[UDMF] [DOOM II] Naga's Abyss

[Badman]

MAP01: Naga's Abyss

IWAD: Doom II

Format: UDMF

What's here: 1 new level using mostly stock assets with a few new textures, sounds, a model and a music track.

Tested with: GZDoom 4.10.0 + hardware rendering w/ & w/out Brutal Doom (brutalv21.13.1.pk3)

Freelook: Yes

Jump/crouch: No

Single Player: Designed for

Co-op 2-4 Players: Player starts only

Deathmatch: No

Difficulty Settings: Ultra-Violence only (all difficulties spawn all things)

Build Time: Around 6 months off and on, then 6 months of most of my free time
Editor(s) used: Ultimate Doom Builder, Slade, Audacity, Blender, Noesis
Known Bugs: Poor performance in the spike room and big drop room
May Not Run With: Anything other than GZDoom 4.10.0 + hardware rendering

Optional File: Brutal Doom (brutalv21.13.1.pk3) is the intended way to play! This level is designed with BD in mind so try the extra visual and combat spice! I like to use Arcade Pistol (No Reload) mode for BD. Please play however is most fun and turn off any BD features you don't like! Load brutalv21.13.1.pk3 first then NAGASABYSS.pk3.

 

Naga's Abyss exists in multiple dimensions in different forms simultaneously. This has drawn constant waves of evil creatures over the ages looking to use its power. It's time for you to cleanse this vile fortress! Seek out a central place of healing to aid you in your quest!

 

Prepare for a difficult, sprawling, multi-path journey full of creepy and thrilling things! Fights and exploration abound as you find just how deep you can go...

 

This was originally a Pathfinder dungeon created by my friend grunge muddvain. I adapted that into a level for the Steam game Delver. Both of those were then the basis for this unholy creation!

 

Updates:

v1.1 Fixed 4 incorrect damaging floors (Thanks, Helm!)

v1.2 Restrict player inside final lift after activation (Thanks, Caleb13!)

v1.3 Fixed incorrect player start

 

Winner of the Doom Awards 2023 "Staff Award"! Check it out here!

 

Additional Credits to:
grunge muddvain - Original Pathfinder dungeon design this is based on
Jekyll Grim Payne - Waterfall Fog Spawner 1.7
Not Jabba - Grey liquid falling texture
ProjectRemap - Liquid Texture Pack V6.8
Kell (Kothic Skies)- Skybox texture
Little Martian - Retro Texture Pack v9
SoundsForYou - Big waterfall sound*
straget - Small waterfall sound*
cobratronik - Wind sound*
MinigunFiend - Wood knock sound*
ryansitz - Puff platform sound*
anrocomposer - Acecho (Music)*
*Royalty-free, proof license for YT Content-ID clearing @ pixabay.com

 

 

UV 100% Playthrough with Brutal Doom: Here

 

UV 100% Playthrough without Brutal Doom: Here

 

Downloads: 

ftp://archives.gamers.org/pub/idgames/ and mirrors

https://doomshack.org/uploads/NAGAv1_3.zip

NAGAv1_3.zip

Edited December 17, 2023 by Badman

[Helm]

Hi, friend! 

I don't play brutal doom, but I like to play doom maps of all stripes so I turned on my mouselook and ran through your map. First of, all thank you very much for posting it, I enjoyed myself a lot. I love seeing maps like these. The ambition this fulfills a little bit I would generally classify as 'my first map is going to be all my maps in one!'. 

UDMF is a choice you can make for a long and sprawling map full of angled floor lock ins and intense verticality and there will always be a mouselook audience that generally takes UDMF maps and runs them through their favourite weapons mods or what have you. I do however wonder if you could have pulled some of this off without UDMF and see how far you could have pushed in your vision the vanilla game, or at least a version of doom without mouselook. 

Why do I mention this? I have nothing against mouselook but all your impressive work is deflated a little by using GZdoom like a generic 3d engine, it makes this live in that space between old doom and new games, kinda like an early source game if you know what I mean. Of course all the options for locomotion, and combat designed allowed by mouselook I think do not balance out with the inherent doomyness of cl2, 9 or whatever else still keeps to the locked viewport lineage. Of course, such criticism is take it or leave it, other people will not touch boom for this reason and play with mouselook on in everything!

Here's a video of my stumbling through your opus. (hd ver uploading)

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

Waterfall splosh particles: they look good and functional, but they fall on this extremely right angle blocky waterfall sector geometry, so the look of the two aesthetics together makes me think, in aesthetic terms 'not doom, early source, half-life 1 perhaps'. The more you try to add fidelity to doom, the less it's strong in the unique ways doom is strong. Hence my note about 'why not limit removing? why not boom or mbf21? the lineage is still strong'.

Library maze: this is where I felt 'this map is going to be all the map tropes in one'. Not the biggest fan of library mazes at the best of times (maskim xul) and this one is well sectored and looks nice, but it's a library maze. No offense to people who absolutely live for mazes in doom.

Any time this map has a deadfall for 10 seconds: it looks and feels impressive, as verticality always does, but the real doom feels for me is falling down a dark hole for 10 seconds and you can't even look down, lol. 

