Malleable Intent (a large DOOM 2 single-level WAD) - *UPDATED*

Those screenshots are simply gorgeous!

Dude, this is an excellent WAD. Every moment was fun on a bun. You're cruel, but fair... most of the time ;^) There was one bit where I felt there were too many enemies crowding a door to an arena that killed me a fair few times. But that's honestly my only gripe. The map has a fun layout, the design is packed with variety, architecture is really imaginative and combat was pretty fun throughout most of it. It's definitely going in my "Keepers" folder for single map WADs. I'd love to see more from you. Welcome to Doomworld!

Here's my gameplay for you to check out:

UV | GZDoom + Hellrider

Considering this is your first wad, it looks great.

Nice work! I enjoyed this map. Since you asked for feedback I did collect some as I played. I hope it's helpful for you.

Placed in spoilers below. Played on Ultra-Violence.

Really nice map, very well done especially for a first map. Got some serious Hellbound vibes from the theme and style. Feedback to your queries in spoilers. Played with glboom+ on UV (FDA in the attachment).

FDA_MalIntent_Veinen.zip

Thanks everyone so much for the initial feedback! I'm glad to see people enjoying this map and it's definitely a nice boost of encouragement to keep at it.

10 hours ago, Biodegradable said:

Dude, this is an excellent WAD. Every moment was fun on a bun. You're cruel, but fair... most of the time ;^) There was one bit where I felt there were too many enemies crowding a door to an arena that killed me a fair few times. But that's honestly my only gripe. The map has a fun layout, the design is packed with variety, architecture is really imaginative and combat was pretty fun throughout most of it. It's definitely going in my "Keepers" folder for single map WADs. I'd love to see more from you. Welcome to Doomworld!

 

Here's my gameplay for you to check out:

UV | GZDoom + Hellrider

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

I really appreciate you recording your run, it's VERY informative watching another person dissect your level. Curious that the music didn't play for you, can you tell me what sourceport you were using? You were pretty close to figuring out how to get that RL in the gray room, I'll just say that interacting with the consoles was heading down the right trail ;)

9 hours ago, JadingTsunami said:

Note I found the shotgun *very* late in gameplay - not sure if this is intentional, but I was fully loaded with shells by the graywall room but still no shotgun. I took the slime pipe first, and then after the backtracking section, proceeded to the graywall room.

 

Thanks for that note and pointing out something that I was concerned about being a possibility. My original intention with the map was that you either go north and get the chaingun first, or you go east and get the shotty first. An earlier version of the map actually had an obstacle along the path to the gray wall room so that you had to go through the SG room first, but I found it clunky and a bit too forced. I'll chew on this feedback though for future revisions. I took a gamble on balancing the "coolness" of how you find the shotgun against the possible frustration of overlooking it, and I feel like it's possible it's not worth it. Something to consider.

9 hours ago, JadingTsunami said:

I had very few issues, save for the intestines path to the red key. I ended up using a quick iddt/iddt combo to find out how to proceed. I passed by it because it was (a) narrow and (b) dimly lit and so nothing drew me to look there.

This is a good idea and something I'll incorporate into future versions.

7 hours ago, Veinen said:

Really nice map, very well done especially for a first map. Got some serious Hellbound vibes from the theme and style

That's a good eye because I DEFINITELY took inspiration from Hellbound in some of my design choices. 

7 hours ago, Veinen said:

Honestly I thought the map was quite easy overall but I do like the combat and the logicality and "realism" is definitely appealing to my engineer brain. You're pretty forgiving with armor and health pickups and secrets were not hard to find -> more health.

Do you think it could stand to be more difficult if the intent is that this IS "map01" in a larger WAD collection? The map is probably balanced more toward my own skill (so you can probably get a nice gauge of where I stand against other Doom veterans :P) combined with the thought that if it takes around 30 minutes, keeping a high difficulty pressure up might be a bit discouraging and cause people to give up. I watched your demo and you made very few mistakes, so I can definitely see where you're coming from with your thoughts on the difficulty.

