Embryo: where each map is smaller than the last

[BeachThunder]

2 hours ago, whybmonotacrab said:

Level Name: Deluge.

Completion time: 3-4 minutes.

Midi: Wake of a Dream - Ribbiks

Sky Texture: SKYHX3C from 32in24-15.wad.

Tested with DSDA-Doom.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t4-rXr9cp2dpiA4A9oeYyvntPG2VnjKQ/view?usp=sharing

 This map was tougher to put together than it seemed. The concept meant that I had to severely limit myself in terms of detailing as more sectors would mess up the voodoo doll timings and stuff.

Wow, that was a frantic one.

 

It's actually possible to get launched into the out of bounds cave in the east by an Arch-vile, though

[solidago]

On 1/28/2024 at 11:48 PM, solidago said:

I'm almost done with mine though, so an April deadline is more than enough personally.

Oh, January me, you couldn't be more wrong.

Anyway, here's my map, finally. It's Chasm-like aesthetically, and difficulty wise I think that it's pretty reasonable for level 6.



MAP06: Cesspit
Music: Let The Wicked Be No More by Lippeth
Sky: Default Doom 2 SKY1 texture
Tested with: DSDA-Doom at complevel 9 and GZDoom
 

Download link

cesspit.zip

A couple more screenshots just in case

Spoiler

 

[Moustachio]

Well, April 8th has now officially passed everywhere on Earth. The end of the beta phase is over, but that doesn't mean submissions are closed. The remaining mappers can still submit their maps until RC2 is released one month from now on May 9, 2024. I won't accept any new sign-ons as of today, so any empty slots will remain empty after the 8th of May.

 

In the meantime, here's Release Candidate 1: embryo_rc1.zip

 

I'm kindly asking mappers to please check that I've compiled the latest version of their map along with the proper skies and midi.

 

For feedback, tag the map author and provide them with a summary of any bugs. Be sure to mention whether or not you had fun playing the level and why that is! Please, use the map's title in your feedback instead of its number to avoid any confusion during the RC1 testing phase.

 

Map authors will have until the pre-release deadline on June 8, 2024 to make changes their maps.

 

So to recap, here's the overall timeline until idgames:

• May 8, 2024 — Deadline for submissions; RC2 compilation.
• June 8, 2024 — Deadline for edits of already submitted maps; start of pre-release testing phase.
• June 15, 2024 — Submission to /idgames archive.

 

And a friendly ping to those who are still able to finish and submit their maps:

@IvanDobsky

@yourlocalchef

@Philnemba

@PRO-RC

@spineapple tea

@russin

@macro

@SharkyChip

@Jakub Majewski

@Alaxzandarz

@Hydrus

@Large Cat

@LoatharMDPhD

Edited April 9 by Moustachio

[BeachThunder]

Shame there were so many no-shows.

 

Anyway, my map should have Doom 2's SKY3 as the sky. I just didn't set it to anything beforehand because it was supposed to use the default sky for MAP28 - but I guess I'm MAP17 now.

[Moustachio]

21 minutes ago, BeachThunder said:

Anyway, my map should have Doom 2's SKY3 as the sky. I just didn't set it to anything beforehand because it was supposed to use the default sky for MAP28 - but I guess I'm MAP17 now.

Fixed. Every map should default to the sky of their originally intended episode.

[ViolentBeetle]

Wait, what is it with the default skies? I thought we are importing custom ones? Did I miss something?

[Large Cat]

@Moustachio Thanks for the ping. Worry not, MAP30 will be coming along shortly. Some features are taking more work to implement than I anticipated.

[TJG1289]

I still need to make those fixes @BeachThunderspotted, I know that. I'll go through RC1 on Friday! 

[Moustachio]

@ViolentBeetle Maps that were made with the burning city sky from the base IWAD in mind had the cloudy sky from E1 in their maps instead. I used UMAPINFO to correct this.

 

Maps with custom skies via sky transfers will still display the custom skies.

Edited April 10 by Moustachio

[Hydrus]

I played the first six maps in DSDA on HMP. Here's some minor nitpicks I have.

 

"Getting Smaller": There's a big slime trail in the room with the changing floor, and some of the chaingunners can fall into the out-of-bounds areas.

"The Fallen Citadel": You can grab the supercharge through the bars in the cave, and you can straferun onto of the platform with the megaarmor next to the lake.

"Grounded": You can walk over the metal barrier that leads to the armor bonuses without pressing the button that lowers it, and you can do it by just walking forward off the platform.

 

This is a pretty cool mapset, though. "Silvershine station" is my favorite so far, but "Grounded" is also a pretty neat and atmospheric map.

 

[TJG1289]

3 hours ago, Hydrus said:

I played the first six maps in DSDA on HMP. Here's some minor nitpicks I have.

