Circadian Offset (FINAL RELEASE)

[CBTC]

"My friend has been taken. I don't know who or why, but I must find them."

Circadian Offset Part 1 is the first part of a single player focused 7 map mappack partial conversion containing four maps and one secret map made to run on the GZDOOM sourceport. It was initially one map but I then realized that the enemy placement and layout might deter new players, especially those who might want to try out a Doom mod, so I decided to make a mappack to "ease in" the gameplay by introducing new enemies, weapons and items as they progressed.

 

Circadian Offset is a single player focused 7 map mappack partial conversion made to run on the GZDOOM sourceport. It was initially one map but I then realized that the enemy placement and layout might deter new players, especially those who might want to try out a Doom mod, so I decided to make a mappack to "ease in" the gameplay by introducing new enemies, weapons and items as they progressed.

 

Circadian Offset is inspired by games like Blood, Duke Nukem, and Doom wads like BTSX and Sunlust. Combat typically consists of dodging fast moving projectiles and an emphasis on arcade skills, and to help the player movement is a lot tighter and less slippery compared to Doom. Most enemies fire projectiles, and any enemy that uses hitscan attacks have a very noticeable tell or windup. Expect some mini slaughter like encounters but not as punishing (unless you access the secret level)

 

Every enemy, weapon and item pickup is new. You can expect to see textures from Blood, Hexen and ukiro's texture mapset.

 

I have made a lot of changes since the first part, but I assure you that most of the changes are in favor of the player. I put in a changelog below, but it isn't a full list since I don't recall every change.

 

- Map05 and Map06 added

- Increased player speed by 25%

- Health potions are automatically used when player health is below 50%, but the player can still die from any attack that does more than 50 damage. I noticed some don't have the habit of manually using health items so this should soften the blow.

- Secret weapon in secret map altered to be a lot more useful against mobs (you'll see what I mean)

- Secret weapon can also be obtained earlier in the secret map on the "easy" and "normal" difficulty.

- Secret map altered slightly to make it easier for the player to get their sense of orientation in the map. (Sorry I am not willing to retexture the whole map. Too much effort)

- Fire serpent effects altered to be easier to see. Head size increased to be easier to hit and see.

- Lever action shotgun changed from projectile to hitscan.

- Several enemies have their health reduced to be less spongy. Double double barrel shotgunners can now be killed by a single shotgun round if all the pellets hit, for eg.

- Map02 has more cover during the ascension part.

- Acolyte projectile speed increased, Acolyte health decreased. More of a glass cannon now (both a buff and nerf to the enemy)

- Impaler crossbow firing rate slightly reduced

- Demon Wizard enemy changed to Hierophant. Now does an archvile like attack with noticeable animation. Less damage than the Archvile's own attack. Cannot be resurrected.

- Wall messages to hint to the player what has happened in several maps.

 

It's quite unlikely that I will be revisiting this mod anytime soon after release, other than to fix any glaring bugs you guys might find. And I'll admit there's so much more I want to add, alter or edit but after working on it for 5 years and I want to move on to other projects. I hope you understand.

 

A couple of tips:

 

- Map03 has traps. But use it against the enemies.

- Map05 is huge. Save often and take a break when you need to. In fact take a break whenever necessary.

- Map05 is also hugely inspired by Sunlust (in regards to creating interesting encounters using map geometry and functions, but expect mini slaughter sections). But I can assure you it isn't as punishing, even on the hard difficulty. Just keep the quicksave key handy. (I need to stop relying on arena like areas admittedly...)

- The very last section of Map05 (very blue in color) may be bugged somewhat and may require you to shoot at the switches multiple times using the tommy gun to trigger the next event. If you don't want to have to deal with that section, the teleport in the middle will bring you to the next map. (use "fly" in the console command)

I do hope I managed to accomplish gameplay that is in a "good way". This is my first time into the mapping scene and the maps are kind of experimental, so I don't expect that people like all of the maps and I welcome any feedback on improving, even if I am not planning to change a lot of it, as it always proves useful for future projects.

 

Here's a gallery of the places you can expect to visit:

 

New screenshots for Part 2!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tested on GZDOOM ver. 4.3.0, 4.5.0, 4.7.0 and 4.7.1 with UDMF map format. Recommend using the latest version of GZDOOM (I don't know which version was it, but earlier versions don't show certain correct messages or something) using both DOOM 2 and Freedoom as IWADs.

Machine specs this mod was tested on:

- Nvidia GTX 1060 graphics card

- Intel Core i5

- 4GB of RAM

 

Please enable, bind or adjust:

• Mouse freelook
• Jumping
• Crouching
• Turn off auto aiming
• PRESS "Z" TO HEAL (sorry the font makes it look like a 2)
• Minimize the HUD elements until you see only health, health potions, ammo and armor (I don't have a custom HUD made for this mod)
• Brightness (some areas can be pretty dark)
• Resolution (you may have to reduce the resolution, if your machine can't run them at a smooth framerate, especially for the secret level)

 

You can expect framerate drops in all the maps, because of how highly detailed they are. I've tried my very best to optimize all of them, even removing a lot of detail, but sadly only so much can be achieved :(

 

I recommend most people start on the Easiest or Medium difficulty. Certain design elements were inspired by wads like Sunlust, and because of that I highly recommend saving as often as you can (I didn't implement any autosaves). You can expect Map 3 and the secret level to be the most difficult.
 

DOWNLOAD THE MOD HERE (for full release)

 

(Unfortunately it's a pretty big download, due to several texture sets used)

Credits:
Ola "ukiro" Björling: OTEX texture set

James "Jimmy" Paddock : MAP02, MAP03, and MAP05 midis

Joshua "Dragonfly" O'Sullivan: Menu theme, Intermission, Ending theme, MAP01, MAP06 and some boss midis

Realms667 Repository for various monsters, weapons and items

Daniel "Cherrybutt" Tan: Level design and gameplay

Full credits inside the pk3 file.

 

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope you'll have an enjoyable time playing Circadian Offset~

Cherrybutt

 

Edited May 15, 2023 by GBTS
Full Release Edit

[Walter confetti]

Holy shit this looks impressive from the pics! I smell cacoward here...

