Doom 2 In Name Only - Now (supsiciously) on a load of gaming articles

[schwerpunk]

1000 counting proxy posts, though.

It's gross. /pun

[The_MártonJános]

Antroid said:

(...) Besides, you can't rush creative genuis a lazy person.

Gah. :D :D :D

[an_mutt]

So! Is this even a thing? I hope it still is, as it's almost done.

I'm mostly bumping as I've had basically everything regarding my submissions complete for a while now, and will most likely be uploading them this week. However, seeing as I gave no considerations at all for deathmatch for my map 08 submission and I can't think of a good off-screen deathmatch arena, would someone who's a little more experienced in deathmatch mapping be interested in giving that a shot?

[Tristan]

WOAH!
One does not simply post in this thread!

Okay, now seriously.
I actually considered completely remaking MAP22 for a short while, not taking into consideration the amount of time I actually have and the fact that I'm really not good enough a mapper to properly blow the roof off of that map, as it were.
I have literally no idea what to do regarding getting this finished once-and-for-all. And I might never know. I think something needs to be done though, and let's face it, that's a bit obvious.
My other concern is that now, since it's now been such a long time (just over 4 months) since the alpha release, when this actually gets released, people will just be like "oh. that project. thought that was done."
Perhaps that's something Jay can prevent with UDINO, if he's still up for doing that.
That's all from me on this project for the next 2 months. Have a nice 2 months!

[mouldy]

Nothing seems to have changed since I posted this 2 months ago:

mouldy said:

i think maybe map 07 might be getting some tweaks as well. And not sure if joseph has completely finished with map 16, it looked like it was pretty much done barring a couple of fixes.

Be good to finally get our hands on map 24, it looked pretty cool but its the only one i havent played properly.

Regarding deathmatch starts, I dunno if many of the mappers have bothered with them - I certainly haven't since I don't play deathmatch myself. If we want deathmatch starts available then I'd suggest if any of the mappers on this project are keen deathmatch players and want to volunteer to go through the maps adding them then that would save us waiting for each of the individual creators updating their maps. I imagine there is more to a decent deathmatch map than just adding starting points but unless the majority of authors are concerned with that then there's no point spending too much time on it.

Eris Falling said:

I have literally no idea what to do regarding getting this finished once-and-for-all. And I might never know. I think something needs to be done though, and let's face it, that's a bit obvious.

There are 3 maps left to finish: 07 16 and 24, and 2 of them were practically done, so all you need to do is ask the people working on them what their progress is. If they are too busy to work on them then see if they want help.

Once those maps are done I'd suggest compiling a final alpha of the whole wad so we can check it for bugs one last time and then if its all ok add any finishing touches like map names & titlepic and release it as beta, where it will probably stay until everyone has played it to death and has had enough of it. Then its finished.

[plums]

Forgive me for poking my nose in here, but I think if you guys want to make progress on this you're going to need to set some solid deadlines. Pick a reasonable date, and any maps not finished by then will be released as-is/finished by someone else/replaced entirely, depending on their current state.

This looks like a cool project but I've been kind of waiting for a beta release before getting too into it.

EDIT: I'll help if there's anything I can do as a player/tester/etc.

[Katamori]

Oh, the rebumping of the thread made me remember to some things I wanted to tell:

- MAP06 music choice (Heroes 3 Inferno castle music) was shockingly surprising, I'm freakin' proud of ProcessingControl for the choose!
- MAP06 start is also impressive.
- Such as MAP19 starting.
- MAP16 seemed to be heavily unfinished; maybe my dl is too old.
- MAP07 is still not my cup of (simply dead) tea, but who cares anyway?
- I wanna be the first who creates a LP about it :D even just because Antroid have created some impressive maps for it, and I haven't seen anything from him yet, I guess.
- also, MAP24 seems to be kinda finished for a second quick lookout.
- MAP21 music choice was also perfect.

[Jayextee]

Eris Falling said:

WOAH!

Perhaps that's something Jay can prevent with UDINO, if he's still up for doing that.

Still up for it, aye. Got some ideas here and there for my own maps, though in the interests of fairness I'm not even starting them until everyone else is.

[scifista42]

Hey, so this is how it looks with MAP07:

For the past months I've been occasionally touching it and doing minor changes, while not being satisfied with any of them, since they didn't significantly add to the gameplay.
At one point, I made a backup copy, then scrapped all of the outer parts of the map with the intention to remake them from scratch, and differently. Haven't gone far, too. I just can't come with anything I'm satisfied with.