7 hours ago, Veinen said:

I had little bit of a hard time realizing that you have to jump into the BK wing tube that opens up. The switch is right there and you can see the thing open but still it did not come intuitively to me to jump there.

I tend to agree here and this is another area where I could probably signal it better. Probably a good example of where a noob mapper becomes infatuated with a "cool" idea at the expense of more obvious pathing :P

Thanks for recording your demo, it was very informative to observe your experience of the map and will certainly help me build future maps.

2 minutes ago, LVENdead said:

Curious that the music didn't play for you, can you tell me what sourceport you were using?

GZDoom

1 hour ago, LVENdead said:

I took a gamble on balancing the "coolness" of how you find the shotgun against the possible frustration of overlooking it, and I feel like it's possible it's not worth it. Something to consider.

For whatever it's worth, I mostly blamed myself for this. :)

I figured it was expected that I would explore more before continuing through the graywall room. But, since it was a possible path through the map and how I experienced it I thought it might be valuable feedback for you.

1 hour ago, LVENdead said:

I tend to agree here and this is another area where I could probably signal it better. Probably a good example of where a noob mapper becomes infatuated with a "cool" idea at the expense of more obvious pathing :P

Although I got the idea, I think if you just put something valuable on the "sill" of the broken pipe, even something tiny like a health bonus, it would encourage the player to jump there. Just a thought.

3 hours ago, JadingTsunami said:

I figured it was expected that I would explore more before continuing through the graywall room. But, since it was a possible path through the map and how I experienced it I thought it might be valuable feedback for you.

This is absolutely valuable and I'm glad you shared it. I run a couple D&D campaigns for my friends and one thing you can never build into your games is a necessity for your expectations as a designer to be fulfilled by those experiencing your creations. The ONLY thing you can count on is that your players will buck your expectations in ways that you can't predict. In this case, I should have trusted my gut more that people might accidentally miss the shotgun early - if you found the chaingun first it's probably not a big deal, but otherwise I could see stubborn players trying to slog through that gray room fight, or other players just giving up and restarting the map or quitting, thinking I was trying to be cheeky by making them do the fight with just the pistol.

I really doublt you actually spent 75-100 hours on this 20 minutes map, but ok. Looks nice anyway

This a very nice looking map. Especially so since it's not using any advanced stuff and stock textures. I think you have real potential here.

4 hours ago, Dranyan said:

I really doublt you actually spent 75-100 hours on this 20 minutes map, but ok.

??? This is their first release—I might have cracked 75 hours on my first released map and it wasn’t nearly as extensive as this seems to be. (I donno how many hours I sunk into just figuring out that 0-tagged actions can go off the rails in non-ZDoom ports!) Seems like a weird thing to question.

Anyway love the screenshots, I like the combo of high-detail/large-scale/all stock textures, ala Viggles or mouldy. Looks like you’ve already got your own thing going on visually, though. Congrats on the release LVEN, hope to check it out soon!

If your rules say no free look, jumping, or crouching, then why not put that in the MAPINFO patch. The parameters should be (nojump, nocrouch, and no freelook). It would look something like this:

defaultmap
nocrouch
nojump
nofreelook
 

map MAP## "(Title of your map)"
titlepatch CWILV00
next MAP02
secretnext MAP02
sky1 RSKY1 0
cluster 1
music D_RUNNIN

6 hours ago, Dranyan said:

I really doublt you actually spent 75-100 hours on this 20 minutes map, but ok.

I was basically learning Ultimate Doom Builder and how to do literally everything while making this map, and made a ton of mistakes, especially with my early layouts. I'd say at least half the rooms in the final version are drastically altered from the original iterations in some way. The time also includes all the time I spent playtesting the map and trying to understand how my linedef actions worked or trying out the various fights with different variables like if I'd found powerups from the secrets or not. The time also includes composing the MIDI track, which is something else I am largely unfamiliar with. I took a lot of time with it because I didn't want to publish a half-baked beginner WAD and stake my early reputation on being "just another noob mapper". I dunno, all I can say is I started the map about 3 weeks ago and finally had a version I felt comfortable publishing 2 days ago. It wasn't meant as a brag, if anything it's an admission that I largely didn't know what I was doing and that my workflow was and still is very inefficient.

