Doomworld "Secret Santa" Project - SECOND MAP POSTED

[Walter confetti]

i waiting for your comment on my map...

[Khorus]

Snakes said:

Okay, everyone. The first map is getting posted in the coming week, so keep your eyes open! Pretty much everything sent my way has been, at a bare minimum, solid fun and well-done.

Also, any status updates from you peeps? Like, a word or two?

Oh shit I'm supposed to be doing something for this! I'll have to open up DB for the first time in half a year and finish my thing up soon.

[Dutch Doomer]

I'm guessing my map is gonna be up first? I think I was the first who finished a map for this project.

[Snakes]

@Walter - Could you please re-send me your map? Seems to have fallen off of my hard drive at some point.

dutch devil said:

I'm guessing my map is gonna be up first? I think I was the first who finished a map for this project.

Actually, I'll be going with a different one first. I'll send you a PM in a minute with a quick request, so be sure to keep your eyes open for it!

Expect the map to be posted either tonight or tomorrow, everyone!

[Walter confetti]

ok...

[gemini09]

whoops, I just remembered something.....

[skillsaw]

Snakes said:

Expect the map to be posted either tonight or tomorrow, everyone!

Awesome! I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone's come up with.

[Snakes]

Hi everyone - first map for this project is officially ready for download! It's a fairly awesome map worth downloading and playing, so you should totally do just that and do that - that uh, guessing thing that sort of kickstarted this. The following questions are this:

1) Who's the mapper being imitated?
2) How did you come to this conclusion?
3) What about this map separates it from the typical work of the imitatee?

Bonus points if you can guess the imitator.

Here's a sexy screenshot to entice you into giving this a whirl:



Go, play. Have fun.

[Joshy]

Just a quick stab here as I'm supposed to be working on my assignments. Played through quickly, god-mode and all, I'd guess that the mapper being imitated is Lupinx Kassman? Not sure about the imitatee though.

[Memfis]

FDA, not sure what's the intended port, I used prboom-plus -complevel 9. Nice looking map but pretty boring to play, there is a lot of shooting stuff that appears in front of you and overall monster placement encourages camping tactics. It gets better towards the end with all these fights that trap the player in a limited space, but it just takes too long to get to these more exciting parts of the map.

I think Joshy is right about Lupinx: there is a "story text" at the beginning of the map just like in CC4 m21, isolated islands just like in CC4 m20 and an overall "epic" feeling. I'd say it's a pretty accurate representation of his style.

The imitator is Matt Tropiano I guess, these Plutonia mountains immediately reminded me of Coffee Break.

[Dutch Doomer]

Well I have no idea really. I can say for sure who its not and thats me, since the layout doesn't match anything I ever made :p Looks pretty impressive.

[stewboy]

Memfis said:

I think Joshy is right about Lupinx: there is a "story text" at the beginning of the map just like in CC4 m21, isolated islands just like in CC4 m20 and an overall "epic" feeling. I'd say it's a pretty accurate representation of his style.

Unless of course Lupinx is the one who made the map in someone else's style, and he couldn't help but put some of his own touches in it :P
I'm not sure who else's style it could be in. I'm not familiar enough with other mappers. I do think a lot of the detailing is similar to what I do (although what I do is fairly generic), but I've never made maps this epic before, so it's probably not me :P

[Joshy]

stewboy said:

Unless of course Lupinx is the one who made the map in someone else's style, and he couldn't help but put some of his own touches in it :P

Hahaha, the thought did occur to me!

[Xaser]

I'd actually guess Joshy as the target. Dunno why -- maybe just a general "the monsters are kicking my ass" feel, though the building shapes and such feel joshian to me.

Wild guessing, of course. :P

[skillsaw]

Xaser said:

I'd actually guess Joshy as the target. Dunno why -- maybe just a general "the monsters are kicking my ass" feel, though the building shapes and such feel joshian to me.

Wild guessing, of course. :P

Yeah, I got the Joshy feel as well when playing through this too. The story text at the beginning is probably the giveaway though, so my money is on lupinx-kassman.

From just a visual perspective though, the map felt extremely MTrop, just with a much freer use of angled map geometry.

