Early Mass (5 spooky and challenging boom maps!)

[Treehouseminis]

                                                                                  

This is a set of 5 decently challenging boom cl9 maps.  I also worked hard on the atmosphere on this. "Spooky Vibes"  was in my head a lot when creating these.  Too early for Halloween?  Never :)  

 

combat puzzle and slaughter gameplay awaits.  UV and HMP implemented.  HMP is slightly reduced but still serves a decent challenge imo.  I would rate the UV difficulty to early Sunder, mid to late Sunlust.

 

The first 3 maps have a semblance of what could be a real place, but maps04 and 05 have a classic surreal slaughter map vibe(and are a lot bigger in scale than the first 3). 

 

Also all map names are names after my favorite band's song titles.  Theres an easter egg dedicated to them in map04 :)  If you know as well you get, I dont know, extra brownie points.

 

Tested on prBOOM 262 , gzdoom 4.82 , dsda 0.25.6

 

Bugs:

--Small Visual bug I thought I got rid of but appeared in thelamps video of map03 so not sure whats up with Woof source port.  Recommend dsda or prboom

--Ill be honest in not a lot of testing was done on HMP so if anyone finds anything egregious Ill try to fix it ASAP. 

--may also be a bug on certain, possibly newer gzdoom versions where monsters wont spawn when the teleport location is blocked, even when the line is repeatable.  I personally never had this happen but one of my testers did.

 

Screens :

Spoiler

 

--Drop Box 1.6--

 

Credits:

 

Title : "Psychos" by Jimmy

Inter : "Hades Maw" by Jimmy

map01 Graveyard Shift: "Brain Freeze" by Jimmy

map02 Fresh Bones: "Library" aNti MaN (VGmidis website)

map03 Send Help: "Holier than Thou" by Jimmy

map04 Observer: "taking the death toll" Duke Nukem 3d

map05 Lucid Dream: "Mucus flow theme" - BPRD

Special thanks to @lunchlunch and jaded.wad for being a big inspiration for the creation of this.  I used a lot of resources from jaded.wad because I wanted to make a few maps with a similar color palette.  

So also thanks for the texture usage to Otex, Occula, Gothic, various Doomer Board projects, mainly DB34, DB29.

 

Also thanks to a few of the testers and video makers : @Dragonfly from discord,  @GreenSlayer , @thelamp

 

Edited September 18, 2023 by Treehouseminis : new version of wad

[Treehouseminis]

Updated download.  Fixed a HMP bug, it was so simple idk why it took me so long, make sure your teleporter locations are flagged for all difficulties! lol

[DreadWanderer]

I'm on map 4 (HMP) and I must say I really like it. Slaughter is not my thing, but you've convinced me to stay with your striking use of color combinations and the intriguing architecture. Feels like a trippy afterlife. I want to see more of it, so I'll gladly hone my unimpressive slaughter skills!

[Treehouseminis]

2 minutes ago, DreadWanderer said:

I'm on map 4 (HMP) and I must say I really like it. Slaughter is not my thing, but you've convinced me to stay with your striking use of color combinations and the intriguing architecture. Feels like a trippy afterlife. I want to see more of it, so I'll gladly hone my unimpressive slaughter skills!

Thanks!  Your description suits the wad perfectly.  Map04 is a long one, so I hope it doesn't drag you down too much.  Map05 is even more trippy imo but not as long.  

[DreadWanderer]

7 minutes ago, Treehouseminis said:

Thanks!  Your description suits the wad perfectly.  Map04 is a long one, so I hope it doesn't drag you down too much.  Map05 is even more trippy imo but not as long.  

 

Yeah I saw the monster count, but fortunately I can save and play it in chunks. I forgot to mention the fact that the final fight of 'Send Help' absolutely kicked my ass before I realized I should BFG the hell knights around the enclosure, creating space to deal with the clusterfuck of revenants. Being patient brought its rewards, it's a very clever setup that needs planning. The double cyber surprise right after made me panic, but I saved enough cells to grease them. Intense!

[lunchlunch]

Glad to inspire another mapper, here's an FDA
I like your use of the extra textures from Jaded, it's good to see them get some use. I played the first map and I do have a good bit of feedback for you. I'm going to hazard a guess that you're new to mapping because there's a fair share of problems that you learn to avoid pretty quickly. There's also plenty to admire though, your monster placements are generally chesslike, and the atmosphere is strong.