 

"Getting Smaller": There's a big slime trail in the room with the changing floor, and some of the chaingunners can fall into the out-of-bounds areas.

 

Man, I thought I fixed the slime trail. Guess I have to try that again. 

[ViolentBeetle]

Are you planning on just having gaps if there's missing maps? Kinda weird.

[BeachThunder]

1 hour ago, ViolentBeetle said:

Are you planning on just having gaps if there's missing maps? Kinda weird.

There are no gaps. All the maps have been pushed up into the missing slots. The final release will seemingly just have 17 maps.

[Moustachio]

No, the final release will have at least 17 maps. I'm allowing those with unsubmitted maps to submit until the deadline, but no new slots can be claimed. Those abandoned slots will be filled in with the next maps in the set as described by BeachThunder.

 

Could be 17 maps (which is a pretty good length for a project like this) up to the full 31 we have claimed so far.

Edited April 11 by Moustachio

[Malefication]

I don't know if it's something on my end, played with DSDA-Doom but on Getting Smaller there's this... gap? It doesn't seem intended but might be some setting in my DSDA that causes it, idk.

 

 

[TJG1289]

19 minutes ago, Malefication said:

I don't know if it's something on my end, played with DSDA-Doom but on Getting Smaller there's this... gap? It doesn't seem intended but might be some setting in my DSDA that causes it, idk.

 

 

I believe this was the same thing that BeachThunder mentioned. It's definitely not intended and will be fixed! Thanks for the report tho!

[signaturereverie]

getting smaller : ive also managed to get out of bounds here , its a bit of a precise jump but still very possible

Spoiler

 

i also had two barons not spawn in but i think that could be because i was out of bounds for a while

Spoiler

 

[signaturereverie]

the fallen citadel - in this secret theres two different secret sectors which i dont think is intended

Spoiler

 

cesspit - not exactly much of a thing , but this looks just a tad bit awkward imo with the stimpack floating when the lift is down

Spoiler

 

grounded - im pretty sure the berserk secret is completely unreachable in its current state (unless its a mandatory archvile jump ? feels like a stretch to me that seems a bit too unreasonable to me)

 

a world of ichor - this switch is one time use with an open wait close action which could get you softlocked

Spoiler

 

cruel sea - not a very big thing but you can easily push monsters over the edge all over the map , really not gamebreaking but could be dealt with or smth

Spoiler

 

aint big enough , deluge , hell cant wait , cruel sea , empty machine , realm of sargentia - all dont have death exits

 

im pretty sure thats all i could find

[ViolentBeetle]

I didn't remember there should be death exit, just for everyone's information, people will be spamming use key near the exit and accidentally restart if you have an exit button. We had this issue when people started playing Pina Colada.

Edited April 12 by ViolentBeetle

[signaturereverie]

ahhhh it does say in the original post that they have to be there but it also does say that they will be added in during compiling if absent . so it isnt really an issue yeah

[ViolentBeetle]

I monster-proofed edges and added death exit as a walkover line (Due to issues with switch I mentioned earlier)

cruel sea now with death exit.zip

[Moustachio]

Added the updated Cruel Sea to RC1 and fixed most of the bugs. Left Getting Smaller untouched since it seems that TJG has their own patch coming up.

[kuirivito]

1 minute ago, Moustachio said:

Added the updated Cruel Sea to RC1 and fixed most of the bugs. Left Getting Smaller untouched since it seems that TJG has their own patch coming up.

do you have an approximate estimate for a full release yet?

[Moustachio]

@kuirivito June 15, 2024

[TJG1289]

32 minutes ago, Moustachio said:

Left Getting Smaller untouched since it seems that TJG has their own patch coming up.

Yeah, I'd like the get the experience of fixing the issues that pop up! This is my first community project after all, so I need to get more used to troubleshooting stuff. I ended up not having time to do anything today, so I'll have to try to make time in a few days.

 

The out of bounds stuff was tough to get right since I was trying not to use impassable lines too much. Trying to make boundaries look more natural, and have any flying monsters not get blocked. Didn't use many flyers, and did use impassable lines by the red key platform, so I'll just make those lines like that too. Idk why the barons didn't teleport in. Those should have showed up when the red key was lowered. Didn't have that issue when testing in GZDoom or DSDA, so I'll have to look more into that.

 

Also, outside of the oopsies, were there any issues anyone had with the general design and/or combat that could be worked on, or is it generally good? 

[Arno]

On 4/11/2024 at 1:11 AM, Hydrus said:

"The Fallen Citadel": You can grab the supercharge through the bars in the cave, and you can straferun onto of the platform with the megaarmor next to the lake.

 

Thanks for the feedback! There were indeed two bars at the supercharge that provided just enough room for the player to squeesh through. I've put the bars closer together. I didn't manage to reproduce the straferun towards the megaarmor myself, but I can imagine that it's feasible. It wasn't intended, but I decided to let it stay as-is, thereby accepting the consequence that a skilled player can get the megaarmor a bit early.

