Going Down

[General Rainbow Bacon]

And you have to remember you can only go halfway in, the other half you're going out.

[mouldy]

Xaser said:

I really hope that the last map has you emerging on the other side via an upside-down building in China.

haha, i did consider falling through the earth's core and coming out the other side, continuing to fly upwards into space until you land on the moon, but then I thought maybe not.

[The_MártonJános]

mouldy said:

(...)I'm gonna go for the full 32 maps no matter how long it takes.

The sentence a wad is worth being made for. :)

[Suitepee]

I quite like the visual idea of this one, and since I've been recommended to try this in the NOVA thread I shall do just that at some point via livestream. Especially since I was impressed with mouldy's 'Bad Blood' NOVA contribution.

[mouldy]

Suitepee said:

I quite like the visual idea of this one, and since I've been recommended to try this in the NOVA thread I shall do just that at some point via livestream. Especially since I was impressed with mouldy's 'Bad Blood' NOVA contribution.

Cool, I wouldn't mind watching that.

[mouldy]

Episode 2 has finally arrived: maps 12-20 plus the 2 secret maps. More monsters, more chaos, and 4 new music tracks.

DOWNLOAD LINK

As usual I'd appreciate any bugs you find and comments you have. Enjoy!

[Gez]

mouldy said:

and 4 new music tracks.

Speaking of which, do you give titles to your songs? I just like knowing the actual name of music tracks I listen to, rather than circumlocutions like "the MAP04 theme from that level set". :)

[General Rainbow Bacon]

You misspelled "vivisection" on that one map title. Gonna go actually play them now.

E: Title for map 11, don't know why nobody caught that before.

[dobu gabu maru]

"200 Mega Hurts" is a fantastic name for that map.

[mouldy]

General Rainbow Bacon said:

You misspelled "vivisection" on that one map title. Gonna go actually play them now.

E: Title for map 11, don't know why nobody caught that before.

Well spotted, cheers.

Gez said:

Speaking of which, do you give titles to your songs? I just like knowing the actual name of music tracks I listen to, rather than circumlocutions like "the MAP04 theme from that level set". :)

Yeah I will figure out names for the tunes at some point, maybe when I sort out the text file once I finish the whole thing.

dobu gabu maru said:

"200 Mega Hurts" is a fantastic name for that map.

Was interesting trying to do the easy setting for that one..

[scifista42]

As far as I've looked in (with the help of cheats), the maps are awesome, but unfortunately also too hard for me. I guess I'd try to properly play through them on a lower difficulty. Anyway I can already say, great job!

[tourniquet]

I just played till Map15 by now but so far i can say that this stuff is really brill.

[mouldy]

scifista42 said:

As far as I've looked in (with the help of cheats), the maps are awesome, but unfortunately also too hard for me. I guess I'd try to properly play through them on a lower difficulty. Anyway I can already say, great job!

Cheers! Yeah they can get a bit tough, i've implemented lower difficulties but its hard to test them so let me know how you get on.

I'd recommend continuous rather than pistol starts as well for first timers. And for pro's who find it too easy on UV I might go back once its all done and add multiplayer stuff for solo-net malarkey. Or there's always brutal doom... (which breaks half of the traps)

tourniquet said:

I just played till Map15 by now but so far i can say that this stuff is really brill.

thanks!

[gun_psycho]

Having had a look at the maps, they remind me of the Scythe series' maps but I'll be damned if they're not brilliant.

Definitely looking forward to what Episode 3'll be like.

[scifista42]

Well, the maps appear to require massive save-load spam on HMP too. But actually, mouldy, your devious horde ambushes that give me no rest at all, are clever and I appreciate them as a unique feature of your mapping. I like the mechanics going on in maps 12 and 13. For a long time, I was stuck on the start in MAP14 as I couldn't find out what to do after I got the secret chaingun. Continuing later.

[MegaTurtleRex]

I like the interiors of the office building, usually they look goofy in the Doom maps I played but it looked nice up to where I played. The air vents are terrifying though, keep going past horribly dangerous things, really clever.

[Katamori]

How did you dare keeping this a secret for me?!

I MUST DO AN LP!

[mouldy]

After more testing in prboom I've fixed a few stuck monsters in maps 12 and 13, here's an updated download link:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/t9vea9449ja3z5p/goingdownE2-apr04-2.zip

Cheers for the kind words folks.