1 hour ago, mArt1And00m3r11339 said:

If your rules say no free look, jumping, or crouching, then why not put that in the MAPINFO patch. The parameters should be (nojump, nocrouch, and no freelook). It would look something like this:

Thanks for the suggestion. Am I correct in my assumption that Boom doesn't support MAPINFO patches? I'm honestly still trying to understand how a lot of this works, and I'm still wrapping my head around MAPINFO formatting and syntax, and of course what stuff is and isn't compatible with all the various source ports.

1 minute ago, LVENdead said:

The time also includes composing the MIDI track

You also did the MIDI? That does it.

Promising newcomer.

2 hours ago, LVENdead said:

Thanks for the suggestion. Am I correct in my assumption that Boom doesn't support MAPINFO patches? I'm honestly still trying to understand how a lot of this works, and I'm still wrapping my head around MAPINFO formatting and syntax, and of course what stuff is and isn't compatible with all the various source ports.

I just tested the "allow jump" option in Boom with wads where jumping is disabled and it turns out that the nojump parameter can be overwritten via options. I've heard though that if you are recording demos, jumping, crouching, and free look are disabled but that may just be a rumor. I know that the parameter does work in ZDoom-derived source ports (assuming that the jumping in the gameplay options is set to "default").

I included a MAPINFO patch for you.

MALLEABLE_INTENT_1.1.zip

58 minutes ago, mArt1And00m3r11339 said:

I included a MAPINFO patch for you.

MALLEABLE_INTENT_1.1.zip

Hey I really appreciate that! While I don't think I'll keep any of the custom graphics/sounds (as much as I love Doom 64) it's very helpful that you've included an example of HOW I might go about doing that. You rock!

2 hours ago, LVENdead said:

 

Hey I really appreciate that! While I don't think I'll keep any of the custom graphics/sounds (as much as I love Doom 64) it's very helpful that you've included an example of HOW I might go about doing that. You rock!

I've used the stuff a lot when recording play throughs of custom wads out there (including maps that I design myself).

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/690781377

I play this at 1:33:40 into the livestream.

I love the midi! Great work there. The map is quite pretty, and I'm especially a fan of the lighting.

"How is the encounter design?"

I'd say your years of playing wads have rubbed off on you. Some of those encounters were top notch. I was especially pleased by the super shotgun room.

"How does the level design lend to navigation?"

I never got hopelessly lost, but there were a few times I had to think about where to go next. Basically right where I like maps to be.

"Did anything outright break?"

Yep! I was able to to obtain the shotgun by diagonally strafing into the enclosure and back out again. I never even flipped the switch to what I assume the encounter was supposed to be. (It took some persistence, though. I was using GZDoom if that matters.)

I also triggered some bars that were supposed to trap me in an arena -- only I ended up on the wrong side (see attached image)! What can I say, I was going to door scum for a bit! I suggest putting the trigger a little farther into the room.

"I'm sure there are some misaligned textures here and there. If you want to point them out, that's cool..."

There was only one that really stood out to me. A ceiling light. (See attached image.)

"Did you have fun?? Would you play the next map in a theoretical WAD collection?"

Yep, great map. I would definitely play the rest of this theoretical wad.

4 hours ago, Suitepee said:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/690781377

 

I play this at 1:33:40 into the livestream.

Thanks for giving this a try. Your no bullshit/candid commentary while playing, and the comments from your chat, were very insightful and you rightfully pointed out some pain points that need to be addressed.

2 hours ago, Krenium said:

"Did anything outright break?"

Yep! I was able to to obtain the shotgun by diagonally strafing into the enclosure and back out again. I never even flipped the switch to what I assume the encounter was supposed to be. (It took some persistence, though. I was using GZDoom if that matters.)