Regardless of the guessing game though I *really* liked this map. I usually get bored on long maps (this took me about a half hour of game time) but not here. The design felt really open and I thought the looping flow throughout the map was very cleverly done. Gameplay was pretty easy on HMP other than the exit room but the action was plentiful enough that my interest stayed in it. I really liked the music, too.

[Snakes]

Okay, weeks later, I've decided (after being reminded by the author) that it's high-time to reveal this bad boy.

The answer is: Lupinx being imitated by MTrop! Pretty spot-on guessing for the first round by Joshy and especially Memfis. Congratulations, you win the money. I just wish there were someway to actually award someone a contest-esque manner (the best I have is a Steam gift to the most accumulated guesses, but not many in this competition have Steam).

Here's the complete .zip file provided to me by MTrop, complete with, what I feel, is a very interesting post-mortem about his mapping process and what the imitation process entailed. I recommend downloading and discussing this as it's full of little observations that'll make you look at the project from an angle you may not have previously considered.

In the meantime, I'll try and post the next map this Sunday. They've all been quality stuff so far, so even if the angle of this doesn't appeal to you, you'll steal have a fun Doom map to play.

Discuss!

[lupinx-Kassman]

Haha neat, I had a feeling that I was the one being imitated. I was certain Mtrop was the imitator though, since that is revealed in the ending text of the map when played in zdoom =P.

Its a cool map with nice flow, as I was never lost and I had the feeling that I was always moving forward as I winded in and out of the castle. I agree that monster placement is pretty bunchy in my maps, but I think this map handles monster placement better than I do in my own stuff. I appreciate the addition of a quick storyline to the map, since I think it helps give the player a feeling of adventure and a looming objective to look forward to at the end of the journey (the effect of pulling the sword out and releasing the "curse" was pretty neat).

The postmortom revealed some things to me about my own map making process that I hadn't noticed before, but that I believe are true (like the theory on "satellite" areas). It also reddened me in the face a little, not only because its a strange feeling to read a detailed analysis about my own mapping style, but because it made me realize that the postmortom I wrote for my own submission is not very good in comparison, as it does not go as in-depth and explain my thoughts very well. Therefore, if Snakes doesn't mind, I think I would like to give my postmortom another shot, now that I am in between college and work for a couple of weeks =P.

[MTrop]

I've uploaded the map to idGames, so that'll be up in a couple of days.

Can't wait to see what others made!

[Joshy]

Yeah, reading Mtrop's post-mortem has kinda made me a bit paranoid whether mine was good enough. My problem is I guess that I was not quite as 'conscious' of all the specifics when I was working on my imitation map, but using overall ideas/forms as the driving force, and hoping my intuitions for the specifics kicks in. I hope that's an acceptable excuse for my crappy post-mortem :P

Looking forward to the next one!

[MTrop]

So.... where exactly are we with this?

Any other maps?

[scifista42]

I'm quite interested in this project, and if there was another that-like or the signups for this one were reopened, I'd take it (last year I didn't have any maps released, now I have).

Snakes, and participants - where are all the maps :p ?

[Snakes]

I'd like to go ahead and apologize for being fucking sketchy in the past few months. I've placed my creative efforts elsewhere and it just hasn't been fair to anyone involved in this project at all. Part of the reason I'm being so neglectful is that I only ever received 3 maps; however, one could argue that's because of poor leadership on my part. I'll go ahead and accept the blame on that front.

Now, all of that being said...

Secret Santa Round 2 is a go!

This one's going to be a bit trickier, I think. It's a very well-made, compact map that requires some textures out of CC4 to run. Of course, the usual round of questions:

Who's the author being imitated?
How did you come to that conclusion?
How does it differentiate from the standard output of the imitatee?
Who's doing the imitating?

Go. Play.

Have fun.

[Joshy]

Just played it. Not a bad map, gameplay was nicely done. As for who did it and the imitatee, I am absolutely stumped.

[scifista42]

Dictionary: Imitator = Who did the imitation and actually created the map, imitatee = who is being imitated.

Well in my view, the key attributes of this map are:

1. It's fun and very satisfying to play and explore. However, I think this is more of a touch of the imitator instead of the one being imitated. It makes me think that the imitator is very experienced mapper specially in regards of gameplay. I guess the imitated person is someone experienced too.
2. Monsters start to attack the player immediately. I'm sure this is the first giveaway.
3. The map is compact, playable area gradiently expands and turns elaborately interconnected.
4. The mapper doesn't hesitate to use a few strange angles and little structures. The first staircase has weird angles, the waterfall staircase is obscure for itself, strange little stairs helps the player to surmount smaller height differences. Still, these structures doesn't at all spoil the map.

