Veranda - A dreamy, liminal, brutalist map

[Mercury191872]

Not the first junky map I've made but the first I'm uploading anywhere. Thank you SeeJay for playtesting the map when it was still in rough(er) shape.

 

Inspired by my love of malls and the album Illuminations by FM Skyline. A fairly linear adventure through a dreamily brutalist structure with a few tonal shifts and surprises sprinkled in. Middling difficulty and a playtime of somewhere between 20-30 minutes. Designed around UV.

 

Single map WAD

Complevel 9

Tested in PrBoom and DSDA

Some small visual issues in OpenGL

 

veranda.zip

Edited December 14, 2023 by Mercury191872

[Matt Eldrydge]

As a fellow enjoyer of dreamy brutalist liminal spaces, I'll definitely check this one out! I like what I'm seeing in the screenshots a lot!

[insanoflex312]

The difficulty I would not call middling. Its pretty brutal, actually. Didnt like the enemies at the beginning either(don't want to spoil). I do adore the atmosphere, though

[plums]

Nice map, -dsdademo fda (dsda 0.27.5) with saves, takes about 50 minutes because I die a lot in some places and also reload once near the start by accident. Don't feel obligated to watch. You'll laugh at me not getting the secret, I had the right ideas but couldn't put it together, I groaned when I went back into the map and figured it out :)

https://user.fm/files/v2-94d4c3824e7921522fd4eaddf246b2a5/veranda_plums-fda.zip

 

So the mall part was great, the empty space that made you wander around a little to figure out where to go worked really well. Fights weren't too hard, it took me a bit to figure out the one with the AV but once I did it was pretty smooth.

 

The second part was very striking visually and pretty fun but very hard with the platforming, that has no apparent way to get back up if you fall. If that's what you're going for, no problem, though you should at least make the floor damaging since right now it just softlocks you. If there actually is a way back up I certainly couldn't figure out what it was. You might also want some block monster lines to stop the cacos from sailing off into the distance. Anyhow I fall quite a bit here so that's where a lot of the demo time is spent.

 

The palette is a bit off, some of the textures and sprites look either pretty palid, or pretty noisy like the AVs. Not a big deal. It doesn't look like you generated the other palettes though, so in non-GL ports every time you take damage the colours will go back to normal (other than the red tint) for a bit. In SLADE you can just right-click the playpal lump and choose Palette -> Generate Palettes.

 

Anyhow pretty good overall and also pretty unique, with the atmosphere being the big draw.

[Maribo]

Beautiful brutalist dreamscape, software shading does this wonders in both the dark introduction and in the mall.

 

I agree with pretty much everything plums said regarding the quirky issues with the megastructure beneath the mall (falling anywhere = softlock, cacos can just get sent off into the ether), and color palette generation. This is a very nice palette, somewhat reminiscent of Arcadia Demade's palette in that it melts off-whites, greys, and blues together and gives the mall this super fitting hazy/fog feeling. Would look even better with the rest of them properly generated + the colormap.

 

UV playthrough, -dsdademo, plays back in v0.27.5 - veranda-maribo.zip

[Matt Eldrydge]

I went expecting something chill and got my behind handed to me at least ten times in the first half, only to go flying off the platform in the second part. I don't think it's worth getting frustrated at the difficulty (which is certainly not middling IMO) in what is a beautiful and quite interesting map, so I'll probably turn monsters off and enjoy the atmosphere next time I boot it up.

 

Good work either way!

[El Inferno]

Great map. Combat is well-made and I enjoyed it a lot. The ending was a neat surprise, I really liked that area. 

Barely visible chaingunners at the start of the map got me worried about what am I getting into, but it went by quickly enough and the rest was cool.

[LadyMistDragon]

Middling? Really?

 

I get that this doesn't really throw massive hordes at the player, but just look at this from a perspective of someone who isn't necessarily a top player. It's not like UV isn't possible by any means and particularly if your problem with slaughter maps is them being 45 minute extravaganzas, but.....you're not here for my pedantry.

 

The atmosphere is just so cool and it's especially nice how the music transitions when we find ourselves in the abstract liminal area. This really seems like a case where the best was made of brutalist architecture whereas....many people find it to be such a striking theme when they make attempts to emulate it, but the results in practice just look dull and bad more often than not. Thankfully, that did not happen her and not just because this map's comprised of three distinct areas!

 

Note: I didn't finish, because it wasn't immediately obvious what the three switches in the last area did and I just plain ran out of time. That's probably just as well though, if there were something like a dozen Arch-viles guarding the exit :P)

 

 

 

 

 

[Egg Boy]

Great lil map! Wish there were damaging floors or teleporters to get back up in the last area, other than that, no complaints. Big fan of the monochromatic visuals and semi realistic architecture that feels warped due to doom's scale. Thank you for posting this.

