Ultimate Doom “In Name Only” - [Limit Removing] - Artist for titlepic/M-Doom etc needed

[Jaws In Space]

Okay so here's what I'm doing for the new Military Base. I've only just started this today so there's not much here, basic layout is done with a few items & monsters thrown in to give the player something to do, & that's about it. Feedback & suggestions are much appreciated, enjoy.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9eb15w0esvn6i69/UDINO19.wad?dl=0

[scifista42]

Jaws In Space said:

Okay so here's what I'm doing for the new Military Base. I've only just started this today so there's not much here, basic layout is done with a few items & monsters thrown in to give the player something to do, & that's about it. Feedback & suggestions are much appreciated, enjoy.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9eb15w0esvn6i69/UDINO19.wad?dl=0

You should get rid of the damaging water, really, such a design doesn't belong to modern day mapping. There shouldn't be an ocean of water on Phobos, anyway. The BROWN96 garages look very unprofessional - the cheapest trick to make them look better would be to shift their Y alignment so that the top "railing" will be in the middle, and add a borderline ceiling made of another fitting texture. Also, SLADWALL is a bad texture for a wall of a building, as well as TEKWALL4 and COMPOHSO. Your map seems too inefficiently structured (extensive) to be well playable, and too abstract to resemble a military base and not a bunch of 1994 sectors with minimum detail. IMO, you should try to plan out your usage of detail so that the map looks as good as possible while the feel of "military base" is maximized. Oh, and random pickups everywhere on a road look odd - I mean, the road itself is a step towards "realism", and you immediately spoil it by such a game-y thing. That's my thoughts.


EDIT: By the way, I've just reached post count 3000! :P I'm overposting a lot, it seems. At the beginning of this year, I only had 800 posts.

[Clonehunter]

Page 2, guys?

Anyways, another question, but there was some discussing about monster placements, like "Should their be cacos in E1?" etc... I was wondering if there was any kind of consensus on that.

[cannonball]

Clonehunter said:

Page 2, guys?

Anyways, another question, but there was some discussing about monster placements, like "Should their be cacos in E1?" etc... I was wondering if there was any kind of consensus on that.

Hi, sorry for the late reply. Busy Christmas :P
I stated in the original post that cacodemons and lost souls can be used in any map of E1. I was open to further debate on loosening this further, but thought a compromise between the strict original rules and a complete free for all on monsters was the best idea.

[Steve D]

Bumping the thread to say that after a long dry spell, I'm making progress on E1M2. Might have a draft ready early next week.

[Steve D]

The map; http://www.mediafire.com/download/65t38zucwbv068o/UDINO12ABZ.wad

Okay, so it took a little longer than I expected . . . ;D

I started with the best intentions of producing a nice little E1M2, but then I launched DB2 and things got out of hand.

I went and made a Nuclear Plant that includes a Reactor Room, a pump room for the cooling water, and a Dynamo Room to generate electricity. It took quite a few sectors to make it all happen.

This Nuclear Plant is also loaded with disgruntled employees. I mean, a LOT of them. I beat the map on a zero-secret playthrough but added some ammo, mainly bullets and a few shells, so it's less brutal.

The map is pretty close to being vanilla-compatible. I was surprised how far I could push it, and I can add loads of detail in some areas, but the Dynamo Room has at least 3 HOMs and 2 VPOs. I'm pretty sure I can fix those, but I decided to upload it now for testing and to see if you're interested before I do that. There is also a potential HOM in the ginormous secret room, but it's pretty hard to make it happen. This was the only one caught by Visplane Explorer.

As a further smack in the face to vanilla compatibility, the music track is an Amiga MOD, albeit in PC format, so if you play in Doom.exe or Chocolate Doom, you will get silence. The music is only a placeholder until I have time to find a MIDI, assuming the map is accepted.

Enuff blathering. ;D

Edit: Forgot to mention that difficulty settings are enabled. Also, the music track plays badly in Risen3D, but is fine in GZDoom.

