30 Sectors: A Community Project for Boom (Limit Removing) (Closed)

On 9/9/2023 at 6:43 PM, Doomy__Doom said:

Authentic experience victim here. Haven't played v1. Overall, I would describe my experience as "this is an oppressive map that you initially learn/route". Presumably, that's by design. Sector usage is art (and even more so in the other map) and arachnos just outside autoaim if you want any safety are exquisitely mean.

 

1) SSG/north path is much harder than PR/south one.

...

 

 

2) 2 shootable switches soulsphere secret feels way more obscure than the reward is worth. Also, the switch by SSG route/blue lift is higher than pistol's aim line, it can only be shot with expensive shells via SSG spread if playing without vertical aiming.

 

3) I have no clue how to lower tag 7 crates leading to blue armor secret TP. Looking in UDB, I only see a switch action to lower them from inside the secret.

 

4) I played HNTR after UV using ssg route without secrets, and I'd say some ammo is over-removed there. I was completely dry entering PR area from YSK side.

 

I definitely recommend a higher slot, if you plan on keeping current level of challenge.

 

I played this one first prior to 09, and this one was pretty alright. A couple rough patches where you can wander into death, but this was a level I could "just play" rather than soulslike'em'up.

 

1) I don't see a good reason to withhold chaingun from UV or HMP. To wit, I grabbed one through blue bars from the initial chaingunner, and it didn't ruin the map in any way. Being able to kill pinkies/specters with bullets with sane TTK is hardly a problem.

 

2) The first vile encounter was kind of mean (was hanging out around chainsaw pentagram thing, not sure how it got there), what with not having any guns up for the job. I wouldn't say it's extremely oppressive, but certainly resulted in cheese being the primary option.

 

3) I did run out of ALL ammo at the tail end. I didn't use zerk for anything at all prior, as the map didn't really make an impression that I had to. Maybe a small safety net for the finale is due, or maybe I should've controlled the viles better. Hard to say.

The Lava Skull:

- 1) Difficulty: I have always ran away during my testing, because cacodemons always get stuck inside caves easily in spite of my attemps to give them a way out which reduces the back pressure a lot, but not entirely, and generally just ran through the crate area gunning down chaingunners alone (arachnotrons are wonderful for infighting). Two options I had was to either make south route that much harder, or somehow neutralise cacodemons, with the latter being worse option because they are non-ambush and are released for incidental combat later... mostly catching plasma from arachnotrons and infighting. An actually positive outcome for south route if anything.
I revised the map a bit more, mostly making the south route harder, will note that I still believe it necessary to keep the SSG route as a harder one, because it is faster to speedrun due to red skull backtracking taking a chunk of time.

- 2) The 2 shootable switch secret should be more obvious with new changes, since you get to look at the first switch on your way through SSG route. Still, it just feels wrong to put a megasphere with this low monster count while the other soulsphere and the blue armor secret are about as difficult to access. ...Look, I have a problem making easier secrets, they feel too cheap.
The use of SSG to hit secret was intentional initially, but there are so many other sectors I actually managed to get rid of it.
- 3) The crate doesn't lower; not in the least because it is all of the crates down there and punishing player for finding a secret by utter lack of cover is pretty cruel, which was not the intent. The teleport sector is actually a GR door instead.

- 4) Ammo was returned and armor/plasma was placed elsewhere; might needn't have moved the south armor also downstairs. Still short on shells to kill cacodemons without pushing forward or infighting, but much better overall.

Notes:
Still not satisfied with The Lava Skull, previous version was OK but now it bothers me in some way I can't put my finger on, so feel free to comment.

Redflower Computing:
- 1) Fair point on chaingun. It gives a significant advantage over shotgun in that it has no cooldown and can stunlock things and so is much safer vs formers, I still placed two chaingunners in easy reach and every other stunlock-prone thing is after that. Also, it's 40 extra bullets.
- 2) Archvile that isn't part of final wave is set to ambush and its closet opens at the same time when you cross the chaingunner bloodfall/pinky closet line, so you might have missed it while backpedaling a lot or didn't notice when backtracking past; there is *also* a teleport line that delivers it to pinky closet, from where it usually goes west to the bars, where it can teleport to chainsaw/soulsphere pentagram... there is a lot of teleports here. And yes, if you used neither blue nor yellow keycard you will have no heavy weapons at this point; the red key entry segment is basically four ambushes back-to-back, with the only other way to make it even worse is routing past yellow door into compblue room which makes you trigger them all at once with the only other option involving a monster opening the door to escape.
- Ammo was rationed here, yes. I erred on the side of placing it early and only counting the single-barrel ammo value; later rooms near red keycard were pretty bare as far as ammo/health ratio goes. If you pick up everything, there is enough to take out final archviles while being slightly careless about it, but likely not enough if you also insist on shooting harmless demons and painful dozen of lost souls.

