Sanguine Cybermancy - A PRCP2 reject

[Xulgonoth]

This was my submission for the upcoming Plutonia - Revisited Community Project 2, but was rejected for being too unfun. I don't want the map to just rot on my hard drive, so I've decided to make a couple finishing touches and release it standalone. I still want to make something for that project if I can, but I guess it's going to have to be in a very different style.
The map is extremely punishing on Ultra-Violence, and it's something you would need to learn and practive for a single segment run, but to me that's the main crux of Plutonia's design philosophy, which is why the map is the way it is.
All custom graphics used come from the aforementioned PRCP2, and the music track is "Plutopia" by Jimmy.

IWAD: Plutonia
complevel 9
MAP31

Screenshots:




Download:
Sanguine Cybermancy.zip

Edited February 12, 2021 by Willy W.

[Silhouette 03]

I took a look at your map and....even for plutonia this is insanely difficult, so difficult I could not finish the map. Here are my thoughts( from what I played:

• You may want to get rid of the pain sectors in the cyber-demon courtyard. Having to dodge incoming rockets and taking 10 damage every few tics from the sector is not a good combination, and seems to just be draining the player of health( perhaps you could add radiation suits to increase tension?)
• The room with the mancubi triggers a beserk state that forces me to switch to my fists every few seconds. I don't know if this was intentional or not, but punching a mancubus to death is not an ideal way to tackle that encounter, and there is not enough space to strafe.
• You give enough just enough ammunition to the player to survive, encouraging smarter resource use, though I'd recommend giving more for the cyber-demon encounter.
•  In the room with the chain-gunners, it isn't clear what you have to do. Maybe I missed something completely obvious, so let me know.
• I really like your detailing, such as the gargoyle faces dripping blood. Plutonia maps as a whole have a nice style of detailing that doesn't detract from the gameplay( In other words, doesn't get in the way or hinder gameplay.  
•   

I wish I could give a more detailed analysis of the map, but this was so bloody( no pun intended) difficult that getting through the first few rooms was a challenge. I'm a novice mapper, yet I know how to make a detailed analysis of maps( even If I do say so myself). I really hope this helps, man.

[ElPadrecitoCholo]

Sanguine Cybermancy

 

Ultra-Violence || Zandronum || Vanilla

 

Deaths: 45 approximately - (Many enemies have killed me, so I will not be able to detail those responsible unfortunately)

Saves: 5

 

 

(You know, it was really good that they removed him from the project, they really made a good decision)

 

Well, really interesting map in my opinion, but in truth that this, playing it with Vanilla's rules, would be almost impossible, and in something if I agree with the people of the Plutonia project, that map as a secret level, really could not be considered as such, and indeed, it is less fun than expected, why?, well... combat with very little battle space, traps that are clearly not at all pleasant to see, very limited ammunition at the beginning and in the middle of the map, an absolute lack of medkits, and like cherry on the cake , floors with toxicity... too many floors with toxicity in the large area where the Cyberdemons are, each of the rooms with keys worse than the other, none is really interesting to see, because of its simplicity, and how frustrating it gets to be, perhaps, and only perhaps, the most "memorable" of the map, is the final confrontation with all those Revenants and the Cyberdemon, since at that point we finally got the BFG 9000, but hey, I didn't want to be super detailed on this because avoid complaints that there are pure nonsense texts, so I end my comment with a brief conclusion:

 

"Adding more ammunition to the map from the beginning or from the middle, or placing more health supplies such as more soul spheres and armored vests, Berserk is not bad to add, but it is not just in a damn place like what It is the area with the blue key."

 

Edited February 12, 2021 by ElPadrecitoCholo

[Xulgonoth]

1 hour ago, Silhou3tte said:

I took a look at your map and....even for plutonia this is insanely difficult, so difficult I could not finish the map. Here are my thoughts( from what I played:

• You may want to get rid of the pain sectors in the cyber-demon courtyard. Having to dodge incoming rockets and taking 10 damage every few tics from the sector is not a good combination, and seems to just be draining the player of health( perhaps you could add radiation suits to increase tension?)
• The room with the mancubi triggers a beserk state that forces me to switch to my fists every few seconds. I don't know if this was intentional or not, but punching a mancubus to death is not an ideal way to tackle that encounter, and there is not enough space to strafe.
• You give enough just enough ammunition to the player to survive, encouraging smarter resource use, though I'd recommend giving more for the cyber-demon encounter.
•  In the room with the chain-gunners, it isn't clear what you have to do. Maybe I missed something completely obvious, so let me know.
• I really like your detailing, such as the gargoyle faces dripping blood. Plutonia maps as a whole have a nice style of detailing that doesn't detract from the gameplay( In other words, doesn't get in the way or hinder gameplay.  
•   

I wish I could give a more detailed analysis of the map, but this was so bloody( no pun intended) difficult that getting through the first few rooms was a challenge. I'm a novice mapper, yet I know how to make a detailed analysis of maps( even If I do say so myself). I really hope this helps, man.

