Sunder - Map20 Appears, finally.

Gimmegimmegimmegimmegimme!

Those maps look pretty intense. :P

Second screen for Map02 made me lol.

The Cage looks all kinds of awesome.

Played the first old map...well, more like "played" since I ran out of ammo by the "fortress" behind the blue key door so I had to cheat from there on. The only secrets I found were the backpack and berserk+green armor closer to the beginning.

The good: The architecture was awesome :)

The bad: Simply not enough health. I found the berserk secret after getting through the lava lost soul area with 18 % health left, and had I not found the secret I guess I wouldn't have got much further and requiring secrets to beat a map is a big no-no. That lost soul area was pretty bad over all too, either too many souls or too little health or armor. Yeah, it was beatable, but only barely.

The short part where you repeatedly teleported to the three square arenas (cacos, knights and barons, with zombies) was a little meh. Recycling the same arena for each fight would have been more interesting, as you would have seen the bodies pile up. :)

The cybie arena was dreadful. Way too dark, huge pillars and two cybers to kill...it felt more like a chore, especially since cybers take ages to kill in such areas. However recycling the same arena for the next fight was a nice touch...too bad it was too dark to find any goodies lying around without blindly walking around. :( I guess that might have been the reason why I didn't have enough ammo for the part after the blue key door, in case I missed some ammo in that arena.

I'm liking the shots from map05 alot.

Insane_Gazebo said:

Anyway, try to spot all the mistakes I made making my first maps :D

The first mistake I see before even d/ling your wad is this :

Insane_Gazebo said:

Map 04 - Can't be finished without cheats.
Map 05 - Can't be finished without cheats.
[...]
Map 32 - Can be finished without cheats... maybe?[B]

Every map in HR / HRII / AV / KS / DV /[...] can be finished without cheating :)
What would be the point in making an impossible wad anyway ?

That said, let's check this out, your screens look good. :)

I'm also liking the shots of those maps so far, it definitely reminds me of how sadistic all the other slaughter megawads were so far... in a good way, of course.

I don't know how they play, but the screenshots blew my mind.

Had a quick try through it, yeah the maps are nice !
Problem is, as Jodwin stated there's a lack of health/ammo, it ruins the fun :o
Map 05 was the most impressive imho, sadly it's in this map that the item/weapon problem is the most annoying.

There are also some HOMs here and there, nothing critical though.

For a first release, this sure is impressive :)

[WH]-Wilou84 said:
Had a quick try through it, yeah the maps are nice !
Problem is, as Jodwin stated there's a lack of health/ammo, it ruins the fun :o
Map 05 was the most impressive imho, sadly it's in this map that the item/weapon problem is the most annoying.

There are also some HOMs here and there, nothing critical though.

For a first release, this sure is impressive :)

Heh, guess I wasn't very clear.

These are my old maps, and they're also unfinished. I just thought people might want to have a look at what I did before I forget about them forever.

But I think the biggest mistake I used to make, wasn't in creating insanely detailed sections, but rather, not sector packing them.

Insane_Gazebo said:

These are my old maps, and they're also unfinished. I just thought people might want to have a look at what I did before I forget about them forever.

Oh, my bad then, thought you'd want to rework and re-use them :)

Ryathaen said:

I don't know how they play, but the screenshots blew my mind.

Ditto. Looking forward to playing them just on principle.

looks pretty sweet. Doubt I'll enjoy the game play though.

Insane_Gazebo said:

But I think the biggest mistake I used to make, wasn't in creating insanely detailed sections, but rather, not sector packing them.

The architecture looks stunning, especially in map 5. The shear scale of it is breathtaking. I'm going to send my brother (who complained that my humble PWAD was impossible) links to some of those screenshots with hundreds of monsters. :-)

Just out of interest, what is 'sector packing', and how would it help? I can't help thinking that anything other than a Doom source port on steroids would keel over and crash, given the complexity of the visible detail in your screenshots.

cs99cjb said:

The architecture looks stunning, especially in map 5. The shear scale of it is breathtaking.