Here are 2 pics. First, the Dynamo Room;


The ginormous secret room;

[mouldy]

SteveD said:

The map; http://www.mediafire.com/download/65t38zucwbv068o/UDINO12ABZ.wad

I had a quick go at this. Visually its fantastic. Gameplay though is ridiculous. Remember this is E1M2! I think there is a problem though where the map is so spacious that lowering the enemy count to normal levels will make it feel quite empty in places. The start was fine, but as soon as cacos start appearing it goes silly. The first swarm at the mega-armour secret is bad enough considering the pea-shooters you have to deal with them and the lost souls, its just a grind. Then the trap with the more cacos and spectres is way too much. Even with rockets which are rendered next to useless by the spectres) I ran out of ammo, leaving a cloud of caco meat following me around the next couple of areas so I couldn't stop and fight anything, and there wasn't enough health to keep me going anyway, so I gave up.

And if I'm giving up on the 2nd map thats a bad sign! It looks cool from what i've seen though, think you just need to scale down the encounters.

[tourniquet]

Yo Steve, your map refuses to run in PrBoom+, seems like it can't handle the MOD.

[scifista42]

SteveD said:

The map; http://www.mediafire.com/download/65t38zucwbv068o/UDINO12ABZ.wad

IMO, this map is WAAAAAY too large, too difficult and too slaughterish for E1M2. Even the start is pretty hectic, and it only gets tougher. The cacodemon swarm behind the red door is already too much, and it seemed that the map was going to continue even much longer! I recommend to pick just the map's most memorable "Nuclear Plant"-like designs (not the abstract ones), scale them down, rearrange them in a reasonably small and compact layout and accustomize gameplay to be more starter-like, instead of ramping up difficulty with dozens of shotgunners and imp groups (not to say cacos) right away.

[Steve D]

tourniquet said:

Yo Steve, your map refuses to run in PrBoom+, seems like it can't handle the MOD.

Thanks for the heads-up, tourniquet. This actually should work, but I made a change in the renamed MOD file because it wouldn't loop properly. If you check it out in OpenMPT's Channels window, it has an odd channel arrangement, and Channel 49 is empty sound. The MOD eventually does loop, but it takes about a minute, so I put the MOD in OpenMPT, checked the Loop Song box and deleted Channel 49, and it works great in G/ZDoom, but apparently, it borks the MOD for PR/GLBoom+. However, I had done a God Mode walkthrough of an earlier version with the original, unedited MOD, and it worked fine in PR/GLBoom. I've now restored the original MOD in a new version of the map. Let me know if it works now.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/87bv6wgq8h37qy4/UDINO12ACB.wad

BTW, how do you change the loop behavior correctly? I was reading through the MPT Wiki pages and couldn't figure it out.

Last question, did PRBoom crash on startup? On my machine, the map played, but the MOD sounded like a bunch of random noises, so I did an IDMUS15.

[tourniquet]

Yes it did crash on startup but i just checked the new version and it seems to work. Some midi players encounter problems whilst playing mod files which might be the reason for those glitch noises you've mentioned. SDL seems to handle MOD,IT,XM files preferably.

As for setting loops, Open MPT's normal loop function basicly repeats a pre determined part of song several times. You sure can add loop markers to start and end of the track but you also need to define the iteration count and these can not be set to infinite. So the smartest way to add an infinite loop is to add a position jump "B00" at the end of the song, thus the song will jump back to the start infinitely everytime he reaches the "B00" marker.
Hope this is somewhat understandable, my english is not the best :p.

If you encounter problems setting the loop right, just give me a shot i'll add it to the song.

[Jaws In Space]

In addition to the 2 VPOs in the Dynamo Room I found the biggest VPO 149/128 while standing anywhere in front of the wall up on the ledge in the reactor room. The Green dot & arrow show where I was standing & what direction I was facing to get the highest VPO count. Also line 1111 has a tutti-frutti.

[Steve D]

@mouldy
@scifista42

Another link to the updated version; http://www.mediafire.com/download/87bv6wgq8h37qy4/UDINO12ACB.wad

Thanks for the feedback, guys! Well, I pretty much admitted in my first post that this isn't ideal E1M2 material. ;D The UV/HMP/HNTR monster counts are 537/379/218. Nuff said. ;D If cannonball wants this map, it's probably best to see if anyone with an M5 or above slot wants to trade, or if anyone drops out or doesn't feel like mapping. I know cb has a map already that he can fling into this slot. As another option, I threw in some Marbface and Skintek panels in the exit area since Helling it up for E2 could work if any slots become available. Maybe it could fit into Refinery or The Spawning Vats? I could also pull this map and use it for my own E2 project, and start another for E1M2. There's plenty of time.

