New Map: The End is Nigh (by DoomPhreak) -- ID: QRH9D84K

[DoomPhreak]

I spent a week on this map, and hope this is better than my last one. There are 3 maps currently with a similar name, but mine has "by DoomPhreak" in the title. You fight your way up a 5-story building. There are 5 keys, 5 power cores, and 8 secrets to find.




One of 5 floors to explore:




A sprinkler to put out the fire. One of 8 secrets in the map:



An invisible staircase (pictured top). Remember the classic Doom custom map "Doomsday of UAC"? It has an invisible staircase as well (pictured bottom), to which I pay homage here.

[DoomPhreak]

Figures no one is playing this map. I uploaded another map several days ago and it has got played zero times. I find that very alarming. I'm not being full of myself here. I'm alarmed because apparently the interest on SnapMap is alarmingly low for a fairly new game, probably due to all the limitations of SnapMap. Look at the slow traffic in this forum section (and Bethesda's official SnapMap discussion board). The classic Doom WAD section has way more posts than here. I looked through the maps published on SnapHub and tons of them have never been played.

Back to my map. Here are a couple of interesting things I did in it. These are kind of spoilers, but if no one is going the play the map, don't mind me spoiling it. But if you are kind enough to give my map a go, then don't read further. I created a testing (or torture) chamber for demons, where you can apply explosives, poison, and radiation and see them suffer. But the barons' health is so high that you have to apply a lot of torture to kill them. You have to open the release door anyhow, since a key card is inside the chamber.





I also created demons that can CLOAK. Their visibility goes on and off at random throughout the encounter. I'm fairly proud of this one, as I created something eerie and challenging at the same time:

[VentedPennies]

Oh, don't worry. Unplayable maps like a fashion show make news on Kotaku, so there's hope yet.

[DoomPhreak]

Those joke maps are just not my cup of tea. They got attention probably because people see Snapmap as a joke. This fashion show idea would've been much better done if Snapmap had been a better tool.

Those Snapmap MP maps seem to have even less play. If I play one, I will be shocked if anyone actually joins me.

When the game just came out, I posted my first map (which has since been unpublished), and within a few minutes I got 5 people playing it. Now, everyone seems to have gotten word that Snapmap is just not worth it.

[40oz]

I just played it today. I had trouble with it at first, it took me a long time to figure out how to get the gray power core in the beginning but the rest of the map was cool. The firewalk was pretty awesome. Reminded me of the invisible stairs with the candles on them in MAP02 of Eternal Doom.

Overall I had a lot of fun with it! Nice work :)

[DoomPhreak]

40oz, thanks! You mentioned Eternal Doom, and that's exactly the kind of map-making I admire. Sadly, with Snapmap's limitations, that kind of ingenuity and ambitiousness are pretty much impossible.

I regretted I couldn't make that invisible staircase longer, but it used a ton of resources. Also, each step (which, of course, is a player-blocking volume) couldn't be more than 15 height, or the player wouldn't be able to climb the step.

[40oz]

That's okay, I really liked the tricks you implemented in the map like the burning building area, cloaking monsters and flickering lights. Also the gameplay was surprisingly fun compared to most snapmaps I've played which haven't been very exciting. I'll keep an eye out for other maps you make.

[DoomPhreak]

Thanks again. One good thing about Snapmap is that the use of prefabs does enable faster map-making, as opposed to making all the structures from scratch. I only spent a week on this map, so hopefully a week from now I'll have another map out.

I agree about some of the other Snapmap creations, but that's probably not the fault of the mappers due to all the limitations of Snapmaps.

[xTWx PREDATOR X]

I feel your pain mate. Very hard to get people to play your maps. There are a few youtube shows that are doing reviews on maps so i recommend msg some of them with your codes. Good way to get it out there.
I've not played your map yet. But i will. It looks very cool. I will give feedback once played.

[Moon Marin]

im always looking for cool snapmaps to play, and i have spent a lot of time building them myself.

add me on steam - moon marooned

ill test your maps out and maybe you can try some of mine.

