I believe I have created the largest and densest maze possible in Doom

[Trar]

Honestly, what this needs is destructible walls:

 

 

I don't know how you'd do that without fancy GZDoom scripting magicks though.

[Lucius Wooding]

46 minutes ago, Trar said:

Honestly, what this needs is destructible walls:

 

I don't know how you'd do that without fancy GZDoom scripting magicks though.

You can do it in vanilla (although it will be slow and obvious) with shootable triggers. In Boom however you can make an instant floor/ceiling movement that makes a sector seem to disappear when shot. It's fairly common in use although it's limited to hitscan weapons, Going Down had some use of it off the top of my head.

[thestarrover]

On 11/25/2022 at 7:02 PM, Kyka said:

I have some suggestions to make this map harder:

1) All of the keys teleport once every hour to random places on the map.

2) Just like Mirkwood, the paths randomly change as you progress. Walls raise to block previous paths. And walls lower to reveal new paths.

3)Occasionally, all of the health on the level just vanishes for a period of 10 minutes, reappearing in random locations also.

 

 

19 hours ago, jpsplat said:

I am very excited that someone might beat my big crazy maze! Anyway here's a couple progress  pics for the next version, the wall sectors are now at a certain height so they have a proper top you could walk on, and also the towers work from far away. You can also see them from the ground as you approach.

 

10 hours ago, LateToDOOM2020 said:

This wad would be really cool if some areas you step on will make walls lower while other areas you step on will make walls raise up.
It would make this maze even more of a mess to navigate. 

The screenshots are amazing! And the possibility to see the towers from the labyrinth is a very good improvement. I also agree with the possible additions suggested by @Kyka and @LateToDOOM2020

[Kyka]

Day 5 (Day 4 of this second run.) Not that I would expect anyone to be super interested, but what the hell, I'll share it anyway. I hope some find this interesting. If nothing else, I am having fun.

 

Previous Progress:

 

 

Current Progress:

 

 

Good Progress today! I FOUND MY FIRST KEY!!!!!!! A red one (Marked with the orange cross on the above map.) And even better, there is only one possible route for progression, marked with the red dot. Everywhere else is a dead end. Now here is the thing though. I found that route, then had to go back and 'fill in' a lot of routes and open areas that I had left behind, now closed off.

 

Like this, for example:

 

 

(You can see the white dot in the middle left. That is me and that is where the red key is.) Sadly for me, I got thoroughly lost, and the blue circle 2 pics up is where I was situated when I saved and ended the days proceedings. Nowhere near the red dot which is where I need to be. To anyone with the patience of a medium sized god, feel free to trace the route from blue circle to red dot. I guarantee, it is not a direct route. Good luck. :) )

 

 

(Spoiler alert. The next two hour recording, which I just did, is basically two hours of me trying with increasing frustration, to retrace my steps and failing. Getting turned around. Getting lost. Not being able to find the route. Even. Slightly.)

 

Day 6 (Day 5 of this second run.)

 

Here are some of the wonderful 'locations' I visited in my increasingly desperate attempts to find my way (that tiny white dot lol):

 

 

 

I did eventually find my way out. Eventually. I think I permanently damaged my mental function.

Anyway, enough fun and games for one day. My ability to endure fun of this magnitude ran out somewhere between hour 2 and hour 3. Finally I did find that elusive exit, and made some progress for the last half hour of the most recent recording.

 

Final progress pic after 12 hours on the job:

 

 

Some backtracking needed to fill in those gaps, and three progress points, so lots more backtracking tomorrow.

 

No deaths yet. Two cyberdemons still to deal with. Ugh. (Op mentioned that Cybers guard each key is how I know there are two more in this map.)

Edited November 27, 2022 by Kyka

[jpsplat]

 

On 11/26/2022 at 3:18 PM, Shepardus said:

Does that mean that every cacodemon in the level will come after you at once?

Yeah you were right, that is what happened, so I just made all the walls impassable in doom builder. You will still be able to peak at all the pillars and the maze from on top of stairsets, but not all the cacodemons will come for you.
Progress on this is s l o w as adding any line freezes doom builder for 30 seconds.
 

Quote

Centered the map around 0,0 (approximately)

Randomized thing angles to multiples of 45 degrees

Rebuilt nodes with ZDBSP

 can someone tell me how @Benjogami did this so when I release new versions they can have these fixes? thanks everyone :)

edit: some cool shots. I made this big staircase thing that gives you a good view of the maze.

 

view of key towers from on top of the big stairs:

 

The key towers are also lifts that will give you a similar view. But don't stay up too long or you will get cooked!

View from on top of the blue tower:

its neat to see them squirm around the maze.

