Blood Reactor - A short vanilla Doom 2 level, designed to be challenging but not frustrating

[FruitOfTheDoom]

Hello everyone. Yesterday I finished this map and decided to submit it to Doom World and to the main archive at /pub/idgames/incoming/. It should appear in the main archive at some point soon. I'm doing a forum post here too though of course.

 

Here's the map description from the text file (also available at https://www.dropbox.com/s/rduwt4ck454npfb/BloodReactor.txt?dl=0):

 

Quote

 

Blood Reactor is a single vanilla Doom 2 level designed to be short and fun. It features 6 secrets, plus a few pseudo-secrets. All of the weapons are available. It is intended to be challenging but not frustrating. It has high variety, low tedium, and careful use of map layout, lighting, and gameplay to create a tight and polished experience.

The theme/story of the level is that you've infiltrated a "blood reactor" (an energy fusion power plant fueled by blood instead of nuclear fusion) in hell and need to shut it down to hinder hell's energy resources and then to escape out through the sewage system of the reactor.

I hope you enjoy it!

For reference, the available secrets are: (1) the invisibility powerup room, (2) the super shotgun, (3) the BFG room, (4) a smarter way to handle the BFG room, (5) the soulsphere room, and (6) the rocket launcher. Try to see if you can get them all without cheating! Some are easy to find and some are hard.

 

 

Here's some screenshots of the map I took with the -nomonsters flag active:

 

 

 

 

Here's a link to the map on my public dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5h7kpuv2zprrmol/BloodReactor.zip?dl=0

 

It'll probably appear on the idgames archive soon too.

 

The map was built in GZDoom Builder (Bugfix) R3067 and tested on GZDoom g4.1.3 using Doom 2. It uses the standard Doom 2 file format and is very vanilla, so it should work on pretty much any system. It has 1055 sectors. It only has one difficulty level and has no multiplayer support. It starts on MAP01, as usual. It has standard Doom gameplay (i.e. not slaughter, not puzzle, etc).

 

The map is available under the most permissive of the standard Doom World licenses (including allowing commercial use), so feel free to do whatever you want with it without having to ask me, as long as you give appropriate credit etc.

 

It took roughly 7 days to create, in the time I had available to work on it.

 

I've been wanting to make a complete Doom level and release it for years now but kept procrastinating it. I finally decided to just do it, and so here we are. I've lurked on Doom World before but only just yesterday finally created an account. I hope you enjoy the map.

 

I normally work as a programmer in game development but felt like trying my hand at hand-made level design and such.

 

Oh, by the way, there's a bug with the rocket launcher secret where you can get it after you're not supposed to be able to anymore, but it appears that to fix it I might have to change my map format and use ACS scripting, but that would make the map less universally compatible. If I do more mapping in the future I'll probably switch to a more advanced format though, so that I can get around a bunch of these vanilla limitations that inhibit some kinds of level design polish.

 

Ironically, I originally intended the map to be very non-linear but it somehow randomly became fairly linear as I kept tweaking it. It does have some non-linear parts though. If/when I make another map I'd make it a lot more non-linear and would use more advanced features.

 

Anyway, that's my post. Have fun! It won't take long to beat the level.

 

[Worm]

Just played this. 21:31, 141/143 kills, 3/6 secrets. I'm not going to lie: right at the beginning, I saw the basic architecture and thought "I'm not afraid of this simple little map!" Then I

Spoiler

promptly ran over to grab the plasma, got boxed in by the pinkies, got chomped at least once, and also took a fireball to the face. I was on my guard for the rest of the level.

I liked that this map tries to use handfuls of monsters and level geometry in tricky ways rather than hordes, and I also thought the health balance was pretty good. Nothing was super hard, but you still can't slip up too many times because medikits are scarce. The red key room is pretty cool-looking. Also, and this may seem silly to other people, but the main reason I played this was because of your description and README. I like it when authors clearly explain their mapping approach and the kind of experience to expect.

 

I also liked:

Spoiler

-the pain elemental trap (the way the walls move is cool and disorienting)
-the teleporting spectres in the dark
-the way you unlock the BFG secret, quirky but suggestive in an adventure game-style way
-the little bits of platforming to get items

 

My suggestions: more variations in ceiling heights and wall angles. Fewer crates (although the big crate + tiny crate pairings were kind of cute... "a mother crate and her young"). And for the parts where the monsters aren't terribly threatening, those parts would work better with a little more exploration or at least room for the monsters to wander a bit so they have a chance of surprising you. Congrats on finishing a clean, competent map and best of luck in the future.

[Degree23]

Really enjoyed playing this (on UV), though didn't find the RL or BFG. Only comment I have is that the ending was a bit anti-climactic as I didn't shoot the Spider Mastermind once. It shot some Arachnatrons and then they all took it down for me. It's quite an easy fight to cheese like that.

[FruitOfTheDoom]

Thanks for playing my level and for your input! It's good to hear from some people on it.

 

Sounds like some good advice too.

 

The monster infighting was one of the monster AI problems I had on the level. There are a few zones where it would have been really nice to be able to disable monster infighting for specific sets of monsters and also make them less likely to accidentally hit each other.

 

All the times I fought the Spider Mastermind before it at least wasn't killed by the Arachnatrons, but sounds like you got especially unlucky. I have seen them infight fairly often though.

 

If I do another level I'll try to use ACS and some more advanced stuff and more non-linearity etc.