[DoomPhreak]

xTWx PREDATOR X, thanks, I'm trying to reach out to those review sites as well. I think there are simply not a lot people enthusiastic about Snapmap, and that leads to a lot of maps not getting played. I looked through the top-rated and most played maps and many of them are the ones that originally came with Snapmap!

Moon Marin, hi, I just sent you a friend invite. How do I find your maps at Snaphub? You may search keyword "DoomPhreak" to see my maps, but so far I only have one map. I'm working on a new one and will need about a week to finish.

[Jesric1029]

I'll tell you guys a secret.

When you publish a map it goes to the "New Maps" feed.

Any time you re-publish your map regardless if you changed anything it goes right back to the new maps feed. Technically you could republish every 10 mins for an entire night and I bet you would have quite a bit of plays. I discovered this because I had 22 likes and I published after an update and suddenly within 10 minutes I had 29 likes.

So sometimes you might want to republish a few times to get it going and even after that from time to time, I'm pretty sure a lot of the high-likes maps use this strategy.

You should note that the leaderboard does reset when you do this.

[xTWx PREDATOR X]

Yes done this a few times. Mind you, that's only because i can't stop tweaking!

Btw all my maps can be found with #predator. Made 3 so far.

[VentedPennies]

While true, it resets your leader-boards everytime you do that.

[Moon Marin]

played the map, thought it was really good. one of the better snapmaps.

main area of concern : fighting in those stairwells is not fun. the second area would have been awful had i not found the bfg. would prefer a different location to fight, especially since you have to also fight lost souls and cloaked enemies on the stairwells later too. these fights were really boring and the spawns for the lost souls seemed buggy.

i enjoyed the custom lighting you put into area 1, the invisible fire stairwell in the caco room, the secrets.

the baron of hell area was very tedious too, had i thought i could fight them all in that small space without dying i might have went for it.

overall i enjoyed it enough to save it, will likely play it again sometime.

if you want to try my map, the best one i have right now is ID - 4DPUNEHJ

[DoomPhreak]

Moon Marin, thanks for all your comments. I admit I used too many of those 2-story stairwells. I'm making a new map that is the opposite of this one, in that you descend a building instead of going up it. So I'm definitely trying to be less repetitive in staircase usage.

[DoomPhreak]

Jesric1029 said:

I'll tell you guys a secret.

When you publish a map it goes to the "New Maps" feed.

Any time you re-publish your map regardless if you changed anything it goes right back to the new maps feed. Technically you could republish every 10 mins for an entire night and I bet you would have quite a bit of plays. I discovered this because I had 22 likes and I published after an update and suddenly within 10 minutes I had 29 likes.

So sometimes you might want to republish a few times to get it going and even after that from time to time, I'm pretty sure a lot of the high-likes maps use this strategy.

You should note that the leaderboard does reset when you do this.

I also notice people are naming their maps with "! " as the start of a title, so they will show up first in the alphabetical list that you see if you browse by SP, MP, etc. And those maps do get a lot of plays. I'm really hesitant to game the system in any way. I'd rather post about my maps in a forum like this (or submit to review sites) and at least get some useful feedbacks, even if only 1 or 2 people would play them.

[Jesric1029]

I'm with you there. I don't typically spam-publish my map except when I make changes. If I work hard and no one is playing and I can see it didn't last in the new maps more than a minute I might republish though.

That's a sneaky trick about the "!".


I probably would use those tactics but so far I don't have a map that I'm super insistent on people playing. I think I just enjoy making the maps.. Once I start a new project I don't care about the old ones it's all about the new and now I'm to the point where I like making maps that I can enjoy with a money system and things to spend it on.

[xTWx PREDATOR X]

Played the map and completed it. Good stuff mate. Love the final room with the invisible bridge and the cacodemons. Did find some s3ctions a bit of a chore though. A few to many demons to clear in some rooms. The stairways were a bit tedious. But overall very impressive.