What do you say on this: What about to reduce my map just on the first arena? For its own good, for simplicity, and for my peace. :p

Or maybe the first + the last arena only? First + some filler fight + the last arena only? Last arena only? Opinions please.

(And you're allowed to spank me for my laziness, I know it and apologize for it.)

[mouldy]

I quite liked map 07 how it was (apart from the platforming bit). I'd say its up to you if you want to simplify it, there is certainly enough map there to lose a load and still feel complete. I tried it again just now and it took 19 minutes so make of that what you will.

I still had to noclip and godmode through the platforming bit, so if you are going to take any bits away please for the love of god make it that part!

[Tristan]

Katamori said:

- MAP07 is still not my cup of (simply dead) tea, but who cares anyway?

Mine? Because I'm pretty sure we're going with scifista's map instead.

Jayextee said:

Still up for it, aye. Got some ideas here and there for my own maps, though in the interests of fairness I'm not even starting them until everyone else is.

Awesome. Same here, though even if I did start one of the maps I preliminarily claimed, I wouldn't finish it anyway, the way I've been mapping recently.

EDIT: I've added a to-do list to the OP. I believe that is all.

[Xaser]

I'm probably totally late to the party once more, but now that I'm noticing this is still in a tweaking phase, is there anything that needs to be done with Wolfmap, by chance? Even though I think it was pretty close, I'd hate to leave it in a state of not-done-ness. :P

[EDIT] Dumb idea of the moment, which I'll begin with a question: Has anyone used Commander Keen in their maps at all? If not, I think I might replace Keen with a blank dummy actor in the DEH and litter the boss arena with Keens. That way the map will actually be completable in case of no-patchness (as the bossman uses A_KeenDie to open the exit door anyways), and anyone who tries the map without the DEH will get the "joke" ending with the single SS guy.

Win-win-win, as they say... Nobody says that... I say it.

[Katamori]

Eris Falling said:

Mine? Because I'm pretty sure we're going with scifista's map instead.

Oh, I didn't know about that. Sounds like a wise decision!

[plums]

scifista42 said:

What do you say on this: What about to reduce my map just on the first arena? For its own good, for simplicity, and for my peace. :p

I just played your map that was linked in this post, and thought it was quite good as-is. It's long, but I kind of like that idea for a MAP07 slot, and there's enough variety in gameplay and scenery that it's not tedious at all. The platforming stuff I had no problem with, but I could see how some people would. I think having to teleport back to the start of that section if you mess up in some places is too harsh; have the teleports go back to the most immediate area, or even the start of the next area but have them far enough away that some guaranteed damage will happen.

Other than that I think there's no shame in calling it finished, IMHO.

Also FWIW I experienced none of the problems CorSair did as described here, using GZDoom.

[plums]

EDIT: Disregard this post, I played a very old version of this map.

* * *

MAP16 of the download in the first post requires a minimal number of fixes to be release-quality: the COMPBLUE and SWxBLUE textures need touching up/replacing/etc. It's fairly obvious this was temp texturing. The detail level takes a noticable hit once you get outdoors but it's not terrible, and the gameplay remains intact.

All IMHO of course.

[Tristan]

Xaser said:

I'm probably totally late to the party once more, but now that I'm noticing this is still in a tweaking phase, is there anything that needs to be done with Wolfmap, by chance? Even though I think it was pretty close, I'd hate to leave it in a state of not-done-ness. :P

It was possible for the cyberdemon to not trigger his first teleport (that is, castle entrance to box), and that was all I found bug-wise.

[mouldy]

plums said:

MAP16 of the download in the first post requires a minimal number of fixes to be release-quality: the COMPBLUE and SWxBLUE textures need touching up/replacing/etc. It's fairly obvious this was temp texturing. The detail level takes a noticable hit once you get outdoors but it's not terrible, and the gameplay remains intact.

All IMHO of course.

The latest version of map 16 is here:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/4fxctqrofb710c2/map16.wad
Josephs original link seems to be dead so I reuploaded it

Judging from your description the one you played is an old one and it has been massively changed. The new version was done by joseph lord and I thought it was pretty much done, there were just a couple of bugs - places where you can get outside the map and a missing texture, but not heard from him since.