-First area: Kind of a slow start so I skipped these enemies on my second life. Think about the fact that most players will die in your map at least once and will have to replay the whole thing from the beginning. Ask yourself, is this a strong/fun introduction to my map and is worth playing over and over? In this case, I think plinking away with the pistol at monsters that are all spread out is a chore that should just be skipped.

-Crypt: You step into the crypt and it silently teleports you to the interior. If you shoot or punch while in this opening room, all of the crypt enemies wake up and crowd the space below preventing the player from dropping down. Use sound blocking linedefs around the pit so they can't hear you until you drop down. After doing something like this, always playtest it again and make sure it works and can't break. There's a room in the crypt with some perched revenants and imps against the walls. These should pop up after the player steps into the room, or else a player is just going to shoot them from the doorway like I did. In general, you should really try to break your own fights in playtesting to make sure there's not unintended ways to beat or cheat your fight. Most fights in the map can be cheesed. The final fight in the crypt is really fun, I was thrown off on whether to target the PE or the imps first, this is an example of the chesslike monster placement I mentioned before.

-RL fight: Don't dump a bunch of enemies into a big open flat space where the player has to just circle strafe around them, that's boring. Close in your environment more, put up more cover, have higher and lower parts of the battlefield with steps in strategic places that offer different routes to the player. Use turreted enemies around the edges of a fight to deter camping or circle strafing on autopilot. The other problem I had with this fight is that the only cover here is the crypt. The tombstones are too low to block rev missiles and are too close to each other anyways to really pivot around them at top speed. The trees, all objects actually, block the player but they do not block projectiles (Unless you are playing in GZDOOM. DO NOT PLAYTEST IN GZDOOM). Oh by the way, I like the headstone secret.

-Red key fight: This fight's nice, you have the area closed in so there's a more interesting fight dynamic here than just circle strafing. Closed in between different types of enemies has the player problem-solve on their feet, so this is another fight I enjoyed. Still, it's pretty easy to just run past the revs and camp everything out from the front of the church.

-Church: The baron turning into an archvile was clever, that really caught me offguard, nice touch. The bleachers of revenants do not need to have new revenants constantly teleporting in to replenish dead revenants. These guys are threatening enough and looping all the way around the church just to pump a few rockets at a time at them is really tedious. You'll notice I did not bother killing them in my demo. I realized the second time I played this fight that you can just run right out the front door. Don't let the player do that. Though, I didn't really feel too bad about it because the pews restrict movement in the church in a way that doesn't quite feel fair when you're trying to evade massive balls of rev missiles. Maybe a couple rows of pews in the front and back could be removed. As a last note, the pulpit's linedefs should be marked impassable. As a general rule, anytime you have DOOMcute, block it off, it's really awkward and immersion-breaking to step on top of it or bounce over it.

 

I plan to play the rest of these at some point, and I might record videos with commentary for you since it's easier to address issues on the fly, and you'll be able to see what I'm talking about at the same time. Oh, actually, one last thing- I didn't notice it in this map but something I noticed in your screenshots is that your ceilings are kind of ugly. It's something some people might consider nitpicky but it's something that I definitely notice, is when there's parts of the ceiling that are much brighter or darker than the other parts. Use a dummy sector and set the linedef action to "transfer brightness to ceiling" to fix this. For example, in your third screenshot you would make the brighter parts of the ceiling match the darker parts and in the sixth screenshot, you would make the large dark area of the ceiling match the brighter parts.

Edited June 21, 2023 by lunchlunch

[Treehouseminis]

6 hours ago, lunchlunch said:

Glad to inspire another mapper, here's an FDA
I like your use of the extra textures from Jaded, it's good to see them get some use. I played the first map and I do have a good bit of feedback for you. I'm going to hazard a guess that you're new to mapping because there's a fair share of problems that you learn to avoid pretty quickly. There's also plenty to admire though, your monster placements are generally chesslike, and the atmosphere is strong.

-First area: Kind of a slow start so I skipped these enemies on my second life. Think about the fact that most players will die in your map at least once and will have to replay the whole thing from the beginning. Ask yourself, is this a strong/fun introduction to my map and is worth playing over and over? In this case, I think plinking away with the pistol at monsters that are all spread out is a chore that should just be skipped.

