*2020 HAKAWARDS* I'm Also Looking to Play and Record Your Maps 2 *CLOSED*

Table of Contents

@Casketkrusher

download the .wad

It’s not badly put together or detailed, but the combat is pretty boring. It’s a beginner map; it’s short but it shows that the mapper has the basics down.

Bottom line: basic map with what amounts to an obscure necessary secret

@Casketkrusher

download the .wad

Again, nothing broken or horribly ugly, but nothing that stands out in a positive way either. Progression, layout, and combat are all very basic.

Bottom line: your basic early-in-mapping-career tech base-ish map

@HAK3180

Oh man, those maps are horrible. I had no clue what I was doing I just made some rooms put some enemies in there and yeah nothing special. If you want you can skip map 03 (I think its the Cabin) you've played that map before on my updated version. So don't bother with that one. It was funny to see you play through the first maps, I do remember making that UAC facility map. The others I don't have much memory from. But yeah very basic. Thank you for playing again I appreciate you put effort in these. Techwall as a door? Crazy person! 

Cheers!

Atleast the first map was somewhat cosy :') the 4th map I still do like, although another shorty where the secrets make it a bit longer. 

@00_Zombie_00

Doomworld forum topic

It’s a long map with a deceptive kill count and a lot of custom monsters that I didn’t enjoy. The ammo was also in bunches, so if you didn’t find it, you found yourself low on much-needed rockets and plasma. Progression was a little bit odd. There’s a miniboss that apparently is guarding a door, but it doesn’t look anything like a door and never opens automatically. But I really like the layout and appearance and how it cinematically and dramatically connects Inferno to Doom II.

Bottom line: A mostly fun large map with some frustrating moments

Hey @HAK3180 , thanks for playing my map and giving a fine feedback, as usual.
The current goal is to make 12 maps, (across 2 episodes) that is the main focus right now.
The 32 map megawad is my ultimate goal.
My slow mapping combined with my new crappy job... that may take a while.
Anyway...

First of all, that final fight is a NO NO. I can´t have you running around letting Cybie doing YOUR work. :-D
I have to fix that, I was always trigger happy at that part so I never had that much infighting going on.
(Sloppy testing on my part.)
I need to figure something up in the next update (whenever that is going to be).

I will probably be lowering the number of cells in the "late" game - after the blue key
(maybe even in the blue key room itself, althought that room requires killing the Archvile to progress and player may skip
the super shotgun for that fight that may result in harder/more grindy combat... which might be good ok thinking about it now)
when player SHOULD have most of the weapons.

One problem with the branching, more "open" maps (IMO) is that you can´t predict how player will progress,
how much stuff will they kill etc. and the last thing you want is one of your choosen
path to be much less viable/balanced than the other/others.
But yeah, I will probably replace the cell pack in the crate area (that optional one behind the crates)
and the other one in the shorcut room with the baron (or knight in the lower difficulties)
and probably the cell charges in the blue key card room with shotgun shells.
I´ll stop rubling about plasma gun ammo now...

The revenants in the outher areas were mostly an afterthought and they were so good, that I was thinking about
deleting them after I put them in, BUT in the end they were TOO good... TOO GOOD...
(The number of them varies on the difficuly settings.)
That chaingunner in the small monster closed, on the other hand, is getting fired...
I am pretty sure he did so little that you didn´t even notice him.
The good news for him is that Plutonia is hiring, I am pretty sure. :-D

The button you were little bit confused does open the upper door to the outside area.
You can see it through the window, but unfortunately you were facing the other way while pressing
the button... which is not your fault... no, just kidding... it is your fault... 100%. :-D
Have no clear solution to that right now, I need to think about that one.

And lastly, that is a great educated guess about the style and asthetic of the map.
The step1/2 flats are suppose to be conveyor belts and I took stuff that I learned
from working on Hydrologica and made a smaller map in that style (with a slightly different theme).

