Have You Seen the Yellow Sign? - a first-time mapper's first-time project

[JollyRoger]

Hello everyone,

 

I present to you my first ever set of levels for Doom 2, tested with GlBoom+ and PrBoom+, Boom compatibility. The current version contains 5 maps (MAP01 - MAP05), with 1 more planned. Difficulty levels implemented, only UV fully tested. 

The inspiration for the theme was an ARG me and my friends ran in our high school a few years ago. The goal of that ARG was to prevent a gang of cultists from summoning an avatar of Hastur into our world. In the wad's timeline our intrepid heroes failed and it's up to Doomguy to clean up the mess.

 

Current levels:

Quote

MAP01 - "Ex Oblivione": A short run-and-gun focused level, can be blitzed through if you find all secrets and the 1st map I ever made

MAP02 - "The Yellow Chapel": A more slow-paced corridor crawl with some nastier encounters

MAP03 - "The Inner Sanctum": An attempt at a more slaughter-y map. A significant increase in difficulty compared to the previous two.

MAP04 - "Vale of Pnath": My idea of a more non-linear exploration based experience. Expect to be starved of resources if you're bad at finding secrets.

MAP05 - "Lake of Zan": Pure arena slaughter, manage powerups and routing carefully or you'll have a bad time.

 

Screenshots:
 

Spoiler

MAP01:

 

 

MAP02:

MAP03:

MAP04:

MAP05:

 

Download

 

Music used:

Quote

MAP01 - "Suck This" by Lee Jackson

MAP02 - "Plasma" by Lee Jackson

MAP03 - "Outer Darkness" by John S. Weekley

MAP04 - "Sign of Evil" by Bobby Prince

MAP05 - "DOOM" by Bobby Prince

Notes/Bugs:

Spoiler

No major gameplay issues should be present, but do let me know if you find anything. Some minor graphical glitches occur in MAP03, especially if you play on PrBoom+ if anyone has a suggestion on how to fix them - I'm all ears.

Planned map titles:

Spoiler

MAP06 - "Dread Carcossa"

 

I hope you enjoy my first foray into Doom mapping. Suggestions very much welcome.

Edited September 16, 2023 by JollyRoger

[prfunky]

"I hope you enjoy my first foray into Doom mapping."

 

Are you kidding me? I've been at this for over a decade and I can't

produce work like this. That's it, I should retire. Obvs, I'm talking about

map03. I tooled this whole thing up on HMP and after awhile of dying,

I did the iddqd cheat to get to see the whole thing since my time is

limited.

 

Question about the automap on map02: Are these lines intentionally

missing? (see attached pic)

 

Love your use of round. Map03 reminds me of map13 of Equinox but

runs choppy on my Zandronum on Linux. Might be because my

computer is ancient tho'.

[JollyRoger]

Quote

10 minutes ago, prfunky said:

"I hope you enjoy my first foray into Doom mapping."

 

Are you kidding me? I've been at this for over a decade and I can't

produce work like this. That's it, I should retire. Obvs, I'm talking about

map03. I tooled this whole thing up on HMP and after awhile of dying,

I did the iddqd cheat to get to see the whole thing since my time is

limited.

 

Question about the automap on map02: Are these lines intentionally

missing? (see attached pic)

 

Love your use of round. Map03 reminds me of map13 of Equinox but

runs choppy on my Zandronum on Linux. Might be because my

computer is ancient tho'.

 

No, the hidden linedefs are not intentional - I'll have to fix that if it bothers people.

 

As for map03 - it's not surprising that the final fight runs choppy on zandronum - it has about a 1000 monsters teleporting in and is supposed to be somewhat brutal (difficulty settings are also not really implemented for this map yet). I'm a bit concerned about it being too mean, but I used Sunder as my inspiration so I don't feel too bad about it.

[prfunky]

Yah, I'm not good player anyhow. But I just love creating Doom levels.

For some idea about intermission screens, you should check out my,

now, year old work, Chap Deathmatch 3. I don't know how many ports

my methods translate to but KNOW they work in Zandronum/LZDoom

and GZDoom. The offending entries in the wad file are;

zdmapinfo

intermd1

intermd2

intermd3

intermd5

intermd7

intermde

credimap

titlemap

 

http://chapsoftware.com/Files/chapdm3.zip

 

Edited October 27, 2022 by prfunky
forgot 2 entries

[watto3699]

You and your mates are a bunch of devious bastards, you know that?

Don't even remember the first 2 levels, 3rd took me over an hour.

Less revenants plz

[JollyRoger]

20 hours ago, prfunky said:

Question about the automap on map02: Are these lines intentionally

missing? (see attached pic)

Weird, I checked the in the editor (Ultimate doombuilder) and there was nothing peculiar about them, yet they're missing from the automap.

20 hours ago, prfunky said:

I don't know how many ports

my methods translate to but KNOW they work in Zandronum/LZDoom

and GZDoom.

I'm targeting PrBoom+ with my efforts, from what I've heard, you need to actually make your own intermission screen and map name title for them to show up in that source port.

