Mortal Soul [on indefinite hold]

So this is a project I've posted about from time to time, mostly in the form of screenshots and private playtest requests.  As you can see, though, this thread is quite old now, having been dormant since 2014--and even that doesn't quite represent the age of this WAD fully, given that the first map to be made (now MAP05) was released for testing in October of 2010.  Obviously most of the intervening 10+ years have not been spent furiously mapping, and most of the work here has been done in a combined span of probably like 8 months or something.  But you know, cycles of furious mapping followed by disappointment and burnout and all that, plus life getting in the way...

Anyway this is not a final release, because I do plan to finish it sometime between now and when quantum tunneling has turned our sun's cold cinder into space mush.  But I have 8 maps done, and at the behest of @FEDEX I have decided to put these out for public playtesting and maybe get an idea of how to make these maps better before continuing with the last few.

OBJECTIVE

My goal with these has always been a bit vague.  At the outset I wanted to try and make maps that were nonlinear, nonorthogonal and not overly large.  I probably failed in all of these at various points, and overdid it in some of them, but at the end of the day hopefully they're at least fun to play.  I do have a taste for large, exploratory, slow-burning maps, so if you're all about small punchy maps then you'll probably not like maps 7-9 of this demo.

In the end, I'm gunning for 10 regular maps and 3 boss maps with dehackified enemies and custom sprites I may not be talented enough to actually draw myself.  I've got the whole thing laid out in my head and the remaining maps shouldn't take too much time to make/finish once above mentioned sprites are drawn.

REQUIREMENTS

Sourceport: Anything limit removing.  Some stuff doesn't work right in Doomsday.  Tested extensively in Crispy and GZDoom.  MAP07 makes use of a couple ghost monsters but it won't cripple the map if that doesn't work.

Gameplay: No jumping or crouch.  Freelook is fine and I've tested all the maps with it to no trouble.  I've made a some use of deHackEd especially for decorations and a couple minor tweaks; I haven't tested this with any mods really, so no promise that they won't make some weird shit happen with the decor (I know for a fact that Br00tal D00m breaks the visuals in places.)

MAPS

SCREENSHOTS

hey welcome back!

I'd like to playtest it! Looks very very interesting, love the sky especially. (did you make it yourself?)

Unfortunately, no, and in fact I don't even remember where I found it. The original sky was a slightly modified section of Hubble's Deep Field photograph, and I'll go back to using that if I can't find a source/permissions for this sky.

I'll make standalone versions of the maps later today when I have a chance, and send it your way.

mmm... i don't see sense in shot 5, really wooden ceiling with green marble stone room?

I've got a demo version ready for anybody who wants to playtest. I'll provide the link upon request.

EDIT: And by request I mean it's linked in the first post. Enjoy folks.

@walter: The visual design in that particular map is meant to be kind of peculiar, even quirky, kind of in the E3 vein. I can also pretend to blame my colorblindness for a poor sense of texture matching, though I also usually stick pretty close to edging rules as far as texture transitions go, and indeed I think that doorway did bother me for a while. As that map is incomplete (and therefore not in the levelpack I'm providing) it may be one of those things I iron out, depending on which way I decide I hate it least.

Played through the first two maps in coop, it was very good. I think the only problem I noticed is how you have only one teleport destination in some ambushes, which leads to easy camping. For example on map01, after the red key some imps start appearing and the player can just kill them one-by-one very easily. Adding just one more destination would change the situation a lot already.
Also the use of all-whilte flat seems a bit weird to me but I guess I understand why you decided to go with it, I can't think of a better flat to replace it.

edit 2: Yes! map02 is the one I was asking for haha. Awesome!

Edit: ops, I see the link now =)

Wow, may I test? I actually think this is the map(s) I asked about in the "trying to find a specific WAD"-thread some days ago :D What a coincidence if it turns out to be right hah

darkreaver said:

Super vague description:

-I believe it had a starry nightsky
-I remember some computer maze parts
-huge map
-two symmetrical big curved hallways with climbing stairs which both reached a huge open room with a center piece of some sorts
-tech base map, but might have contained some bricks and marbfaces and stuff too

Heh that is a coincidence, especially since there could've been any day in the last 2-3 years I'd release these for testing. It's nice to hear you were curious about finding that one.

