Murder House

[DiavoJinx]

Murder House

A Single Player/Co-op level based in a spooky house... probably owned by cultists. It seems you were kidnapped and thrown into the dirty sub-basement of a fancy house to be ritualistically murdered. You need to escape and GTFO of here! ... before it's "curtains" for you (pun intended).

(And no, of course not; you won't be leaving the obvious way.)

 

 

The goal was to see if I could make a start to a Doom level that makes low level enemies feel a bit scary/dangerous before diving into pure OG Doom gameplay.  I think I succeeded... restricting ammo at first and controlling the first engagements gives me more Resident Evil 1 vibes than Doom Eternal arcade-chaos combat. My DeHackEd pistol firing faster than the default, with new graphics, makes the basic Doom pistol feel more useful than the default pea shooter.

 

This, stand-alone here, map is to be the lead-in experience to a short series of maps that I'm making based off my cousin's D&D dungeon/underground maps; a series I'm naming "The Other Side" (you'll see why early on! Side note: I have disdain for announcing projects long before completion so ignore this last paragraph, heh. It's a stand-alone map.).

 

There are 2 early major traps. They're so early that I feel they aren't mean because you've lost nothing by resetting the map anew.  One should make any Doom veteran wary on sight: a tight corridor with a flashing light when you escape your starting confines (don't get your hopes of escape up so high you forget your situational awareness).

The other is a false exit, so early you haven't even seen the house yet! It even looks out of place! But it has an EXIT sign right? So I use a quote from The Crow to taunt the hopeful before triggering the map to reload. ;-)

 

Screenshots:

Spoiler

Main floor -- gives me heavy The 7th Guest vibes

 

Main floor

 

Rear lounge

 

Lower level lounge

 

Yellow key room..!

 

Before backtracking to the basement to exit with the red skull [key], the house reveals its true nature to you

Video playthru, with light commenary:

Spoiler

 

 

Folder of the requisite files Mhouse.wad, HH.wad, HH.deh and including a proper old school .txt description:

Spoiler

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10fy3nUJhn_Y_HdA2bEwzgkeTtLzSqp8j?usp=sharing

 

Please load all 3 files: Mhouse.wad (the map), HH.wad (the gfx & sfx), and HH.deh (necessary specific alterations to things, all documented in HHspoilers.txt for you). Things will look weird without HH.wad and things will behave not as intended without HH.deh -- they are both updated from my first map release, Doomed Mansion. "HH" once stood for "Haunted House".

 

This is made for GZDoom with Doom 2, and uses a couple of UDMF features. Crouching/jumping aren't necessary but aren't disabled.

Map 01.
Single player & co-op.  (Co-op untested but has 4 starts and copious ammo, should be fine. Player 4 will need to be released, which they naturally will be when following the starting switch progression.)

Just a few new graphics & sounds, nothing annoying... those I didn't draw/record myself are mostly from Heretic and properly documented & credited in the folder above.

All difficulties accounted for. Pick the easier 2 if you want it actually easy; it was intended to be played on Hurt Me Plenty; UV not just has more monsters & ammo, but is made to be harder (different monsters sometimes, fewer healing items, even the red skull [key] is moved) -- UV does away with the atmosphere I think.

 

While this uses UDMF, I didn't use much by way of modern source port features.

However, I did use the Line_SetPortal in 2, logical places.  First is the top of the main level staircase to the upper floor -- to create the "room over room" effect Doom can't natively do. The second is at the very end just before the exit: to create some of the spiral stairs down proper, with the final exit hall feeling like it's crossing "under" those stairs. Nothing non-Euclidean.

And of course I like mirrors.

Enjoy!

 

EDIT: added my video playthru

Edited May 12 by DiavoJinx

[LadyMistDragon]

 

[DiavoJinx]

20 hours ago, LadyMistDragon said:

 

Thank you, again!  I love seeing how someone not-me goes through my levels!

Wow it's dark without GZDoom's light sourcing. Wicked.

 

I just uploaded my playthru from earlier today, it'll be up this evening.

Edited May 12 by DiavoJinx

[MisterLivers]

I will give this a shot!

[DiavoJinx]

Video added to the main post.

[MisterLivers]

I beat this map on UV, good level design, ammo wasn't too hard to manage, health wasn't hard to manage either but it was still really fun! I did like the lighting a lot, theres 2 exits I guess, I went for the one that requires you to actually play the level. the monster placement was good, I got spooked when I saw a Chaingunner/Heavy Weapon Dude because the whole level was just Imps, Zombiemen, Shotgunners and Pinkies so I would say that's good, It alerts the player so they get something fresh from time to time, you probably weren't going for that but It felt like that, overall, really awesome map dude!

Edited May 12 by MisterLivers

[DiavoJinx]

13 hours ago, MisterLivers said:

I beat this map on UV, good level design, ammo wasn't too hard to manage, health wasn't hard to manage either but it was still really fun! I did like the lighting a lot, theres 2 exits I guess, I went for the one that requires you to actually play the level. the monster placement was good, I got spooked when I saw a Chaingunner/Heavy Weapon Dude because the whole level was just Imps, Zombiemen, Shotgunners and Pinkies so I would say that's good, It alerts the player so they get something fresh from time to time, you probably weren't going for that but It felt like that, overall, really awesome map dude!

Awesome. I' glad you enjoyed it!

When I was making it, ammo and health were too scarce... to the point where you'd run out of shotgun ammo and fall back on the pistol quickly. I thought it'd feel more annoying that way, less fun... so I stocked the level with plenty of ammo (and health) once you get into it. =)

[CravenCoyote]

Was fun to play, I love maps like this. Last time I heard that door sound was Von Helsings Mansion I think!

And who was wearing high heels around this grand house?

 

My one little bit of advice here would be to make some lines impassable (for example, around the pool table). It helps when you have things like the low beams that you can get 'stuck' on.

 

You should be able to merge the map wad, textures wad and dehacked file into one single wad so that three files are not needed :)