Edited November 28, 2022 by jpsplat
new screenshots

[RastaManGames]

@jpsplat How dare you... Now I wanna create my own labyrinth too!

 

Edited November 28, 2022 by RastaManGames

[thestarrover]

Almost 4 hours. I started playing and now I can't stop!

Edited November 28, 2022 by thestarrover

[Kyka]

2 hours ago, thestarrover said:

Almost 4 hours. I started playing and now I can't stop!

 

There is something oddly captivating about this map. I really am enjoying it. Like a cat inside a box. Just loving it in there.

[Caleb13]

On 11/27/2022 at 6:17 PM, Kyka said:

(Spoiler alert. The next two hour recording, which I just did, is basically two hours of me trying with increasing frustration, to retrace my steps and failing. Getting turned around. Getting lost. Not being able to find the route. Even. Slightly.)

 

Ah, masochism is strong with this one. But really, you could use something to mark your way through the maze. Something like this wall spray mod:

 

https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=59536

 

You could make one symbol for the corners you've cleared, another to denote dead ends etc. Well, it's too late in your case (you can't add a gameplay mod without invalidating your save games), but maybe someone else will find it useful.

[jpsplat]

Version 2 is up now, check out edit 4 on the original post!

 

[LateToDOOM2020]

6 minutes ago, jpsplat said:

Version 2 is up now, check out edit 4 on the original post!

 

Thank you for making our torturous game play experience of being stuck in a maze forever more improved and enhanced with an update. 😂🤘

It looks good. One thing I notice is making it possible to walk on the maze walls causes the entire map to become discovered.
Its good to see the entire map but it also makes it difficult to know what has been explored. I guess its a trade off you could say.
 

[Trar]

Tbh, I can see this being fun with the DRL Arsenal mod and monster pack.

[Shepardus]

The new version significantly reduces performance, especially with software rendering, which is unsurprising considering that the walls no longer fully block off vision between different parts of the map.

[Redneckerz]

Needs to be on /idgames. A fun benchmark map.

[Majin]

10/10

[Kyka]

Day 6 (Day 5 of current run.)

 

Current Progress:

 

 

As you can see there are only two points of progression. The northern one is inward, and will ultimately lead to dead ends, but there may be a key in there, and also I am UV-maxing this level, so I have to go back. The southern red dot is the only ultimate way forward. Now here is the problem. I have been wandering around filling in dead ends and alternate routes, and have managed to get myself stuck. After an hour of wandering around, I can neither find my way back to the dead end section, nor to the main exit. I am really stuck. Please send help. No really. Send help. Bring Gatorade. And some cookies.

 

So far no deaths, but I am starting to wish for one lol.

 

If I don't make it out, I want you to know it has been a privilege knowing all of you. I wish you all every blessing and success in your endeavours.

 

Godspeed.

 

(Cries quietly while curled up in foetal position, rambling incoherently about endless corridors of marble and brown overcast skies.)

Edited November 29, 2022 by Kyka

[powerkraut]

6 hrs and 8 mins making left turns only. You still end up exploring most of the map, but you get all three keys and then the exit so less backtracking.

[Kyka]

31 minutes ago, powerkraut said:

6 hrs and 8 mins making left turns only. You still end up exploring most of the map, but you get all three keys and then the exit so less backtracking.

 

Well done! :D Making sure every turn is a left turn and not making a mistake still takes formidable concentration and patience.

Edited November 29, 2022 by Kyka

[powerkraut]

42 minutes ago, Kyka said:

 

Well done! :D Making sure every turn is a left turn and not making a mistake still takes formidable concentration and patience.

No joke, you're nuts for trying to UV max this. Especially given that monsters can roam around and end up in places you've already cleared. Good luck on regaining your sanity.

[LateToDOOM2020]

My progress is not impressive but that's okay I don't want to suffer that bad lol
I had an observation going through marking all the dead ends and continued going deeper until I find more dead ends. 

Theres a spot you can see where I begin to hit many dead ends all at one time and it is limited to an area.
Its a petty cool visualization to see where an area is cut off from the rest of the maze.

Also is it just me or does anyone have difficulties going up the new stairs? I cant get up

Edited November 29, 2022 by LateToDOOM2020

[Kyka]

@LateToDOOM2020 That is actually pretty cool! :)

 

 

Ok I was so stuck that I had to sit down and draw out the solution. haha there was no way I would have been able to work this out on the fly while playing the map.

 

The blue circle in the bottom right is my current position. To get to the red dot marking the only point of forward progress, follow the red line to its conclusion. (I couldn't even manage that while in the map playing.) To get back to the top red dot and complete that blank section up there, simply follow the red line until it meets the dark yellow line. Follow the dark yellow line until it meets the flesh colored line. From there, follow the pink - white - blue - bright yellow - dark yellow lines to reach your destination. (the purple dots are nexus points where major paths branch off. The orange line was a dead end.)