@Memfis: I'm really glad you had a chance to test these in coop, because I wasn't sure if anybody would. I can see what you mean about the teleports, so I'll find some way of making that work better. As for the white flat I try and use it sparingly for the reason that it's got a pretty narrow range of situations it looks good in.

Keep the comments coming! I appreciate the feedback so far.

StupidBunny said:

The visual design in that particular map is meant to be kind of peculiar, even quirky, kind of in the E3 vein. I can also pretend to blame my colorblindness for a poor sense of texture matching, though I also usually stick pretty close to edging rules as far as texture transitions go, and indeed I think that doorway did bother me for a while. As that map is incomplete (and therefore not in the levelpack I'm providing) it may be one of those things I iron out, depending on which way I decide I hate it least.

ok, get it.

IMO these maps are excellent for coop, with loads of monsters and enough space for everyone: just what people want from multiplayer games.

btw not sure if that's the case with other ports but in ZDaemon you can see the archies through the wall here: http://i.imgur.com/E6U11KQ.png

Glad to hear it, and hopefully the upcoming maps will be as fitting. I've put particular focus on trying to use space better on these maps, since historically my maps have had a sort of "horror vacui" construction which has rendered them too cramped for the most part.

Also it turns out that archvile is visible in other engines too. Glad you spotted that!

EDIT: I found the "original" thread, with the MAP02 darkreaver mentioned.

To have a map get burned on Darkreaver's mind is quite an accomplishment, and yes I was actually thinking of that map a few months ago.... it had something really special to it that made it stand out in my memory. Then I'm also a big fan of another one of your maps, remember it being a large linear level called hell outpost or something!

Anyway... I'm going to download this! :)

Yeah, I noticed that you and one other person posted in the original thread a year after I started it, which surprised me (and unfortunately I wasn't around to catch it at the time!) It's cool to see there's still some interest in the project, and I only hope the other maps meet the standard of memorability that that one did. I remember you liking Dead Outpost too...these maps actually kind of originated as a personal reaction to that one, as an effort to focus more on interconnectivity and nonlinearity.

On that note, I've expanded the intended scope of this WAD from 5 maps to 11, which in spite of the slowness of progress so far should (hopefully) not be too ambitious since I plan on using 5 of those new slots to practice speedmapping and building smaller maps, which are two things I've always choked on before. I've already got one of those maps nearly complete, and have started another (possibly longer?) map. I'll post screenshots when I'm able, the computer I'm using now doesn't have Doom on it. :P No estimates yet on a final release, especially given that classwork has suddenly reached a high pitch, but I'll continue working on this in my spare hours.

EDIT: Well, I took some screenshots and realized that the above mentioned map in its current state doesn't screencap that well, at least compared to the ones I've completed. Still, here's a couple shots anyway.

http://i.imgur.com/ow3b2uk.png
http://i.imgur.com/Xh0w35n.png

Well, the above "speedmapping" experiment ended up taking a lot longer than expected to finish, though I guess I at least had a start-to-finish map done in under a week after starting it. Nonetheless, it means I now have four maps for testing. I'll have more screenshots up soon.

I've updated the OP once more! Don't forget to read the text file also. Or not, but in any case leave some helpful reviews, criticisms, etc. of the work done so far.

I've played the first 2 maps on UV.

MAP01 had slightly too little ammo (if I was sniping monsters on ledges) and too many unnecessary cacodemons for that matter. Otherwise it played well and looked okay, too. Simple layout, but good for a starter map.