-Crypt: You step into the crypt and it silently teleports you to the interior. If you shoot or punch while in this opening room, all of the crypt enemies wake up and crowd the space below preventing the player from dropping down. Use sound blocking linedefs around the pit so they can't hear you until you drop down. After doing something like this, always playtest it again and make sure it works and can't break. There's a room in the crypt with some perched revenants and imps against the walls. These should pop up after the player steps into the room, or else a player is just going to shoot them from the doorway like I did. In general, you should really try to break your own fights in playtesting to make sure there's not unintended ways to beat or cheat your fight. Most fights in the map can be cheesed. The final fight in the crypt is really fun, I was thrown off on whether to target the PE or the imps first, this is an example of the chesslike monster placement I mentioned before.

-RL fight: Don't dump a bunch of enemies into a big open flat space where the player has to just circle strafe around them, that's boring. Close in your environment more, put up more cover, have higher and lower parts of the battlefield with steps in strategic places that offer different routes to the player. Use turreted enemies around the edges of a fight to deter camping or circle strafing on autopilot. The other problem I had with this fight is that the only cover here is the crypt. The tombstones are too low to block rev missiles and are too close to each other anyways to really pivot around them at top speed. The trees, all objects actually, block the player but they do not block projectiles (Unless you are playing in GZDOOM. DO NOT PLAYTEST IN GZDOOM). Oh by the way, I like the headstone secret.

-Red key fight: This fight's nice, you have the area closed in so there's a more interesting fight dynamic here than just circle strafing. Closed in between different types of enemies has the player problem-solve on their feet, so this is another fight I enjoyed. Still, it's pretty easy to just run past the revs and camp everything out from the front of the church.

-Church: The baron turning into an archvile was clever, that really caught me offguard, nice touch. The bleachers of revenants do not need to have new revenants constantly teleporting in to replenish dead revenants. These guys are threatening enough and looping all the way around the church just to pump a few rockets at a time at them is really tedious. You'll notice I did not bother killing them in my demo. I realized the second time I played this fight that you can just run right out the front door. Don't let the player do that. Though, I didn't really feel too bad about it because the pews restrict movement in the church in a way that doesn't quite feel fair when you're trying to evade massive balls of rev missiles. Maybe a couple rows of pews in the front and back could be removed. As a last note, the pulpit's linedefs should be marked impassable. As a general rule, anytime you have DOOMcute, block it off, it's really awkward and immersion-breaking to step on top of it or bounce over it.

 

I plan to play the rest of these at some point, and I might record videos with commentary for you since it's easier to address issues on the fly, and you'll be able to see what I'm talking about at the same time. Oh, actually, one last thing- I didn't notice it in this map but something I noticed in your screenshots is that your ceilings are kind of ugly. It's something some people might consider nitpicky but it's something that I definitely notice, is when there's parts of the ceiling that are much brighter or darker than the other parts. Use a dummy sector and set the linedef action to "transfer brightness to ceiling" to fix this. For example, in your third screenshot you would make the brighter parts of the ceiling match the darker parts and in the sixth screenshot, you would make the large dark area of the ceiling match the brighter parts.

Wow that's a detailed list of good criticism.. I appreciate it.  Yeah I've only been mapping since last December.  I didn't even know there was a transfer brightness to ceiling action.  

 

At any rate appreciate the feedback, I never tried to break my fights too much in testing.  Having monsters pop up more is a good idea.  I'm actually playing Stardate 20x6 for the first time and that happens all the time lol

 

Want to add that I think the later maps fights are slightly less cheesible, but most of the things you mentioned are easy edits to map01 :) 

Edited June 21, 2023 by Treehouseminis : Removed questions after watching demo

[Matt Eldrydge]

Got to map03 just now, I can't offer much criticism but I am having fun! I gotta say I'm a big fan of the new aesthetic you chose to go for given Meat Machine is certainly more modern-looking. The revenants spawning from bone piles or in that big coffin in map 02 is a nice touch, and that last fight in the enclosed area is pretty great. Good job!

[Treehouseminis]

37 minutes ago, Matt Eldrydge said:

Got to map03 just now, I can't offer much criticism but I am having fun! I gotta say I'm a big fan of the new aesthetic you chose to go for given Meat Machine is certainly more modern-looking. The revenants spawning from bone piles or in that big coffin in map 02 is a nice touch, and that last fight in the enclosed area is pretty great. Good job!