On that note, I am honored that you remember Hydrologica
(that name seemed cool at the time, still does to me, but it´t kinda weird).
I did add more detail in the most bland areas in v1.1 thanks to your feedback no less and the last
thing for that is to convert it to UDMF and fix all the misalignments.

Sorry for the long post with probably tons of spelling and grammar errors and thanks again.

Keep up the great work.

@beast

Doomworld forum topic

I ended up not having much fun here. Especially early on, the way to be successful is lots of patience, even camping. I tend to be more rash and this level is not very forgiving of that with lots of hitscanners and little health. I also thought darkness was overused in this map, but the layout and progression mostly work. The map is tied together by the hub and the thematic darkness. I thought the maze area was the best.

Bottom line: I might enjoy it with more health, fewer hitscanners or much more Doom skill

Thank you very much, I appreciate your criticism, I have made the necessary adjustments, I have deleted the custom monster, the door protected by the miniboss now if it looks like a door that requires red and blue key. I have added ammunition and life in various areas, the cyberdemon of the beginning is gone.

Thank you very much, your gameplay and criticism has helped me a lot.

@RonnieJamesDiner

Doomworld forum topic

Bottom line: Less quirky than some of the others but still fun and somewhat strategic

@RonnieJamesDiner

Doomworld forum topic

Bottom line: tough finale, definitely some strategy involved

@HAK3180
Hey, got another Interception2 map i'd like for you to run through:

MAP16: Asteroid Assault

Thanks again

DFF_INT2_16.zip

@nicolas monti

Doomworld forum topic

It’s definitely a different style, but it seems mostly visual. It doesn’t shout Shores of Hell to me, but that’s perfectly fine. This one was all about verticality, but it was implemented very well and in such a way that shouldn’t frustrate a player who doesn’t use freelook. It also introduces the super shotgun and a few new monsters. I think it’s wise to introduce things gradually in a full megawad. Doom 2 is very much the same as Doom 1, but it’s also very different.

Bottom line: A fun map of verticality

15 hours ago, HAK3180 said:

@Fonze

 

Doomworld forum topic

 

 

 

The whole map is fairly tight in terms of space, but you get to explore quite a bit; it seems a lot of the map is optional and I didn’t even find a secret. Still, the progression was not hard to figure out with the blue and yellow doors right next to each other. I like the little puzzles here and there and the ways the map blocks itself off and/or opens itself up. At least one fight itself seemed to be a puzzle, and I didn't really understand it, but I don't mind the idea. Detailing is sharp and appropriate.

 

Bottom line: tough and eccentric but well thought out

Hey man, thanks so much for the playthrough! Lotta helpful things for me in your video and it was a fun watch :D

Small few quick things:

 - The little room with the blue-light "parkour shenanigans" and all the barrels: you did enter it from the typical place; it's just a cheeky, non-serious beginning to that encounter that if you stand where the rocket pickup is on the ground and fire a rocket into the center bull, you'll blow up all the barrels and kill all the mobs on that side of the room, leaving only the barons and ledge-imps to deal with.

 - You were wondering about the SM fight, what the "intended" strat, when the cybers come out to play, and what the timer/switch was. First off, you did well enough figuring out how to survive for the invul sphere and that was a good win there. As for what works best there: I "ignore" (don't fire at) the SM, rocket one side as much as possible, then switch to rocketing some of the imps and shotgunners that come in on the back sides. When the bulls get too close I swap to the pg and focus on killing the imps and shotgunners in the back; the SM and your plasma will kill the bulls in time and they are not very dangerous if you jostle around and juke their attacks. (plus the occasional stream of plasma as they get in your way) At about <100 cells make a push for the cell ammo near the SM and finish killing the imps and shotgunners. From there, finish most of the rest of the bulls and then the SM, at which point you can grab the invul sphere (or radsuit on higher difficulties) and leave out the back side as you did. The cybers come out either 1) when the SM dies: the SM blocks a teleport location for a zombieman, who crosses lift trigger lines that release the cybers after teleporting in, or 2) when you escape the lower portion of the arena as a backup if you don't kill the SM. The switch only controls the timer on the platforms in the back and invul sphere raising up.