[kvothesixstring]

Very cool map! I really enjoyed exploring the space you have made. I wasn't expecting such a challenge but it wasn't unwelcome. Some really tricky fights. Plenty of powerups to make it fair. This was a good time. 

[EmoLevelDesigner]

Interesting palette changes.

Spoiler

Invisible chaingunners

are a fresh idea. These both are something worth playing with original game to give it a different look.

 

Excellent premise where you break into the building through storage facility attached to it.

 

Architecture is well done, with new textures and its own style. Later there's an unexpected journey into a twisted version of this place in some alternate reality.

 

When we finish the storage, difficulty balance gets a serious problem. We start to get fights that require very precise actions and too many things can go wrong. Each fight is harder than previous one, with no room to catch your breath by going through easier encounters, like, for example, this is handled in classic shooter SiN on hardest difficulty.

 

Other serious problem: in the last location if you fall into the water, there's no way to get back up.

 

 

[Firedust]

No idea why, but the two cyb turrets and vile on fountain are stuck behind invisible walls in GZDoom during their respective encounters. Also, one of the monsters in the scrolling floor closet (for the final area) never teleports in, because, I'm guessing, its destination is blocked.

[DreadWanderer]

1 hour ago, Firedust said:

No idea why, but the two cyb turrets and vile on fountain are stuck behind invisible walls in GZDoom during their respective encounters. Also, one of the monsters in the scrolling floor closet (for the final area) never teleports in, because, I'm guessing, its destination is blocked.

 

Can confirm that the cyber problem is happening in DSDA too - I can't target them and they can't target me either. There's another enemy I missed somewhere but I didn't spend too much time looking for it.

[KnievilRoo]

I love the vibes sm

 

very neat

[Firedust]

33 minutes ago, DreadWanderer said:

 

Can confirm that the cyber problem is happening in DSDA too - I can't target them and they can't target me either. There's another enemy I missed somewhere but I didn't spend too much time looking for it.

Was probably that one pesky bugger that didn't teleport into the final area because of the scrolling floor teleporter destination.

[DreadWanderer]

36 minutes ago, Firedust said:

Was probably that one pesky bugger that didn't teleport into the final area because of the scrolling floor teleporter destination.

 

Sounds plausible thank you. I'd love to do a UV max of this map because I really dig the vibes but I can't right now :(

[Mercury191872]

19 hours ago, Firedust said:

No idea why, but the two cyb turrets and vile on fountain are stuck behind invisible walls in GZDoom during their respective encounters. Also, one of the monsters in the scrolling floor closet (for the final area) never teleports in, because, I'm guessing, its destination is blocked.

 

they are meant to be statues, you can see they dont move at all because one of their idle frames is removed. in a previous version of that fight they would come to life but i didnt like it so now they are just decoration. i could have set up some crushers to kill them later i guess or put their sprite on an object and just use that but i didnt bother on account of idrc about uvmax

[Firedust]

23 minutes ago, Mercury191872 said:

 

they are meant to be statues, you can see they dont move at all because one of their idle frames is removed. in a previous version of that fight they would come to life but i didnt like it so now they are just decoration. i could have set up some crushers to kill them later i guess or put their sprite on an object and just use that but i didnt bother on account of idrc about uvmax

That's fair enough but in that case, pls consider adding more ammo for the cyb area, because they aren't shooting at the player and there isn't anywhere near enough to kill the monsters teleporting into that area. Initially, I thought the problem was with cybs since infighting was required but if that isn't the case, you might wanna add some more rockets and cells.

[Astar]

I adore the aesthetics and atmosphere of this wad, but damn, what an absolutely brutal and merciless gameplay it has

[LVENdead]

What a really cool map. The vibe is just so dreamy and unsettling and I think you made very effective use of the rather limited variety of textures. Not a big fan of the softlock pits in the final area but it's whatever I guess.

 

Here's a video of my playthrough.

 

 

[Aubrey De Los Destinos]

I found the aesthetics very pleasing. The palette swap works pretty well, and Doom Retro does something with rendering that plays out really nice with this map. Especially lost souls due to partial translucency of the flames that Doom Retro applies—they were half-invisible with the shopping mall in the background. It's generally more retro, and these liminal places play heavily on nostalgia.

 

Spoiler

Invisible chaingunners felt unfair at first, to the point that I have lowered the difficulty level (because playing should be fun above all) and then I learned where they are. They had

 

I liked this moment when I took the elevator from the basement (or the workforce entry) rides up and suddenly, I was in the shopping mall after hours. Really nicely done.

 

However, in the basement, I would really quickly fall to the water, which didn't do anything and at the same time, it was not possible to go back up. I don't know if the source port messed up something or what, but feels game-breakish a little to be stuck like that. I could let revenants' rockets kill me or load game, but after three or four times, I gave up and IDDQD'd the rest because I wanted to see all the visuals.

 

I would be thrilled to see more maps like that.