Katamori said:

How did you dare keeping this a secret for me?!

I MUST DO AN LP!

Cool, I'd be interested to see that.

[Katamori]

Damnit, I already recorded MAP01 and MAP02 with the previous version. meh, nevermind, I just hope I won't forget updating after I finish E1.

Anyway, you can watch my video here.

[mouldy]

Good to see you are playing on HMP difficulty, I have a feeling I might not have balanced the lower difficulties that well in the later maps so will be useful to see how you get on.

[Jimmy]

MAP32's blue card is set to UV-only. D:

[mouldy]

Jimmy said:

MAP32's blue card is set to UV-only. D:

Wow, how on earth did that even happen.. here's an update:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/t9vea9449ja3z5p/goingdownE2-apr04-2.zip

Guess I didn't bother trying to exit when I tested.

[Gez]

In Painframe, the special on both the switches in the radioactive chambers extend beyond the switch itself. You can trigger the event by using the border of the switch rather than the switch itself. It's a bit odd.

[Xaser]

Dayum. That fleshy thing on the left in the second shot in the E2 release post is exactly the sort of thing I'd been hoping to see from you for quite a while now. Definitely looking forward to seeing the freakiness get cranked up in the later maps. :D

[gun_psycho]

I really do hope I get to see a womb level or two somewhere in Episode 3. (In the vein of Heroes' Tales Map29, at least)

[mouldy]

Gez said:

In Painframe, the special on both the switches in the radioactive chambers extend beyond the switch itself. You can trigger the event by using the border of the switch rather than the switch itself. It's a bit odd.

heh, what's even odder is the borders use a different action from the switch which does exactly the same thing...

Thats a mistake of course, luckily its not a deadly one so I will fix it in the next update, but very well spotted. I expect there are a few more like that where I forgot to remove actions from switch trimmings. Action 166 causes a weird bug in some source ports so I changed it but didn't realise the rest of the wall was also a switch.

As for the fleshy horribleness requested above, map 20 ends with the player jumping down the throat of that beast, so you can probably guess how episode 3 will begin :)

[mouldy]

A little bump for a semi-important update if you play with prboom:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/z1abm46q52vbfjc/goingdownE2-apr06.zip

...as I discovered the death exit I had on map 20 didn't work properly. I've taken the opportunity to fix a bunch of other minor things, though I'm sure there will be more stuff to find.

[Gez]

Secrets & Lies has activatable switch trims too. A good way to detect them is to play with ZDoom using a custom automap color set and the "show trigger lines" option enabled. Then look at your automap after activating a switch.

[Demon of the Well]

Hah, from what I've played so far the new batch of maps is as charming as the first. Here is a first round of FDAs if you like (-cl 9, using the 'April 06' version linked above), covering maps 12-15 and the two secret maps. Will definitely get around to maps 16-20 later!

Some quick commentary:
Map 12 -- An unpredictable map, at first you think you can start to see how things are going to go, but then the shitstorm keeps snowballing past the point of what symmetry and intuition would suggest; some of the triggers here really surprised me, good work. Amazing how easy it can be to run low on ammo in such a small/bloody play space. One thing, I smelled the plasma rifle trap coming a mile away, and it wasn't hard to blunt it almost entirely (would've pretty much been 'entirely, full stop' if it weren't for some of the vagaries of -cl 9)--I would suggest having one of the viles stay in that upper area, and have the other two teleport almost as soon as they appear, maybe one into the main cesspool and the other up on one of the walkways. The cesspool itself being mostly undamaging is also a real boon to the player; while I'm glad (I think) I didn't have to think about juggling radsuit timekeeping on top of everything else, you might be able to add a reasonable degree of extra stress by expanding the toxic zones a bit.

Map 13 -- I dig the setting here, it feels very expansive and spacious even though in actuality the gameplay is built almost entirely around the player not having much room to move, like most of the other maps in the set (incidentally, I would like to see at least one lategame map where I can run around and indulge my inner six year old a bit more). I do well up to a point, but then lose most of my momentum screwing up what is probably the least threatening wave of monsters partway through. The final battle had me really pissing my diddies at one point, too, fine example of a battle that's probably vastly less pressuring without infinitely-tall actors enabled. At first I was thinking 'maybe a cyberdemon or two would've been good at the end', but watching the FDA I think it's probably better the way it is now--the nobles wouldn't be nearly as effective at hemming the player in if cyb was around, since they'd tend to infight with him at the drop of a hat. On the technical side, there are a lot of texture misalignments in this one (probably very hard to avoid given the mechanisms at play), and some small issues with stuck/unstuck demons.

