rook
Simply Dead by @SLOTH MARINE (CB)
Ascent by MICUU 
 

 

[Rook]

Thanks for kicking off with "Sand Trap" - glad you enjoyed the map!

[Silhouette 03]

I wanted to say something earlier, but since my internet connection was a bit faulty, I couldn't at the time. So I'll leave this small anecdote here.

 

RAMP helped me when I was feeling a bit hopeless in terms of my mapping ability, as well as some bad mapper's block. I'm still very much a beginner, and I'm still struggling to find my place in the community, as well as hone my skills to a point where I can create maps that I'm fully sure people will enjoy, and more importantly, I am fully satisfied with. RAMP also helped me to overcome my mapper's block and create something that is special to me, at least. I know that my map isn't close to being what one would call one of the best maps in the project, considering the multitude of talented mappers (with far more experience than myself) who contributed to this behemoth project.

 

So I'll close off by saying thank you to @DavidN, who went above and beyond when it came to setting up and organizing this project, @Fiendish for taking the time to playtest my map and @Destr3456 for recommending I map for the project. I look forward to mapping for a similar ( not the same scale, obviously) project again in the future.

Edited August 25, 2021 by Silent Wolf

[Pistoolkip]

Do or die time, with more Random RAMP maps!

Today we hop randomly into:

Hell Hah by @mxbobbie49
Aztek by @CBM
Party Crasher by @Fiendish
Vampire Castle by Gilboron 
 

 

Edited September 2, 2021 by Pistoolkip

[CBM]

Thanks for the kind words and the advice :-)

Texturing and setting up encounters are the two things I struggle most with when mapping but I hope to learn and become better

 

...

 

EDIT

 

btw... the monsters that spawn are very different depending on the chosen difficulty

 

code snippet... relevant for aztek and monstercamp

	if (GameSkill() == SKILL_VERY_EASY) //“I'm Too Young to Die” in Doom.
	{
      MinMonsterType = T_ZOMBIE; //4
      MaxMonsterType = T_IMP; //5
	}
	else if (GameSkill() == SKILL_EASY) //“Hey, Not Too Rough" in Doom.
	{
      MinMonsterType = T_SHOTGUY; // 1
	  MaxMonsterType = T_CHAINGUY; // 2
	}
	else if (GameSkill() == SKILL_NORMAL) //“Hurt Me Plenty” in Doom.
	{
      MinMonsterType = T_STEALTHCHAINGUY; // 120
	  MaxMonsterType = T_STEALTHIMP; // 122
	}
	else if (GameSkill() == SKILL_HARD) //“Ultra-Violence” in Doom.
	{
      MinMonsterType = T_CACODEMON; // 19
	  MaxMonsterType = T_REVENANT; // 20
	}
	else if (GameSkill() == SKILL_VERY_HARD) // “Nightmare!” in Doom.
	{
      MinMonsterType = T_STEALTHMANCUBUS; // 123
	  MaxMonsterType = T_STEALTHREVENANT; // 124
	}

 

Edited August 23, 2021 by CBM

[Fiendish]

@Silent Wolf Glad to be able to help out! I'd love to see more maps from you in the future, especially if they're Plutonia-like as well!

 

@Pistoolkip Hey, thanks for checking out my map :-) you missed the fun stuff, but I'd probably have died around where you did too if I were playing it blind on UV haha. 

 

 

[Pistoolkip]

Just now, Fiendish said:

@Silent Wolf Glad to be able to help out! I'd love to see more maps from you in the future, especially if they're Plutonia-like as well!

 

@Pistoolkip Hey, thanks for checking out my map :-) you missed the fun stuff, but I'd probably have died around where you did too if I were playing it blind on UV haha. 

 

 

yeah, that's them breaks of playing on UV blind at ironman. The difficulty between maps is very different, and I was kind of surprised to get as far as I did, then die to a stupid fireball. It does let me show more maps though.

 

 

35 minutes ago, CBM said:

Thanks for the kind words and the advice :-)

Texturing and setting up encounters are the two things I struggle most with when mapping but I hope to learn and become better

You're welcome! Like I said in the video: You have a lot of technical know-how, and I hope you can grow your skills in terms of gameplay.

[CBM]

8 minutes ago, Pistoolkip said:

yeah, that's them breaks of playing on UV blind at ironman. The difficulty between maps is very different, and I was kind of surprised to get as far as I did, then die to a stupid fireball. It does let me show more maps though.

 

 

You're welcome! Like I said in the video: You have a lot of technical know-how, and I hope you can grow your skills in terms of gameplay.

I will try to implement your advice in my upcoming maps.