You have so many different rooms that basically come from the combo of the theme you're in and 'what sort of traps and obstacles can I put in the player's way?' you go through many permutations. This pads the map in a certain sense, it gives more breadth and variety of content but it flattens out the expectation, once you know all the variants of platforming and basic scenarios for combat+platforming are going to be explored, down to the 'believe in the bridge and the bridge may hold you' indiana jones trope. 

There, I was missing vital info so I had to trial and error it, which isn't necessarily something wrong with the map, just my first runthrough of it. Some areas being a bit too dark leads the player to committing down paths they aren't certain they would choose otherwise; open combat in a big, dark room with 5-6 different paths through it will just register in the mind of the inattentive player (me) as 'a dark room with many twistly little passages, all alike. I will be eaten by a grue'. No internal map or sense of direction is possible in a huge dark room with 50 fireballs coming my way from the pure darkness, keep that in mind as a general note. Confusing the player is totally fine, but then you may have to live with someone quicksaving and quickloading through your meticulously designed environmental awareness puzzle. Take the combat out of such spaces, or compartmentalize it in a useful manner is my note.

The floating bridge particle treatment is quite effective, however.

Funhouse dungeon vibes continue with the crusher circuit and then the final battle with the switch tiers. Fun though a bit chaotic arena, and RL + mouseaim + Pain Elementals makes for a long range 'hide behind a wall' fights, I find. Perhaps different in brutal doom. 

I had a great time all in all and I appreciate having played this. Please take all criticism with a grain of salt and most importantly keep in mind I am grateful for having played the fruits of your creativity, for free, and extra grateful I have a chance to give you a little feedback for the future. Please make more maps, so many more maps, all styles, don't be afraid of vanilla, don't be afraid of doom. Everything you post will be played not just by wordy idiots like me but silent downloaders who will have fun with it and may never respond in person, nothing goes to waste :)

[Badman]

Hello, friend!

 

Thank you -very- much for taking the time to play, make a video and give such detailed feedback! I really appreciate that! I'm glad you enjoyed your stay in the Abyss. I tend to get carried away with things and go big so this map definitely has a kind of "I'll try a little of everything" vibe haha.

 

As I primarily use GZDoom as my source port, I just went with UDMF as I also read it offered a lot of freedom with features. I totally dig the "push the vanilla limits" type of challenge and now that I'm more familiar with things, I may try to something like that next.

 

The blocky geometry and overlay of graphical fancyness is definitely an aesthetic choice I know not everyone will like, but I'm a sucker for dressing up old games with some new effects here and there. To provide some context, this level is heavily based on a previous level I made, also called Naga's Abyss, for the game on Steam called Delver. Below are some screens to show you the look I was trying to bring to Doom.

 

 

I wanted to help you so bad in the "Indiana Jones invisible bridge room," so let me give you a hint in case you decide to venture again:

 

Spoiler

Use the rocket launcher to clear the imps off of the platforms so you can move in peace. Then take a look above you and you should see a guide to show you the correct path to walk :)

 

Thank you so much again Helm for your time and words!

 

 

 

 

 

[Caleb13]

Very nice map design, even if the gameplay is uneven - monsters are clustered in a few areas and others are empty. I played in GZdoom 4.10.0 and I noticed 2 problems:

 

-I couldn't find any way to re-open the final lift. I entered it, but jumped off before it reached the ceiling. The same problem occurs when you do ride the lift to the top, but then return to the caverns via the teleporter nearby.

 

-GZdoom reports this during startup:

P_Init: Init Playloop state.
Unknown terrain Blood
Unknown terrain Blood
Unknown terrain nukage
Unknown terrain nukage
Unknown terrain Slime
Unknown terrain Slime
Unknown terrain Lava
Unknown terrain Lava

 

Also, GZdoom once hard-crashed (no error message) in the water cavern, though I'm not sure if it's related.

[Badman]

Thanks Caleb13! I really appreciate you playing my level!

 

I would say of all the areas of mapping skills, I feel enemy and item placement are definitely my weakest.

 

Actually the final lift uses a sector teleport trick to move the contents to a copy elevator back near the start, so I only made it work one way as a kind of dramatic final lift. The teleport room then serves as a way to move around the level if the player wants to explore more before leaving.

 

I notice that the "unknown terrains" are the ones replaced by the liquid texture pack I use in the level. Do the fancy liquid shaders appear for you correctly or is that just a startup message you see?

 

I haven't had any crashes in that area however I'll play some more and see if I get anything. Could just be the evil energies crossing to our dimension and causing crashes! Yea. 

 

Thanks again, have a great day!

[Caleb13]

I see, but the teleporter room solution isn't exactly intuitive. Maybe you could at least script the lift so its outer linedefs become impassable once the player triggers it?

 

Well, it's hard to say what the liquids should look like. The green-ish water definitely looked the best, with glossy surface and partial reflections. Lava looked like on your screenshots. Since we both used the same GZdoom version, there shouldn't be a difference in behavior... theoretically.

[Badman]

I agree that it is not intuitive how to proceed if you step off the final lift early and I like your suggestion of making the linedefs impassable! I have modified the script and it seems to work really smooth. I like that a lot better as at least now it shows the player the exit area then allows returning via teleport if desired.

 

Update uploaded, thanks!

[Badman]

Just added my Brutal Doom and non-Brutal Doom UV 100% playthroughs! Links above