MAP03 was pretty awesome, actually. It looked nice and was structured well. Ammo was okay, I thought. I felt encouraged for an aggressive playstyle, then the map turned a bit punishing, and I liked it. I thought the music choice (D_E1M7) was good for this map - actually, the map thoroughly reminded me of Jimmy's maps, just without a typical cheerful or melodramatic Jimmy's midi, which helped me separate the feelings and be impressed by this map more (I've already played lots of Jimmy's generic good maps, repeating the same principle again and again). There were 3 things I disliked about this map: 1) Once again, way too many cacodemons, 2) switches do seemingly unobvious things in a random place in the map, and 3) the SILVER lift, the one leading to the switch that made red key area accessible, was barely noticeable and it took me ages before I discovered it, as I didn't know where to search for a way further in the entire map.

The DSPISTOL sound was not downright annoying, but still weird, at least for me. I thought health balance and texturing was okay in either map. More to come when I get to playing further.

excellent mapset so far!

scifista42 said:

...too many unnecessary cacodemons...
Once again, way too many cacodemons...

Heh I sense an oncoming theme with these levels. ;P I suspect all of these, except maybe MAP05, will have this problem at some point. I guess I just like cacodemons. Should I replace them with something else or do you think it'd be sufficient to just reduce the number of them? (Or is it a case by case thing...)

scifista42 said:

switches do seemingly unobvious things in a random place in the map

Yeah, I tried to work around this in some spots by providing visual cues, e.g. the lowering mini-platform with the yellow key being visible through the window. I guess some of the other switches/doors still seem pretty arbitrary, though. I'm considering ways of linking the switches and doors visually, like with symbols or something like that.

The DSPISTOL sound I've chosen is from PSX Doom. I like it personally, though it may be that it's conspicuously louder than any of the other sound effects and is jarring as a result.

Anyway thanks for feedback! Looking forward to hearing about the other levels. :)

omegamer said:

excellent mapset so far!

Glad you're enjoying it!

StupidBunny said:

cacodemons. Should I replace them with something else or do you think it'd be sufficient to just reduce the number of them? (Or is it a case by case thing...)

Reduce their number to only 1 in MAP01 and about 3-4 in MAP03, or consider replacing them with lost souls (or, occasionally, lone PEs).

Continuing with MAP04. Well-done Tyson intro for a pistol starter (I've played from pistol start). The big computer structure (the one with revenant turrets) has many misaligned computer textures inside and outside of it. Also the crushers before exit caused some incorrectly unpegged textures to glitch. Other than that, I thought the map looked pretty good and had a pretty solid, balanced and enjoyable gameplay as well. I liked it. Nice music, too.

MAP05, again, specially encouraged me to rush and play aggressively, and turned out to be enjoyable. The downside was that there were lots and lots of high-HP monsters which would take too long to kill, and I've skipped many of them, mainly all the cyberdemons and their infighting companion. Not really a bad thing, though, if it's the intended strategy, UV maxers can play their way. Oh, and it was quite a very challenging map, I've been dying a lot (and using resurrect cheat, yay). I'm not a slaughterplayer at all, actually. Balance was okay; and layout and detailing-wise, I thought the map was superb.

I liked the look of the shots, so I gave these a play, and recorded the results: Skill 4 FDAs. If you ever specified a complevel, I missed it, and so just used the default. Didn't seem to break anything, fortunately, although near the end of map 04 that PrBoom+ sound bug popped up and the program crashed when I reached what I assume was the exit (I don't think this had anything to do with your map, and the bugged sound isn't replicated in the .lmp file).

Generally, they were fun levels. Very big and spacious for the most part, to the point of being oversized, but that's a trait I personally like, frankly. Good-looking, too, for the most part, tasteful texture choices dominate in that catch-as-catch can 'Deimos on Earth' style. A couple of the thematic transitions from earth-base to full Hell struck me as perhaps a little too abrupt (they're big maps, so they give you a big canvas for some kind of transition), but that's a very minor complaint, and a very subjective one, to boot. Action's nice and bloody, too, surprisingly large monster hordes, but other than 'Blood Mountain' (which was rather nasty) most of the setups offer ample space and firepower for dealing with the matter. Balance as a generality seemed workable, despite a lot of bad play I was generally able to triumph (read: recover from my mistakes) so it's not noose-tight on the health or armor or anything (and I found less secrets than I usually do, so they shouldn't have skewed my impression too much). I'm not sure you accomplished your stated goal with the ammo balance, though....in maps 01 and 06 the ammo balance is extremely tight (probably a little too much so in the latter, frankly), in the others it ranges from a workable/grey median zone to some outright excess in a couple of the others.