[CBTC]

@Walter confetti Thank you! Though by my own admission I personally feel that there's still a lot of work left done before it can even reach such a status~

[Biodegradable]

It's Hexen with guns! Quite an interesting TC for sure. I quite like what I played. It's rather challenging, but I know it'd definitely be well-received around these parts. While the level progression is a bit linear, it's also very epic and exciting which is a fair compromise. My biggest quibble is that the player movement feels stunted and made me feel like I was at a disadvantage when it came to dodging projectiles. All the enemies are very aggressive and spam their attacks, so combining that with how fast they are and the somewhat stilted player movement made dodging projectiles almost impossible at times. I think that requires a bit of a tweak by either not having all the enemies attack at the same rate or make the player faster like Doom because I ate far more projectiles than I dodged. Thankfully, you were very generous with all the health potions scattered about because boy did I need them!

 

I smashed through the first two maps:

 

 

Edited February 3, 2022 by Biodegradable

[azerty]

This looks awesome. I played MAP01 and I have to say that the rest looks very promising.

[Decay]

Looks quite excellent, love the use of colour and architecture

[CBTC]

32 minutes ago, Biodegradable said:

It's Hexen with guns! Quite an interesting TC for sure. I quite like what I played. It's rather challenging, but I know it'd definitely be well-received around these parts. While the level progression is a bit linear, it's also very epic and exciting which is a fair compromise. My biggest quibble is that the player movement feels stunted and made me feel like I was at a disadvantage when it came to dodging projectiles. All the enemies are very aggressive and spam their attacks, so combining that with how fast they are and the somewhat stilted player movement made dodging projectiles almost impossible at times. I think that requires a bit of a tweak by either not having all the enemies attack at the same rate or make the player faster like Doom because I ate far more projectiles than I dodged. Thankfully, you were very generous with all the health potions scattered about because boy did I need them!

 

I smashed through the first two maps and I'll play the other two tomorrow.

<Keep an eye on this space for playthrough footage>

 

Yea, it's true that the enemies spam their attacks (they have the MISSILEMORE flag enabled). While I was playtesting, it was kind of difficult to avoid certain attacks. I played a lot of Duke Nukem and Blood while making these maps, and got that inspiration, and wondered how Build engine games' formula could work with Doom.

I did spread out a lot of cover for the first 2 maps. The 3rd map not so much and it to me was definitely the hardest out of all the maps I playtested, but the enemies you'll face there are somewhat less punishing I feel.

The double double barrel shotgunner was kind of a reference to determine the movement, and I liked that you could totally avoid both attacks in open space. The movement was initially slippery like Doom, but I decided it to be more like Build games, so it's movement is tighter. I may up the speed in Part 2, let's just see how it goes (though I assume you enabled all run)

I am really glad to hear you like the health potion placement. I told myself it's better to be generous with health than to be stingy, because at least people can finish the level :D

Thank you for liking it! The feedback you've given is valuable

[CBTC]

14 minutes ago, azerty said:

This looks awesome. I played MAP01 and I have to say that the rest looks very promising.

Thank you! I hope the rest is enjoyable

[CBTC]

10 minutes ago, Decay said:

Looks quite excellent, love the use of colour and architecture

Thank you, a lot of it was inspired by other Doom wads~

[General Rainbow Bacon]

This looks amazing.  Really like shots 3 - 6 especially.  Can't wait to play it!

[JustAthel]

This looks so sick, really want to get around to this one eventually! Nice work from the shots!

[Chopkinsca]

Ah man, this for sure is a "I wish I still played Doom so I could play this". The screenshots look spectacular.

[Pirx]

quite colorful. kinda baroque architecture.

[Andromeda]

3 hours ago, Chopkinsca said:

Ah man, this for sure is a "I wish I still played Doom so I could play this". The screenshots look spectacular.

Take your time, Doom isn't going anywhere ;)

[CBTC]

6 hours ago, General Rainbow Bacon said:

This looks amazing.  Really like shots 3 - 6 especially.  Can't wait to play it!

I liked those shots too~
Thank you very much, I hope you'll enjoy it!

[CBTC]

6 hours ago, Athel said:

This looks so sick, really want to get around to this one eventually! Nice work from the shots!

Thank you! The zdoom wiki helps with getting these really good shots

[CBTC]

4 hours ago, Pirx said:

quite colorful. kinda baroque architecture.

Yep~ I like church architecture

[Biodegradable]

Had to throw in the towel at MAP03 as things became more arena-based-slaughter encounters. The player simply does not feel sufficiently fast enough to be able to dodge projectiles very well. I still do think some tweaking really needs to be done in regards to speed and monster balancing. Otherwise, I'm really liking what I'm seeing and wish you the best of luck with the rest of your work on this project moving forward.

[msx2plus]

i played the first two maps of this this evening. this isn't in my wheelhouse at all but it's never worth just leaving somebody with "not my thing sorry", so i wanted to mention a couple things in particular! keep in mind that because this isn't my thing, it isn't a value judgment on your project, and i would like to think these are decent general critiques regardless of that.

 

the first map didn't quite fetch me but the second map started strong. it did lose steam for me after some time in the castle area, i think mostly because the fights didn't feel like they were evolving and there wasn't enough downtime to contrast the nearly constant incidental combat.

 

i would probably revert the shotgun to hitscan. since the other bullet weapons are hitscan, it's a bit jarring for it not to be. the way i see it is that bullets travel fast, and since doom operates in 1/35ths of a second, it'll just about always be two frames @ 60hz for you to get your shot out even with no wind-up in the animation; this is already fast enough for bullets to have traveled, so adding additional travel time on top does feel significantly muddy. i hope that makes sense!

 

regarding performance, most areas were ok, but larger open areas, even those seemingly lacking much detail, were pretty heavy. if you can build some more 1-sided walls it will help, but i thought i'd also mention that your use of the circle tool is pretty intense, particularly for smaller shapes. i'd greatly reduce the number of sides on your circular shapes for a performance boost, especially smaller ones.

 

i'd also look into the huge batch of errors thrown at boot, while it looked like most of them are negligible it's always worth keeping a tidy project.

 

best of luck with the rest of this project! i will be watching it come along for sure!