17 hours ago, watto3699 said:

Less revenants plz

Your wish has been heard, there are now considerably fewer revenants on map03 on HMP and lower. On a side note - how the hell did you manage to make so many lost souls appear? There are only 1554 placed monsters in map03 on UV yet your counter shows a number close to 4000.

 

Anyway, difficulty levels have been more properly implemented for all of the maps, I haven't tested them much beyond a single playthrough so they may make some things too easy. File in the OP updated.

[prfunky]

Y'know, I had a thought about that after I posted. My files contain both a

mapinfo and zmapinfo. I *think* that the zmapinfo lump is simply ignored

by ports that don't support it, hence there being a mapinfo lump as well.

Might be worth experimenting with and when I have time, I might do my

own experimenting with as well.

re: 4000+ monsters by watto2699

maybe this is why original Doom limited Lost Souls to 21-ish? Lol!

 

[prfunky]

Hey! Thanks to this/you, I now have PrBoom+ installed on my Linux box!

You're right; map03 renders much better here. I'm not doing the OpenGL

though so you should know about this anomoly. I have this in one of my

levels as well and was able to mostly fix with ZokemBSP but then something

else got wiped out with Zokem's save so never fully solved the problem.

 

[JollyRoger]

That's precisely the "minor graphical glitch" that I've mentioned. It does not appear when using OpenGL, however. Still, I'm curious as to what could've caused this.

[prfunky]

When I first saw a glitch like this in my work years ago, I remember reading

it has something to do with having too many vertices line up from the point

of view. Offsetting corners a bit was the only way I found then to eliminate

the bug then.

[watto3699]

3 hours ago, JollyRoger said:

Your wish has been heard, there are now considerably fewer revenants on map03 on HMP and lower. On a side note - how the hell did you manage to make so many lost souls appear? There are only 1554 placed monsters in map03 on UV yet your counter shows a number close to 4000.

I think I had the lost soul spawn limit off, I had meant to ask, in my previous post, if that was meant to be on or off.

[JollyRoger]

3 minutes ago, watto3699 said:

I think I had the lost soul spawn limit off, I had meant to ask, in my previous post, if that was meant to be on or off.

It's meant to be off. In my test playthroughs the pain elementals only spawned 400 - 500 extra souls at most. They tended to get shredded in a crossfire of revenant fireballs and cyberdemon rockets pretty quickly. Could your ludicrous numbers be a GZdoom thing?

[ryiron]

Very cool. I like the new textures, especially the starry wall used in the cental hub of map03. There's some very cool architecture. I like design of the central area and the revenant/hell knight fight in map03. I like the look of the entryway in map02, but the use of silent teleporters is a bit strange. It just makes it look the map is glitching out. Not sure what the intended effect is here?

 

Combat is pretty decent, with map01 and map02 not being too difficult. Map03 has a good mix of slaughter fights and smaller challenges. My favourite of the smaller fights is the one with the four hell knights and one baron on the platforms, with the imps spawning in. The hell knight/revenant fight in the marble hallway is fun, but a bit on the easy side because the room is quite large compared to the number of monsters. It's easy to camp in a corner spamming rockets for a bit.

 

The main hub finale is quite grandiose, but is a little bit circle strafe to win. Only the viles and stray rockets from cybers are really threatening. I didn't have any issues with the final wave of pain elementals, because if you keep running in circles they always move towards you and so never get out of the central area. There's also not much reason to go down into the pit in the final fight because there is heaps on cell ammo on the higher floor and you can just BFG/rocket things from above. The cleanup takes a bit too long, once the viles and cybers on the upper floor are dead the fight is basically won, but there's still a couple of minutes more of BFG spamming.

 

A few notes for things you might want to fix:

• Lots of doortraks are missing the lower unpeg flag, causing them to scroll when opening the door.
• You have a few places where you have several trigger lines close together. With boom you can use voodoo closets to have a single line trigger multiple effects. This avoids players being able to inch forward to only trigger one line.
• Orthogonal lines are easy to accidentally line skip. In one attempt at map03 I managed to grab the soulsphere and teleport into the main hub without any enemies getting released.
• I missed two secrets in map01 because I couldn't backtrack out of the final room.
• The death exit for map03 didn't work for me, I ended up just getting killed without the map ending.

 

 

[JollyRoger]

15 hours ago, ryiron said:

It just makes it look the map is glitching out. Not sure what the intended effect is here?

There you're crossing across two temporal rifts - I'd imagine the feeling would be pretty jarring and disorienting.

15 hours ago, ryiron said:

It's easy to camp in a corner spamming rockets for a bit.

Yeah, I should probably add more hell knights/revs in the corridor bits to force the player to use the linked teleporters on hard difficulty.

15 hours ago, ryiron said:

 

A few notes for things you might want to fix:

Thanks for the suggestions - the player getting locked in for the final fight in map01 was intentional. Also, the death exit in map03 works - in your playthrough you probably pressed some button on the keyboard too quickly. I moved the Romero's head on top of the teleport location to hopefully make it faster, although speeding it up might be something to look into. As for the others - I'm currently in the process of fixing/improving them although I don't have that much time to map right now so this will take time.