Map-specific comments:

Map 01 -- Plays alright, but looks pretty sloppy in several places where texture alignment is concerned (especially on that hexagonal grey paneling), and is generally the least striking visually of the maps in the demo. I'm not sure whether or not I agree with scifista42 about the cacodemons here......they're the only thing that makes the ammo balance as tight as it is, requiring 5-6 shells each to kill in a map that is extremely short on ammo if the player doesn't find the secret shell case (I don't until the end, despite staring right at the secret tell early on). Incidentally, that secret shows on the automap.

Map 03 -- I liked this one a lot, might go so far as to say that it's the best map in the demo, IMO. Coherent visual theme (sort of Evilution meets Dr. Sleep's Master Levels, kinda?), nice lighting, attractive sky replacement, fast freestyle action, good incidental reuse of space which leaves the player a lot of choice as to where and when to fight....for the most part I only have good things to say about it. By way of criticism, though, I guess the red key trap feels a bit flat...the imps that teleport into the corridor are nowhere near enough of a threat to make the player feel the need to leave said corridor (they don't even flank you, they just beam in at that one spot), and so the revenants and other stuff just approach the anteroom from afar and then can be simply blasted from relative safety through the barred windows, a mite anticlimactic. That two-stimpack secret is also kind of dumb, but we can probably file that one under 'harmless eccentricity' rather than any kind of actual problem. ;) Also, I think the cacos are just fine!

Map 04 -- I thought that the massively overscaled mainframe structure at the end (and the peek at it you get about halfway through) were really cool, but from a gameplay perspective I think this was the weakest map in the demo. I don't have anything against Tyson play (on the contrary, I enjoy it), but the way encounters are framed makes it seem more like a vague background nuisance than a committed design decision, where you can just flee from/ignore everything until you get shotgun/chaingun/SSG from within the server stack structure, although cleaning up with those weapons probably actually takes longer than using the fist. The limited arsenal concept works okay for the yellow key fight--you can't just blow through everything in an instant, and so have to pay attention to your movement--but it really starts outstaying its welcome as the map wears on. By the time I'm back in the yellow key area and using the SSG to fight a big clump of revenants in that large space, the honeymoon's definitely over--give me a rocket launcher or something to use to speed that encounter up (maybe pick it up out of that back hallway they presumably come from, something like that). I also got lost for a few minutes looking for a way to progress after that fight, turns out I had to go back to that nondescript door from early on and hit a switch there, then backtrack again all the way back to the evil eye room. Seemed kind of needless to me, but maybe I was just being thick (and my sound was wigging out at the time, in my defense). As for visual bugs, the most noticeable one was the issue with the crushers at the end that scifista already pointed out, but I also saw some subtle HOM on the ceiling of the small chamber with the green armor and stimpacks in the server stack (where a few lost souls teleport in), and a slime trail in the forked ashwall passage on the east side.

Map 05 -- Identifiably an earlier map from the layout, though less so than map 01. It's mostly this map I'm thinking of when I say that maybe the thematic transitions are a little too sharp, e.g. from base to flesh-hell in an instant, etc. Looking at it again, maybe it's not the (lack of) transitions so much as the constant variation in theme over the entirety of the map (e.g. there are two big outdoor yards, but they look like they come from different areas of the planet)....I suppose what's 'too much' in this case is highly subjective, though, given that no one area looks markedly above or below par vis-a-vis the others in terms of build quality, except for the rocket launcher room, which I personally feel is downright ass-ugly, to be blunt. Some tex alignment issues here and there, and I saw another HOM/slime trail in the floor of the redrock passage off of the flesh room, but other than that it all looks pretty sound. My favorite part was the whole blue key area...some odd texture combos there, but odd in a good way, and that huge scale and the distant scenery overlooking the fight are very appealing--maybe some windows on the curving staircases that look out on some more scenery would be cool? Action's varied enough, beginning with some hitscan attrition before moving into the arena/yard fights, the only really awkward thing I see is the potential for the player to have to play a lot of the map without the SSG if s/he picks the wrong route at the start (though I was lucky about this in my playthrough), which will make a lot of the action very sloggy. Some folks will probably tell you there's too much meat on the stairs leading up to the blue key, but I think it's alright, given the stockpile of ammo the player's likely to have by that time (incidentally, this map definitely doesn't leave the player with 'about as much ammo as he came in with', for the record).