Thank you for taking a look :) I know the map is insanely hard, but it was meant to be a secret level of a Plutonia-inspired wad, so it's kinda the point.

The pain sectors have to stay. It's my way of making the cyberdemon fights a bit more interesting than just "circlestrafe to win" - here you have to watch your footing and stay out of the damaging floors. But you are absolutely right about the radsuits, I usually forget those things even exist when making maps, because I only place damaging floors into places where the player shouldn't be. Of course those added radsuits don't appear on UV, that'd make it too easy :)

The forced berserk pickups are there on purpose exactly to make you switch weapons. You either spam the weapon switch key, or you learn the rhythm... or you die :)

Thank you, ammo balance is something I've struggled with in the past, so I've become a bit stingier with resources lately. But I never ran out of ammo when playtesting, so I think the current balance is fine, you just have to make sure not to waste anything.

I know, you're absolutely right about that fight being a bit unclear. I initially wanted the lifts to just raise up when the time is right, but if the voodoo doll tried to raise those sectors while they're under the effect of the lift action, it would create a softlock, so I instead added the switch. I know it'S hard to see it, especially in the fray, but I didn't think of much of a better way to handle this.

I appreciate the compliment about the detailing. I generally don't consider myself very good at that, and I think that's pretty visible in some sections of this map, but I tried, and I'm glad it was noticed :)

It did help, at least with the radsuits, so thank you :) And if I may have an advice for you, not all maps are worth trying to get through on UV. I've been trying to push the idea that HMP should be the standard difficulty and UV should be a challenge for those who feel like HMP doesn't quite cut it, and I think this map examplifies that idea pretty well.


 

1 hour ago, ElPadrecitoCholo said:

Well, really interesting map in my opinion, but in truth that this, playing it with Vanilla's rules, would be almost impossible, and in something if I agree with the people of the Plutonia project, that map as a secret level, really could not be considered as such, and indeed, it is less fun than expected, why?, well... combat with very little battle space, traps that are clearly not at all pleasant to see, very limited ammunition at the beginning and in the middle of the map, an absolute lack of medkits, and like cherry on the cake , floors with toxicity... too many floors with toxicity in the large area where the Cyberdemons are, each of the rooms with keys worse than the other, none is really interesting to see, because of its simplicity, and how frustrating it gets to be, perhaps, and only perhaps, the most "memorable" of the map, is the final confrontation with all those Revenants and the Cyberdemon, since at that point we finally got the BFG 9000, but hey, I didn't want to be super detailed on this because avoid complaints that there are pure nonsense texts, so I end my comment with a brief conclusion:

 

"Adding more ammunition to the map from the beginning or from the middle, or placing more health supplies such as more soul spheres and armored vests, Berserk is not bad to add, but it is not just in a damn place like what It is the area with the blue key."

I'm not going to lie... I got a kick out of this comment. Maybe I'm a bit of a prick, but I get genuine joy from seeing people suffer with something I've created :)
But there's something you pointed out that helped me fix a glitch in this map, so thank you for that. 

Spoiler

The final encounter is actually supposed to have 4 cyberdemons, not just one. 3 got stuck because of their teleporter destinations being too close to self-referencing sectors, so I had to move them a bit.

I'm not sure if you remember, but we've talked before - you helped playtest a map I released a couple months ago, and you had a lot of things to say about it. I may have sounded a bit harsh at some point and never really apologised for that, so let me do that now - I'm sorry for getting mean back then.
But by the end of that conversation we talked a bit about difficulty settings, and I pointed out that that there's no shame in playing on lower difficulties than Ultra-Violence. I think that point stands a bit more in this case than it did at Reaching Beneath. This map is specifically designed to be evil and to beat you down at any opportunity, but I tried to alleviate that on lower difficulties.

[Silhouette 03]

3 minutes ago, Willy W. said:

Thank you for taking a look :) I know the map is insanely hard, but it was meant to be a secret level of a Plutonia-inspired wad, so it's kinda the point.