If it comes to it I can just fix the bugs and that will be that, not sure how much playtesting it got though.

edit: playing it again it also needs all the doors checked for door frame lower pegging

[plums]

Whoops, sorry about that, I was indeed playing a much older and different version. Does indeed need a bunch of texture fixing-up. Gameplay was pretty good up until the part where some Hell nobles teleport in and chaingunners can hit you, maybe I just rushed in there too fast though, I'll have another go later.

I hope I'm not coming across as trying to micro-manage this project or anything like that, I just think it's a shame that it's been stagnating for so long when it's so close to being finished. Feel free to ignore my posts or tell me to butt out as needed!

[mouldy]

No problem, this project needs all the help it can get really. Its a difficult one to coordinate because it has so many mappers involved, and some of them disappear for lengths of time. There hasn't been a massive amount of playtesting as far as I can tell, but unless things are broken or blatantly unfair I doubt maps will get changed much now. Difficulty is quite harsh in some of them though.

[scifista42]

I promise I'll release improved MAP07 next weekend at last, but it can likely be this weekend, as I hope. I returned to my backup version of it, to which I had been doing little changes during whole October. And I found that version quite good again, so I'm working on it now. I already improved some encounters (PEs), and scrapped the unfair hell platforming section. Things left to do are to replace that section with something else (I'm planning a 'nicer' hellish section), and to get rid of visplane overflows. That may be also fine-tuned during testing after I upload the map.

[Antroid]

I've been playtesting and tweaking map24 every day at work the past several weeks. Most of it is done, quite a few tweaks from the version you guys had in the beta. For one, there's now a cyberdemon in the main part of the canyon (where the keys are), and he certainly livens up the gameplay around there :D And many, many tiny tweaks to how monsters are set up, some geometry, a lot of ammo pickups being reshuffled about, etc. I only need to finish tweaking that one final linear stretch after the key doors. Should not be too long now. I know it's been pretty disgraceful how long this map's been sitting on my PC waiting to be done, but hey, at least I'm not actually the only one this whole project's waiting for :>

Oh and despite my poor performance in this project I'd still like to do a map or two for UDINO. But perhaps smaller and simpler ones ^.^'

[Antroid]

Alright, you know what, I think map24 can be public-tested now.

TWICE UPDATED LINK

I've been pretty stingy with ammo still, but if you don't miss too much and look around you should be fine. Before the final version of the wad, even if there's no bugs to fix or tweaks to do based on your feedback, I'll go through the map combing through all the ROCK5 and try to fix any misalignments to the best of my ability, because I'm pretty sure there must be several really bad cases of misalignment on visible edges right now. I just can't be arsed to do this during the last hours of work right now and I figured, might as well throw it out there for gameplay testing as is.

[scifista42]

OK, I tested the map. It was almost completely new to me - I never properly played through it until now, only cheated through a part of the version in D2INO-alpha.

Design-wise it's certainly great, no doubts. The cohesive style and atmosphere give a strong impression, which overcomes all the orthogonality and "brownishness". I didn't mind them (orthogonality and "brownishness") in this map at all. The music fits the map very well, too.

But I guess you'd like more to hear about gameplay. My opinion is that you've balanced ammo and health just right. Maybe... an armor. There's a little of it, you can add some more, but in fact it's okay as it is. I like how you approached monster placement. No slaughter, quite a mild pace, yet things can still be dangerous, so it's better to play carefully. I enjoyed the one certain platforming room (with PEs), as it motivated me to kill all monsters in beforehand, then it was quite easy. The usage of damaging floors makes the map interesting, too. You've hidden some secrets nicely in it. Which reminds me:

How to reach red key? I don't have the slightest idea. I spent nearly an hour of in-game time in the map (more than hour in real time, since I kept dying), explored each accessible bit as I believe, but only found 4 of the 7 secrets and many parts remained inaccessible. Did I miss something? Not a problem if intended, though maybe the way to the red key might be hidden less.

Another thing, the exit deserves some mark that it's an exit. For example, the big stone behind it could be textured with that grey brick wall with an exit sign.

All from me I think, I liked the map a lot. I don't mind long maps as you know :).

[mouldy]

Antroid said:

Alright, you know what, I think map24 can be public-tested now.