Thanks!  Map03 is a slight jump in difficulty, but there's a certain cyber demon that spawns in an easier location on HMP lol

[DreadWanderer]

Managed to finish this yesterday. Great stuff. 'Observer' is pretty mad and exhausting but it feels great to finally get to the end. You are right about 'Lucid Dream' - possibly the trippiest map, with some very tricky fights. Consistently pleasing aesthetics that remain unsettling. Sadly I didn't catch the reference to your favorite band.

 

I might be ready for a bit of Sunlust now, after failing miserably a couple of years ago. I feel like I've definitely cut my teeth at slaughter with this map set, so thanks for making my journey a pleasant one!

[Treehouseminis]

1 hour ago, DreadWanderer said:

Managed to finish this yesterday. Great stuff. 'Observer' is pretty mad and exhausting but it feels great to finally get to the end. You are right about 'Lucid Dream' - possibly the trippiest map, with some very tricky fights. Consistently pleasing aesthetics that remain unsettling. Sadly I didn't catch the reference to your favorite band.

 

I might be ready for a bit of Sunlust now, after failing miserably a couple of years ago. I feel like I've definitely cut my teeth at slaughter with this map set, so thanks for making my journey a pleasant one!

Yeah observer might catch ppl off guard for anyone who's never played Sunder or Abandon.  Those 2 wads have notoriously long levels, just trying to emulate the greats lol.  And yeah If you liked this, I definitely think you can handle sunlust, I played it on hmp first time and it wasn't too difficult until the last 1/3rd.  

 

Thanks for the comments, and glad you enjoyed it! 

[Treehouseminis]

Uploaded 1.3 in the OP.  Fixed a lot of the ceilings in the wad.  Edited map01, slight change to one crypt fight, put sound proof lines. Church fight, got rid of a few pews and shrunk the ones that remained, reduced the amount of Revenants.  red door is only usable on the outside.  Edited map05, I made one fight less cheesible, more raising bars so the idea to abuse the elevators seems like a bad one, and it is usually, every time I tried to cheese it I got zapped pretty quickly anyway. 

[mancubian_candidate]

Howdy Treehouseminis, 

 

just downloaded v1.3 and it looks like I'm warped to a Teleport closet on starting Map 1 (have screenshots in Spoiler tag)

I might be being a silly billy so apologies if I'm way off haha

 

Playing on dsda-doom v0.25.6 on complevel 9 (Also tested on GZDoom and it's the same)

 

 

Spoiler

[Treehouseminis]

18 minutes ago, mancubian_candidate said:

Howdy Treehouseminis, 

 

just downloaded v1.3 and it looks like I'm warped to a Teleport closet on starting Map 1 (have screenshots in Spoiler tag)

I might be being a silly billy so apologies if I'm way off haha

 

Playing on dsda-doom v0.25.6 on complevel 9 (Also tested on GZDoom and it's the same)

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Oh wow thats embarassing lol.  When editing I forgot to redo the start.  I edited OP with 1.3 fixed.  Sorry about that!

[mancubian_candidate]

1 minute ago, Treehouseminis said:

Oh wow thats embarassing lol.  When editing I forgot to redo the start.  I edited OP with 1.3 fixed.  Sorry about that!

 

No problem at all, can easily happen - thanks for the quick response :)

Will get back to this tomorrow!

[nobleflame]

Just started this - I'm enjoying it. Only got to the church fight on map 01 so far (and died) but I really like the use of colour. Everything seems to have a strange green glow to it, which is cool.

[lunchlunch]

I was just gonna DM this to you but figured I might as well bump the thread-
Early Mass (Commentary)

Edit: just editing my comment to mention that this was very enjoyable, looking forward to what else you make

Edited June 26, 2023 by lunchlunch

[Treehouseminis]

12 hours ago, lunchlunch said:

I was just gonna DM this to you but figured I might as well bump the thread-
Early Mass (Commentary)

Says video still processing, which idk if I remember seeing on youtube before.  But I'll check back later for sure. 

 

@lunchlunch Ill just edit this comment instead of making a new one.  Very informative video, I appreciate you taking the time to play through all the maps (besides map01) all in one sitting.  I got some edits I wanna do now for sure.  It was hard for me to feel like some fights were grindy because Im the type of player that likes to induce as much infighting as possible, its one of my joys of the game, but yeah some fights can have reduced monster count and the difficulty wouldn't really change.  I also might make changes to the start of map05, after testing the fights, mostly the second one, even I got tired of clearing the little guys first. Also more ammo probably, testing the map I never ran that low on ammo but maybe its because I knew I needed more rockets.  And I will be more aware of the vile trope lol, I wasnt really thinking about how it could get annoying but I can see that. 