 

I also triggered some bars that were supposed to trap me in an arena -- only I ended up on the wrong side (see attached image)! What can I say, I was going to door scum for a bit! I suggest putting the trigger a little farther into the room.

Hey thanks for the feedback (all of it, not just what I've quoted here)!  I tried to strafe grab the shotgun in my playtests but I never did it successfully, but it's good that you shared it was actually possible. I've adjusted that enclosure and the "arena trap bars" you mentioned for my 1.1 update. Thanks for helping me become a better mapper!

On 7/24/2020 at 6:28 PM, LVENdead said:

Do you think it could stand to be more difficult if the intent is that this IS "map01" in a larger WAD collection? The map is probably balanced more toward my own skill (so you can probably get a nice gauge of where I stand against other Doom veterans :P) combined with the thought that if it takes around 30 minutes, keeping a high difficulty pressure up might be a bit discouraging and cause people to give up. I watched your demo and you made very few mistakes, so I can definitely see where you're coming from with your thoughts on the difficulty.

I think the difficulty is perfectly fine for a starter map in a larger wad. I agree with your reasoning and personally I can absolutely appreciate adventurous lower difficulty maps like this as well. I didn't (and don't) want to sound arrogant or anything but I'm probably an above average skill player so you should view my demo as an example of a very experienced player's first playthrough.

On 7/24/2020 at 8:28 AM, LVENdead said:

Do you think it could stand to be more difficult if the intent is that this IS "map01" in a larger WAD collection?

If this ever comes to be a map in a multi-map pwad, then I would say that the difficulty level is okay. It is always a good idea to ease the player into the game play rather than overwhelming at first go.

However, if this to be just a single map pwad, then, of course, set any difficulty level you want.

At the start of the map, it is not obvious to find the green armour, so I made a slight modification to the green slime fall column to make it obvious

U_M_I.7z

2 hours ago, Kappes Buur said:

At the start of the map, it is not obvious to find the green armour, so I made a slight modification to the green slime fall column to make it obvious

I actually wanted that to be a secret since there is already a lot of armor in the level. Now that you bring it up again, I could probably stand to make a thin inner-rim sector that's tagged as a secret (which I didn't think about when I made that originally).

You'll see my playthrough of this tonight or tomorrow, but I wanted to post now because I found it fantastic. The two big fights (well, I thought there were two anyway), in particular, were excellently thought out. It seems like more of a standalone style to me, but I'd absolutely play a wad of several of these. 

7 hours ago, HAK3180 said:

You'll see my playthrough of this tonight or tomorrow, but I wanted to post now because I found it fantastic. The two big fights (well, I thought there were two anyway), in particular, were excellently thought out. It seems like more of a standalone style to me, but I'd absolutely play a wad of several of these. 

Well shit...considering you've played 40+ pages of WADS I'll take this as a glowing endorsement! Thanks so much! I would probably consider there to be about 2 or 3 set pieces (depending on if you count the gray starbase room a set piece) so I'm glad to hear you think they worked. I found that the battle in the pinky horde room varies in difficulty substantially depending on if your source port has infinite height for monsters or not ;) I'm not sure if you played version 1.2 or not, but playtests I watched of earlier versions of that map saw most people door scumming that fight and thinning out the pinky horde pretty substantially before entering, so I designed that "airlock" area to force players into the room, since that's how I designed/balanced the fight to be experienced. 

I will say I don't think this is going to be a part of a megawad or anything, but I do think the collection will consist of between 3-5 maps, and maybe 10 if I'm feeling crazy. Either way though, I'm glad you think it's capable of standing on its own.

I did play 1.2 on GlBoom+. I actually specifically comment on the idea to use the hell knights to flush Doomguy out. 

Infinite height, interesting. I never tried to go up by the megaarmor or switch until most everything was cleaned up, but not because I thought I'd get blocked; I just didn't. I was preoccupied, I guess. Well, luck of the draw has you uploading last, so the video will be up tomorrow morning (UTC-400).

Damn, if Henry is saying that then I gotta check this out!