Yeah, really reminds me of some of the maps in Drown in Blood (and some other works by TimeofDeath). :)

cs99cjb said:

Just out of interest, what is 'sector packing', and how would it help? I can't help thinking that anything other than a Doom source port on steroids would keel over and crash, given the complexity of the visible detail in your screenshots.

I've heard it called other names before, but essentially, it means you're combining sectors that share identical properties together, like lights, the pillars you can see in Map05, etc.

I had a look at your map again, and you're doing it correctly, so maybe you call it something else :P

And no, funnily enough, Map05 seems to run okay. In fact, it isn't the architecture which appears to be causing a small dip in the frame rate... No, much like Map03 in DVII, it's the amount of visible sprites. (In this case, the torches.)

For good examples of sector packing, look at the 10sectors and 2sectors megawads.

As far as I'm aware, in most (or all) cases "sector packing" will have absolutely no effect on framerate, as detached-but-identical sectors will be split into subsectors (and, during the actual rendering process, visplanes) the exact same way regardless of whether the sectors themselves are merged or not. If their properties are identical, they'll be treated the same way. Makes no real difference in the end if they're merged or not.

esselfortium said:

As far as I'm aware, in most (or all) cases "sector packing" will have absolutely no effect on framerate, as detached-but-identical sectors will be split into subsectors (and, during the actual rendering process, visplanes) the exact same way regardless of whether the sectors themselves are merged or not. If their properties are identical, they'll be treated the same way. Makes no real difference in the end if they're merged or not.

But it makes a lot of difference if you are trying to keep within a fixed limit of sectors in your editor. For example the old and rather flaky port of DETH to RISC OS that I use crashes when I try to save a map that has more than 511 sectors. :-( I don't know enough about Doom to say whether that is an inherent limitation of the game, or just a bad editor.

I imagine it probably reduces the file size too, doesn't it?

cs99cjb said:

I don't know enough about Doom to say whether that is an inherent limitation of the game, or just a bad editor.

It is a bad editor.

The original Doom stayed within those limits -- as far as sector count goes, the largest map in Doom 1 is Spawning Vats (323), in Doom 2 it's the Inmost Dens (348), and in Final Doom it's Shipping/Respawning (a whooping 489).

But many mods went beyond that.


As for filesize, well yeah, but an individual sector declaration doesn't take up much space anyway -- just 24 bytes per sector.

I'll certainly have to try these on -fast when they're done...but will they be harder than the Bowels of Gehinom (Titan 2 map 07) but not impossible? Delicate balance there :P

(mind you the final set-piece in map 03 of dbzone was possibly harder...but that was only 1 bit of the map)

The Ultimate DooMer said:

I'll certainly have to try these on -fast when they're done...but will they be as harder than the Bowels of Gehinom (Titan 2 map 07) but not impossible? Delicate balance there :P

(mind you the final set-piece in map 03 of dbzone was possibly harder...but that was only 1 bit of the map)

You just made me realise that I never finished Titan2. (I'd only played the first two maps, and somehow forgot about them.) Going to finish them now.

Also updated the OP with a very early screenshot of Map07.

Damn, 7 looks cool. The basic ingredient to an epic look is a really tall ceiling it seems (like map 5), heh (which is basically what deus vult did).

:O
These maps look awesome. The Cage and Pale Monument are especially impressive. It looks like the game play is pretty tough but I am willing to try it :)

I remember seeing this quite some time ago. It's pretty insane.

I sure would like to give these maps a try, if not for the gameplay, than just how cool they look. But if some maps can't be beaten by cheats, than what's the point of it? Just take some monsters away, add some health/weapons and see if its just BARELY beatable. Its a lot more fun when you do the work instead of cheating. ;)

Bumping for minor update. Wee!
(Expect a few more soon, now that I have time to map again.)

Another update! More screenies! Huzzah!

I'm liking the screenshots of the redesigned map02.