 - "If I had to guess I'd say put them all in their off positions." You don't know how close you were ;p Thanks for the time you spent trying to figure it out; do you have any ideas on how to make it more intuitive or easy to digest?

Thanks again for the video, your thoughts and your time! Cheers!

@HAK3180 thanks for the play-through, you showed tremendous patience. I overused the ambush flag as you rightly pointed out, clearly an area I need to put much more thought in. That and cutting back on the many switches where you don't see the immediate effects, plus the lack of health really stands out like a sore thumb. This was a great learning experience, cheers.

I enjoyed making/playing this map much more than the last one. Hopefully you agree on the play-through!

On 8/3/2019 at 1:58 PM, HAK3180 said:

Bottom line: fast paced nonstop action

After a somewhat extended absence, I'm back again.

Thanks for your playthroughs of M3 and M9. Starting with M3, you once again did something you weren't supposed to do and I'm making a change because of it. ;D Specifically, you were searching for a secret way of getting to the elevated hitscanner areas near the start by randomly pressing on the Tekwall4 texture. You heard clunking sounds that encouraged you to keep going, but these weren't coming from the walls. Rather, they were lines on the floor that activated lifts, but natch, only when they're in the raised position. They are raised from the second switch in the secret exit, which means, yes, a classic '90s "I just hit a switch that activated something far away, and I have no idea what the hell it did." I've been getting bothered by that in playtesting, because the player has to leave the secret area and go all the way back to find a lift that lowers all the raised floors and then lets you up into the hitscanner area, which you can explore completely and get a lot of ammo for M9 if you play continuously. For pistol-starters -- and speedrunners -- it's just a waste of time. As to why there are lift lines on the floor, it's because if a player falls off the path between the raised floor and the wall, they'll get softlocked if there's no lift switch on that side -- the other side is untagged.

Well, sure enough, I saw someone else do what you did, so that settled the issue. I added a little Speed of Doom style switch in the Tekwall so players can access the secret during the normal flow of gameplay and get a Green Armor plus a little ammo. No more weird side-track, and IMO, it improves the map, so thanks! And yes, you will get playtesting credit in the v1.1 text file. 

That said, you don't have to randomly hump walls in my maps. These are mostly maps from the '90s and they use the classic '90s tricks for hinting at secrets -- misaligned textures, textures of a slightly different color -- especially the Starg family -- light variances (a brightly lit section of a wall, with no obvious light source, is likely a secret door), bleeding Dead Players or pools of blood placed near walls, and so on. I almost feel bad about telling you this, because if you knew my Secret Bag o' Tricks when you played M3, you wouldn't have humped that Tekwall and accidentally clunked the lift lines, and I might not have decided to change that secret. :D The cool thing is that you figured out the secret exit, so you played M9 before M4. Another thing to keep in mind with these maps is that secrets are often chained, so if you get into a secret area, check for signs of another secret.

Great job on the Yellow Key Fight. It's almost unchanged since I first made it in 1998. My goal with SS was to make the hardest E1 ever, and had it been finished by 2000, I think it would have qualified. Now I tend to think of it as in the same violence category as Double Impact.

One last note: at the Blue Key, so many people tried jumping onto the Compute2 platform that I decided to make it a secret area. 

M9 is actually a new map, but done in the '90s style. In testing, Dobu told me it looked a little too bare, so I added some detail. It's actually an Amiga Demo Party styled map -- no doors, everything connected, monsters can pursue you everywhere. The whole idea is continuous combat -- all-out-war from start to finish. I did see one area where I might add a lift in order to keep progress flowing, but otherwise, no changes.

Thanks again for playing these. Keep finding the flaws!

@Milkman

Doomworld forum topic

What stands out most about this map is not really the different approach of using very specific situations and encounters, but unfortunately the bland appearance. The first arena is a big grey square. There’s minimal detailing anywhere. It just feels like a sequence of basic scenarios that are somewhat whimsical but not that innovative.