[Daytime Waitress]

Got a big bang of Build off of the first two screenshots alone - pallette choice and imposing architecture just screamed Ion Maiden and Blood - so mission accomplished there!

 

I hope my potato can run this...

 

[CBTC]

4 hours ago, Biodegradable said:

Had to throw in the towel at MAP03 as things became more arena-based-slaughter encounters. The player simply does not feel sufficiently fast enough to be able to dodge projectiles very well. I still do think some tweaking really needs to be done in regards to speed and monster balancing. Otherwise, I'm really liking what I'm seeing and wish you the best of luck with the rest of your work on this project moving forward.

Thank you for playing it! Seriously though I'm just happy that you finished the first 2 maps~
Your feedback is validating since I did feel the same way while making the 3rd map, it's the most risky map I think I've made and I constantly wondered how challenging the map should be. I will definitely consider the balance, maybe make the player faster, decrease monster health and damage.

48 minutes ago, msx2plus said:

i played the first two maps of this this evening. this isn't in my wheelhouse at all but it's never worth just leaving somebody with "not my thing sorry", so i wanted to mention a couple things in particular! keep in mind that because this isn't my thing, it isn't a value judgment on your project, and i would like to think these are decent general critiques regardless of that.

 

the first map didn't quite fetch me but the second map started strong. it did lose steam for me after some time in the castle area, i think mostly because the fights didn't feel like they were evolving and there wasn't enough downtime to contrast the nearly constant incidental combat.

 

i would probably revert the shotgun to hitscan. since the other bullet weapons are hitscan, it's a bit jarring for it not to be. the way i see it is that bullets travel fast, and since doom operates in 1/35ths of a second, it'll just about always be two frames @ 60hz for you to get your shot out even with no wind-up in the animation; this is already fast enough for bullets to have traveled, so adding additional travel time on top does feel significantly muddy. i hope that makes sense!

 

regarding performance, most areas were ok, but larger open areas, even those seemingly lacking much detail, were pretty heavy. if you can build some more 1-sided walls it will help, but i thought i'd also mention that your use of the circle tool is pretty intense, particularly for smaller shapes. i'd greatly reduce the number of sides on your circular shapes for a performance boost, especially smaller ones.

 

i'd also look into the huge batch of errors thrown at boot, while it looked like most of them are negligible it's always worth keeping a tidy project.

 

best of luck with the rest of this project! i will be watching it come along for sure!

Thanks for playing! Yea the first map is a little more of an intro map made to breeze through and get familiar with the first 3 enemies you'll encounter.
I'll admit thought that the castle idea was more of eye candy and filler than anything. I struggled to come up with fun and interesting combat scenarios, though now that I think about it, I guess I do subject the player to a lot of combat constantly

The shotgun was more of a thing I wanted to try and differentiate from other shotguns, and a bit of an experiment in balance. Plus it looks cool~
But I'll admit that the shotgun can be quite difficult to use compared to other hitscan weapons.

 

Thanks for the advice on the performance, I do regret now making a lot of large areas. Will probably scale down whenever mapping for GZDOOM. I'll tone down on the circle tool if it impacts performance that much in the future and check what those errors on boot might be.

Thank you for watching this and the feedback!
 

47 minutes ago, Daytime Waitress said:

Got a big bang of Build off of the first two screenshots alone - pallette choice and imposing architecture just screamed Ion Maiden and Blood - so mission accomplished there!

 

I hope my potato can run this...

 

Thanks~
If it's any consolation, I ran this on a pretty crappy pc with low resolution (like 1280 by 720 or lower) and the framerate is "playable", just try not to look directly into the ground or the ceiling

[Daytime Waitress]

 

1 hour ago, GBTS said:

If it's any consolation, I ran this on a pretty crappy pc with low resolution (like 1280 by 720 or lower) and the framerate is "playable", just try not to look directly into the ground or the ceiling

I only got part way into the second map and, despite the sheer scale of everything it runs better for me than, say, Lullaby, so I'm off to a good start.

 

First of all I want to say that I can really feel a lot of what you're attempting here. Watching for tells, learning enemy patterns and using the ample cover provided has a good groove to it. It's definitely helped by the way in which the weapons on the whole feel pretty satisfying to use; and while I didn't find the shotgun all that off-putting at first blush, @msx2plus makes a pretty good case for why you may want to reconsider it. Although on the other hand, some enemies did feel a little too tanky for my liking.

 

And whilst the environments themselves were lovingly put together, I felt like the enemies didn't necessarily blend into the background completely, but they didn't *pop*, either. Although that's probably just something on my end, and not a criticism of your design choices: I feel like that about most anything involving Heretic and those flail-chucking bastards. Conversely, the fire golems being camouflaged in their initial encounter was a very cool touch. But I found my issues with some enemies being compounded by the whole sound design seeming... off? Like it felt hard to place what direction enemies were in from their sound effects? Again, this totally might just be a problem on my end (technical rather than personal in this instance). But those two things definitely contributed to me wondering where the heck I was getting shot from during most of the running time. Once I got a bead on enemies or stood toe-to-toe with them, though, combat felt pretty right from what little I experienced.

 

Unfortunately the thing that stood out most for me was that the first level was pretty much a linear path with not much in the way of switches or interactivity of any kind, which is really strange for something that has such obvious Build influences. The few shops you detailed were absolutely killer, and I get that the level was going for scale and you definitely wouldn't want to detail that many stores or houses, but that balance felt a little off. How do you convey that size, while still presenting the player with gorgeous locales that feel like they're integral to play and not just window-dressing? Level design is way tougher than us players give it credit for most of the time. As you've said, though, this is just your first foray into mapping, so maybe you'll want to focus on something more concise before doing big, epic sprawls?

 

Anyway, despite these negative points, I'm still genuinely looking forward to sitting down with the rest of this and giving it more attention. Please take these criticisms exactly as they are: hastily-written first impressions from a relatively inexperienced player. Moreover, I only recently opened a map editor for the first time myself, and to see someone's first (published) map look like this makes me feel like I'm a kindergartener stuffing crayons up their nose while the kid at the next table just casually sketched an exact replica of the Sistine Chapel. This is one hell of an achievement for your first WAD, and you're only gonna get better at making the architecture and combat work together in concert - keep at it!