 

Also, as an additional update: I got the email from the maintainers now and sent them my confirmation response for the files, so the level should appear on the idgames archive soon, assuming no unforeseen problems.

 

Oh, and sorry for taking a day to respond. I was busy yesterday.

[Degree23]

2 hours ago, FruitOfTheDoom said:

If I do another level...

 

I hope that "if" becomes a "when" as this map was a great early (first?) effort.

[Magicana]

 

Neat little map. Good use of light/darkness. Felt a bit stingy with health, but I also did things like using the chainsaw on a revenant, so I only have myself to blame for a lot of my health problems.

[Get Phobo]

Very nice map. It has a fair deal of non-linearity to it. Plus, you really got the play on lighting and darkness right.

 

The secret with the two Pain Elementals and the rocket launcher is really hard to find (would probably have never found it without looking in GZDB), but where is the bug you mentioned?

[FruitOfTheDoom]

Thanks for the additional reactions and input guys, and especially for posting that full video playthrough Magicina (seeing other people play the map is very informative).

 

The main impediment to creating more maps is that I have a lot going on in my life that I'm trying to work on, so it can be hard to justify these kinds of things sometimes. It was certainly enjoyable though and I hope to have more free time for such things in the future. I need to focus primarily on my career and some other things for the time being though.

 

This was indeed my first map if you don't count the tutorial map I did where I was just slapping random crap onto a level to understand what it did. So, it was the second map file I made but the first real map. I've lurked on the community sometimes though, so I knew a few things to watch out for in advance of making it.

 

Yeah, the map is low on health, but that's mostly intentional because I wanted to keep a sense of tension in it.

 

The bug with the rocket launcher is that after you've activated the button to make the red key platform descend then if you shoot the floor afterwards at roughly the spot where the gun-trigger mask texture is then the pain elemental alcoves guarding the rocket launcher will still open up, even though this should be physically impossible since the trigger is now completely inside the floor. If I was using ACS though, then I could probably create a boolean flag that disables the gun-trigger for the mask texture, which would fix the bug.

[Get Phobo]

I see. Yeah, I could open up the alcoves by shooting the ground. The Doom engine in all its glory. LOL

[mArt1And00m3r11339]

I beat your level.

 

[Cidem Tabmoc]

That was a damn good level! I liked the tense resource management in the beginning, where you're given very little health and ammo pickups and have to make use of the environment to single out the tougher monsters.

[MFG38]

Just downloaded, will give this a spin later. c:

[PasokonDeacon]

Fun little map. I appreciate having to conserve health and shotgun ammo more than usual, on top of some surprises like the lost souls/elemental floor lower trap early on. The final arachno-mommy fight definitely felt anticlimactic due to infighting, but it was nice to get outside after the previous cramped corners.

Some things I noticed:

• Good use of platforming puzzles overall. I feel iffy about the balance between quick hops for items (like in the brick ruins channel prior to the red key room) and less obvious solutions (getting the shotty ammo box atop crates prior to exiting outdoors). That last example broke up the pacing a bit much for me, worse when I realized it could count as an unmarked secret in plain sight given the effort needed to reach it.
• Biggest aspect I would improve is height variation. The couple encounters where ceiling-height obstacles and varying height levels factored into play felt more exciting than the more conventional pop-into-hallway-in-front-of-you encounters. Your smart lighting contrasts will pair well with elevation contrasts both for aesthetics and for keeping players spatially aware.
• I really liked the spectre usage at first, but it eventually became predictable, more like forced road-blocking than imposing threat. Definitely keep using pain elementals like this, though, since players have just enough space to dodge the lost souls without the monsters becoming ineffectual. Also, that first revenant deserves more space.
• At least one MIDSPACE midtex (blocking the cacos in their lava den(s)) bleeds into the supporting sector, which could be a texture pegging issue or potentially a HOM affecting one of the sector sidedefs. (Alternatively, when setting up midtex sidedefs on a linedef set in-between sectors, make sure neither sector has the same height or brightness level (adjustable by 1) to avoid bleeding.) Keep an eye out for this stuff and get strict with fixing such issues unless they directly improve the map's theme, atmosphere, etc.

I really want to play another level from you, so please make time in your life for more mapping! The detailed development notes convinced me to give this a try, reminding me to do the same for my threads.

Edited August 21, 2019 by PasokonDeacon

[DavidN]

I see I'm late to the party doing videos of this one, but here's a live commentary that I put together after seeing this come past on DoomLauncher's latest files :) It's a really great first map with a lot of creative use of environments - it's very noticeable that you get more comfortable with the editor as you go along! Like you said, I think if it has a weakness it's that it's very linear - although taking the player in a loop into a room that they've been able to peek into before was a great touch that avoided them having to backtrack a long way. Looking forward to more :D

 

This video was sponsored by the Send Lawyers to Hell appeal! Playing Doom WADs to raise money for RAICES.

https://streamlabs.com/davidxn/v2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-R3_fVcWcE

 

 

[Noiser]

Hey, your map looks nice! I will be playing ASAP.

Just a nitpick: I think the "vanilla" title is a bit misleading. As I see it, vanilla means that it should run on Chocolate Doom or using the Doom format. GZDoom is the worst possible port to determine if your wad is vanilla or not.   

Maybe I'm being unnecessarily pedantic, but I think it's a nice info to have when people are searching maps to play on choco! :-)

Edited September 9, 2019 by Noiser

[Suitepee]

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/479274296

 

I play this at 1:56:22 into this playtest livestream.