Jaded [MBF21] (idgames)

[lunchlunch]

Jaded is a large slaughtermap like many others, meaning it is a dark techbase with flashing green highlights. It is sandwiched between two gimmick maps that are only there to round out the wad and flesh out the atmosphere. Its influences are probably obvious but I'll mention a few anyways- Fractured Worlds, Miasma, Magnolia, Abandon, Occula, Newt, etc.
Included with the wad are UV-MAX demos recorded for each map as a show of good faith. Criticism is welcome. I did spend many hours tweaking HMP, it's as much the "intended experience" as UV, just scaled down.

 

Screenshots:

 

 

 

 

 

Huge thanks to @Cammy for their MIDI compositions and shoutout to @BiZ and @Meowgi for their playtesting and detailed notes. The full credits are in the .txt file.
Tested with DSDA-DOOM 0.24.3
Software rendering and translucency are recommended.

-complevel 21

DOWNLOAD HERE: Jaded.zip

Edited November 13, 2023 by lunchlunch

[Meowgi]

Hell yeah! Congrats on the release, can't wait to give this another go!

[pooplord01]

this midi is such a catjam, i just finished and had tons of fun
really good shit brother 

Edited February 28, 2023 by pooplord01

[Cammy]

Congrats on the release, lunchlunch! It was a real honor to help score a project of this magnitude. Your work is beautifully crafted as always!

[raddicted]

another lunchlunch classic

[Maribo]

9 hours ago, lunchlunch said:

Jaded is a large slaughtermap like many others, meaning it is a dark techbase with flashing green highlights. It is sandwiched between two gimmick maps that are only there to round out the wad and flesh out the atmosphere. Its influences are probably obvious but I'll mention a few anyways- Fractured Worlds, Miasma, Magnolia, Abandon, Occula, Newt, etc.

You are speaking directly to my soul with these comparisons. I will be playing at some point soon.

[slowfade]

Beyond my level as a player, but I played through with cheats (when necessary) and admired the architecture and detailing. There's something special about this green combined with the dark textures, the mood it creates. Looks amazing! Even though I sucked at the fights I felt they were well designed and the map didn't get me lost, which is another thing I appreciate. Good music too.

[indigotyrian]

This looks incredible! Can't wait to dig in.

[mancubian_candidate]

Just scraped by the first fight haha, this is some incredible stuff!

Will properly play through when I have more time, well done on all so far - the visuals and midi are phenomenal :)

[Soulless]

Damn that was good and tough! Made it to the end with just a few bullets.

Secrets were exciting to say the least, and the epilogue was a nice/short addition.

Good stuff!

[indigotyrian]

Having played it now I have to say that was pretty enjoyable! I did HMP because I'm really not that great at slaughter but the fights were plenty engaging and the sights something to behold indeed. Nothing felt particularly unfair though ammo did get tight (in a good way). Loved the addition of the prologue/epilogue maps, particularly the more puzzle-y segments.

 

EDIT: I wrote up some more detailed thoughts on this, especially the aesthetics, on my Cohost: https://cohost.org/virtuatelier/post/1123774-jaded-an-emerald

Edited March 4, 2023 by segfault

[ryiron]

Wow, this is great! Did a uv playthrough with saves and loads. Fights are varied and challenging with some innovative ideas. I think my personal favourite might be the corridor full of hell knights, with the revs on balconies either side. Not quite enough rockets deal with even just the hell knights forcing the player to move up to restock, and moving too far makes things worse :-). I also really like the mix of pacing, with incidental breather combat between the bigger lock-in fights. I managed to find all the secrets. All were fun to find, and I like how they are often shown to the player, but require a little bit of hunting. The berserk took me a bit too long, I though it was a jump from the ledge or the rocks, until I figured out it was much simpler.

 

The intro and outro maps are fantastic too, setting the tone and adding an extra final challenge. The music choices are perfect.

 

Didn't find anything game breaking. One minor thing I found was the secret quake switch leading to the fight with the cyber/4 PEs is damaging on top. I only noticed this because I was trying to climb on things to get to the berserk :-).

[mmjp08]

Finished a run with saves and loads. Interesting to have no* BFG in a level this large. The FW inspiration is most obvious in the secret fights I think.

*I still have a couple secrets left to find but doubt there's a bfg

Edited March 2, 2023 by mmjp08
added asterisk

[ryiron]

I like the no bfg. It allows for some smaller, tighter fights that don’t get totally neutralised by one or two quick bfg blasts. Especially when the map allows such freedom in navigation. The route isn’t just: whichever way gets me the bfg quickest. 

