Decomissioned Foundry [complevel 2]

[JonExMachina]

Hey there, everyone. I finished my third map a couple days ago and wanted to share it with you. It's a moody techbase with multiple paths that can be taken at any order. I did my best to keep the room designs varied, and to have a decent level of detail while avoiding visplane overflow. The sky looks broken in Chocolate Doom, but that's the only bug I found during playtesting, with the level being fully playable otherwise. In other sourceports it looks as intended.

 

Combat was designed around UV, but adjustments were made for HNTR and HMP. Please don't be discouraged by the monster count, I promise you most of them will go down pretty quickly.

 

On a final note, the midi I wrote for this map is too short and will likely sound too repetitive because of that, but my muse went missing and I don't think I'll finish that song any time soon.

 

Any feedback is appreciated. Thank you all for playing!

 

DOWNLOAD LINK: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1eWBWSFZ0DDO_IwqQ_ZbEzPAPsekHoHVr?usp=sharing

 

SCREENSHOTS

Spoiler

 

Name: Decomissioned Foundry
Map Format: Doom
Ports Tested: DSDA-Doom, PrBoom+, Crispy Doom, Chocolate Doom, GZDoom, Etetrnity
IWAD: Doom 2
Map: MAP01
Music: By me
Gameplay: Single-play
Difficulty Settings: Yes
Multiplayer Placement: No
Build Time: 12 days
Textures: Vanilla
Requirements: None. Crouching and jumping can break the map and are not recommended.

Edited July 14, 2023 by JonExMachina

[RED77]

Man! That was AMAZING

One of the best maps I've played this year.
Congrats

[JonExMachina]

Thank you so much, @RED77!

[CrueCut]

Just played this on UV -- great fun!  My only small gripe is the lack of an SSG until very late, although maybe that was my own fault.  Regardless, this map was lots of fun.  Hope you continue mapping!

 

 

[JonExMachina]

Thank you @CrueCut! The paths to each key and weapon can be taken at any order, so you can find the SSG early on depending on your choice. I did try my best to design the encounters of each path around the weapons they offer, so I hope that alleviated the frustration of not getting the SSG until you were mostly done with the map.

 

Thanks a lot for playing, and I'll definitely continue mapping!

[RataUnderground]

Nice map! Maybe it's because I started a bit carelessly, but during the 40 minutes I missed more health xD. On the other hand, although the midi is not bad, for such a long map I would have chosen a less repetitive one.
 

 

[JonExMachina]

Thank you so much for playing another map of mine, @RataUnderground! Not gonna lie, watching your gameplay was extremely entertaining, especially when each trap activated. Yeah, the MIDI gets old after a while, and I wasn't gonna post the map before finishing it, but my composition skills are a bit rusty and I couldn't come up with anything decent. I may either use some old songs of mine or come back to writing something later. (By the way, I finally got to play the first five levels of HABITATS and am currently collecting my thoughts to give you some feedback in its thread. :D)

 

Thank you for playing and for the feedback, @TheDuckXD! I meant for UV to be very mean on this map and spent a ton of time trying to balance ammo and health, but it's possible I overtuned it a little. Though I watched some friends playing and running low on health for most of their gameplay, this is the first time I got negative feedback on that. I'll consider adding some more medikits if more people echo your thoughts. Thank you!

[Tiramisu]

I played this map on UV with saves - it was pretty good all right! The huge, open techbase layout kind of reminded me of TNT: Evilution maps, was that the inspiration here?

 

Overall, exploring the entirety of the huge foundry was pretty satisfying, and though most of the combat consisted of clearing out rooms of basic monsters, there were also a few clever setpiece fights thrown in - all the Archvile fights were stand-out in that regard, especially the one where two of them were surrounding the circular room with the door switch. Though my favorite fight by far was the triple Revenant showdown in the lava bridge room - that one was just plain inspired, and I'm definitely stealing the idea for my own purposes!

 

As for the map's flaws, the only really major one was imo that the doors were very inconsistent in which ones could be opened by pressing them and which ones couldn't - if I were you I would still go back and change that, it's a simple thing that will make the map a bit more enjoyable. If I may inject a bit of my own ideas here, I suggest using STEP4 (the silver step texture) for doors that are switch-operated only, as it makes them look like shutter doors. For doors that are switch-operated from one side only I like to use the UAC door texture on one side and the smooth silver texture with the big UAC logo on the other one.