The blue key fight itself is not as hard as I made it look...I just got spooked by infinitely-tall flyers and ran around too much, probably would've taken less damage if I'd just been more aggressive from the outset. A couple of things about this area, actually...the hell nobles or whatever they were high above the area are almost totally irrelevant and are probably extremely time-consuming (if not outright impossible) to kill from the ground, and so they probably don't need to exist at all. Also, while we get a few more mancs to fight on the stairs at the end, the empty backtrack to the exit is even more pronounced in this map than in map 04, which does the whole a disservice, and calls the level's layout as a more or less linear sequence of battle-boxes to attention. A teleporter in the blue key area back to near the exit, or perhaps a steadier stream of opposition to fight on the walk back (they don't need to be strong enemies or hard fights or anything) should help with this. Oh yeah, and making the player take a shotgun shell upside the head because s/he lands on the plasma rifle and can't fire for a second due to auto weapon-switch is probably not kosher, either. And oh yeah oh yeah, the secret blur sphere is more of a hindrance than a help in pretty much every fight in the area, so maybe it should be something else.

Map 06 -- Do I detect a bit of Kama Sutra influence here? The music, the theme, the initial Tyson-play....'Diablo's Heart', maybe? Anyway, this little map's a ball-buster, for sure...the arch-vile is evil, the revenant snipers that can see a lot of the map are super-evil (I seriously considered trying to pistol them to death they were bothering me so much, but decided to be a man instead, which caused me no small amount of pain and aggravation in the long run), and the pain elemental cluster is hyper-evil, especially considering the severe shortage of ammo on the map. On that point, ammo here is so scant that there may not actually be enough to realistically kill everything, with the snipers outside the playable part of the map + no RL tipping the scale past the breaking point....I definitely could've spent some of my shotshells more efficiently, but even if I'd done that I don't think I'd have had enough ammo to clean the map out (so I end up running away to live to fight another day instead). Of course, the notion that every map needs to be compatible with a maxkills run is more of a popular folkway than some kind of divine mandate, I suppose, but something to consider, at least. Visually, I like the outdoorsy feel (again, the sky replacement works well here) and mountain-shrine theme, but I feel compelled to bitch about the use of neon striplights against ancient green marble, just always looks terrible to me. I don't suppose everyone will share that peeve of mine, though, so again, just something to consider.

Map 10 -- Big one, here....my playing in this was so poor on so many levels it's amazing I made it, suffice to say the map certainly allows success even with a number of mistakes. Ammo is pretty tight for a while at the start, but eventually a comfortable stock and eventually a glut of it develops, beginning around the red key arena or so. Didn't find several of the secrets, but again I vaguely recall another useless blur sphere. Most of my issues are with the yellow key leg....the Barons on the stairs in front of the initially inactive arch-viles are a grind to kill. I can intuit why they're there, of course--you presumably hoped that the viles might be able to resurrect some of them later--but it's liable not to pan out that way, I sort of neutered the setup without consciously trying to do so. The twin cyberdemons are not much of a problem given the spaciousness of their area...maybe have the viles wake up based on sound rather than sight, and have them eventually come down to crash the party? They could rez the otherwise pointless HK trio (and maybe some Barons) that way. Also didn't really like the big lava cavern with the spiderdemon....this is partially a result of my being a dummy and taking 50 years to figure out how to progress there (seriously, that one's on me, not you), perhaps, but the spider itself is not very effective but is placed in such a way that you have to grind through it to progress. After that....well, I try to be constructive and in-depth with my comments, but there's not much I can say about the cherry-red maze other than that it's garbage, and you should definitely cut it from the map. It slows the pace down immeasurably, goes on for much too long, and is generally not a good thing to include near the end of a map this length/size. Doesn't really cause a problem per se, but some of the redundant weapon placement is pretty weird, here...is the map more nonlinear than I realized?

