From Tears

[baja blast rd.]

http://www.mediafire.com/download/quekmj0rtmu35cg/From_Tears_%28v2%29.wad

This is a Boom-format map with difficulty settings.

Some -nomo shots:

Spoiler

I need to find a similar sky that doesn't tile

Anyway, FDAs/comments appreciated. :)

--

New version:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/quekmj0rtmu35cg/From_Tears_%28v2%29.wad

Old version for compat with FDAs posted prior to 9/2/15:

Spoiler

http://www.mediafire.com/download/ppokav7f5pu292k/From_Tears.wad

[cortlong50]

downloading tonight, playing tomorrow before work.

will review.

that second screen is blowing my effing mind.

[Walter confetti]

looks impressive!

[scifista42]

FDA on UV - failed, I've got up to half of the map on my last attempt, I'm not that good player.

Very well done challenge and balance of ammo/health/armor/monsters/architecture, great visuals, good music, overally impressive. Well made map, I liked it.

[gaspe]

Nice map, and tough too! Maybe the blue key fight is a bit luck based on beign on the BFG side :P but looks fine I guess, a very well stage fight.

[snapshot]

(Went boom)
The 2nd screenshot Reminds me of Minecraft, really cool .

[Ribbiks]

fantastic map. Nice tight setups, I like the usage of timed events, so that what-you-see is often not the complete picture of the fight yet, creates a nice tension. Difficulty was very manageable, fun without being frustrating. here's some demos: fda on hmp, subsequent uv playthrough

the differences between settings really felt minimal. on UV the only things I noticed was 1 less medikit at the start and 1 less AV in the crusher room. Might not hurt to either bump hmp down a little more, or UV up a little. On a side note I also liked the quirky secret area. It was also pretty well-done in that the secrets are both obtained a in similar fashion, such that even though they're kind of hard to unravel you have multiple chances to figure it out based on how the rooms are connected. A+

misc stuff:
- the pegging on this wall makes it look weird when the ceiling raises back up as you exit:http://i.imgur.com/6bnPe80.png
- missing texture: http://i.imgur.com/qOJMMR7.png

[Demon of the Well]

Another FDA for you here, skill 4, 1 death, and 1 suicide due to map breakage.

First, the apparent map breakage: If you drop into the rocket launcher's area via the blursphere secret before you've opened the exit/entrance the 'normal' way (via the switch in one of the chaingunner closets), you'll find you're trapped and can't get out. There are a lot of little ways to deal with this--you could have a small step back onto the blursphere ledge build on a walkover trigger when the player is on the ledge, simply make the steel door openable with a usepress from inside, etc. As it is, the chaingunners in the closets involved in opening this door are really the only fight in the map where the blursphere's more of a help than a liability, I would say. Ironic, no?

Very nicely balanced, this, the cell count in particular felt perfect right at the end, it let me get away with just a little bit of unnecessary stress-relief plasma rifle usage (which is fun!) without making the last fight unbeatable for myself, merely requiring me to do a couple of extra dodge-lunges for more ammo instead. Shotshells are also in uncomfortably short supply early on, which helps to drive progression into deeper reaches of the map. If Ribbiks' observation that there's very little change in the actual monster presence on HMP is accurate, though, I would suggest supplying more shells/bullets early on, since the more or less mandatory infighting in the first room doesn't seem quite like an HMP thing--it's mainly the ammo-sponge mancs that put a hurting on one's supplies. I might also suggest having a tad more healing here on all skill levels, perhaps make the stimpack in one of the chaingunner closets be a medikit instead.

The bit with the broadside arch-vile attack from the periphery of the 4-piston room is easily the nastiest part of the level, very easy to panic and die horribly there since it's such a psychologically uncomfortable situation, with no truly reliable cover to use. There is probably some element of pure luck/RNG involved in getting through this fight cleanly that some players will carp about--e.g. what positions do the crushers happen to be in when the viles first appear, when do the viles decide to do their attack, etc.--but in a relatively short map like this (read: that is fairly convenient to replay with an eye towards better momentum) I think it's alright, especially since there is a functional strategy to be used, albeit one that functions more as diceroll safety buffer than a guaranteed victory if you execute it correctly.

I would also suggest having more steps up to the exit platform build from the lower level (with two forkswitches) after the player teleports there for the first time, simply as a convenience for those who either still need to do the other part of the level or who want to stick around and sightsee/look for secrets. It's not the end of the world, of course, but having to go back up to the piston room to teleport there again is somewhat inelegant.

Oh, and on UV skill, have the third revenant in the blue armor room (the one who starts behind the armor pillar) be an arch-vile instead. ;)

Nice lighting. ;) ;)

[BaronOfStuff]

Misread the thread title as "Forum Tears" and expected some sort of satirical work.

Oh well, geometry looks nice with some irregular room styles. Not sure about the lack of texture variety, but I'll give it a go later on to see if I'm still tutting about grey walls and brown blocks when things are trying to kill me.

[SuperCupcakeTactics]

Nice map! Was a good right amount challenging and kept me busy. It wasn't very big (though I expected it to be because of the large automap size) so it's not easy to be lost even if there are very few textures used (and they're the ones that help you keep the whole clashing textures problem out of the way if you know what I mean anyway). TBH I kinda wish it was longer since I was looking forward to another fight but the map ended right then but anyway pretty nice map!

[baja blast rd.]

http://www.mediafire.com/download/quekmj0rtmu35cg/From_Tears_%28v2%29.wad

Thanks everyone. Tidied up the technical errors Ribbiks and DotW mentioned and made a few other tweaks, and boosted UV's difficulty and lowered HMP's, both by just a bit however. Automap is now a lot smaller (unsurprisingly there was a better location for a silencing dummy sector than 7500 mu north of the northernmost part of the playable map).

[koren]

Really liked this one. Each fight was challenging and rewarded aggression and improvisation. I always felt under pressure to collect ammo but never understocked. Here's my fda for V2 on UV: http://www.doomworld.com/vb/attachment.php?postid=1416337

I was tipped off to the location of the secret by a combination of the blursphere's position and prboom's automap showing me the edge of a pink sector mid-way through the map. The health there proved to be indispensable. On the other hand, i'm not quite sure what the point of the lone cacodemon and chaingunner was. I left them alive initially, assuming that i'd be heading into the outdoor area later.

Going to have to agree that the most stressful fight was the the room with four crushers. The slowly lowering wall was a nice, simple pressure tool and led me in a rather frantic and sloppy attempt to clear the lost souls and arachnotrons out in time for whatever was about to be unleashed. Thankfully one of the two viles got distracted and this provided me the opportunity to press forwards toward more permanent cover. I can see how it would end badly if both viles decided to target the player immediately.

That's not to say the blue key fight wasn't somewhat panic inducing either. I liked how the soulsphere and bfg were on different sides of the arena so you can't set up camp at one end indefinitely. On balance I probably would have preferred to have blindly backed into the BFG at the start, but the soulsphere kept me alive long enough to thin out the opposition with plasma spam. The bfg ended up being a nice reward for charging toward the second archvile after running out of cells. If I had stayed put I imagine the he would have caused serious problems.