 

I was also about to tell you that you should put another SSG on the right-hand path of the map, but I read your post saying that the weapon split is an intentional choice, so I respect that!

 

Now, there's one more piece of feedback I have - probably not for this map, as it would require too extensive changes, but it's something to think about going forward. Namely - I think that this map suffers a bit from what I like to call the "previous room syndrome". It's when you open a door (or turn a corner), and the next room is so immediately jam-packed with monsters that you basically have no choice but to fight them at the door, effectively taking each fight from the room it's actually supposed to be in to the previous room. This can be alleviated by moving the monsters deeper into the room, or reducing their initial amount and supplementing with monster closets, teleporters, etc. - it is a bit more tricky when the map is designed with an open layout like this one, but still doable.

 

Overall this is not a big flaw, and can in fact be used deliberately to achieve the effect you want - it's just something I noticed here and on another map I played recently, so I thought it would be interesting to bring it up!

[JonExMachina]

Thank you so much for playing and for the invaluable feedback and advice, @sq. Tiramisu! I'll definitely use them, especially for my future efforts.

 

I can't say TNT: Evilution was an influence because I haven't played it in years, at least not a conscious one. The only megawad I've been playing these past few months is Hellbound, which had a huge aesthetic influence on my second map (MAP285 on RAMP 2023, which I haven't posted here yet because I want to completely redo its encounters), everything else being either mapsets or single maps posted here on Doomworld. Thing is, I'm a huge fan of techbases and they're the first theme I think of when I start a new map, and I was bored at work one night and started drawing some rooms on paper, trying to use some advice I read here in order to make rooms with more interesting shapes. When I got home and opened UDB, all I had was this:

Spoiler

...which was a good start. I tried following what I had on paper as faithfully as I could, then I added a few rooms around the initial idea because I wanted some interconnectivity between them (yep, the room with the three revenants was just a happy accident), which quickly made me think I didn't want that area to be the beginning of the map, then I started drawing some other stuff completely disconnected from what I already had.

Spoiler

The rest of it was pretty much days and days of improvising and seeing what sorts of interesting shapes I could come up with in UDB. My main goals with this map were 1) avoid making square rooms and straight corridors as much as I could, 2) allow players to explore in any order they wanted, and 3) make combat a constant factor in order to keep players interested, but not so much that it would feel grindy or tiresome. To be super honest, I couldn't believe the final layout when I was done with it, especially given how much I struggled with some parts of it. The whole rocket launcher path didn't exist until one or two days before I finished the whole thing, and the room in which you fight the first arachnotron was just a long empty corridor, plus a bunch of other rooms I had no idea how to texture and detail in a way that felt varied but consistent at the same time. All in all, I'm really glad with how it all turned out.

 

Thank you for the feedback on the switch-operated doors. In my prior two maps, I always used metal bars to signal which doors were operated with switches, and I think I'll do the same thing here. It appears SUPPORT2's work isn't done yet. :P

 

Yeah, I had tried putting an extra SSG in another path during development, but it made things kinda redundant and reduced a lot of the difficulty while reducing the sense of reward at the same time. Taking the rocket launcher path first is rough, but it can also be fun for players wanting to challenge themselves, so that was a risk I took willingly.

 

Thank you for the "previous room syndrome" point as well. I saw a lot of what you mentioned while watching some friends play, and will think of ways to minimize that going forward. I'm not a fan of locking a player inside a room and forcing them to fight hordes upon hordes of monsters (my first map was guilty of that), but there are ways to at least discourage them from backing out of a room and hiding behind doors and choke points.

 

Once again, thank you so much for such an in-depth post!