[DoomPhreak]

xTWx PREDATOR X said:

Played the map and completed it. Good stuff mate. Love the final room with the invisible bridge and the cacodemons. Did find some s3ctions a bit of a chore though. A few to many demons to clear in some rooms. The stairways were a bit tedious. But overall very impressive.

Thanks for playing and commenting! The invisible staircase was the one thing I thought wasn't pulled off that great. I originally wanted it to go up and down like a roller coaster, and also to have some jumping challenges. I also hoped there would be some demonic objects I could use. Maybe the upcoming Hell modules will be more suited for this kind of thing.

[VentedPennies]

Hey, here's my reaction to your map.

https://www.twitch.tv/gwlenglish/v/72940242

I couldn't figure out how to get the grey card. =(

[DoomPhreak]

VentedPennies said:

Hey, here's my reaction to your map.

https://www.twitch.tv/gwlenglish/v/72940242

I couldn't figure out how to get the grey card. =(

Hi VentedPennies, thanks for commenting. When you opened that door next to the power station, another marker showed up and pointed you to a gray power core. So you had 2 markers: one for keycard and one for power core. Don't want to spoil it for you in case you go back to it, but finding the power core leads you to the keycard.

Your comments made the good point that the designer has to "manage" the difficulty well. In hindsight, I think maybe the opening area shouldn't have such a tough challenge. Also, this challenge involves finding a secret that is required for completing the map. In all my years of playing Doom, I don't recall that many maps where secrets are required to be found. Secrets are usually optional. So these are, admittedly, some of the questionable decisions I made. This is only the second map I made so I'm still learning here.

[HALFRATS PS4]

Hey Oh,

Played the map last night. Its a good start. I got to the stairwell with the Lost Souls and it either glitched or I couldn't figure out what you wanted me to do. If its a matter of waiting to kill all the Lost Souls then they spawn in way to slow.

Pros:

Over all I like the concept and where its going.

Your lighting is great.

Suggestions

Grenade?

Music??? you'd be surprised how much character music will give your map and give emphasis on mood change. Like when a lock down wave starts and ends.

You hand out the Super Shotgun to early. Gun is way overpowered and you basically become invincible, thus making the level a cake walk and boring. I usually hide the Super Shotgun in a secret room and only let one player pick it up with no respawn. I treat it like the chainsaw or power item.

Waves go on a bit long for single player. Plus with the Super Shot gun off the get go I just merc everything in sight like a hot knife through butter. Also recommend vega/facility notifications of waves beginning and ending. For instance if I knew I was in a wave in the lost souls stairwell I most likely would of stuck around knowing it was going to end.

Another way to add drama is to not have generous loot dumps out of everything you kill. In my maps the only way to get monsters to dump loot is to glory kill them. Even then I exclude armor and make it pick up only. Over supplying the player makes it to easy again leading to the map becoming a cake walk.

No chekpoints, and if there are they are far and to few between. Dying and then having to travel through places you've been that are empty is a drag on the flow.

Flow of rooms, big room after big room with lots of doors in each room with very little hallways and way points in between leads to players getting lost and killing the mood.

I too am always looking for critiques. Check out my maps @ #cyberhell E1M1 - E1M5 published. E1M6 should be out soon.

[DoomPhreak]

Hi HALFRATS PS4, thanks for commenting. I tried to emulate classic Doom, so I avoided using notifications, grenades, checkpoints, and the likes.

In the area with the lost souls, you need to kill them all to unlock the door to the upper levels. And I did put in the message "Kill all lost souls to proceed further" when you entered the area. When I play-tested it, I sometimes also had a hard time hunting down the last lost soul. But then, even in Doom SP campaign, sometimes you had to hunt down that last demon to end the encounter. So I thought that kind of "challenge" was OK to use in my map.

Regarding the ammo and health drops, you still have to go near them to pick them up, which can sometimes be a challenge, but admittedly not a big challenge. With the two-weapon limit, I really don't want to limit the player anymore regarding weapons and ammo, such as limiting when loot comes out, etc. If this were survival, deathmatch, competitive match, or any kind of killing-as-sport map, then those limitations on weapons and ammo would be useful. But my map is not a sports map. It is a somewhat different SP map. If Snapmap allowed a full suite of weapons and ammo items, and I too would consider putting in some limits. But with 2 weapons and universal ammo, I just don't feel like bothering.