Edited February 3, 2022 by Daytime Waitress
Formatting is hard; spelling is harder

[Stabbey]

I played on medium difficulty and  finished map 2 and played a bit of Map 3. Here are my thoughts so far.

 

General

- Obviously it looks very nice, and clearly you put in a LOT of time and effort.

- I like long maps. I make long maps. These feel like they have too much space and take too long. It makes backtracking very very tiresome.

- How much HP do the Crimson Disciple's projectiles have? I can't reliably kill them with the machine gun, but the shotgun seems to work.
- I've seen many armor pickups, but they all seem to be the +200% Crusader Armor. Why is the only armor pickup +200%?
- The single-barrel shotgun feels super-weak compared to the machinegun, and once you get the steel crossbow, you have rockets for days with those quivers giving 20 a pack, so that becomes the go-to weapon. The Shotgun feels like a nerf gun on anything other than a cultist. Meanwhile the machinegun can actually gib cultists, and it chews through Ettins, Fire Elementals and Fire Serpents and just about everything else.
- I would either speed up the death animation of the Fire Serpent, or have it change color when dying as well, that'd be a clear indicator that it's dead. Right now it's often hard to see that it's dying when things are visually busy.
- The message "Picked up 4 Shells" is wrong because you actually get 8.
- I would change the name of "Steel Bolts" to "Explosive Bolts". People don't normally expect steel bolts to explode, and the weapon pickup message is the only other hint this replaces the Rocket Launcher.
- Why on earth did you put the double-barrel shotgun on slot 6? Please do NOT do that. That messes with the player's muscle memory, which says the SSG is on slot 3.

 

Map 01
- Perhaps consider putting fairly early in level 1 parts where the only way to progress is to crouch or to jump, to inform the player that they're both allowed to and supposed to do that. I'm so used to not doing that in Doom that I didn't think about it and got stuck a couple places in the second level.
- This map is pretty darn big. There's a lot of distance to cover. It feels perhaps a bit too expansive.

Map 02
- I don't like the forced Crusader Armor pickup for the red key, I had just gone to get the secret one and it forced me to waste 190% armor. Maybe put a bit more space to let me squeeze past it. But then again there is a lot of that armor lying around.
- I'd definitely add a sniper rifle at the entrance to the castle exterior. Maybe it could share the 1 slot with the pistol and use the same ammo and have the same damage. I just really want a way to be able to zoom in on those distant enemies.

- There's an awful lot of enemies at obnoxiously long distances away or in small, pitch-black sniper nests.  I hope we get a sniper rifle, because they're a little hard to hit. Yes the pistol has 100% accuracy but I'm still shooting at what amounts to a few small pixels I can barely see. It's almost literally this image:

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/115584-do-you-think-plutonia-is-hard-or-unfair/?tab=comments#comment-2154835

- I missed the portal when I went back through the prison section, and got a little lost and unsure of progression.
- The bosses feel like they have too much health - even taking into account their splash damage immunity. I must have spent about 110 bolts to take them both out - not counting misses. Actual ammo spent was 149.

 

Map 03
- And it's gone full slaughter. At least to me, this gameplay isn't as interesting, even with the new enemies. I'll probably continue playing later.

[CBTC]

14 hours ago, Daytime Waitress said:

 

I only got part way into the second map and, despite the sheer scale of everything it runs better for me than, say, Lullaby, so I'm off to a good start.

 

First of all I want to say that I can really feel a lot of what you're attempting here. Watching for tells, learning enemy patterns and using the ample cover provided has a good groove to it. It's definitely helped by the way in which the weapons on the whole feel pretty satisfying to use; and while I didn't find the shotgun all that off-putting at first blush, @msx2plus makes a pretty good case for why you may want to reconsider it. Although on the other hand, some enemies did feel a little too tanky for my liking.

 

And whilst the environments themselves were lovingly put together, I felt like the enemies didn't necessarily blend into the background completely, but they didn't *pop*, either. Although that's probably just something on my end, and not a criticism of your design choices: I feel like that about most anything involving Heretic and those flail-chucking bastards. Conversely, the fire golems being camouflaged in their initial encounter was a very cool touch. But I found my issues with some enemies being compounded by the whole sound design seeming... off? Like it felt hard to place what direction enemies were in from their sound effects? Again, this totally might just be a problem on my end (technical rather than personal in this instance). But those two things definitely contributed to me wondering where the heck I was getting shot from during most of the running time. Once I got a bead on enemies or stood toe-to-toe with them, though, combat felt pretty right from what little I experienced.

 

Unfortunately the thing that stood out most for me was that the first level was pretty much a linear path with not much in the way of switches or interactivity of any kind, which is really strange for something that has such obvious Build influences. The few shops you detailed were absolutely killer, and I get that the level was going for scale and you definitely wouldn't want to detail that many stores or houses, but that balance felt a little off. How do you convey that size, while still presenting the player with gorgeous locales that feel like they're integral to play and not just window-dressing? Level design is way tougher than us players give it credit for most of the time. As you've said, though, this is just your first foray into mapping, so maybe you'll want to focus on something more concise before doing big, epic sprawls?

 

Anyway, despite these negative points, I'm still genuinely looking forward to sitting down with the rest of this and giving it more attention. Please take these criticisms exactly as they are: hastily-written first impressions from a relatively inexperienced player. Moreover, I only recently opened a map editor for the first time myself, and to see someone's first (published) map look like this makes me feel like I'm a kindergartener stuffing crayons up their nose while the kid at the next table just casually sketched an exact replica of the Sistine Chapel. This is one hell of an achievement for your first WAD, and you're only gonna get better at making the architecture and combat work together in concert - keep at it!

 

The first map is unfortunately something of a failure. It's my least favorite map. It was inspired somewhat by Bloodborne, but like you mentioned, I struggled a lot to give character to a lot of the buildings. It had some elaborate things like an actual house you could explore, and a market place, but I scrapped it due to performance (I scrapped possibly an extra hour worth of playtime from the mod itself because I just wasn't satisfied with it). If I detailed it a lot the map would start chugging, and if I didn't detail it enough it would look featureless. At some point, I just decided to get it over with, because the first map was more meant to be an intro map to the first 3 enemies.