Map 14 -- There's a serious progression issue in this one, the yellow skull can be 'grabbed' immediately, allowing the player to exit without having to do anything (this is shown in the first FDA for the map, the 'For Real' version is just that). I guess this is what you'd call a breather map, which is fine--most of the trouble I get into is purely the result of acting like a fool (for example, insisting on using that chainsaw despite my better judgement). I think I can see how the different monster reveals might stack up and snowball out of control in this map, as well, but on my playthrough the action really petered out after a certain point. I was getting scared there for a minute when it dawned on me what you were trying to set up with those weird marble door-pillars with teleports under them, but the situation never panned out at all--the area probably needs to be flooded with smallfry at some point (rather than having them trickle in very slowly by means of the weird door-pillar mechanism), and then have some of the corpses crushed, and then introduce the viles to the room at some later point. The spider mastermind also wasn't very effective, though I can see how it might've been if the pillar thing had worked out.

Map 15 -- Haha, this is a really embarrassing FDA. I think this map is probably the easiest one in this new batch of levels that I've played so far (or at least it is if you find the easy v-sphere secret), and I confidently own it right up until near the very end, when I very nearly kill myself by horribly Good-at-Dooming (R) twice in the span of 3 seconds. I'm not sure if the waves are specific to the weapon choices or if they always follow a linear sequence, but I'll bet somebody setting off all of them at once would make for quite a spectacle. Note that this map has some issues with the player being able to press switches before they have actually been revealed, e.g. the central one behind the weapon pillars (shown in the demo); this didn't seem to really hurt anything, but maybe I just couldn't tell. Incidentally, I reckon maps 13 and 14 both probably have some of the same issues, by looking at them. Oh yes, and some of the 'audience' seemed a bit fidgety, too. This definitely doesn't hurt anything, but perhaps a slight aesthetic niggle to consider.

Map 31 -- A zany concept sure to amuse folks that played E1. Pretty predictable in the combat department, although it mostly overcomes this with sheer quantity of opposition. Those nurse-viles in the wall, though, man is that shit annoying. If you want to really be a dick, trying porting 2-3 more viles in at strategic points on the stairs when the player gets the yellow key, though you'll have to put some more ammo in there with the key to make this viable.

Map 32 -- And another callback. This one can get really frantic (I die here once early on), but may need some retooling at a couple of points. The first real fight--that is, the one after the mastermind dies and before the player starts riding the teleporters--has a major blindspot in it that I found myself instinctively exploiting to avoid much damage. The cyberdemons that appear on the roof when the player starts riding the teleporter merry-go-round also have difficulty hitting the player while s/he is on a few of the towers (they just end up throwing their rockets into the lip of the building), meaning that they mainly just end up killing most of the other riffraff up there with them until they die through attrition. I'm generally not one to encourage authors to insist on making every last one of their fights so rigidly scripted/prosecuted that clever or surreptitious players can't find novel ways to handle some of them in relative safety (doing so often makes them feel less dynamic even for gung-ho players), but you might consider tweaking these a bit, since they constitute two of the three main threats--maybe some early flyers or something for the former, maybe a slightly lower building lip for the latter. On the upside, the giant cacoswarm works well, though. I underestimate their numbers and am nearly devoured alive at one point, escaping only through panic-fire and dumb luck.

[dobu gabu maru]

^ IMO on MAP12 I really like having the 3 AVs pop up when you grab the PG as you're forced to play doorkeeper and watch all the elevators to make sure they don't cause trouble. I haven't watched your FDAs so I don't know when you tackle them, but teleporting two away would be far more trouble than it's worth, especially considering the elevator becoming active is punishment for later, when the final AV pops up for the finale. Perhaps if he teleported something in like a caco or PE in to the side it would help to make the affair less monotonous, but I think it'd be risky to give the AVs the run of the place.

I also find it interesting that you call MAP15 the easiest of the batch, as when I played the first beta I told mouldy that it was the hardest map thus far and he probably should tone it down. It's hard to find a good balance sometimes...