 

I was thinking about "monster closets" that open when crossing a line and surrounds the player...

but I would love a list of "tricks" to create interesting encounters

 

Any way you could elaborate on some of them?

 

for example...

do you have a link to a tier list of monsters and how you would mix them together at the various difficulty levels?

do you have links or advice on how to setup good monster encounters?

do you have links or advice on how to select textures?

or anything else doom level creating related tutorial you can think of...

Edited August 23, 2021 by CBM

[Pistoolkip]

5 minutes ago, CBM said:

I will try to implement your advice in my upcoming maps.

 

I was thinking about "monster closets" that open when crossing a line and surrounds the player...

but I would love a list of "tricks" to create interesting encounters

 

Any way you could elaborate on some of them?

 

for example...

do you have a link to a tier list of monsters and how you would mix them together at the various difficulty levels?

do you have links or advice on how to setup good monster encounters?

do you have links or advice on how to select textures?

or anything else doom level creating related tutorial you can think of...

Not a lot, but I might be making one in the future. Though there are probably some tutorials in that part of the forum.

But generally:

 

• Doom has a unique blend of three types of monsters: Hitscanners, projectile throwers, and melee only monsters. Players want to use cover against hitscanners, want to keep moving to avoid projectiles, and need to back-off melee monsters. Try mixing these kinds of monsters.
• In a combat arena, make a mix between 'up' and 'down' monsters. Almost all monsters will rush towards the player. But by putting monsters on platforms (or in cages) the player needs to come to them. These are up monsters. Down monsters are on (near) equal level and will charge or block the player. Pinkies, Lost Souls, and Caco's are always down monsters. Imps, Revenants, and Hell Knights/Barons work both as up and down monsters. Chaingunners, Arachnotrons, Mancubi and Archviles work best as up monsters (though Archviles can also resurrect when they are down and behind the pack)
• Try to create rooms with several levels, or interlocking rooms with different levels. Give the player room to move, but also items to grab and specific monsters to target in the back, on platforms, or other hard to reach places. This promotes the player needing to enter the room rather than stay in the door and shoot. 
• Of course, locking a player in with closing doors, lowering platforms, or teleporters also force the player to enter a closed combat arena. Just don't overdo it.
• Think of action movies when designing a level: go from intense combat to quiet moments where the player is exploring, finding useful items, and traversing to the next room, al the while having a break from the intense combat.
  
  
  I hope these help!

 

[Fiendish]

24 minutes ago, CBM said:

I will try to implement your advice in my upcoming maps.

 

I was thinking about "monster closets" that open when crossing a line and surrounds the player...

but I would love a list of "tricks" to create interesting encounters

 

Any way you could elaborate on some of them?

 

for example...

do you have a link to a tier list of monsters and how you would mix them together at the various difficulty levels?

do you have links or advice on how to setup good monster encounters?

do you have links or advice on how to select textures?

or anything else doom level creating related tutorial you can think of...

 

I don't know of any tutorials that cover these questions exactly. Regarding your second question, I'm still learning combat encounter design myself, but here is what I've found has worked for me thus far:

 

Spoiler

- Always playtest and tweak your combat frequently. If it's not very fun to you, change it! 

- In designing an encounter, first ask yourself what you want the encounter to achieve. Most fun Doom combat encounters pose some real threat to the player. Even if they lean more toward power-fantasy, the thrill of overcoming combat encounters is amplified with a greater threat. Sometimes, you just want to scare the player to build tension or atmosphere, or give them a quick warmup, but I think these types of encounters should be used less often (unless you're going for a horror type of map, in which case go wild with tension-builders).

- Assuming that the encounter is meant to pose a real threat to the player, ask yourself how you want the player to overcome that threat. Do you want the player to have to prioritize targets? To move or use the terrain in a certain way? To line up monsters to get them to infight? To be very efficient with shots and damage monsters quickly? To lure some enemies away from others to divide and conquer? Or something else? Having to overcome an encounter with strategy amplifies the thrill of winning and/or makes the player feel smart. Once you've answered this question for yourself, add in monsters that you think will create the right kind of threat, test it out, and modify as much as needed until you get the desired result.

- Think about how you want the player to move, and position your monsters in a way to facilitate that. It's generally not fun in Doom to defeat an encounter by standing in one spot (camping) and shooting everything down from there. This includes popping in and out behind one piece of cover or a doorway. Less bad, but still bland, is being able to win by circle-strafing and holding down the fire button. Generally, having monsters threaten the player from multiple angles goes a long way toward preventing standing in one spot. Another method is to add sniping enemies (usually on an elevated platform) with lines of sight to camping spots. All of the Doom II monsters (except the pain elemental), cyberdemons, and spider masterminds are very effective snipers at the right distance. Avoiding mindless circle-strafing can usually be done by contouring the playable area or positioning obstacles in the right way. But hitscanners and arch-viles can also help to prevent circle-strafing, as they encourage the player to back off and seek cover. Fun combat, I think, is combat in which you have to constantly keep an eye on enemy locations and reposition yourself accordingly.