Additional observations:

1. The map is broken in ZDoom. Lost souls and cacodemons don't teleport from conveyor belts. For me it gives a proof that the author (imitator) must be a dedicated PrBoom user!
2. When you look on the automap, it is... nice, and gives the impression the map was preplanned on paper before being actually started.

Result:

My first point (1.) narrows the selection range to about a half. Point (4.) excludes Essel to have anything common with this, as well as other mappers who take pride in clean design. People like Khorus and Joshy are out too, at least as imitatees, since their maps tend to be more extensive and avoid using little details just for playability reasons like it is in this map. Imitated person definitely isn't a slaughtermapper.

I'm 90% sure this map is related to Memfis. I'm just not sure whether he's the imitator or imitatee. If he was the one being imitated (the imitatee), I'd say the attempt at emulating his style wasn't that well performed. Memfis's maps tend to be less linear, don't let the player jump over/off ledges that much, he uses little stairs but they look different, and while their monster usage and difficulty is similar, higher monsters are introduced quite fast for Memfis. I can quite well imagine that Memfis is the imitator and he was imitating someone who... make (firstly) linear maps and don't mind using odd angles, platforms, obstacles in way and nontiling textures (see exit door) while in other instances he sticks to orthogonal/45-degree architecture. But then, who would it be? Or wouldn't it be kind of vice versa?

I admit I'm not familiar with works of all people involved in this project, I'm sorry. I have no idea who is imitated if the imitator is actually Memfis, and there's still possibility Memfis has nothing common with this map. My wild guess:

The person being imitated is Memfis, and imitator was fiend-o-hell (his style fits a bit my description of who would be Memfis imitating, and the style of the map anyway reminds me Memfis, so I say he's the imitatee. On the other hand, the monsters at start don't fit...)

Or vice versa, but take the first.

[Grain of Salt]

It might be a gamble, but I'm putting all my money on Memfis as the creator of this map. What seals this for me is the switch you have to shoot at the start, which reminds me a lot of an old Memfis map called something like "Not In My Shrine"(?)

As for the mapper being imitated... I really don't know. Initially, the usage of grey bricks made me think it might be me, but I have to conclude that doesn't really fit. I think the imitated mapper here is just someone I'm not too familiar with. :/

It's a pretty cool map, also.

[esselfortium]

Something about the setting and shapes used in the map make me think lupinx-Kassman, though I'm pretty sure I'm wrong.

[Memfis]

That's a very cool and surprising map, excellent use of third dimension... But I gotta admit it pissed me off a bit in the beginning, took some time to get used to unusual vertical gameplay.
I think the author is Joshy (music track by stewboy, clever monster placement: no hordes but still a lot of pressure, sector shapes...) and it is possible that he was imitating the style of Grain of Salt (specifically, of her Green Goddess wad).

I'll answer Snakes' third question after everything is revealed, don't want to end up talking about completely unrelated mapper. :)

[esselfortium]

Good call, Joshy is a good possibility for it. Near the yellow key area, the tiny steps and the blocking barriers that look nearly tall enough to step under are definitely potential Joshy indicators. I'm used to seeing that on key bars instead, so I didn't make the connection :)

edit: Okay, looking at previous posts again it seems that Joshy and lupinx-Kassman have both already been spotted in an earlier submission. I've got nothing then :P

[scifista42]

Bump to get interest.
Nobody else want to make a guess about this pretty fun to play thingy available for download a few posts ago?
Also when the real author/imitatee will be disclosed?

[Joshy]

scifista42 said:

Bump to get interest.
Nobody else want to make a guess about this pretty fun to play thingy available for download a few posts ago?
Also when the real author/imitatee will be disclosed?

Hopefully soon. If I had to really take a stab, I'd say either stewboy and/or Walter confalonieri. Eager to find out the answers!

esselfortium said:

I'm used to seeing that on key bars instead, so I didn't make the connection :)

That's true, I like doing that with keybars so enemies can still fire through unimpeded. :P Can't say I'd do the same with barriers though.