 

The sound design issue is something I myself never really paid attention to. Some sound design issues were more of certain weapons being mute at certain points until I added a flag that states to play that sound effect all the time. Unfortunately I don't know how to do a damage indicator (which I really wanted to) since I felt that should be fair to the player. So sorry about that

 

Yea I agree visibility is something I was worried about. I actually wanted the enemies to be cultist-looking (hence why they're wearing hoods). But the first 3 enemies are all wearing gray and dark, and I suck at pixel art.

 

I think my biggest regret about this project is not knowing the limitations of GZDOOM itself. I had this idea in my mind that since it was based on the Doom engine, the 3d floors won't pose a problem. Sadly that's not the case and they're the biggest culprit when it comes to framerate problems (along with large areas). I'll probably map for either PrBoom or Eternity after this mod is finished (maybe even move to other engines), so I definitely agree in making smaller areas.

 

Thank you for your feedback and the compliments! Don't worry about it being hasty, I think first impressions are important to making a good game. I hope to use this, maybe even revise these maps in the part 2 release~

 

8 hours ago, Stabbey said:

I played on medium difficulty and  finished map 2 and played a bit of Map 3. Here are my thoughts so far.

 

General

- Obviously it looks very nice, and clearly you put in a LOT of time and effort.

- I like long maps. I make long maps. These feel like they have too much space and take too long. It makes backtracking very very tiresome.

- How much HP do the Crimson Disciple's projectiles have? I can't reliably kill them with the machine gun, but the shotgun seems to work.
- I've seen many armor pickups, but they all seem to be the +200% Crusader Armor. Why is the only armor pickup +200%?
- The single-barrel shotgun feels super-weak compared to the machinegun, and once you get the steel crossbow, you have rockets for days with those quivers giving 20 a pack, so that becomes the go-to weapon. The Shotgun feels like a nerf gun on anything other than a cultist. Meanwhile the machinegun can actually gib cultists, and it chews through Ettins, Fire Elementals and Fire Serpents and just about everything else.
- I would either speed up the death animation of the Fire Serpent, or have it change color when dying as well, that'd be a clear indicator that it's dead. Right now it's often hard to see that it's dying when things are visually busy.
- The message "Picked up 4 Shells" is wrong because you actually get 8.
- I would change the name of "Steel Bolts" to "Explosive Bolts". People don't normally expect steel bolts to explode, and the weapon pickup message is the only other hint this replaces the Rocket Launcher.
- Why on earth did you put the double-barrel shotgun on slot 6? Please do NOT do that. That messes with the player's muscle memory, which says the SSG is on slot 3.

 

Map 01
- Perhaps consider putting fairly early in level 1 parts where the only way to progress is to crouch or to jump, to inform the player that they're both allowed to and supposed to do that. I'm so used to not doing that in Doom that I didn't think about it and got stuck a couple places in the second level.
- This map is pretty darn big. There's a lot of distance to cover. It feels perhaps a bit too expansive.

Map 02
- I don't like the forced Crusader Armor pickup for the red key, I had just gone to get the secret one and it forced me to waste 190% armor. Maybe put a bit more space to let me squeeze past it. But then again there is a lot of that armor lying around.
- I'd definitely add a sniper rifle at the entrance to the castle exterior. Maybe it could share the 1 slot with the pistol and use the same ammo and have the same damage. I just really want a way to be able to zoom in on those distant enemies.

- There's an awful lot of enemies at obnoxiously long distances away or in small, pitch-black sniper nests.  I hope we get a sniper rifle, because they're a little hard to hit. Yes the pistol has 100% accuracy but I'm still shooting at what amounts to a few small pixels I can barely see. It's almost literally this image:

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/115584-do-you-think-plutonia-is-hard-or-unfair/?tab=comments#comment-2154835

- I missed the portal when I went back through the prison section, and got a little lost and unsure of progression.
- The bosses feel like they have too much health - even taking into account their splash damage immunity. I must have spent about 110 bolts to take them both out - not counting misses. Actual ammo spent was 149.

 

Map 03
- And it's gone full slaughter. At least to me, this gameplay isn't as interesting, even with the new enemies. I'll probably continue playing later.

Thanks for playing! I'll try to address every issue:

- I don't recall many places where there is backtracking, may I know which areas? The few I can think of is after entering the portal in MAP02 to get a secret in which the way back is going back through the prison, which I'll admit is unnecessary but didn't rectify and maybe the blue key, but most of the maps are generally linear.

 

- CD's projectiles were meant to be taken out with the shotgun, I forgot what health values I put them as, but I will admit some work could be done to balance out the machinegun, shotgun and some other enemy types. (Machinegun was a tommygun and I wanted to reflect it's firing speed)

 

- I deliberately made the crossbow to be a weapon that is used often for MAP02 and MAP03, because you'll face much stronger enemies later on, making the SSG and crossbow the preferred weapon. On the highest difficulty however, ammo pickups are halved, and this is unfortunately the difficulty I playtested the map the most on. I'd rather take the risk of giving the player more ammo to play around with and it being actually finishable then frustrate the player with constant deaths (though unfortunately that may not be the case with MAP03)

 

- It's 200% mostly because I didn't want to have to deal with making decisions on what armor I want the player to pick up. I simplified it.

 

- The fire serpent's animation was something I liked and I liked how it messed with a player's perception of it, so I'm keeping it as it is.

 

- Typos. I knew there were some, but couldn't pinpoint all of them, thanks for pointing them out.

 

- Fair point as most people who play Doom use 3 for SSG, but I personally prefer the SSG have it's own separate slot, cause I wanted the Shotgun to stay relevant as well. This is something I also wanted to remedy with a weapon wheel, but I'll admit I forgot.

 

MAP01

 

- Might consider that

- I tend to make large areas, so that the player has room to dodge those projectiles. I might up the speed of the player

 

MAP02

 

- Fair point, should probably reposition that armor pickup
- That is the kind of reaction I wanted the player to feel in that section. Adding a sniper weapon would make it too easy.

- The same goes with the pitch blackness, I wanted the player to either close the distance or avoid it entirely.