- Allowing monster infighting can often make for good fun, but it isn't very fun if the monsters get a big infight going without any effort on the player's part. To avoid this, an encounter should start in a way that monsters of different types won't be likely to hit each other right off the bat. It all comes down to positioning: for example, of you have hell knights and revenants together in an encounter, have them attack the player from different angles rather than bunching them together in one mass.

- Play well-regarded Doom maps with an eye toward how the mappers have set up their combat (for example, maps by Ribbiks or Skillsaw.)  

 

I would also highly recommend @Doomkid's video, linked below, if you haven't already seen it; it helped me a lot when I first got started mapping.

 

Spoiler

 

 

[CBM]

@fiendish

 

"In designing an encounter, first ask yourself what you want the encounter to achieve. Most fun Doom combat encounters pose some real threat to the player. Even if they lean more toward power-fantasy, the thrill of overcoming combat encounters is amplified with a greater threat. Sometimes, you just want to scare the player to build tension or atmosphere, or give them a quick warmup, but I think these types of encounters should be used less often (unless you're going for a horror type of map, in which case go wild with tension-builders)."

 

what you want the encounter to achieve

that right there... what is an encounter supposed to achieve, what are the options and how would each option be implemented?

 

Edited August 23, 2021 by CBM

[Fiendish]

1 hour ago, CBM said:

what you want the encounter to achieve

that right there... what is an encounter supposed to achieve, what are the options and how would each option be implemented?

 

That's a good question! Here are a few possibilities: 

 - Threat - this could come in the form of anything from a sealed-off arena battle, to a devious ambush, to a stretch of incidental combat spread out over a gauntlet of some kind. But generally, this is the meat-and-potatoes of Doom maps. These are encounters that are meant to pose a real chance of the player dying as a result of monsters (either by monster attacks, or from environmental hazards while fleeing from said attacks, or taking rocket splash damage when trying to rocket said monsters). You can kind of think of a map like a story. Just like a story, you've got to have conflicts of some kind, and resolutions to those conflicts. These encounters are a kind of analog to a conflict in a story. And just like a story, you usually want to have a climax close to the end of the map -- this should usually take the form of a challenging threat-type encounter near the end of the map.

- Tension-builders - seem very threatening when they appear, meant to scare the player, but are not overcome with any kind of drawn out fire from the player. You might have an arch-vile pop up momentarily, only to teleport off somewhere else a moment later, for example, leaving the player in a state of unease knowing there's an arch-vile crawling about somewhere.

- Flee - Pose a lethal threat to the player, but cannot be dealt with by force. For example, you might have a cyberdemon harass the player as the player tries to traverse a hallway, but the player lacks the means to kill the cyberdemon at that point in the map (and then later in the map eventually gets to kill it). Best combined with low-tier monsters that get in the way that the player does have to kill. 

- Warm-up - threaten to damage the player, but unlikely to kill the player. Often included at the beginning of a map and usually are composed of low-tier enemies.

- Reward - does not pose much of a threat, but is satisfying to dispose of. Usually consists of bunched up hordes of low-tier enemies while the player possesses a BFG, rocket launcher, or super shotgun (or the enemies are grouped around lots of explosive barrels). These can be nice to place after a tough Threat-type encounter, to let the player blow off some steam. 

- Obstacle - not really a kind of encounter by themselves, usually, but can pair with other encounters to prevent the player from skipping something. Enemies with wide hitboxes are good for this (such as pinkies, cacos, arachnotrons, mancubi, spider masterminds). Barons and hell knights are also good for blocking off the player where you don't want them to be able to go immediately.

 

There are probably others as well!

 

How exactly you mix these really depends on the kind of map you want to create. Want to make a challenge/combat-puzzle map? Create a series of Threat-encounters with not much else. Want to create a horror map? Add a healthy dose of Tension-builders and Flee encounters. Want to create a power-fantasy map? Add lots of Reward encounters.

 

Hope this helps! 

Edited August 23, 2021 by Fiendish

[CBM]

@fiendish

thanks its very helpful

 

but

I want to be able to scale depending on the difficulty setting 

 

also

 

cant a map have both horror, power fantasy, challenge, combat and puzzle ... just in different sections?

 

[Fiendish]

Just now, CBM said:

@fiendish

thanks its very helpful

 

but

I want to be able to scale depending on the difficulty setting 

 

also

 

cant a map have both horror, power fantasy, challenge, combat and puzzle ... just in different sections?