Using specifically single barrel for whatever reason and not using berserk and chainsaw does mean little safety net, worse if you skip SSG area outright; getting SSG sooner saves the more ammo the sooner you do it, but it forces the red key ambush sequence next. So, there is that.

The final wave, outside archviles, is predominantly demons and lost souls either way, so the goal is really about being able to kill archviles before they cause too many ammo depletion. Twenty rockets is usually enough to do this, provided you don't retreat too far.

Quick and simple slaughter-lite; very lite, I guess, given it is mostly imps and demons. Once you survive the initial box the infighting monsters basically play themselves out, no shooting required except to carve path through imps and demons in case of emergency cornering. There really isn't much interesting about layout and practically no sector merges, which is fine I guess, not every map needs to be an absolute monster with hundreds of subsector merges.

- Depending on whether you want to force the player to actually engage with the demons, shrink the extra space provided when the box opens. The starting box with attachments is just small enough to force player to enter combat, while the current larger one is too big and it becomes pretty easy to just circlestrafe without player really needing to do much of anything until things die.
- SSG only feels to be present just because, since nothing stops the player from hiding until the plasma lowers. Also, the shells run out sooner than the plasma lowers.
- The floors lower very very slowly. Have you considered using an instant lower trick for the first wall at least? It will also give a reason to use SSG at all.
- Demons in front of revenants are self-defeating, in both waves. Routinely they devolve into infighting so unless this was your intent all along it needs fixing.
- The blursphere secret feels very silly with the worst hitscanners there are the three zombiemen. At least it isn't a mandatory pickup.
- The lack of armor punishes any mistakes with revenants or archviles quite severely. Still, the map just isn't long enough to worry about that; maybe place medikits in the exit sector, and add armor for lower difficulty instead of removing monsters? The map felt just fine without, but just suggested this as a sanity check.

The posted version feels either very unfinished, or I am really very much not the target audience for this kind of wad because I was like: and that's it?.. Also, editing this gave me a whole lot of ideas. The fogmap gimmick definitely can work; it simply takes more effort to use less than 30 sectors and will probably take lift use instead of sector stairs if any in-combat verticality is implemented.

- Did you really need to make sectors 2 and 4 have separate dummy sectors? Because as far as I can tell there is no reason to use two of them when one can do the job (they are the same) and this level could definitely use a spare sector.
- Door stuff: same applies. All of the door sectors and doorframes can get by with the exact same control sector as the sectors 2 and 4 without anything untoward happening in DSDA and Zdoom (at least, I didn't see anything; Prboom+ shouldn't make a mess but I had no time to dig up my copy of sourceport and check). The control sector can have more than 3 linedefs too.
- If you are still using fogmap, have you considered rotating the level *after* you're completely done editing it? Fogmap looks ghastly with orthogonal walls due to fake contrast Doom uses, and rotating 30 degrees despite all involed nodebuilder artifact cleanup looked better to my taste. Even 1 degree is enough to stop fake contrast, so you can also do some manual fudging by a few pixels instead.
- More spare sectors: Do you really need the portal frames to be exactly height 128 not installed into walls instead, and  if so why not build from midtextures entirely? Especially that one which is placed in height 128 room; that pair of merged sectors can definitely go. I can understand if you feel this stylistic choice is worth three sectors, if barely. Especially the lowest pair of portals can be instead built from midtextures alone unless you build a hidden platform in deeper fog underneath and use these sectors.
- Any particular reason why blue bars are DR and the red/yellow are D1?
- Blue armor is basically irrelevant for those who do pistol start, because you need all three keys to actually access it and by this point you can exit (Well you need to press the *red button*, but you might as well collect the yellow key while you're at it; barons realistically won't let you pass unhindered until they die, anyways.)

- Subjective opinions on gameplay itself: The level looks impressive, but underneath it is really, really flat, nearly railroad linear (the key fork is meaningless), and is large enough to be indistinguishable from a very boring walking simulator even with monsters (no offense intended towards those who like walking simulators). The city-in-the-void gimmick feels underused mechanically since everything is more or less the same height all throught, except apparently turrets of all things. It really could benefit from things being less isolated so the monsters from adjacent arenas can shoot instead of using an extra two sectors on turrets monsters specifically (who don't even have the decency to have a good field of view and only are a concern at all on -fast), and generally full layout reshuffle.
Really, the playable area could be fit in a 3000x3000 box and be better off for it. Or more specifically: this style of map absolutely ticks off all my negative bias, because it is big and empty and full of running around with no combat to show for it.
- Combat is really mild here, thanks to vast, vast unpopulated spaces provided. Arachnotron box basically doesn't use any of its side space at all; I could stand and shoot without much concern, and ignore hitscanners. Now if they had a crossfire...
- The player moves around enough that I actually forgot about pain elemental, cacodemons, and the rocket launcher bars. Yes, there was a shrieking skull swarm somewhere in the corner... but so what? I'm outta here, get lost you souls.