[lunchlunch]

Thanks for your comments and love, everybody. 
@mmjp08 @ryiron Yeah, I rarely give out the BFG to a player, I think the plasma gun is more interesting to design fights around, and the BFG just nerfs every fight that comes after it. HMP and HNTR have a BFG in one of the secret fights, but on UV you'll have to wait for MAP03, which makes quite a bit of use of the BFG.
Although I might stick a huge BFG-spam arena at the end of the map for Release Candidate 2 per Killer5's suggestion. Not totally a for sure thing, but I'm thinking about it.

[mmjp08]

I could see that making the secret fights way harder to balance and could invalidate demos

[CblBOPOTKA]

I should say, this is awesome mapset. I love the atmosphere, tend to exploration and your maps usual hardness ;) Found 9/11 secrets, almost all from usual gameplay, few after further research, they are very well cooked. Talking about fights, i found that fight with revenants after closed door that are going down to stairs and cacos behind you, - very tough, there is very little space, but i somehow managed this fight (didn't figured out that cacos are not infinite and there is some space under them). Fight for blue (?) key was less painful, but also very hard, where was 4 pedestals with revenants and hellknight are approaching to you. And after 3 archviles are showing to finish off you) In some strange way, i enjoyed this fight after all. Anyway, i constantly enjoy over your latest releases, they are very detailed, what i love in doom mapping, and creative too. Keep up the good work!

[mmjp08]

1 hour ago, CblBOPOTKA said:

I should say, this is awesome mapset. I love the atmosphere, tend to exploration and your maps usual hardness ;) Found 9/11 secrets, almost all from usual gameplay, few after further research, they are very well cooked. Talking about fights, i found that fight with revenants after closed door that are going down to stairs and cacos behind you, - very tough, there is very little space, but i somehow managed this fight (didn't figured out that cacos are not infinite and there is some space under them). Fight for blue (?) key was less painful, but also very hard, where was 4 pedestals with revenants and hellknight are approaching to you. And after 3 archviles are showing to finish off you) In some strange way, i enjoyed this fight after all. Anyway, i constantly enjoy over your latest releases, they are very detailed, what i love in doom mapping, and creative too. Keep up the good work!

staying close to the revs is pretty consistent

[Maribo]

Hi, I took some time to play this wad this evening and adored it. The showstopper is obviously Map02 here, but Map01 and Map03 both are also really good maps for the purpose they serve, I particularly think they would be good platforming practice since they're quite forgiving with the teleporters and don't have anything like SR50 line-ups.

 

I honestly have little to no criticisms, the only things in these maps that slightly bothered me were some instances of sneaky geometry that looks like it can be jumped to for a secret, but there was nothing there, and I don't really think that's a problem on the map's part... it's just a bit difficult to shake the secret hunting mindset on a blind playthrough. This map is also fucking gorgeous, the blue-greens are so soft on the eyes and it feels like I could look at the cliffs and gorge walls forever.

Three highlights off the top of my head:

Spoiler

The stairway fight with the massive rev horde + the cacos that teleport in behind you, based around the damaging pool at the base of the stairs. Wonderful.

One of the key fights that takes place in damaging floor, it has a big shelf with revenants, the water has pinkies, and there are two area denial viles at the end of one side.

The big semi-hallway fight with the hell knight flood + 4 sets of chunky revenant turrets.

 

Here are a set of 3 -dsdademo FDAs, recorded in DSDA-Doom v0.25.6, so they'll need that version to be played back. I imagine you've gotten plenty of gameplay footage, but I knew I was going to play the full wad so I figured it wouldn't hurt to add a few more.

jaded_fdas_maribo.zip

 

Incredible wad, thank you for sharing.

Edited March 5, 2023 by Maribo

[mmjp08]

 Demos and yt playlist include map01 max, map02 max, map03 max and map03 NM100s.

jaded.zip.zip

[Razza]

Very nice maps here mate. I played through on HMP and had a blast, though the fight with the cybies at the end of map03 did rub me the wrong way a bit. Maybe I was just unlucky, but most of the time they would shoot immediately after they teleported into the area, and because I didn't know where they would come in, I just couldn't react fast enough to get away.

 

Aside from that little bit, this was a great way to spend an hour.

[mmjp08]

the order they spawn in is determined. It'll be slightly ccw from the last one

[lunchlunch]

@Maribo 

@mmjp08

Thank you both for providing your playthroughs.  I'll never get tired of watching people explore my maps, I make popcorn and put it on the TV. Especially with commentary.

@Razza 

Glad to hear your POV, I put a lot of thought into the lower difficulties as well so I like hearing from players that try them.