LINK

I've been pretty stingy with ammo still, but if you don't miss too much and look around you should be fine. Before the final version of the wad, even if there's no bugs to fix or tweaks to do based on your feedback, I'll go through the map combing through all the ROCK5 and try to fix any misalignments to the best of my ability, because I'm pretty sure there must be several really bad cases of misalignment on visible edges right now. I just can't be arsed to do this during the last hours of work right now and I figured, might as well throw it out there for gameplay testing as is.

Cool, I had a run through it, very interesting design. Took quite a while as I was having to play very conservatively, found ammo and health to be a bit on the tight side - thats not to say there isn't enough, I was seldom down to my fists, but there was a great deal of backtracking to scrape every last stimpack and bullet I could find which slowed things down a touch. Then again, it seems to be that kind of a map where you have to explore and take things slowly - a lot of the enemy threat comes from a distance so progress was all about finding cover and picking things off. Some bits are a bit painful with no mouselook but not much to be done about that.

The only problem I encountered was that I couldn't find any way of getting the red key. Even looking in doombuilder I can't work out how you are meant to get in that whole red key section.

The end section has no monsters in it, is that intentional? I don't have a problem with that myself but it seems a bit strange as by that point I was tooled up ready for a fight, and there's even a secret cache of ammo before it.

[Antroid]

mouldy said:

The end section has no monsters in it, is that intentional? I don't have a problem with that myself but it seems a bit strange as by that point I was tooled up ready for a fight, and there's even a secret cache of ammo before it.

Yeah, that's intentional. The ammo thing is more for the people who want to kill the cyber, or for people who play continuously (for the next map). By the way, I thought it was dramatic enough to be an obvious exit, does anyone else apart from scifista feel like I should mark it somehow? I really don't want the stupid "exit" sign in my ancient temple...

The red key. This is an embarassing fuck-up on my part. That "window" in a wooden wall right under the ledge with the key? That was meant to be a door :D The last thing I changed on the level right before uploading and posting it was making it so you can't get back out of that red key area when you jump in, and I raised the floor on that sector a bit, and it didn't occur to me to check whether the player could actually fit through after that.

Woops!

I reuploaded the wad with that quick fix (updated the link in the previous post). Redownload if you want to try the red key area legitimately. I would also like to ask anyone to pretend this didn't happen.

p.s. imagine what I thought about you guys before I went and checked and discovered that you can't actually fit through that opening. :>

p.p.s. also scifista, there's two green armors in the level, did you find both? They're not hidden but the second one can be obscured by a fatso corpse.

p.p.p.s. also also scifista, there's only one secret in the red key area. The rest you should've been able to find :P

[mouldy]

I kind of guessed the exit was the exit, although I was also expecting a fight so couldn't be completely sure. I'm ok with it though

[scifista42]

Antroid said:

p.p.s. also scifista, there's two green armors in the level, did you find both? They're not hidden but the second one can be obscured by a fatso corpse.

p.p.p.s. also also scifista, there's only one secret in the red key area. The rest you should've been able to find :P

I found both armors, but depleted both very quickly, they weren't enough.

And you should at least admit that the megasphere-secret-opening switch was hinted too subtly (even invisible on automap), as well as the shootable switch raising platform to the other secret. But OK, you win. :)

[Antroid]

scifista42 said:

I found both armors, but depleted both very quickly, they weren't enough.

Play more carefully then :P But I'm seriously lacking in my ability to have a "feel" for armor in doom, hell, for the longest time I thought of it as completely useless. Even now I still have no idea how often armor is usually found, how long it lasts, how much it helps etc. You'll laugh, but I wasn't sure about placing the second green one there, because to my untrained armor-sense two green armors in one level outside secrets seemed like too much. X~)

Although there's a blue armor in the red key area which I now think might be a tad imbalanced. That area felt very hectic to me but who knows, maybe that thing is easy to pass and the blue armor will make people choose that area over the yellow key area all the time. Maybe I should switch the second green armor with the blue one?.. Or is a blue armor too good to just have in the open like that?

[The_MártonJános]

Ok, I see it's getting to an end sooner or later. Waiting eagerly for the first beta release, I'll be getting busy giving Antroid's map a go.

[CorSair]

Yeesh, map to toy with. Except too tired at the moment.

.:edit:.
All right. Demo's here (reserve some time, because it took like hour to finish x( ) Ammo can be tight at points, but once you find that backpack, it isn't chore anymore. Also, megasphere trap was kinda dick move. Secrets are meant for rewarding, not punishing, eh? :P

And I think I said it already, but map is pretty.