I'm generally pretty stern against lowering difficulty when difficulty settings are enabled. After all, @mouldy, I died 39 times in your 50 Shades of Graytall map, smiling all the way because I had so much fun getting killed. That said, I added some bullet boxes leading into the big gray room next to the Reactor Room, and another one inside, because when I played it again without going to a secret area first, I ran out of ammo and ended up chainsawing a Sergeant. Of course, the blue key room has a Zerk, so Doom pugilists might be okay with everything if they do that room first. I'm not one of those players. ;) I added an extra bullet box in the blue key room as well. I can add more if necessary, because . . .

. . . resource issues in traditional maps are what made me less than fond of BTSX E2, aka Ammo Starvation, The Megawad, because it led to a lot of grindy single-shotty plinking against Hell Nobles and Revvies. I think mouldy made a valid point that the first Caco/Lost Soul attack at the Blue Armor secret can be a slog once you dodge past the initial rush. I was also a jagoff there because I put two bullet boxes inside the Lost Soul closet, so that if the player immediately jumps off the platform, they end-up plinking away at the Cacos with a single shotty, which is a drag.

After numerous playthroughs, I'm beginning to worry that grindy Caco-killing can be an issue because of the large spaces and the relatively small number of Cacos you encounter at once. I also made it easy for Cacos to follow you from room-to-room in the setpiecey areas. If you're not out to max the map, it's possible to escape the Cacos once you find the switch lowering the barricades, but maxers might find it a bit dull. It's generally better to Rambo these fights to avoid boredom, but that discussion was had in the BTSX E2 thread. ;)

I'm happy with the first rocket fight. I did it because I felt a need for revenge against Rottking's excellent Map22 in BTSX E2, where I died a zillion times in that dark room leading to the Soulsphere and red key. On 6 occasions, I could have escaped that room because I had my RL lined up against all the Imps guarding the way out, but 6 times I suffered "Good at Doom!" suicides because a damned Spectre was there. I don't even know where the damn thing came from, but I was really pissed off. :D Anyway, I think the rocket fight here is best Ramboed. Once the Spectres start teleporting in, shoot rockets straight ahead to kill the 3 or 4 ahead of you. That leaves only 8 or 9 to deal with, and it's not a bad fight once you get used to it. I beveled the walls and railings in vital areas to make sidestepping the Spectres easier.

@scifista42 -- you're right about the slaughtery nature of certain fights. It's the influence of Demonologist. I played Imago Mortis and his Slaughterfest3 map -- on HNTR, mind you! -- and found them exhilertating, so they have influenced me.

Anyway, let me know what you think of the updated version, but play it with the idea that it's not an E1M2 and is more an M6 or M7 candidate. Last thing, I do recall that excessive size was a major issue with D2INO maps.

[Steve D]

@tourniquet
@JawsInSpace

Thanks, guys!

@tourniquet -- I will give your advice a whirl. We'll see if I can figure it out. If not, I'll come crying back to you. ;D

@JawsInSpace -- thanks for the catch. I never checked from that spot because when I came into the room. I had way more segs and planes than I expected, so I got a bit lazy. Probably the easiest fix is to put a door where the bars are, but I use bars because IMO doors that don't open suck unless they're key doors. I got in the habit of using bars instead on the Team Mapping Project, because that's how my partner PhantomTMac did it, and I immediately decided to steal the idea. ;D

[Magnusblitz]

[Steve D]

^^^ROFL!!!!!

Hmmmm, getting a little predictable, am I? ;)

[mouldy]

SteveD said:

Another link to the updated version; http://www.mediafire.com/download/87bv6wgq8h37qy4/UDINO12ACB.wad

In deference to your many deaths suffered in my maps I decided to have another go at this one. And this time I got through it, and even stuck around to find all the secrets, I like how there is such a massive secret area with its own population of monsters. Its an interesting map, though it has some issues that I think might wear on people. Overall the spaces are huge and cavernous, but it feels like the space is a bit wasted. A lot of the incidental fighting happens at such a distance that the enemies are mere pixels, and there are an awful lot of decorative imps which become a bit of a grind. Maybe because of the enormous scale, a lot of it feels very flat. The most interesting area is right at the start where you get the red key.

The rocket launcher fight is possibly the hardest one in the map, because your space and weaponry is so restricted that it doesn't allow for any improvisation, you have to know whats coming and do the right thing, which for me was camping in the alcove rocketing everything and crossing my fingers. Its a shame because its such a large room but you can't navigate it using those skinny pathways while they are full of spectres and cacos are cutting you off. Maybe if you took away the walls of the paths around the room and made the pits full of nukage with steps to get out, so they were an option for escape from the swarm..