[ryiron]

This was fun. It starts out pretty easy going, but there's a handful of nice traps throughout. The viles especially will catch players off-guard if you don't know they are coming. I really like the non-linear design and how the path you choose determines which weapons you have for large parts of the map. I did get a bit lost towards the end in the windy corridors though. Attached my fda, and near uv-max. I couldn't find the last secret even though I could see it on the automap.

dcm.zip

[JonExMachina]

Fantastic demos, @ryiron! It was amazing watching you play, and if it weren't for that rocket, I'm positive you would've finished the map on your first try. The final secret is unlocked by 

Spoiler

shooting the brighter light on the middle pillar of the lava room,

which is probably too obscure considering I've yet to see anyone finding it. :l Congratulations on finding all the others, though!

 

Thank you very much for playing!

Edited July 16, 2023 by JonExMachina

[JonExMachina]

Sorry for the double post, but I made a number of changes to the map after considering the feedback I received from friends, here and on the RAMP discord server, and from watching gameplay:

• Added SUPPORT3 bars to doors that can't be opened through direct interaction
• Simplified the access to the smaller lava room so both doors stay open once the switch is activated
• Adjusted the timing of a few traps
• Added the "Ambush" flag to a considerable number of monsters, removed it from a few others
• Repositioned some enemies that were seeing the player too soon 
• Replaced a secret blur sphere with a supercharge
• Added a small amount of ammo and healing items to strategic parts of the map (both are still rather tight on UV, but slightly more forgiving)
• Made an adjustment to force players to stay on the roof during the roof encounter
• Added a switch to the elevator in the rocket launcher room so the player can't activate it by just crossing a linedef and getting cornered in the process
• Angled the walls around the door in the rocket launcher room so the player has a smaller chance of getting stuck while trying to dodge projectiles
• Tried to make a secret slightly less obtuse by adding some items in its direction and unhiding the linedefs to its activation, putting it in line with other secrets

[DoomBerry]

Great map, I played on UV in gzdoom. I like how it looks quite basic at first glance but is very detailed and thought through when you get in to it. Some sections are pretty hard!

 

Spoiler

Some of the archville placement is pretty mean! In a good way, in unexpected places!

 

[Tiramisu]

10 hours ago, JonExMachina said:

*writeup*

 

That's some interesting stuff, right there - it's always nice to hear about the creative process behind a map! I definitely noticed that "no square rooms/straight corridors" part when playing, so we can safely say you succeeded in that regard. :) And yeah, now that I think of it the map isn't really that much like TNT, it's just that I was recently tricked into playing this huge-ass tnt map in the middle of a Plutonia-related wad for some reason, so TNT: Evilution was just on my mind when writing that :p

 

And to expand a bit more on the "previous room problem" - I feel like what you've described with your friends was more of the classic "door problem", where players just don't want to risk going inside a room when they see enemies. My version is a little bit different - I like taking risks and running head-first into new areas (especially when playing with saves), but here I often just wasn't able to because some Pinkies or Spectres blocked my way before I could react! Honestly though looking back it wasn't that big of a problem here, it was more of an issue in that other map I've played (which was funnily enough also a big techbase map lol). Back in there it was caused mostly by putting hitscanners right behind doors - I mean I'm a brave guy when it comes to DOOM, but I can't just walk into a room when I immediately see a Chaingunner right opposite the door XD

 

If you haven't seen that one classic blog post about the "door problem", I suggest you read it (I've posted the link below). It's not a cure-all for every scenario, but it does have some pretty interesting ideas to think about and incorporate into maps!

 

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/the-door-problem-of-combat-design

Edited July 16, 2023 by sq. Tiramisu

[Delisk]

 

[Helm]

Very good midi to propel the action. Didn't turn the music off for the whole gig, which is rare w/ me and midi so some good choices already. The layout is pristine, very understandable flow, the challenges are exciting and the item placement always complicates movement when dealing with mid and high tier scenarios (mainly the vile bits, but some fun revenants around too). Not too hard, not too simple. The vile encounters pockmark the flow and create memorable scenarios. Great secrets. Very confident and competent outing. I am a fan and I hope you do more! Thank you for sharing your creativity for free with us.

[Degree23]

Played on UV. Despite taking a bad 80 damage Revenant rocket early on, and an AV blast after being pinned in by a Zombieman of all things, I somehow managed to get through in one take! The AV usage somehow managed to strike the fine balance between being challenging and not being unfair - something which I think can be extremely tricky to do. I did find the SSG early which helped a lot.

 

Very enjoyable map!