No problem. I probably should have known what I was getting myself into with the words "Plutonia" and "secret level inspired by Plutonia ;)

 

5 minutes ago, Willy W. said:

The pain sectors have to stay. It's my way of making the cyberdemon fights a bit more interesting than just "circlestrafe to win" - here you have to watch your footing and stay out of the damaging floors. But you are absolutely right about the radsuits, I usually forget those things even exist when making maps, because I only place damaging floors into places where the player shouldn't be. Of course those added radsuits don't appear on UV, that'd make it too easy :)

I see.. maybe put at least one or two radsuits on Uv, just to even things out?

 

8 minutes ago, Willy W. said:

The forced berserk pickups are there on purpose exactly to make you switch weapons. You either spam the weapon switch key, or you learn the rhythm... or you die :)

I have no words to describe how evil that is.

7 minutes ago, Willy W. said:

It did help, at least with the radsuits, so thank you :) And if I may have an advice for you, not all maps are worth trying to get through on UV. I've been trying to push the idea that HMP should be the standard difficulty and UV should be a challenge for those who feel like HMP doesn't quite cut it, and I think this map examplifies that idea pretty well.

I'm glad it helped. I've become so used to playing on UV that I sometimes don't think clearly on what wad I'm selecting the difficulty for. Thank you for the advice.

[Xulgonoth]

13 minutes ago, Silhou3tte said:

I see.. maybe put at least one or two radsuits on Uv, just to even things out?

 

Spoiler

No :)

 

[ElPadrecitoCholo]

21 minutes ago, Willy W. said:

Spoiler

The final encounter is actually supposed to have 4 cyberdemons, not just one. 3 got stuck because of their teleporter destinations being too close to self-referencing sectors, so I had to move them a bit.



 

Wait, 4 Cyberdemons?... well, I don't really know if all of them actually appeared, because I was stuck in the place where the red key was, many Revenants had appeared and among some that I saw, I could also hear that they were hitting and shooting something, the truth was I was questioning if it was only that "only" Cyberdemon there that they were hurting, because apparently they had shot and launched many attacks and it seemed very strange that they had not finished killing him for be the "only one" who was there...

 

26 minutes ago, Willy W. said:

I'm sorry for getting mean back then.

 

Don't worry, that's already in the past.

 

27 minutes ago, Willy W. said:

and I pointed out that that there's no shame in playing on lower difficulties than Ultra-Violence.

 

I've gotten so used to Ultra-Violence that I don't feel comfortable playing it in other difficulties, but in the case of this map, I knew exactly what I was going for, that's why I didn't end up getting as angry as expected, since I was already In case, Plutonia was made to annoy the players, but if it's any consolation, from the things I said in my Post, the architecture of the map is really well designed, and I like the style it has from the part that you arrive with the Cyberdemons until the 2 entrances of the site that requires the yellow skull, where you collect the Super Shotgun and the Rocket Launcher.

[SilverMiner]

The geometry is cool and the use of the boom features like pushing player into black corridor when trying to get to the exit too

I've heard you are using self-referencing sectors in this map. They may cause geometry bugs in some ports like glboom+ and make nodebuilders to build the nodes much slower than without them, use 242 action instead since you're under boom compatibility

I see you've made these blue wall torches I've seen in 2002 Doom Odyssey in E2M9 by Metabolist. Nice

But:

It's the third Cyberden inspired map in my mind. It would be ok if it was funnier in battles or had something that could surprise me but it's even less fun than the Cybernation and even the Cyberden itself.

Why the hell the blood damages?

Forcing player to go to the area where they would be quickly ambushed by shower of projectiles and hitscanner attacks is obviously unfair.

And even if you think these battles are OK, give me a noticeable BFG pickup in the start of the map lol: rocket launcher is too dangerous to use in these beefy cramped fights and plasmagun is too weak to quickly down a Cyberdemon.

Berserk is switching player's weapon to the fist many times in the first ambush fight I encountered at this map. Annoying. Give us the invulnerability instead

 

Verdict: this map has high potential to be good map as it looks aesthetically nice, but two rooms of ambush kill it all

 

However the gameplay is not way too bad for this map to get rejected from a community project in terms of quality, I seen worse.