Picks up again after the yellow key leg, fortunately. Final fight was alright, could probably stand to have a few more monsters, honestly (maybe another cyberdemon on the ground, something like that). A pleasant exploratory affair, in all. The stark theme transitions look a lot more natural to me here (somehow, the setting being subterranean makes me less inclined to notice full Hell being inches away from standard Base, I guess), and I like the vastly overscaled space of some areas, again (though we do see some flyers get blown to the other side of the map while still alive in some cases as a result, I suppose). That outer walkway reminds me of Jade Earth somehow, come to think of it, certainly not a bad thing.

Anyway, enjoyable maps, like I said. I'd certainly play more if you made 'em.

MAP06. My favourite, actually! It was hectic and punishing, but somewhat managable even for me. On my 2nd attempt, I was able to kill all ground + flying monsters in my way and get as far as to the red key battle without dying at all, which I felt proud of, because it was damn hard for me to survive. :) Well, now there was a motivation to kill the monsters, because space was tight and flying skulls were overwhelming me from seemingly everywhere. I've enjoyed this map well. It looked great, too. Ammo was very tight from pistol start, but at least I could berserk the enemies - so, okay.

MAP10. Huge, and a bit slower paced on average. Sometimes the gameplay only consisted of shooting into a wall of same-type enemies, which was specially disgusting if said enemies were revenants (and tedious if they were barons). That's probably just my personal distaste, though - I hate encountering revenant hordes. :) The cramped red maze, while not bad at all, also contributed to an overall tedium. But don't let me sound harsh when my impressions were actually good: The map was well entertaining and mostly enjoyable for me! Can't complain about visuals or ammo or things like that. It was good experience, slightly spoiled by its longevity itself and slightly by overscaled inefficient fights, but otherwise solid.

You've definitely convinced me about your mapping skill. Quite awesome work. Keep it up! And thank you for the experience these maps gave me. :D

I really enjoyed these maps alot, especially map 4 and 5. Looking forward to the others.

Map 01: I agree with Demon of the Well about the aesthetics on this one. A few too many boxy areas and 90 degree angles, which are accentuated by the texture choices. Probably the ugliest bit in this map was the room with the switch that raises the stairs. The shotgunners sit on a big blob of COMPUTE2 which is totally unappealing to me. Biggest problems I noticed with this map were with the secrets. The shotgun shell secret sector is too small to register as a secret, or at least I couldn't get it to pop. Second, Cacos kept getting stuck in the elevator to the other secret area, usually blocking it off entirely unless you had killed them beforehand. Had to restart the map cause of this.

Ammo and health were both suitably tight, especially if the shotgun shell secret is missed. I like making the chainguns inaccessible, as a chaingun would take some of the challenge out of the Cacodemon fights. I'm a big fan of this style of gameplay, with a strict weapon progression and scarce ammo. This map is a good challenge despite its lack of high tier monsters, though somewhat architecturally simple.

I'll post more words about the rest of the maps as I play them, I'm definitely intrigued by the screenshots.

Thanks for the feedback, everyone! This gives me a lot to go off of moving forward, as well as obviously for bettering these existing maps.

Demon of the Well said:

If you ever specified a complevel, I missed it, and so just used the default.

I've been testing all of these in PRBoom using the default settings, so that should've been fine. (I've never heard of the PRBoom+ sound crash, though it sounds like nothing I could fix.)

Demon of the Well said:

Plays alright, but looks pretty sloppy in several places where texture alignment is concerned (especially on that hexagonal grey paneling), and is generally the least striking visually of the maps in the demo.