[JonExMachina]

Thank you so much for playing and for the kind words, @DoomBerry, @Helm, @Degree23! I hope my future efforts entertain you as much as — if not more than — this one. Your feedback has certainly made this newbie mapper even more excited to continue his new hobby!

 

Thank you so much for playing, @Delisk, and congratulations on finding that completely unintended way to get to the soulsphere secret. The "correct" way to it is 

Spoiler

pressing on a green button located in the angled wall directly south of the secret, 

but huge props to you for finding an alternate solution. I'll probably move that lift a few units to the south. :P

 

I'll definitely be reading that article, @sq. Tiramisu, and thanks sharing it with me. What wad are you playing, by the way?

 

Finally, I'd like to thank everyone for the amazing feedback on the Archvile encounters. I'm quite insecure about using archies in general (and don't even get me started on Pain Elementals), but it's really encouraging to have so many people telling me they liked them. I'll keep trying to surprise players with some mean archies here and there in the future.

[Tiramisu]

14 hours ago, JonExMachina said:

What wad are you playing, by the way?

 

Plutonia Revisited Community Project 2, it's the current wad of the month in the DWmegawad Club. It's a good wad, as long as you don't go in expecting to play Plutonia-style maps because while they are there there's also stuff like 300+ monster exploration-focused adventure maps and said random TNT-style stage thrown in (which also happens to be a 300+ monster exploration-focused adventure map 🥲)

 

14 hours ago, JonExMachina said:

I'm quite insecure about using archies in general (and don't even get me started on Pain Elementals)

 

I'm not super good with Archviles either, but I can give you a tip on Pain Elementals! You basically have to think of them as "objectives" for a fight. In most cases, when you put even one Pain Elemental in a fight, then the game could just as well flash a message on the screen saying "OBJECTIVE: KILL PAIN ELEMENTALS" - and all the other monsters basically become obstacles until you complete the objective. Then there's also the time pressure element to it - usually time is on a player's side, but Pain Elementals turn it around and force the player to hurry instead. Finally, Pain Elementals prevent the player from running away from a fight (at least until they're killed).

 

All in all, you definitely have to approach designing a fight a bit differently when Pain Elementals are involved, but when used tastefully they can add a very unique element to a fight that (non-Archvile) monsters cannot achieve on their own!

Edited July 17, 2023 by sq. Tiramisu

[JonExMachina]

9 hours ago, sq. Tiramisu said:

All in all, you definitely have to approach designing a fight a bit differently when Pain Elementals are involved, but when used tastefully they can add a very unique element to a fight that (non-Archvile) monsters cannot achieve on their own!

Thanks for the tips! If I try using Pain Elementals in the future and the encounters are good, I'll credit you. :D

 

Hmm, maybe I'll join DWmegawad Club next month… 👀

[Biodegradable]

This is definitely a fun, devious little map with some delicious neo-classic vibes to it in regards to its level progression and combat flow. Some spaces felt maybe a tad too small given the amount of enemies put in, but it's not to an egregious degree that hurts the map. Good stuff, Jon!

 

 

[JonExMachina]

3 hours ago, Biodegradable said:

This is definitely a fun, devious little map with some delicious neo-classic vibes to it in regards to its level progression and combat flow. Some spaces felt maybe a tad too small given the amount of enemies put in, but it's not to an egregious degree that hurts the map. Good stuff, Jon!

 

 

 

Thank you so much for playing and for the feedback! The rocket launcher room seemed to be the biggest offender, judging by your video. I think I'll remove that lift and connect both rooms with a staircase, so players won't be stuck in an unwinnable scenario if they decide to fall back a little.

 

I'll watch the video again a few more times later to see what other adjustments I can make.

[Maribo]

Cute comfort food type of map, very in tune with the most basic level of Doom appreciation, ie: mowing down the hallways of a tech base, but a bit more updated to match the capabilities of a modern player. Has some nasty bite to a couple of its encounters, thinking specifically of the minimal setpiece fight where you're inside a circular room with windows and a pair of viles get teleported to the outside when you hit a switch, which caught me off guard in comparison to the aforementioned hallway shooting sprees. The inter-connectivity is nice, although the base does still feel very room-by-room, and the placement of the automap that you can get at the end of your first loop tells me that you might be aware that it's a bit easy for the player to miss some paths (I missed the door to the yellow key and had to do automap investigation to figure out where I'd missed a split in the path).