So make the revenge and try get the map into the prcp2 again. Good luck

EDIT:

I mean fix the gameplay to make it more fun

 

 

Edited February 12, 2021 by SilverMiner

[El Inferno]

I recorded micless a playthrough of this thing and I must admit that it's actually really difficult)

I enjoyed the cyber fights for the most part - I like this kind of technical movement. My only suggestion to the cyber fights would be to spawn health in portions before each pair of cybers. In my blind run I wasted almost all of them in the very first fight as I hoped to get more health later on. By the end I pretty much mastered the fight and could do it almost without taking damage. But it is extremely annoting to run with 5% health and dying randomly to slime. It would've been much better if you spawn just a couple of stimpack in the arena, say.

I had a lot of trouble with BK fight before I found RL upstairs, such placement felt a bit weird for me and finding RL makes BK fight much easier because you can shoot HKs right away (and I'm not even sure that there's enough ammo to kill them with SSG only). 

Both complaints above are of course about a blind run and can be avoided if you know the map. 

The manc fight was very weird. I hate this berserk gimmik. Just give the voodoo doll medicits if you want to heal me up! Not letting me shoot things is just annoying (and I had to do that stupid RL switch to kill chaingunners every time). And it's even not that hard to dodge mancs unless you go for the last switch which seems to a lottery anyway. And btw, place some ammo at the end so I can kill those dumb mancs.

Lastly, I don't like that the baron+chaingunner trap. I couldn't kill that baron consistently with the health I had at that moment (60 I think). There's just no way I can kill him before he approaches a melee distance.

I really liked that effect before the bfg slaughterfest.

Overall, there are some interesting fights going on, but the map is definitely not blind playthough-friendly. 

 

edit: sorry for dw notifications in video) I had this thread open while playing

 

Edited February 12, 2021 by El Inferno

[El Inferno]

Oh, I read in the comments the purpose of the berserk gimmik. That's quite clever but I didn't get the idea in my playthrough(

[galileo31dos01]

I played your map, since screenshots and description sell it pretty well to plutonia lovers like myself. I took your disclaimer about UV and went expecting to be demanded a lot, so this is how things sorted out (spoiler alert!):

 

Spoiler

 

- Alright, interesting setting. I go grab a soulsphere, just in case. First place I visit is the room with mancubi (fake walls render HOMs on the blood, that might be an opengl-exclusive glitch anyways so nothing needs a fix). The trap opens, a load of fireballs surround my tiny body, but somehow my health goes upwards in a blink of an eye, hmm. I start using those rockets, dodging fireballs as best as I could. Suddenly I show the fist again, okay, back to rockets. One side of mancubi clear, now to the other side, again doomguy switched to the fist. My understanding was that these berserks are intended to recharge, which sounds like a smarter choice, if they were in the HKs closets you could accidentally pick them up too soon.  

 

- Out of that place, I enter the opposite side. Show begins, I see things teleporting and chaingunners already spreading their load. I kill one, but it resurrects. Suddenly pinkies, and my health is already low from a fireball on my back. A chaingunner ends me. Repeat this a lot of times, add the occasional blockmapped pinky or a HK scratching my head, and it's taking a while to see how the setup evolves. Then I think of rocketing one group of HKs as soon as they start teleporting, that gives me a bit more free air. The setup is really cool in theory, but I think the pinkies phase could to be shortened by half and it'd still be a nice challenge. I would also hand a berserk or some boost once you're up to flip the switch, since you're still hard pressed from hitscan and you can't quite control where the archvile is going to stop to attack. 

 

- Next I go north, and find four copies of green armor I could have always made use of before, aaaagh I'm dumb. I take one, head to a marble switch, a HK almost cornered me to death. A cyberdemon is descending and I go say hi, while another one behind screams goodbye. This setup, with the harming blood, is perfectly valid as it is imo, a decent interval. If you stay on the non-liquid parts you're fine, even if you had to swallow a little blood you're given health afterwards. Both dead, I start wondering if I'm going to see a BFG for the next round, since like in Plutonia's "Cyberden" I'm not sure how more engaging would be to grind with SSG/PR the same setup over and over.

 

- Headed north and east, pressed switch, quick pincer trap, second cyber phase starts. I shoot my gun and a ring of chaingunners teleports in the open. I immediately run inside as that looked like too much hitscan out there. The cybs ended up killing them, btw the fake windows idea is good so that you won't get infight-cheese if you tried. I appreciate the twist nonetheless, but less chaingunners or perhaps mancubi or arachnotrons would do a better job at keeping players in the fight imo. 