Edited June 27, 2023 by Treehouseminis

[fabian]

On 6/20/2023 at 3:48 PM, Treehouseminis said:

 --Small Visual bug I thought I got rid of but appeared in thelamps video of map03 so not sure whats up with Woof source port.  Recommend dsda or prboom

Could you point me to a time stamp where that happens in the video? Or  @thelamp probably? 

[Treehouseminis]

10 minutes ago, fabian said:

Could you point me to a time stamp where that happens in the video? Or  @thelamp probably? 

I went back to it and it's right after 4:21, pretty early.  I remember fixing it by removing some extra vertices on the straight lines, but i only tested on the 3 source ports i mentioned in the OP.  It looks like the floor texture bleeds out

[fabian]

I must be looking at the wrong video. 

[fabian]

Sorry, but I can only find a video of Early Mass map02 on youtube. Would you mind sharing a link, please? 

[Treehouseminis]

5 hours ago, fabian said:

Sorry, but I can only find a video of Early Mass map02 on youtube. Would you mind sharing a link, please? 

https://youtu.be/CteL1sSNur8

 

This should work 

[fabian]

6 minutes ago, Treehouseminis said:

https://youtu.be/CteL1sSNur8

 

This should work 

 

Ah, that's it, thank you. Now I can see it, yes, floor flat is bleeding through. Glad you fixed it in the map, but do you still happen to have the original map lying around for some debugging purposes? 

[Treehouseminis]

7 minutes ago, fabian said:

 

Ah, that's it, thank you. Now I can see it, yes, floor flat is bleeding through. Glad you fixed it in the map, but do you still happen to have the original map lying around for some debugging purposes? 

I do not sorry:/

[Treehouseminis]

Ok new version up at top.  1.4 hopefully last version unless I can think of other stuff. 

 

map02, fixed some lines that are now monster blocking, used more brightness contrasts in one area so maybe someone can notice a secret. added teleports to the pit in final area.

 

map03, Added some detail, added a secret and moved some items around to make one small area have a purpose.  more ammo in some fights.

 

map04, more ammo in some fights, reduced monster count a tad to make it feel less grindy.

 

map05, changed how the starting area feels, it flows a lot better now, less monsters teleport, cant get back to the start once the big fight starts.  get the rocket launcher earlier, a few more tougher demons than just hit scanners now.  Added more ammo in the later areas.  changed where the mega is so hopefully no one line skipped it like I saw in lunchlunch video.

[Maribo]

Decided to give this a go since I liked your newest work a lot, here's some FDAs for Map01-04:
earlymass-maribo.zip

 

First three maps are very nice atmosphere, particularly Map01 with the sky and the way the color palette tints imps into this sickly off-green color, and Map03 as a whole.
I played what I could of Map04, but you'll see at the end of the demo that the progression is broken at one point: Linedef 9786 has tag 225 but no corresponding sector, so the fight unfortunately softlocks you.

[Flyxolydian]

Thought I'd just pop in after playing this pack, amazing visuals!

Map 4 has an issue right after the giant Revenant wave, in that there is a switch that needs to be pressed to lower some bars to continue, however the switch can't be triggered. I've tried shooting, pressing, and combed the arena, but there's nothing that makes it register.

[Treehouseminis]

@Maribo @Flyxolydian Sorry about that, I remembered I wanted that switch to also raise a lift so you could go back to the beginning if you wanted.  I must have edited it half asleep last time cuz I didnt even have a voodoo doll in the closet I made for it, and didnt tag everything lol.  Just updated and tested that part fast it should work now.

 

link updated to 1.5

[Flyxolydian]

12 hours ago, Treehouseminis said:

@Maribo @Flyxolydian Sorry about that, I remembered I wanted that switch to also raise a lift so you could go back to the beginning if you wanted.  I must have edited it half asleep last time cuz I didnt even have a voodoo doll in the closet I made for it, and didnt tag everything lol.  Just updated and tested that part fast it should work now.

 

link updated to 1.5

Just been through, yep it's fixed thanks! I can start going for some single segment runs now haha. Not looking forward to map 5 though, the Revenant/Cyber/Baron basin is actually quite a tough fight