Good map overall though, thank you for sharing. :)
 

UV playthrough, -dsdademo, v0.26.2 for playback: dcm_fdry_maribo.zip

[JonExMachina]

4 hours ago, Maribo said:

Cute comfort food type of map, very in tune with the most basic level of Doom appreciation, ie: mowing down the hallways of a tech base, but a bit more updated to match the capabilities of a modern player. Has some nasty bite to a couple of its encounters, thinking specifically of the minimal setpiece fight where you're inside a circular room with windows and a pair of viles get teleported to the outside when you hit a switch, which caught me off guard in comparison to the aforementioned hallway shooting sprees. The inter-connectivity is nice, although the base does still feel very room-by-room, and the placement of the automap that you can get at the end of your first loop tells me that you might be aware that it's a bit easy for the player to miss some paths (I missed the door to the yellow key and had to do automap investigation to figure out where I'd missed a split in the path).

Good map overall though, thank you for sharing. :)
 

UV playthrough, -dsdademo, v0.26.2 for playback: dcm_fdry_maribo.zip

Thank you so much for playing and for the feedback, Maribo! Yes, I've seen many players miss one path or another, mostly the one to the yellow key, which ironically was the first one I made. The automap placement was more of a "I need to put something in that room" thing than anything else, and I like to put the automap close to the end of my maps so players can secret hunt if they want to, but this time it definitely helped people figure out where to go next as well. I'm still learning how to do inter-connectivity (that was my third map, with the other two being very linear), but I'll keep playing and studying other maps so I can make something truly open in the future (the next one is a bit better on that front, but still very room-by-room).

 

p.s.: I still need to finish I CANT GIVE YOU ANY THING, and please don't get me wrong, but it feels nice to know one of my maps managed to kill such a talented mapper and speedrunner. :P

Edited August 11, 2023 by JonExMachina

[LadyMistDragon]

I think I'm playing with an older version. Anyway, here's my fairly rushed demo of it.

 

 

[JonExMachina]

Thank you so much for playing, @LadyMistDragon, and I'm sorry you had to suffer a much less polished and fair version of the map. Still, your video description gave me a "mission accomplished" sorf of feeling. Love your mugshot and gameplay videos!

[Serathis]

Okay, for a newcomer this is an amazing map. Had tons of fun with not mindblowing but good fight choreography. The different sections were well signposted, especially giving a consitent texture for doors that need a switch. Imma nominate this for Cacos, I think it's honorary worthy.

[Noiser]

This is insanely cool, congratulations!

[JonExMachina]

6 hours ago, Serathis said:

Okay, for a newcomer this is an amazing map. Had tons of fun with not mindblowing but good fight choreography. The different sections were well signposted, especially giving a consitent texture for doors that need a switch. Imma nominate this for Cacos, I think it's honorary worthy.

Thank you so much for playing and for the kind words! Not gonna lie, the last sentence got me tearing up a bit. :')

 

I credit @sq. Tiramisu for signaling switch-operated doors, an excellent idea I'll keep using for as long as I make maps. Regarding your post in the Cacowards thread: Though this was my third map, my first one was published in May, so I believe I'm a newcomer. If you want to check the other two, here's the link to the first one (I just updated the file with some small changes I made a while ago):

 

I haven't posted the second one here yet, as I made it for RAMP 2023 and ran out of time to detail the final areas and design decent encounters in all but two arenas, but if you want to give it a shot, it's MAP285:

 

Once again, thank you so much for playing and for the nomination! I hope to keep making maps the community enjoys playing.

 

4 hours ago, Noiser said:

This is insanely cool, congratulations!

Thank you so much! (Judging by your custom rank, would I be wrong to assume you're a fellow speaker of Portuguese?)

[Noiser]

On 8/13/2023 at 12:43 AM, JonExMachina said:

Thank you so much! (Judging by your custom rank, would I be wrong to assume you're a fellow speaker of Portuguese?)

Eu sou brasileiro! heh :-)