 

- I think this is when the southern room opens? I forgot the key order... Well, it was enjoyable and harsh particularly with the spectres involved. Luckily the secret megasphere I found before saved me from dying to the so-many perched chaingunners. Third switch (?), another pincer trap, yet another cyb phase now with pinkies. I was really looking for a BFG at that moment, but I assumed that's what "something you would need to learn and practive for a single segment run" referred to, the weapon may appear later.

 

- Fourth switch, was low on health and the baron killed me, since I took too many blood tics in third phase -- my mistake there. Now there are pain elementals, hmm, better than chaingunners at least. I run inside and position myself next to a window, so the PEs group up in a corner and I can kill them much easier. That was a cold strategy, but at no point I felt the urge to retreat.

 

- Everything dead, I go get the yellow skull, which also gives me the damn BFG!. A bunch of cell packs teleport, a monsterless prelude methinks. I open the last door and see the exit, suspicious, carefully step inside and woah what the hell :D cool use of that effect btw. Final wave was as expected, horde of revenants. Not the most satisfying finale but it was alright, though I figure the intention is to leave cybs alive so you actually get more usage of the belated BFG. How that's viable with the small steps to the yellow skull in all its exposure is something others might confirm better. Secret exit was too obvious imo, though if that's how you like it nevermind then.

 

 

Additional points and rambling:

 

Spoiler

- Visuals are pretty neat. The skybox work and ceiling detailing look cool. Also liked the "broken" circles in each wing to the north, that sort of touch immediately reminds me of PRCP. I would, however, mention about the brick work outdoors on each cyb pedestal is cut off a little jarring (it can be seen in the 5th screenie by ElPadrecitoCholo), though it's meticulous me who's talking since it doesn't hurt anyone.

 

- The green armor in front of the secret megasphere could be moved a bit further away from it imo, I barely managed to avoid picking it up by accident before the secret closed.

 

- These three monsters never teleported out, not sure if I missed a trigger or what.

 

- For "tidiness" you may want to shrink your file name to something like "sanguicyb" or whatever.

 

In conclusion, I had fun, it's definitely harder than Plutonia, and you advertised your map pretty well explicitly on that regards. That being said, I don't think it needs any balancing changes imo, the health and ammo given are as tight in numbers as justified for each segment and as a whole, after all you can't just expect to beat a punishing map without getting your feet wet. If lower skills, which exist for a reason, give a bit more freedom in comparison to higher, there's no harm in checking those...

 

Keep it up!

[Rudolph]

Is the title a reference to E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy?

[Xulgonoth]

15 hours ago, SilverMiner said:

I've heard you are using self-referencing sectors in this map. They may cause geometry bugs in some ports like glboom+ and make nodebuilders to build the nodes much slower than without them, use 242 action instead since you're under boom compatibility

Yeah, I should really learn to use that action. I know it doesn't really make sense to use SRS in Boom when that special can do everything they can and more, but I'm used to them and they're honestly a bit easier to grasp for me. Hell, I've even used SRS in UDMF maps in the past instead of trying to figure out all the advanced ZDoom features.

Also this doesn't have anything to do with the map, but I just wanted to say that I know Joshy is working on Plutonia 3 alongside PRCP2... but in my heart Going to Surface will always be the only real Plutonia 3 ;)


 

 

14 hours ago, El Inferno said:

I had a lot of trouble with BK fight before I found RL upstairs, such placement felt a bit weird for me and finding RL makes BK fight much easier because you can shoot HKs right away (and I'm not even sure that there's enough ammo to kill them with SSG only). 

I know this is a bit weird, but it's something I put in after some suggestions from Archi, Scotty, Joshy and AD_79. Originally the map didn't have any weapons at all in the key wings, but they said that wasn't speedrun friendly, so I put a weapon into each wing so that they're at least doable if you go for them right away instead of exploring around.
And thank you for that recording :) I understand from it how frustrating the map can be on a blind playthrough, but at least on UV you're kinda expected to know what's coming and use all resources accordingly.


 

 

13 hours ago, galileo31dos01 said:

These three monsters never teleported out, not sure if I missed a trigger or what.

I thought I fixed that. It was an issue in the first version I uploaded here, but then I made some adjustments and I thought it was working fine now.

Thank you for the extensive notes by the way :)
Next time I make something it's probably going to be in a similar vain of UV being a challenge, but I'll probably tone down the dickishness. Not too much though :)
 

 

13 hours ago, Rudolph said:

Is the title a reference to E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy?

Pehaps...
Honestly I just like that word and I thought it fit the Cyberden clone :)