- The portal section now that I think about it, is kinda dumb. I should have just done teleports (I did portals mostly for cool factor I guess)

- The Hellsmiths don't have splash immunity. They take 3x more damage from the crossbow, but yea their health is 30000. I'll admit that double boss fight was meant to starve the player of the resources they collected and be careful with each crossbow bolt, so that they can't rely on it too much during MAP03 to utilize the traps. That fight is admittedly long

 

MAP03

 

- Map03 was risky, I wanted to explore methods outside of killing enemies directly in some cases. It's a complete overhaul from another MAP03 that I made and I just wasn't satisfied with it, in fact it was kinda boring.

 

Thank you for playing! I look forward to feedback on the rest of the maps

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Stabbey]

I've finished Map 03 and moved on to Map 04, but I won't comment yet, I should do another run through Map 03 to collect more thoughts.

 

By backtracking, I meant my own backtracking for ammo and quartz flasks, and secret hunting.

 

Quote

- Fair point as most people who play Doom use 3 for SSG, but I personally prefer the SSG have it's own separate slot, cause I wanted the Shotgun to stay relevant as well. This is something I also wanted to remedy with a weapon wheel, but I'll admit I forgot.

 

A weapon stays relevant if it's useful. Having a separate slot for the regular shotgun won't in itself, make it relevant. Just ask the pistol.  Personally speaking, I find the regular Doom 2 shotgun is relevant for use at longer ranges than the SSG or on weak enemies which don't need two shells to die. The issue with the shotgun in this mod is not the SSG, but the Tommy gun, which outclasses it on everything the shotgun is supposed to be good at, and later the crossbow. I don't really know how to fix all of those problems, but I don't think separating the weapons onto different keys will solve the underlying relevance issue.

 

In contrast to standard Doom, the pistol here is somewhat relevant to use on some of the weaker cultists because of its accuracy and high rate of fire.

 

Quote

- The fire serpent's animation was something I liked and I liked how it messed with a player's perception of it, so I'm keeping it as it is.

 

Hmmm... I don't necessarily agree about that being a positive. If a game is going to have lots of hectic fights (and MAP 03 suggests it will), players need to be constantly making decisions about what to do, what enemies to target, where to move. Good feedback to the player is important to be able to make decisions about what to do next. Perhaps make the audio cue for the death sightly louder, that could be feedback without needing to change the death animation.

 

 

Quote

- That is the kind of reaction I wanted the player to feel in that section. Adding a sniper weapon would make it too easy.

 

It's not difficult. Spamming pistol rounds into dark rooms trying to hit a target which is the size of the dot crosshair is annoying, and it slows the pace of progress on an already very long map, which makes it feel even longer.

 

On some of my own levels, I've gotten feedback from playtesters along the lines of "this is annoying and a waste of time." "Annoying" is sometimes, very rarely, what I want my players to have... but usually not.

 

The portal effects are very cool, don't lose those.

Edited February 4, 2022 by Stabbey
fire serpent

[Doomenator]

On 2/2/2022 at 6:41 PM, GBTS said:

...

Can you remove unused textures? Ok, thx.

[Stabbey]

Map 03

- I went back to the end of Map 02 to find the missing secrets. I found the SSG and tried it on the Hell Smith to see if that would kill faster. It did not seem to do so, which suggests that they really do just have a boatload of HP.
- It's not a terrible idea to break up the slaughter parts with puzzle or platforming sections.
- I finished Map 03. That last fight was bonkers, but luckily there were a ton of invulnerabilities so I somehow made it through on my second or third attempt. On that one I used my weak guns and tried to kill as much of the horde of basic cultists as I could without invulerability.

 

Map 04
- All four of these maps have a pretty different feel. It went from a city to an underground castle in lava to an otherworldy slaughter palace to a library.
- I like how each level after the first has unique enemies. That's very ambitious, and if you're limiting how many types of enemies appear on each level, that keeps the amount players have to remember low.
- Those female mages are a really interesting idea. Their super speed makes it hard to avoid their attacks, and if they're on the same level, their constant charging is intimidating, but they have very little health so they're okay to deal with.
- The Hexen Dark Bishop palette swap enemies don't appear very often, but they have an unsatisfying combination of projectiles which are too easy to dodge and too much health to kill quickly. In Hexen, they came in large packs, but died fast. These ones aren't any more challenging than the ones in Hexen, but you'll need to shoot them a whole lot. Barons of Hell are sometimes described as doors with 1000 HP, and these feel pretty similar.

- Something annoyed me about the Demon Wizard and it took a while to figure out what it was. It's that the preparing to attack animation is fixed. It doesn't indicate how long before it goes off, and if you're too far to hear the audio cue - which is fairly often - you're just guessing on whether it was at the start or end of its attack cycle. Compare that to the Arch-Vile, which also has a charge-up attack, but with multiple stages in the animation to let you know exactly how close it is to going off. Also, the Arch-Vile attack also puts an impossible to miss indicator on the player (the wreath of flames) to let them know they're being targeted and need to take cover. The Demon Wizard gives no such indicator, if you didn't see it from all the way across the map, you just get railed. Some kind of similar indicator to let the player know to take cover would be appreciated.
- This is another map which is way, way too freaking long. Room after room after room after corridor. Too many rooms.
- I found one of 8 secrets on the map - the bloody morgue. I like looking for secrets. This map has too much area and too much detail to make it worth my time - and I just played through the Eternal Doom WAD, which is full of obscure secrets. (I later went back looking and did find two more based on lines I saw on the map).

- It's cool that you made the elevators actually 3D floors, but why are there death pits under them, instead of just a floor you can walk out of?
- The final encounter is the only one in which the Dark Bishops actually worked, but that wasn't a function of the Bishops, it was that the Blue mage guys were extremely intense.
- It's a little tricky figuring out how to deal with the attack patterns when there are two of them, but it can be dealt with.

 

Map 31
- This exemplifies why I don't care for slaughter maps. Grab invulnerability, spam your big gun, repeat. If you run out of Invulnerability, die instantly, and since there are only four to handle a ton of waves on timers, you'll probably die a lot.
- I think the use of Crimson Disciples on ledges in this map is a mistake. There are already too many to deal with on the ground without adding dozens more homing missiles constantly being spammed at you.
- Attempt 2: Really? Really? The waves are on a timer? Wow. That makes an already unfair situation seem even more unfair. Now players are forced into killing the waves fast, as opposed to putting in switches that unleash the next wave, and permitting players to handle each wave at their own pace. Your own MAP 03 was like that and it was better for it.