The other major fight with the cacos and lost souls is probably even harder with infinite height monsters, but I played with zdoom and I can't imagine how painful it would be in vanilla ports. I found that running round and round chipping away at all the lost souls before rocketing the cacos was the way to do it, though it felt like a bit of a chore without the SSG, and again the space works against the fight since falling in the middle is to be avoided leaving a single circular path to run around. Anyway, took me about 40 minutes to do the whole map, and judging by the reaction to some of the maps in d2ino I think this might benefit from some jiggery-pokery, but it sounds like you are happy with it as-is so see what others have to say.

[Steve D]

mouldy said:

In deference to your many deaths suffered in my maps I decided to have another go at this one.

And I look forward to many more entertaining deaths in the future! ;) And now that I have most of my health back, I do plan on dying a whole bunch while finishing Going Down, though it might be a month or more before I tackle it.

Thanks for finishing the map. I appreciate your comments, and I can't really disagree with any of them. You made some excellent points. For example, the sense of flatness in a map that actually has a lot of height variation. I felt it, too. To me, it seemed more a function of how you don't have enemies from below. By the time you reach an overlook, all the enemies in that area are usually dead. This is kind of unusual in my recent maps, such as The Miley Cyrus Concert in Shotgun Symphony, or The Amiga Demo Party of Doom, or Heat Miser, where you can leap off ledges and find yourself attacked from multiple heights and directions at once. In this map, the height variation was mostly above the player, and most of what was below you was water that had nothing in it, monster-wise.

I still maintain that Ramboing the rocket fight is the most fun way to do it. I last played it on ZDoom because I've read so often that people can't see Spectres in a software rendering port. I had no problem at all. Indeed, they seemed even more visible than in GZDoom or Risen3D, so running around the track, looking mainly for the Spectres, and switching between RL and Chaingun was the way to go for me. As for the Dynamo Room fight, I'll try it soon on PRBoom myself, might even record a cl-1 demo so I can savescum through it. ;D I think the most fun way to do that fight is a mix of chaingunning the Lost Souls, corralling the Cacos in the middle, but also dashing into that north room which is loaded with enemies. It's dangerous with 3 Spectres in there, but you have more rockets as well as Medikits, and when the Cacos and Lost Souls come pouring in through the door and the high openings, it becomes nicely chaotic, with good opportunities for mass Caco killing. But once again, it's the BTSX E2 "To camp, or not to camp" debate. I play my maps very aggressively because I know where the goodies are, other players are less fortunate.

Considering what you and scifista have said, I've decided to do another map. I'm not dissatisfied with this map, and if cb wants it, he can have it, but the combination of needing to do a Nuclear Plant because these maps are supposed to match their titles, while sticking to vanilla limits, was a real drag. Surprising as it may seem, the low-detail Reactor Room has over 200 segs from certain angles, and I knew that using 2 dynamos with all those 2s lines for the curves was going to be a problem. I've thought about what you and sci have said, and I have some ideas for a smaller map that might serve to get the point across. It's a fun challenge, anyway. ;)
.

[Capellan]

Love the cacoswarm. Live the cacoswarm.

[dobu gabu maru]

Goddamn Steve, I knew you loved cacoswarms, but seriously now! I gave your newest version of Nuclear Plant a spin and had a lot of fun with it. I must sincerely apologize however, as you only nabbed one pelt off of me at the start, largely due to having a video I was focusing on in the background (and the pistol start is a bit hectic of course). Once I closed that and got down to business, it was generally clear skies, though I did panic here & there. I didn't find any secrets, but I'll save sniffing those out for when I eventually replay it.

Like I said, I enjoyed the map and found it interesting how you're creating more encounter-based maps. Sure, there's the old sneak around and shoot guys from a distance grind every now and then, but I felt like the caco-based battles were the highlight, and each one was pretty fun. The RL one was my favorite just because of how quick I had to think on my feet when it sprung up. I must say, demons/specters are a real nasty threat I hadn't given much consideration until now—great work on that front.

