Finished - Once Upon A Slime

Here's a vanilla map for doom2: map

Visual Aid:
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Edit: updated link to final version

Hmm, been a long time since I played a Vorpal map. So here goes (or here it went, rather): -skill 4 FDA. A little slow because it takes me a couple of minutes to find one of the switches, but no deaths or other troubles otherwise.

To be truthful, it's not anywhere near as violent as I expected, but it made for a decent leisurely outing nonetheless. I didn't find several of the secrets, and left the map without even a slight inkling as to where they might've been, so some of them were hidden quite well. I assume one of them must've been a cell weapon, but I ended up not needing it. Hmm, a handful of other observations:

*You probably notice me screwing around with the area near the radsuit secret a lot before I actually get it (of course my dumb ass finally gets it all of 60 seconds after it ceased to be of any use)--I hump it, fire a shot at it at one point, etc. The reason for this is that the mouth of this secret shows up clearly on the automap (that is, with the secret sector color); it just takes a couple of minutes for it to dawn on me how to get it, despite seeing a similar device used earlier on. Yes, I'm a slow boy.

*I feel that the best potential piece of combat the map has is the trap with the pain elementals and cacos and mancubi and the like in the yellow key room. Problem is, that cage around the switch area provides a really potent security blanket/safety net that almost totally nullifies the threat of the flying monsters (especially the PEs), which turns the fight into little more than a turkey-shoot. Now granted, probably not everyone that comes there is going to have the rocket launcher by the time they throw the switch (I was fortunate to see it while peeking into the little window slits beforehand), and I can envision a situation where a player just simply runs out of ammo there trying to use shotgun/chaingun fire to push through the cloud of lost souls, which would leave him/her in the tense situation of being trapped in the cage with nothing but danger outside. But, eh....I think it'd be more consistently engaging for more players if some or all of the cage was simply eliminated. In that scenario, the pincer movement by the two PEs is suddenly a LOT more dangerous, and using the RL to deal with them even for those players that have it at that point becomes a much more pitched risk/reward situation.

*The last surge of enemies over in the blue key/blue switch area is all well and good--I always like it when arch-viles get to rez all kinds of stuff while the player is off in some other part of the map--but it occurs to me that the blue switch itself seems rather pointless. Setting aside the possibility that it might have something to do with a secret I never found, presumably what the switch does is just open the blue exit door over in that neat-looking torch/slime hallway? It's a small thing, but I don't really see any reason why the key couldn't just be used directly on the door as is. However, supposing the blue switch ALSO triggered some kind of additional wave of enemies somehow, its existence would seem to make a lot more sense. I'm also not quite clear on why there are two yellow switches, but given that I didn't get a very good look at the V-sphere room until later on, I'm probably just wrong about that one.

pretty cool open and sandboxy map...

Thanks for the FDA! Found some bugs like the floating shotgun shells, a silent raising-floor, and various automap strangeness that happens in vanilla (like being able to see through and thus map out zero-height sectors). I will also change the sladwall button lifts to support3, to indicate more to the player that "this texture is the lift texture".

Regarding the (lack of) difficulty, yeah the goal was to emulate the doom2 feeling, and those maps are extremely easy with modern play methods, yet approachable on lower skill levels to your 3rd grade nephew who doesn't know how to use a mouse. Although the map can still be difficult, especially if you're bad at platforming like me and get stuck in poison regularly!

The yellow key cage is indeed intended to be a safe haven against the ambush that ensues. If you want additional challenge you can just walk outside it, but I'm not going to force the player to deal with the area one particular way (there's actually a third way to deal with the area, but I doubt anyone will figure it out on their first playthrough).

The way the switches work is part of the 1994 emulation. There's plenty of switches in id maps with no logical connection to what they do, even sometimes required-for-map-progression stuff.

Effectively the map is e4m6, except if it was a sandbox like map15, with editorial submissions from McGee, Petersen, Willits, and myself. So a lot of nonsensical aspects are intentional emulations of them (sortof like doomtwid without the one author restriction).

i played it for a minute or two at the moment, and it looks / feels interesting. After a long hiatus of playing keyboard only or with mouse turning i felt the in game death lol...

interesting layout, and 'surprise' attacks.

Shots that I obtained through the utilization of a screen:

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Very good stuff. What I found strange was that former human (thing 183). For Max kills/secrets I need to jump into the lava, kill him, use the teleporter to get out, then get there once more (and it takes a LONG time) to get the invulnerability secret. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Really cool! Nice use of roaming monsters to keep the action going and it was interesting to see a fusion of romero and spencer styles.

Can we expect any more vorpal maps in the near future?

vdgg said:

Very good stuff. What I found strange was that former human (thing 183). For Max kills/secrets I need to jump into the lava, kill him, use the teleporter to get out, then get there once more (and it takes a LONG time) to get the invulnerability secret. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Sure, it was supposed to be a bit of a decision the player had to make, "do I want the powerup, or that extra BFG shot worth of ammo in the nukage?". If you want it all then you're going to add a few seconds to your completion time.

Marcaek said:

Can we expect any more vorpal maps in the near future?

I think this is it for me for a while, I still have unfinished things I am sitting on, and various planned out maps... but I really want to devote some serious time to trying my hand at making a map (or several) for The Dark Mod.

Gave this a try finally, did an FDA on the v4 wad.
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/attachment.php?postid=1268223

Fun map, played bad and died a lot but made it through on my 4th? attempt. I kept falling in the big slime area with the invuln, don't know why, but I lost a ton of health there. Only found a few secrets and some of them felt kind of weirdly-timed, like that invuln, I would really have to know about it and how to get it ahead of time for it to be useful. Actually the whole map felt like that, that prior knowledge is really important, but that's OK. Felt more dickish than a normal Doom iwad map in that regard though. Anyhow, I enjoyed it.

Very nice - props.

Finally got around to making my last edit (removed a lightamp secret from the lower difficulties). Thanks for those who tested and to those who just gave it the time to play through it!

It's a great map! Especially suitable for those feeling nostalgic and missing those golden years of the nineties! ;)