That figures, as this is the only map that was made in under a day; indeed, the day that I released this latest demo, actually. As such it could definitely use some polish, but thanks for some specific suggestions.

Demon of the Well said:

I guess the red key trap feels a bit flat...

Heh, Memfis suggested I fix that ages ago. I thought I had, but I guess not.

In MAP04 I had actually deliberately added that backtracking to encourage the player to fight some of the monsters that, depending, may have built up around the map up to that point. Once again, I guess appropriate visual cues are lacking (the nondescript door is opened by a nondescript switch and enables opening of an even more nondescript door. The most obvious switch there just raises a platform and the most obvious door requires no switch at all. May need to rethink that whole segment a bit.)

Demon of the Well said:

...the rocket launcher room, which I personally feel is downright ass-ugly

Yeah I was having waaay too much fun with that room. I've been thinking about putting the plasma rifle in there and saving the rocket launcher pickup until the player finds the next one in that alcove with the revenants. Then again, the player won't have the RL for the first cyberdemon encounter (unless you drop and grab the one on that little blood ledge), so not sure about that.

I'll definitely tighten up ammo in this map some. There's also a secret SSG approaching the blue key area, so maybe I'll put some ammo in there and make the SSG a freebie. (And you're right, those hell knights are totally useless up there.) On the contrary, I can add ammo (though just a bit, I still want to keep it pretty evil) on MAP06. I'll watch your FDAs and run through it a few times myself and figure out how many shells vs. cells to add.

Demon of the Well said:

Doesn't really cause a problem per se, but some of the redundant weapon placement is pretty weird, here...is the map more nonlinear than I realized?

I know there's at least two SSG's (one in that mancubus room upstairs, and one in the bar-windowed room with the hell knights) but they can indeed be got by different routes. I guess there may be a chaingun or two that are unnecessary with the chaingunner drops beforehand, and now that I recall there may be a redundant RL entering the yellow key area.

I've never really been satisfied with the final battle in MAP10, which seems to echo what Demon of the Well and scifista42. I think DotW may have a good suggestion with an additional cyberdemon in there. I also think having those archviles wake on sound is a good idea. I personally like that red maze for some reason, so I'm kind of loth to get rid of it altogether, though since DotW hated it and scifista42 was ambivalent about it I may want to shorten it at least.

I'm glad everyone is enjoying these overall. Hope to hear more feedback from other people, but in any event I'll keep working on the rest of the maps in the set (and maybe release another demo later.)

EDIT: I watched your FDAs, DotW. Super helpful! I can definitely see lots of places where I could cut way down on certain types of ammo and even on health. It's worth noting that you're way better at playing Doom than I am, but then again I think so are many people in the community, which is why I need people who suck less than I do to test on UV. I also like how you shake your head in disapproval at stuff you find that you don't like...especially since I often find myself agreeing with the sentiment.

I've reuploaded the same 6 maps, each with various amounts of change to them. Mostly the changes focused around bettering the ammo balance. However, after much delibration I decided that DotW was right about the red maze in MAP10 being a boring waste of time, so I replaced it with a much shorter (and harder) segment. I've broadly tested to ensure that ammo is sufficient, but because I only have access to computers with shitty mice and keyboards I can't really test them very well right now. In any case, they're hopefully at a point where no more dramatic changes are needed and I can get back into working on the unfinished/unstarted maps.

SEE OP FOR DOWNLOAD LINK

@StupidBunny rules lol

I've updated OP for the first time since like forever ago with an 8-map demo set for playtesting.  Thank you @Dubbag @Clippy @GarrettChan @Silhou3tte @Biodegradable @Retro Dino @Karl515 @Oldschoolgeek32 for all your feedback so far!  It's all been super helpful to improving my mapping.  And of course everybody in this and the ancient thread as well.

Oh crap... and it's funny that I think of your sending me the map and I got super busy recently... I was about to get to you and said I'm going to test it, but obviously I forgot :P

I'll play some of them if I have time for sure.