Bottom line: a linear map of light gimmickry – I liked some, not all.

@Steve D

idgames download page

This one seemed toned down a little bit in terms of difficulty, but I still like it a lot. It has a lot of secret hints that I failed at, optional paths, and some generosity in how much elbow room Doomguy is given. And the usual somewhat modernized E1 look.

Bottom line: Quintissential Doom, basically

You have E2 already, so maps 09-14 are up for you with this file, waiting for your comments!

https://www.mediafire.com/file/5ll0j6o3fvb5jhv/massexe200.wad/file

@Capellan

Doomworld forum topic

This concept is clever, though somewhat cheaply so, if that’s not a paradox. I think the map wisely features some different enemies, though the appearance isn’t so bad, despite being essentially the reason for the wad’s existence. The gameplay is pretty simple and pretty easy but with an experienced mapper, you’ll still have a good time.

Bottom line: Suitable secret map: fun and (a)thematic, but you won’t miss much if you miss it

@HAK3180

Loved the idea of using the Cyberdemon to kill the Archviles before actually waking up the second Cybie on map10, that was fun to watch. I was always just BFG'ing the two AV's as quick as possible at the start, which accounted for some of the extra Cell packs. I've really enjoyed watching your use of infighting throughout this whole map set, which has given me some interesting ideas.

Thanks again for playing through these. The commentary was a huge bonus in helping pinpoint a lot of the pros and cons in each map, so I appreciate that. Best of luck with your ongoing demo extravaganza! I might pop back in here with another WAD in the near future. Cheers for now! 

1 hour ago, HAK3180 said:

Bottom line: Suitable secret map: fun and (a)thematic, but you won’t miss much if you miss it

I did actually consider having nothing but imps and the cyber as the monsters, but it felt a bit too "flat", gameplay-wise, so I sprinkled ina  few other monsters to vary things up.  As expected, the sergeants probably did the most damage!

If you're playing continuous, this is definitely a map you want to find - you can exit with 200/200 and there is plenty of ammo to carry into M7.  If you're pistol starting, it's at least a bit of a breather before M7.  :)

8 hours ago, HAK3180 said:

This one seemed toned down a little bit in terms of difficulty, but I still like it a lot. It has a lot of secret hints that I failed at, optional paths, and some generosity in how much elbow room Doomguy is given. And the usual somewhat modernized E1 look.

 

Bottom line: Quintissential Doom, basically

Thanks for the playthrough, and glad you enjoyed it. You and Chris Hansen both noted the business with the blue and white lights above the Compwerd columns in the Red Key area. An oversight on my part. I initially couldn't decide which color I liked best and never got around to finalizing it, but you and Chris both mentioned that it seemed like secret hint, which is a natural assumption. I  considered turning one of them into a descending sector that reveals a switch which opens the door leading to the Blue Armor, and I may ultimately do that, but for now both lights are blue.

I also finished the changes to M3 and M9 suggested by your comments and play experience.

Lastly, the reason I named this map Have Some Fava Beans is because I planned to recreate, by memory, an area in E1M2 of Fava. Here's the original;

And here's my, as usual, much larger recreation. It even has the same secret room in the same place, which performs the same function of lowering an outside column, giving you a Blue Armor, in this case. And with that said, good luck on M5. I hope you find the secret BFG path, though it's not easy.

@nicolas monti

Doomworld forum topic

This was the first time, I think, that I thought the map didn’t look that great – kinda dominated by long stretches of the same texture, but you are gonna have some of that in vanilla. Gameplay is fun. There’s nukage everywhere, and while there are enough suits, you can’t spend too much time fooling around or you will run out. It’s a hub + 3 keys with significant traps at the objective moments, so it’s not innovative in that regard, but it doesn’t really feel too hubby while you’re playing it. And even with the somewhat bland appearance, this would be another memorable map.