 

All of the types of encounters I mentioned can be scaled up or down in difficulty (some more than others -- Rewards for example can pretty much stay the same across all difficulty settings). Scaling up or down in difficulty pretty much is just a matter of having a weaker threat on lower difficulties and more resources (mainly more health) on lower difficulties as well. Doomkid's video gives some good advice on how to scale things for different difficulties, numbers-wise.

 

And you can definitely make maps that have elements of horror, power-fantasy, and challenge! Those are just the extremes, but there's a wide spectrum in between that can involve elements of each. You can even mix types of encounters together. For example, I'm working on a map that mixes Flee with Reward to create a combined feeling of fear and pleasure, as you destroy hordes of zombies in order to flee from a cyberdemon. There's also adventure maps, of course, which can include any and all of the types of encounters. It's more just, the greater proportion of a certain type of encounter you include, the more it takes on a certain feel.

[hakros]

Hi, awesome project, thanks for share it !
I'll included it on my app Hakros Doom Launcher at next release.
https://hakros.itch.io/hakros-doom-launcher

[Hayden49]

14 hours ago, Pistoolkip said:

Do or die time, with more Random RAMP maps!

Today we hop randomly into:

Hell Hah by @mxbobbie49
Aztek by @CBM
Party Crasher by @Fiendish
Vampire Castle by Gilboron 
 

 

 

The way to get out of the start of Hell Hah is stand in the indent in the wall and shoot the FIREBLU in the wall. Thanks for at least trying it out!

[AllSlayer]

Awesome stuff mate!

[Pistoolkip]

1 hour ago, mxbobbie49 said:

 

The way to get out of the start of Hell Hah is stand in the indent in the wall and shoot the FIREBLU in the wall. Thanks for at least trying it out!

 

I just checked it out again, and I think it's far too convoluted. Even knowing this I still needed 4 or 5 shots with the pistol to even hit the trigger. If you want a shootable switch, use an actual switch texture, like the eye or gargoyle.
Make it obvious to the player early that shootable switches are an intricate part of the map, rather than something hidden. I also don't think it adds much to the map. Why not use a regular S1 switch? Generally shootable switches are reserved for secrets, or needing the wake-up a bunch of monsters that teleport in. 

BTW, I died in the first big trap while running back to the stairs (that had disappeared) and was gunned down by the two sergeants that came out of the closet. On my second attempt I died in the starting room to the chaingunners. The map seems very tough and doesn't give you any weapons beyond the shotgun. 

I hope this helps with your future wadding!

[Guilhem Saint-Gaudin]

Felicitations !

[princetontiger]

Looks fun... how many maps are in the wad?

[Worriedidiot]

4 minutes ago, princetontiger said:

Looks fun... how many maps are in the wad?

There's only 200 maps.

[Pistoolkip]

Random RAMP Maps part 3!
Still played on Ironman and UV, so we don't get to finish all the maps... again. But at least that means we get to see more maps!This is the last one for a while, since I'll be starting a different WAD tomorrow.

Maplist
A Baleful Heart by @Death Bear

Teeny Little Base by @DavidN

Derpy Doors of Despair by @QuotePilgrim

Cell Block Hell by @Blue Phoenix

Their Torment Ascendeth by @Impboy4

 

 

 

Edited August 24, 2021 by Pistoolkip

[Impboy4]

1 hour ago, Pistoolkip said:

Their Torment Ascendeth by @IMP BOY

Wrong username - I am the creator
One word, the b is lowercase, and the 4 at the end.

Also, the chainsaw was put on the map for a reason - to save ammo.

Edited August 24, 2021 by Impboy4

[Mr.Rattlebones]

Im am very grateful to have been apart of this project, Special thanks to David aswell as the rest of the RAMP community. :)

[Emperor S P O O N]

Thought I might post this here to promote the thread, and because I'm curious as to what you guys thought of my maps...
MAP27: Brick and Root (which the below video is related to)
MAP38: Beyond Time's Gate (which I may or may not make a music video for in the future)

 

Anyways, Congrats on getting it finished and to everyone who contributed to the project! It turned out really great, and I'm glad to have participated.

[Pistoolkip]

Time to jump back into RAMP!
We play a map at UV until we beat it, or die trying.

Ventryway by @DrJordo
Outpost 31 by Wisefree

Metal Base by EpicYoloMaster420
 

 

 

[Pistoolkip]

Yes, can we continue our Ironman win streak on more Random RAMP Maps?

 

Forgotten Water Storage Station by @ThatWeNGuy (?)

Pool of 3vil by @Caiuz

Devastation Fixed by @TheGamingFox