Bleh, slaughter, at least it doesn't demand insane platforming tricks or walking the 8-wide 64-gap pillars. On the other hand, solid nice clean visuals and everything is actually working.
...also I actually liked the level once I cheesed it completely.

- Not a fan of forced lava walk; could you provide at least two medikits for continuous play (aka people exiting at 1hp)? Because it takes at least 40 damage to traverse normally, often even 50 for zdoom ports, and even wallrun takes 20ish.

- The bluearmor/megasphere are placed annoyingly too close to button, forcing you to either waste them or risk tiptoeing around (I lose no health if I reach the other side quickly)

- The HNTR empty archvile pedestals look odd. You could place imps over there instead?

- Echo the sleeping cacodemons note. They might as well be without ambush flag, since it only takes one attempt to learn that shooting isn't a good idea when no gunfire button is provided.

- Suggest rotating north cyberdemon 45 degrees away from player start. It has a straight line of sight to non-hurtfloor otherwise.

- Suggestion if you *really* want to prevent player from being able to disengage with this map: place a stairs switch action on this side somewhere obvious enough so that the stairs must be raised before you can escape all threats. I am actually not a fan of it but only because it will be so very annoying to actually play this slaughter.

So the question I asked myself: do I need to engage with the intended slaughter here? Answer: no, no I actually don't. The fight doesn't have a second half for me; it's all one infighting brawl where I chill out barely strafing (well, not literally, but the minimum of actual tactical process involved in footwork is a fact) to bait cyberdemons and reward the survivors. The one goal that involves most risk at all is reaching the stairs to stay upstairs ever since; it can be thoroughly sped up by waiting until the cyberdemon you can alert from the left side downstairs rockets the central imps so they are already blown up upon teleporting and nothing stops your crossing (dodging cyberdemons is very simple). From upstairs, you can't die, you can't get cornered, and basically only have yourself to blame for catching the rocket or approaching archvile pile too brazenly; mancubus blobs will die the first of all. Pulling the switch is the only action that makes sense because hellknights die too slowly otherwise.
Cyberdemon exploit can be fixed by rotating the north one 45 degrees; it will still alert on teleport but you can't bait it to solve your beginning woes anymore and must shoot the BFG... exactly once. Hmm, the imps are still a suspect here, they simply die too easily and you're free to abuse the arena infighting. Is that really intended way to complete the level, I ask?
Also, hiding behind the switch makes for a lot of splash damage on hellknights if infighting ever quiets down. If anything, HMP and especially HNTR are more technically demanding difficulties because there are few helpful cyberdemons and you must actually kill the surviving hellknights or worse, cull the unchecked pain elementals. In Zdoom ports than fix explosion logic this is less pronounced because the splash damage from rockets doesn't stack so much and cyberdemons die faster.

Also, a note for map29-30: expect a continuous player can leave with 100 rockets and 600 cells, because that's what I left with every single time I let infighting do the work. This is kind of tough to ignore without making two more slaughtermaps or maps full of cramped rocket-denying tunnels...

Bleh, more slaughter... well-done slaughter, but still. The second half I could tolerate, but absolutely not fond of first half challenge wad because it relies on sustained dodging without cover, which is far too draining activity to me. Don't have any general ideas for improvement here, because it feels already well-polished.

(Also, I think I already saw or played this map at some point. I think. Not sure, but I definitely remember the idea and the title)

- The secret exit trigger is placed before point of no return, which is not very fun in such a techincally demanding level.
- Also, two of the cyberdemons on plat 14 won't die if they start rising; platform must be stopped first. At least once this happened not on -fast and in DSDA, but I haven't recorded at the time.

This is the updated version:

On 9/5/2023 at 9:41 PM, DankMetal said:

OK, first update i made to this wad so far:

• The Cyberdemon fight it's no longer "optional", i removed the "secret" sector special in the arena. In exchange for that, there's a new secret... somewhere in the map.
• Fixed the "door flash" bug (it was so simple, and somehow i didn't figure out how to fix it before)
• Fixed the metal bars bug.

Here's the new file: ABYSS.zip

I forgot to mension that the song of this map is "Toxin Refinery" from PSX Doom.

It is good, I definitely wanted to try to stay away from slaughter for this set. (I changed the OP to show this). I will still accept the map though. I think the final fight is a little ridiculous. The cyberdemons and pain elementals fought it out so I didn't have to worry about them, but the archviles were just annoying. They do not really add anything to the fight and just add a blockade to the upper level. I would replace them with revenants and also remove a couple of cybers. Other then that it is a good looking map that is on brief, good job!