 

On another note - I managed to fix the weird texture glitch in map03 + added some other minor fixes and improvements. OP updated accordingly.

[IcarusOfDaggers]

@Jolly Roger That's a slimetrail. The hard part is pinpointing where it comes from. Especially with UDB having nodebuilder mode disabled. But it's basically caused by the game not being able to build a node due to multiple overlapping linedefs, multiple vertices in a row on one line or an extremly sharp angle. Curves also tend to be problematic for doom nodebuilders. 

 

Basically, find the spot that produces it in the game, then adjust that place until the glitch is gone. it usually takes several attempts to know what is actually causing it. But it is caused by doom engine. mostly in places with high detail or in places with sharp corners betweem two linedefs.

Edited October 30, 2022 by IcarusOfDaggers

[JollyRoger]

@IcarusOfDaggers Yeah, I seem to have fixed the trail in the current version.

 

I'm encountering a weird issue with unpegged textures in the first two maps, however. All door tracks are actually tagged as "lower unpegged" in UDB, yet they still scroll with the opening doors. Is this UDB acting up or did I make the doors wrong?

[LadyMistDragon]

Well, this was quite stimulating all the way through! I was expecting something a little more pirate-themed admittedly, but let's try to get some thoughts down, shall we?

 

Map 01 - I really like the way flesh textures are integrated here. The control room and dining room were also quite nice. Too bad the start was so painful for me. And I somehow reacted wrongly to the death exit. Anyway.

 

Map 02 - Even better. I did wander for a bit because the blue key is not exactly in the most obvious place but encounters are spicier without feeling cheaper. I do like the sort of hint of the next map. I did sort of futz the trap at the end.

 

Map 03_ I don't really think I have time for this. I will say that the opening room looks really good.

 

Edit: This is an older version I'm playing

 

 

lmd_yellow01.zip

Edited October 31, 2022 by LadyMistDragon

[JollyRoger]

It turns out adding a custom intermission screen and custom map titles/par times that show up in Boom is easier than I thought. The unpegged textures in maps 1 and 2 are still broken. Also, looking into speeding up the death exits may be something to consider - they seem to force restarts for some people if they press some button too quickly.

 

On a brighter note, here's a sneak peak of map04 (currently only this room is finished):

 

File in the OP updated.

[JollyRoger]

So, my girlfriend found out what I'm doing and volunteered to make intermission screen art for all my levels. Here's her rendition of map01:

 

All intermission screens will be added once map04 is done.

[JollyRoger]

Finally, after a long wait, map04, "Vale of Pnath", is finally out. The monster count is scaled back from map03, with no massive encounters (unless you find The Super Secret^TM) yet the layout is more complex and the level is consequently more hostile especially on a first playthrough when you don't know where everything is.

 

OP updated accordingly.

[JollyRoger]

MAP02 Intermission screen done as well. Took a bit longer than expected, but I think this came out better than MAP01.

Drawn by - https://www.instagram.com/p/CpJaaXOKvqp/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

[JollyRoger]

So, has anyone beat MAP04 yet? I'd like to hear some feedback, particularly if the secrets aren't too obnoxious to find.

 

Started work on MAP05. Here's the opening scene, still WIP:

[LadyMistDragon]

Hey, finally decided to play Map 04! Didn't really discover much. It did seem a little evil to place a hidden Invisibility at the beginning of a fight with two Cyberdemons but it's just a matter of adjusting how one fights.

 

 

[JollyRoger]

On 7/5/2023 at 12:41 AM, LadyMistDragon said:

It did seem a little evil to place a hidden Invisibility at the beginning of a fight with two Cyberdemons

Well, the Vale is basically Lovecraft's underworld - it's a pretty evil place all things considered. Your completion is roughly what I expected from someone playing the map for the first time without deliberately looking for secrets.

[Carduelis_0329]

HeLLo it me!

Map_03, The Inner Sanctum.

I liked this one the most, maybe because of the challenging angle maybe because I'm getting better at pixel art.

Sadly, I can't find a good colour combination with Doom's limited palette so had to settle with brown columns. It blends well with the sky though, which is the main focus (' v ')/*

[Carduelis_0329]

It me Again,

Map_04, Vale of Pnath.

Featuring Doom Guy studying dripping meat in the Valley.

Another fleshy one, hope this doesn't get flushed with the end-screen texts!

[JollyRoger]

"There is a lake in distant Zan,

beyond the wonted haunts of man..."

 

MAP05 is finally out, I paid much more attention to the concept here than to combat, which is pretty simple slaughter. Ammo and health are stored in specific places though so this hopefully should spice things up. Also added the custom intermission screens to maps 03 and 04, they look really neat.  The new download link should point to the updated wad already.

 

Let me know how MAP05 plays.

[Red Recluse]

Somewhere you can add pillars to the walls or even the ceiling, in principle combine mosaics of converted color-chnging paintings hertic on map.