Bottom line: Cohesive and conceptual

@The Mysterious Moustachio @DerFurer'sFace

Doomworld forum topic (project)

The idea here is bold, especially with over 500 enemies. It goes fairly quickly, of course, all of them being humans. That dedication provides some challenges, and I thought they were met well. The enemies need to be placed well. There needs to be a good mix of deaf and roaming. It can’t be cheap. There has to be sufficient health, quite a bit, really, to prevent it from becoming a campsite. And it has to be interesting for Doomguy and provide some variety. Only that very last point was just somewhat lacking in this map. There was a fun use of barrels, enough rockets to pick your spots, and a secret plasma gun, but most of the map was chaingunning. Still fun, but I’d like to see it encourage more shotgun and even a touch more rocketing, perhaps also a super shotgun toward the end. Visually, these Interception II maps are all high quality, this one providing a lot of real estate and a pretty strong concept of place.

Bottom line: TNT doesn’t always get much love, but this is a fun map whose concept is clearly based on Map 10 Stronghold

@HAK3180 Glad you had some fun with the map and I saw some points I'll fix. I originally made the conveyor faster because I didn't want the player to feel stuck in long tunnels but i guess its too fast XD.
there's a midtext hiding a passage to the plasma, not supposed to SR50 it. I tried making stuff like TNT where regular areas were a bit hidden but i guess I need some better map progression clarity.
 I think a SSG would definitely improve the gameplay even if in a secret. I used the shotgun in my map and chaingun but its hard to manage bullets when the chaingunners drop them.

@Magicana

Doomworld forum topic

There are some moments that show a little bit of mapping inexperience, such as the basic geometry and perhaps the lack of verticality in significant areas, but this map does have a fine layout and progression with a good use of low-tiers, especially a smart reservation of the “deaf” flag. I did not much care for some of the custom textures, but I have no major complaints for this map.

Bottom line: more conventional but more polished.

4 hours ago, HAK3180 said:

@Magicana

 

Doomworld forum topic

 

There are some moments that show a little bit of mapping inexperience, such as the basic geometry and perhaps the lack of verticality in significant areas, but this map does have a fine layout and progression with a good use of low-tiers, especially a smart reservation of the “deaf” flag. I did not much care for some of the custom textures, but I have no major complaints for this map.

 

Bottom line: more conventional but more polished.

I'm really pleased you liked it. Of all the maps I've done, it's been the one I've enjoyed making the most. I spent a lot of time on lighting, so I'm happy you noticed that as well. I think heights are my next challenge.

The textures you pointed out were from Mortiser, I think they're maybe not the best fit for a tech style level, but I still don't mind the more metal ones. But I also note that some of them are a bit jarring, like the brick texture in that depression in the initial room.

The secret you missed was in the cement room. I cunningly hid it behind another variety of cement texture, with what I hoped would be a visible misalignment at the top.

I thought about making all three computer stations drop when you grabbed the first item (Backpack, armor, chainsaw), but I thought the room may be a bit empty if they dropped down. In hindsight that may have not been as big of a problem as the three time (Minimum) backtrack and jumping.

@Milkman

Doomworld forum topic

You’re in very close quarters this whole map, so it’s not my favorite, though I can appreciate the trippy atmosphere here.

Bottom line: a short, odd, distinct map

13 hours ago, HAK3180 said:

@nicolas monti

 

Doomworld forum topic

 

This was the first time, I think, that I thought the map didn’t look that great – kinda dominated by long stretches of the same texture, but you are gonna have some of that in vanilla. Gameplay is fun. There’s nukage everywhere, and while there are enough suits, you can’t spend too much time fooling around or you will run out. It’s a hub + 3 keys with significant traps at the objective moments, so it’s not innovative in that regard, but it doesn’t really feel too hubby while you’re playing it. And even with the somewhat bland appearance, this would be another memorable map.

 

Bottom line: Cohesive and conceptual

Thanks man! Last trap didnt lower, hell knights 64 unit tall, I'll fix that, as you say the scheme is very simple for this map, purposely, I'll see if I can add more detail to the slime corridors though.

I aso was afraid that the demon /lost souls setup would be innocuous but it inflicted some damage to people who played it so far.