Instead of music, I prefer to use various sounds for mood and atmosphere. Also, some of my secrets have crucial sound cues for the player to listen, so I don't want music to interfere. And there are not many music tracks to choose room anyway. Again, in a killing-as-sport map, maybe I would consider using music purely as "soundtrack".

Regarding the lack of checkpoints, there are teleporters on every floor that take you the floor above and below. And I added the challenge of having to power up the teleporters with power stations. I would rather have a "built-in" navigation system than an artificial checkpoint system, which is my way of emulating classic Doom.

Finally, regarding the player getting lost in the big areas, I don't know how to alleviate that without automap. I really want a lot of big areas in my map (and my next map as well). The least I could do was put signs on walls, doors, and stairways directing you to "Level 1", "Level 2", etc. Also, the player is told to always go up the building. So any path that leads upward is the right path.

[HALFRATS PS4]

Yeah I tired to do the classic doom approach with no waypoints It works if your level is small but the bigger they get and the more doors you use in each modular it just get confusing. big levels are cool but big levels with big rooms that have 4-7 doors in them aren't. Flow should trump everything. I'll be sure to check out your new map.

[DoomPhreak]

I get what you're saying. And with Snapmap's limits and the lack of automap, smaller maps is probably the way to go. But I've got to give big, sprawling maps a try, since I'm a big fan of all those humongous Eternal Doom maps with challenging secrets. Also, I tried to make my map somewhat linear, i.e. always going upwards (or, in my next map, downwards), to give the player some bearing. In my next map, I will try to use big rooms that don't have too many doors.

[redrage]

What idsoftware did in the original campaign is guide the player quite heavily by using green lights. You have the poles with green lights, edges to jump and grab with green lights embedded into them and sometimes they even light up an entire door or use strobing green lights to guide the player. While this may seem a little heavy handed you can definitely make the "right" doors more enticing through lighting or items.

That said I feel there are only two good choices on player death. Either a full reset of the level (i.e. death is fail and requiring a restart) or checkpoints which keep the flow intact as much as possible. Putting the player back at the start in an empty level is always jarring to the player and quite frankly, boring.

[DoomPhreak]

redrage said:

What idsoftware did in the original campaign is guide the player quite heavily by using green lights. You have the poles with green lights, edges to jump and grab with green lights embedded into them and sometimes they even light up an entire door or use strobing green lights to guide the player. While this may seem a little heavy handed you can definitely make the "right" doors more enticing through lighting or items.

That said I feel there are only two good choices on player death. Either a full reset of the level (i.e. death is fail and requiring a restart) or checkpoints which keep the flow intact as much as possible. Putting the player back at the start in an empty level is always jarring to the player and quite frankly, boring.

How about a third death: dying in lockdown repawns you in the same module where the lockdown is occurring? That's what I use in my maps.

One problem with checkpoints is that I can only put checkpoints inside modules where lockdowns will occur. In other words, checkpoints cannot be put outside such modules. If the player dies in a lockdown, I can't put him back to a checkpoint outside the module because he is not supposed to be able to re-enter a room that is locked down. Funnily, Snapmap does let a player re-enter a locked-down room (but not exit it). The player can actually pass through the lockdown barrier and enter the room, and that looks ridiculous. So that's another reason why I avoid using checkpoints. And if I can only put checkpoints inside locked-down modules, I may as well just use Snapmap's built-in feature of letting the player respawn right where the lockdown occurs.

[HALFRATS PS4]

The wave spawn over rides the placed spawn while the wave is active. Also you can walk into auto lockdown doors just not out of them. If you set a manual lockdown on a door you can't pass through at all.

Here is a simple checkpoint system another person posted on my feed. https://youtu.be/rvC3m22gRHk