- After learning that the waves were timed, I gave up all pretense of trying to beat this map legit.

- The symmetry of the map confuses the player and disorients them. The player, in the midst of all the hectic spam is not going to remember which invulnerability they have picked up and which ones are still around, which is death. You can keep the architecture the same, but consider retexturing the room so that each cardinal direction is visually distinct.

- Being one large room with no breaks between fighting, with no chance to breathe is exhausting. MAP 03 had smaller chunks, and it broke up pure slaughter fests with other parts.

- This map calls for BFG spam. Unfortunately, there is no BFG. You replaced the BFG with the equivalent of the plasma rifle. It's a very strong and powerful weapon, but this kind of horde needs an actual BFG equivalent. The only area effect weapon is the crossbow, and that needs two direct hits to kill a Crimson Disciple, and many more to kill a Dark Bishop. Even being invulnerable, I lost interest in just holding down the trigger. Some kind of way to inflict mass death on the enemies is needed to avoid it getting tedious.

 

Overall, this map sets demonstrate a very impressive amount of work and effort, but I definitely think it needs more polishing and refinement, and more restraint on the urge to keep going more and more and adding additional rooms.

 

Edited February 8, 2022 by Stabbey

[CBTC]

On 2/7/2022 at 9:58 PM, Doomenator said:

Can you remove unused textures? Ok, thx.

Maybe one day. There's a lot of textures inside, and I don't remember every single texture that I did use. I may have to dedicate a month just to determine what content went unused. Unless there's a way in Doombuilder or slade that can detect exactly what texture wasn't used in all 5 maps, which I am unaware of.

 

On 2/8/2022 at 10:40 PM, Stabbey said:

Map 03

- I went back to the end of Map 02 to find the missing secrets. I found the SSG and tried it on the Hell Smith to see if that would kill faster. It did not seem to do so, which suggests that they really do just have a boatload of HP.
- It's not a terrible idea to break up the slaughter parts with puzzle or platforming sections.
- I finished Map 03. That last fight was bonkers, but luckily there were a ton of invulnerabilities so I somehow made it through on my second or third attempt. On that one I used my weak guns and tried to kill as much of the horde of basic cultists as I could without invulerability.

 

Map 04
- All four of these maps have a pretty different feel. It went from a city to an underground castle in lava to an otherworldy slaughter palace to a library.
- I like how each level after the first has unique enemies. That's very ambitious, and if you're limiting how many types of enemies appear on each level, that keeps the amount players have to remember low.
- Those female mages are a really interesting idea. Their super speed makes it hard to avoid their attacks, and if they're on the same level, their constant charging is intimidating, but they have very little health so they're okay to deal with.
- The Hexen Dark Bishop palette swap enemies don't appear very often, but they have an unsatisfying combination of projectiles which are too easy to dodge and too much health to kill quickly. In Hexen, they came in large packs, but died fast. These ones aren't any more challenging than the ones in Hexen, but you'll need to shoot them a whole lot. Barons of Hell are sometimes described as doors with 1000 HP, and these feel pretty similar.

- Something annoyed me about the Demon Wizard and it took a while to figure out what it was. It's that the preparing to attack animation is fixed. It doesn't indicate how long before it goes off, and if you're too far to hear the audio cue - which is fairly often - you're just guessing on whether it was at the start or end of its attack cycle. Compare that to the Arch-Vile, which also has a charge-up attack, but with multiple stages in the animation to let you know exactly how close it is to going off. Also, the Arch-Vile attack also puts an impossible to miss indicator on the player (the wreath of flames) to let them know they're being targeted and need to take cover. The Demon Wizard gives no such indicator, if you didn't see it from all the way across the map, you just get railed. Some kind of similar indicator to let the player know to take cover would be appreciated.
- This is another map which is way, way too freaking long. Room after room after room after corridor. Too many rooms.
- I found one of 8 secrets on the map - the bloody morgue. I like looking for secrets. This map has too much area and too much detail to make it worth my time - and I just played through the Eternal Doom WAD, which is full of obscure secrets. (I later went back looking and did find two more based on lines I saw on the map).

- It's cool that you made the elevators actually 3D floors, but why are there death pits under them, instead of just a floor you can walk out of?
- The final encounter is the only one in which the Dark Bishops actually worked, but that wasn't a function of the Bishops, it was that the Blue mage guys were extremely intense.
- It's a little tricky figuring out how to deal with the attack patterns when there are two of them, but it can be dealt with.

 

Map 31
- This exemplifies why I don't care for slaughter maps. Grab invulnerability, spam your big gun, repeat. If you run out of Invulnerability, die instantly, and since there are only four to handle a ton of waves on timers, you'll probably die a lot.
- I think the use of Crimson Disciples on ledges in this map is a mistake. There are already too many to deal with on the ground without adding dozens more homing missiles constantly being spammed at you.
- Attempt 2: Really? Really? The waves are on a timer? Wow. That makes an already unfair situation seem even more unfair. Now players are forced into killing the waves fast, as opposed to putting in switches that unleash the next wave, and permitting players to handle each wave at their own pace. Your own MAP 03 was like that and it was better for it.

- After learning that the waves were timed, I gave up all pretense of trying to beat this map legit.

- The symmetry of the map confuses the player and disorients them. The player, in the midst of all the hectic spam is not going to remember which invulnerability they have picked up and which ones are still around, which is death. You can keep the architecture the same, but consider retexturing the room so that each cardinal direction is visually distinct.

- Being one large room with no breaks between fighting, with no chance to breathe is exhausting. MAP 03 had smaller chunks, and it broke up pure slaughter fests with other parts.

- This map calls for BFG spam. Unfortunately, there is no BFG. You replaced the BFG with the equivalent of the plasma rifle. It's a very strong and powerful weapon, but this kind of horde needs an actual BFG equivalent. The only area effect weapon is the crossbow, and that needs two direct hits to kill a Crimson Disciple, and many more to kill a Dark Bishop. Even being invulnerable, I lost interest in just holding down the trigger. Some kind of way to inflict mass death on the enemies is needed to avoid it getting tedious.