Just a few things I wanted to point out. The last armor (beyond the YK door) is really unnecessary as I came into there with about 40% left and that would've lasted me to the exit. In the red circled area here, you should put some deaf sergeants or demons as its real easy to put your back to the wall and rocket away the imp horde on the ground, and at the teleport trap you have in the blue circled area you should replace some of the sergeants with former humans, as I think the sergeant party is a little bit of overkill (and it loads you up on shells). The last issue is the thing I see mentioned above me, which is that it's a really aggressive E1M2. Personally I'm fine with it being there, but it is something which might mar the project for new players in hindsight. If you do withdraw it, I really hope I see this map somewhere else, as it's too good to abandon.

[cannonball]

I must agree that this map is too big and difficult for the assigned slot, though I must admit to enjoying the chaos shown here.
If you are keen on trying to make a shorter map, I would certainly endorse that, maybe, just maybe we could shoe horn the map in a later slot in E1 if a slot opens up. If not it would make a great single map release or potentially placed somewhere else as it is certainly fun.

[EffinghamHuffnagel]

There's Lost Souls and Cacos. Change all the water to Nukage, the brown to variants of green, replace all the COMPxx wall textures, call it Sewers and make it E1M10. Add a secret exit to it from E1M1.

FYI: You can run off the platform into the NE pit in the Reactor Room (sector 241) and be stuck.

[Steve D]

EffinghamHuffnagel said:

FYI: You can run off the platform into the NE pit in the Reactor Room (sector 241) and be stuck.

I knew someone was gonna find that. ;) Yeah, the map's a bit rough around the edges. I don't want to put any impassable lines in that area, so maybe a secret Medikit and a teleporter are in order.

BTW, can E1M10 actually work?

[scifista42]

SteveD said:

BTW, can E1M10 actually work?

No. Maybe in selected ports that added support for it, but I don't actually know if they even exist. Surely yes with a custom MAPINFO.

[Steve D]

dobu gabu maru said:

I must sincerely apologize however, as you only nabbed one pelt off of me at the start

Don't feel bad, Dobu, I'm always happy to get a pelt, even if it's only one. ;)

What I was trying to achieve with the gameplay here is what DotW talks about concerning Skillsaw maps, sort of a "Bark is worse than it's bite" where you end up feeling like a badass hero because you just survived 576 monsters without getting killed, or maybe only killed a couple times, but you had to run your ass off because if you stand around thinking about Plato's Critique of Democracy, you're gonna die because the monsters are everywhere. So it's not really a Pelt Collection Factory, more a Run From The Chaos Factory. ;D

Your idea for the Sergeants in the room north of the dynamos is very nasty. I will do it. ;) OTOH, I want to keep the teleporting Sergeants in the Bigass Grey Room, because they can be sudden death in that area. Then again, if they fail to kill you but draw down your health too much, it can be very discouraging to enter the Dynamo Room if you're at below 20%. I'll think on it. I agree about the last Green Armor, but I put it there more because people might say, "Great, 50 million hitscanners and no armor. Thanks, jagoff!" ;D

On another topic, I do hope I can play at least some of Requiem next month for the DWMC, but since I'm now back to about 85% after 4 months of tooth infections, pain, and two and a half hours of bareknuckle brutality in the dentist's chair followed by 2 weeks of recovery, I am so far behind on mapping and playtesting that I'm going to concentrate on those areas of Doom. At least I'll finally be able to start playtesting some Nova II stuff. wOOt!

[Steve D]

Capellan said:

Love the cacoswarm. Live the cacoswarm.

And it's all your fault, dude, which is why I look forward to the day you play Heat Miser. ;D

[Steve D]

cannonball said:

I must agree that this map is too big and difficult for the assigned slot, though I must admit to enjoying the chaos shown here.

Glad you enjoyed it, cb! I'll put the map aside for awhile. I just got an idea for an E4M6, so I'll start that soon. This E1M2 is something I could really go HAM on in a limit-removing port, maybe 2,000 or 2,500 sectors with an expanded, more flowy layout, even more monsters, and at least a PG. I'll hold off on doing that until we know how many maps are coming in for E1 and E2.

[cannonball]

Bumping the thread :)

I would like to announce that E4M5 is open to takers.

Also I would be rather interested in updates on your maps guys and gals.

[TimeOfDeath]

Is there a deadline? I haven't started yet, but I'll spend a couple weeks some time before the deadline to make my map.

[cannonball]

Not at the moment, but I would like to see some progress towards a beta some time by the summer perhaps. A very loose deadline though.

I will play all the current listed maps this week and offer feedback.