About the cybers, you have to know how to do the BFG two-shot technique, it's a little esoteric that way and is inspired by Time of Death maps. In UV you have just enough time to two-shot a cyber before the next one teleports in, eight in sequence, in a counter-clockwise order. On HMP, I removed every other cyber in this sequence so the player gets more time between cybers and only fights four of them in total. Additionally, the cybs can only spawn in two corners instead of four, and there's extra cells so you can just hold down the mouse button, spray-and-pray style. It's an odd compromise but it was the best way I could think of scaling down an already unconventional fight that demands knowledge of an advanced technique on UV. I'm glad you enjoyed your time with it overall though.

Edited March 5, 2023 by lunchlunch

[Razza]

1 hour ago, lunchlunch said:

@Maribo 

@mmjp08

Thank you both for providing your playthroughs.  I'll never get tired of watching people explore my maps, I make popcorn and put it on the TV. Especially with commentary.

@Razza 

Glad to hear your POV, I put a lot of thought into the lower difficulties as well so I like hearing from players that try them.

About the cybers, you have to know how to do the BFG two-shot technique, it's a little esoteric that way and is inspired by Time of Death maps. In UV you have just enough time to two-shot a cyber before the next one teleports in, eight in sequence, in a counter-clockwise order. On HMP, I removed every other cyber in this sequence so the player gets more time between cybers and only fights four of them in total. Additionally, the cybs can only spawn in two corners instead of four, and there's extra cells so you can just hold down the mouse button, spray-and-pray style. It's an odd compromise but it was the best way I could think of scaling down an already unconventional fight that demands knowledge of an advanced technique on UV. I'm glad you enjoyed your time with it overall though.

I didn't have a problem with 2-shotting cybers (or just taking them down in general), the problem was more that I didn't know what corner the cybers would spawn in, so I would either have a cyberdemon spawn right in front of my face, or off to the side/behind me. It just caused me to get blindsided a couple of times and gave me (IMO) a few unfair deaths that I couldn't see coming.

[D0M0]

Came to this thread to credit these maps. I've just finished playing through all the maps and I thoroughly enjoyed it all throughout!

I played through the wad on Ultra Violence and I got 100% kills and 100% secrets on all levels. (I also saved before every big fight)

I saw a theme of exploration throughout these maps which i am personally a big fan of, getting a lot of the secrets felt satisfying. I am also a pretty big fan of slaughter maps, and I can happily say that it's very solid! There was one fight though that absolutely smashed me in, and that would be the fight with all the hell knights and revenants sniping you through a tight corridor. The arch-viles definitely caught me off guard and I ended up very scarce on rocket and plasma ammo at the end. The trick i used was to hang out at the back walls of the corridor and spam rockets, then squeeze through the remaining enemies. It wasn't a very consistent strat but it worked somehow.

This is a mapset I will definitely come back to in the future to replay, excellent stuff!

[Catpho]

As pleasant as 45+ min of mix variety challenge + slaughter fights can be, especially when paired with @Cammy's gorgeous, uplifting composition. It is indeed very familiar in a lot of ways, but at this level of craftsmanship, it's as good a slaughter (or, generally, Doom) confection as any. Thanks for the map; it affirms your place in the community's top-tier, if affirmation was ever needed.

[Treehouseminis]

I've made a few slaughermaps myself but like most of them they're pretty linear.  This has inspired me to try the opposite. 

 

I played on HMP and had a great time.  Just difficult enough for me to be on my toes, but only die a few times.  I tried it on UV first but got stuck on the narrow room with hellknights flooding the room and revenants above.  I bet if I go back with a different approach I could do it, but your HMP is my UV, it's perfect lol

[KeaganDunn]

Beautiful set, and a really fun challenge on UV. Never got held up on any fight or progression for a long time. The ammo situation is very well balanced, at least for my playthrough - I never had to chaingun a LOT of things, but still had to be mindful of my ammo consumption.

 

I had this brought to my attention thanks to Maribo - thanks for using the Epiphanies MIDI! Cammy's MIDI on MAP02 is amazing and fits the spectacle perfectly.

[TheShep]

Thanks lunchlunch, i'll have to spin this one sometime.

[Nefelibeta]

Very cool stuff, favourite map is map03... just kidding.

Love the visuals, love the variety of set-ups. It's definitely quite unique to have a magnum-opusy map that doesn't have any zombie-shooting build-up, gives you all the big guns within first 5 minutes, and doesn't have a BFG. My favourite part is the HK tunnel with rev snipers on two sides, as mean as it is.

Some nitpicking, palette seems to be a big wonky. Whenever I fire in a dark place, all HKs look like as if they were barons... in a map where there aren't any barons. Maybe unimportant.