 

On 4/12/2024 at 7:00 PM, signaturereverie said:

the fallen citadel - in this secret theres two different secret sectors which i dont think is intended

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Indeed, that wasn't intended. I've removed one of the two secret sectors. Thanks!

 

Here's the updated version (V3) of the map.

TheFallenCitadel_Embryo_MAP04_V3.zip

[Hydrus]

Am I allowed to use skies from OTEX?

 

[Moustachio]

@Hydrus Absolutely, just include the sky in your wad submission.

[solidago]

I've finally had some time to play a few of these maps on UV, here's some feedback.

Moment of Conception
Large but not too long, good combat, good detailing, good MIDI, definitely feels like the first map of the set. I've played it a few times now and I don't really have any true complaints, it's a great introduction.

Getting Smaller
There are some pretty interesting and fun little fights/rooms in this map. The yellow key room with the nukage is pretty cool, I almost wish it had more monsters but of course, this being only map 2, the trap in its current form is reasonable as it is. I also just generally liked the openness of the map (almost inherent to its size of course) and the use of height variation, the "climb" to the red key sure would be a lot less fun if it was indoors, flat and/or was composed of hallways with doors in it, for instance.
Other people have already pointed out the non-teleporting Barons, out-of-bounds issues (for both monsters and the player) as well as the slime trails so I won't post screenshots of any of that.
I did find a clipping tree sprite, some misaligned textures and a combination of BROWNGRN and STEP4 that I thought looked pretty weird, though.

Spoiler

 

Oh, and an even more minor nitpick, these doors in the hitscanner trap-secret could all be joined into one sector, so as to make it less loud when they open all at once.

The Fallen Citadel
What a lovely amount of detail! Really great job on the natural terrain and lighting. I liked the progression in this map and the combat was fun as well, I found the final arena to be particularly enjoyable. Pretty great stuff!
Once again, a few texture alignment nitpicks. There are some walls that could use the horizontal auto-align shortcut, the lower unpegged flag or just manual re-alignment. Here are just a couple.

Spoiler

Cesspit
This one's mine so I'd just like to ask for feedback from people who played this one, did you enjoy it? Was it bland? Was it too ugly looking? Was it too easy/too hard? Any feedback would be appreciated. I've already made modifications to the version of the map I uploaded in this topic but they're just very minor touches and I'd like to make a few more before uploading an updated version.

Silvershine Station
I've also played this one a couple of times already, it's a really solid map: fun, visually consistent and with a lovely MIDI.

Grounded
Short and sweet, simple but difficult for the amount of monsters it has. Not too crazy on the visual side but its simplicity works well and the sky texture stands out quite nicely.

Derelict Compound
Electrifying level. Really fun combat, music, visuals, layout. The crowded slime room with the Arch-vile teleporting in can be a bit too much of a headache since you can end up with low health trying to not die to the damaging floor while simultaneously trying to hide behind pillars and avoiding the monsters that get revived by the Arch-vile. Aside from that I found the pace of the map and the general feeling of it to be really, really fun. I love to see a map that's really aware about the fact that it ends with a death exit and just gives you a shitton of ammo lol

I'll keep playing through it and leaving comments for all the remaining maps if possible. This set's pretty great already even with all the missing maps.

[Moustachio]

Mappers would have had a little less than two weeks to submit maps by this point, but I'm thinking it may be best to extend the deadline indefinitely. I'd rather avoid pushing back the deadline over and over, so lets just stay in this first RC phase until I get a full roster of submissions. I don't think the set necessarily has to be a full megawad since we already have a pretty good selection of map sizes to showcase the concept, but the more the merrier, so just keep on working on those maps.

 

@solidago Your level is great! I like the Chasm callbacks, they feel original while paying homage to the original map. The fights are really tense, especially that last fight. Wasn't able to find all of the secrets, but I felt like I had plenty of ammo to spare. I also like how non-linear it is. The map can be made much easier or much more difficult based on which way you go from the start.

 

Here are a couple of demos.

The first is my first attempt, and I got pretty far on the second. I died on the very last fight, but hopefully the gameplay should be enough to see where things are going right and wrong.

 

The texturing in this metal corner could be cleaned up a little bit. Right now the metal wraps in a way that feels wallpaper-y. I also think the door back out of the secret feels a little too hidden. 

 

This medikit is placed right in the way of progression, so if you have 99% health, you'll have to waste this medikit whether you like it or not.

 

This switch can feel a little awkward to get to. Also the stimpack on the lift floats when the lift lowers.

 

The spectres on the BFG platform are pretty non-threatening.

 

This fight was really fun. One of the standouts for me.

 

And of course the end fight is just a blast.

Edited April 27 by Moustachio