 

And then once you have explored that area, follow the same path all the way back in reverse. 

 

Even knowing the route, this is gonna take 1-2 hours to get there, explore that area, and get back.

 

Fun times.

 

Dear God what am I doing?

 

 

 

 

Edited November 29, 2022 by Kyka

[jpsplat]

39 minutes ago, LateToDOOM2020 said:

Also is it just me or does anyone have difficulties going up the new stairs? I cant get up
 

What source port are you using? The first stairset works for me on gzdoom and crispy doom (i have a powerful rig so i am able to play on those)

[LateToDOOM2020]

@jpsplat I am using Woof DOOM because my poor computer cant handle running GZDoom.
When I try to go up the stairs and full speed running I hit it like a wall.

I will look up crispy Doom and see if I can play with that.

[hobomaster22]

3 minutes ago, LateToDOOM2020 said:

@jpsplat I am using Woof DOOM because my poor computer cant handle running GZDoom.
When I try to go up the stairs and full speed running I hit it like a wall.

I will look up crispy Doom and see if I can play with that.

Give Helion a try. I am able to render version 2 of this maze above 100fps even with a low end graphics card.

[jpsplat]

6 minutes ago, LateToDOOM2020 said:

@jpsplat I am using Woof DOOM because my poor computer cant handle running GZDoom.
When I try to go up the stairs and full speed running I hit it like a wall.

I will look up crispy Doom and see if I can play with that.

also I should ask are you able to go up any of the stairs at all? Or do you get blocked at the first step? It is intended that you can go up the stairs to peek at the maze and the towers, but you are not able to actually walk around on top of the walls (otherwise you could just make your way to the  edge and skip the whole maze).

This is the view you should be able to see from the top of the first stair on Woof doom.

[LateToDOOM2020]

10 minutes ago, jpsplat said:

It is intended that you can go up the stairs to peek at the maze and the towers, but you are not able to actually walk around on top of the walls

My bad yes I can go up just like the image you showed. I guess it works fine on Woof doom then👍😎
I think I just misunderstood. Its actually a smart idea just to get a peek only without breaking the game play.
 

16 minutes ago, hobomaster22 said:

Give Helion a try. I am able to render version 2 of this maze above 100fps even with a low end graphics card.

Thanks I will look at it I did not ever know there were so many doom ports!

[BigBoy91]

Doomguy 2000 approves.

[DaAndroid614]

On 11/22/2022 at 8:27 PM, AlexMax said:

This thread reminds me that I was fascinated by maze generation as a kid.  And my memory led me back to a program called Daedalus, a maze generation program for Windows.  Amazingly (pun halfway intended), it's still being updated.  And it has looooooads of options, including the ability to walk through the maze in 3D.

 

 

So if you're looking for a way to create mazes for Doom, take a look at this program.

For shits and giggles, I decided to try and see if I couldn't make something even more absurd by generating a maze with this program and feeding that into PNG2WAD, so I did some quick math to figure out how big it would need to be to fill the UDB level grid (around 80x the widht/height, making it 6400x the area), made a maze, added entrance/exits in MSPAINT, and fed it into PNG2WAD... and it generated an empty wad file. So if someone wants to one-up the map that started this thread, try starting somewhere between 200x200 and 4096x4096.

[Kyka]

Day 7!!!

 

Today was the day we did that epic retracing of our footsteps. Yeah. This:

 

 

It took 45 minutes to trace that path, about 6 minutes of actual exploring and clearing of that blank area, and around 50 minutes for the return journey.

 

I'm numb lol.

 

current progress:

 

 

@sigh. Getting there. (Just for total transparency I have been editing the map pics, because the map is too big to fit on a single screen, even when fully minimised.)

 

Still enjoying the challenge, but soldiering through it at the same time.

Edited November 30, 2022 by Kyka

[LateToDOOM2020]

51 minutes ago, Kyka said:

Still enjoying the challenge, but soldiering through it at the same time.

Yea I'm still having fun with this maze. I have been on maze 2.0 now I abandoned the original map because I was bad at navigation lol.
 

On 11/27/2022 at 1:23 PM, jpsplat said:

@jpsplat Did you make it so the player cant get to the top of the tower? I killed 3 of the spiders but when I try to get to the top I die almost instantly. I would think its  archviles but I die before even catching on fire.

On another note the tower is fun to fight around. The spiders have a delay with their plasma balls  depending on your distance. So You can lure monsters on to a pathway where they will try shooting you and move out of the way causing 50 plasma balls to hit them all at once. Very devastating attack using the tower.