 

Overall, this map sets demonstrate a very impressive amount of work and effort, but I definitely think it needs more polishing and refinement, and more restraint on the urge to keep going more and more and adding additional rooms.

 

The Dark Bishop and the Demon Wizard is something I will have to refine. I'll admit that the Bishop is kinda there to waste bullets with hindsight. They were the first enemies I added in and I liked their attacks and design, so that's something I need to look into.

The Demon Wizard/Archvile comparison is spot on. I might replace the Demon Wizard enemy with something else.

 

Map04 is the first map I made for this mod. It was supposed to be only one map (which explains the length), and I greatly hesitated to include more. I must have cut out an hour's worth of gameplay for Map 04 alone. I do also think the map itself could have been split up into several maps, with the main area being a type of hub area.

(also I hate to inform you that Map05 will be very big as well...)

The 3D floor elevators were used with a death pit inside them as a solution I didn't want to bother with due to a lot of trial and error. If there was no pit, the player could potentially walk under the elevator and get "squished" by the elevator, at least that was what I thought at the time. However if the player is stuck between the platform and the floor, it doesn't kill the player and it also breaks the elevator itself. There were also some buggy complications trying to make the elevator reach the height I wanted that I don't remember the specifics.

 

In hindsight? Don't use 3d floors as elevators. Just use Doom's normal elevators.

 

I am glad though that encounter with the two Thors is at least manageable.

 

Map31 was supposed to be the last map. A fight against a final boss of sorts. Tbh I liked the design of the map, but like you I often find slaughter maps to be a chore (thankfully a lot of Doom mappers tend to put slaughter maps after a long build up or as secret maps) and I hesitated doing so but I relented since I thought I should include it as most Doom mods enthusiasts expect some slaughter sections. It also didn't help that I was playing Sunlust when designing it that I tried to incorporate some creative designs, though ultimately I guess in this context it failed. I tried to make it work as a last map, but it eventually evolved into a slaughter map.

 

The waves coming in on a timer was a last ditch solution to making the enemies spawn in (there were complications where they got stuck in their initial area) and prevent confusion on what the player should press to get to the next wave (as you've pointed out with the symmetrical design. And yes, I did design the whole area first before making the encounters). I tried several configurations, including the switch press. I initially wanted it so that the next wave spawned after you cleared all the enemies in that wave and you were given a brief time to restock. Invul sphere was a last minute afterthought to soften the blow that players would receive, some spheres aren't present on the highest difficulty.

 

Map03's final slaughter section was more meant to be a somewhat cathartic section as opposed to a test of skill in slaughter map ability. Funny you bring up platforming and puzzles as there was a platforming section that I cut out because I figured most people who play Doom just wanna kill things and not bother with breaks.

 

Overall, I am super thankful you played all the maps. Tbh I was expecting maybe most people would try out 2 or 3 maps then drop it, but I am really grateful you completed it and came back with detailed feedback. I'm the only playtester and designer and it's really easy to be blind to your own design biases.

[Stabbey]

The Demon Wizard is okay, it could use a little more tweaking for better feedback to the player, especially at the ranges they get used at a lot. Seeing more of the Pyrosuccubus,

 

The death pits under the elevators aren't that dangerous, it just seemed an odd choice.

 

Quote

Map31 was supposed to be the last map. A fight against a final boss of sorts. Tbh I liked the design of the map, but like you I often find slaughter maps to be a chore (thankfully a lot of Doom mappers tend to put slaughter maps after a long build up or as secret maps) and I hesitated doing so but I relented since I thought I should include it as most Doom mods enthusiasts expect some slaughter sections. It also didn't help that I was playing Sunlust when designing it that I tried to incorporate some creative designs, though ultimately I guess in this context it failed. I tried to make it work as a last map, but it eventually evolved into a slaughter map.

 

I went back and did a couple more attempts at MAP 31. I was actually able to beat it legit, by being extremely frugal with the uses of invulnerability. Four available for the start of the second wave, and then none until four more after all keys are used is a long time, so that feels like it would throw players off. I did discover that there IS a BFG - again at the end of the final wave. It feels like the best stuff is both front-loaded and back-loaded, and there are hundreds of enemies in-between.

 

One thing which strikes me about your response is that you should map for your tastes primarily and don't put in things that you don't enjoy just because some doom enthusiasts "expect" slaughter sections.

 

EDIT: I definitely understand that working on your own maps can leave you blind to things. I'm looking for feedback on my own just-released 2-map set for exactly that reason. 

Edited February 11, 2022 by Stabbey

[Chopper]

Awesome mod, I feel like this is worthy of being called a total conversion on the fact that it shares almost nothing with vanilla. The maps are exquisitely detailed, the atmosphere for each map is very different, and the weapons are a total joy to use. I also very much enjoy that you cut out the fat with ammo and armor pickups, its either all or nothing, and it makes arena fights a lot more bearable.

 

However, I do have a fair share of criticisms. Up first, I think that the projectile speed for some enemies could be toned down a little, such as the shotgun priest, who seems to be a lot of trouble since he is mostly seen on small hallways and he is also dead quiet, compared to his cultist cousins. In that same vein, I think the cultists should get a brighter recolor, since it is exceptionally hard to see them at a distance, and they blend into the environment seamlessly, which is a big problem in mission 2. I also feel like some sections of the game, especially in mission 3, descend into tedium, im always down for some slaughter arenas and whatnot, but the tightrope sections where you make a wrong step and get instakilled, and the trap section where you're getting crossmapped by archers and cultists with homing projectiles could be made a little more lenient towars the player. Personally, I would have enjoyed the trap section just being the traps and you having to take an obstacle course to get all the green flames, but it also would just be a lot better without the red cultists.

 

I think that episode 2 should take a little more focus on the story aspect, a lot of the stuff here was interesting but it had nearly no context, and I would like to know just why doomguy is looking for his friend. Anyways, sorry for the long wall of text, I enjoyed the experience thoroughly, even if I had to play it in a shitty laptop that could hardly play it in 720p, I beat it in the hardest difficulty first, so that is what my criticisms are based off of, but I'm already itching for a replay.