My first wad - Charisma.wad

This is the first Doom level I have ever made. My goal was to make a level similar in difficulty to mid-tier levels of Sunlust while only using vanilla textures. There are also some puzzles and minimal platforming. One secret requires SR50.  

Complevel 2 / limit removing.

Tested with DSDA doom and PrBoom+

Replaces map 01 of Doom2.wad

Charisma.zip

Since this is my first time posting a level, please let me know if I am doing anything incorrectly.

Wow this was brutal.  39 deaths to get thru the map on UV.

I will admit, I played the map on GZDoom, and did not encounter any errors, but some of the issues I had encountered may have been caused by this, so if you know anything im saying is a discrepancy between PRBoom+ & GZ, just ignore it.

With that context out of the way heres my feedback:

The style of the map is very... masochistic, in my opinion.  I'm not a huge fan of this style that basically forces death onto unsuspecting players.  Like that archvile wave near the end,  i cant imagine anyone, regardless of experience beating that the first time.  Infact i feel very few of the encounters are beatable without prior knowledge of how they work.  Even the very first room was a bit of a grind to figure out the proper strategy to just get thru it without dying.  I think my biggest complaint is that, the encounters feel very linear.  like there is only one reliable method to get thru them, and you just need to keep dying to discover that method.  because of this i got into a routine of saving before pressing a button, just so i could see what happens, then die and start fresh... Its bit hard to describe what that feels like in game - but in a few words I guess I would say the map feels unfair at times.  Dropping the player into encounters that basically force a death without prior knowledge of how it plays out.

That being said, i had SO MUCH FUN playing this.  about an hour and 1/2 to get thru the map and i was never able to figure out how to get the gold skull.  nor was i able to get every secret.  (im gonna try to find all the secrets and get that gold skull cuz i saw it didnt unlock a new secret rather just your nice little end message, so i have a feeling all secrets are required for GS)

I also have some pain points in the playability I want to address:

The blue key staircase that leads to the red key i think is not timed very well.  Even when strafe running, hitting that button at the bottom to have to run up the stairs to shoot the switch is an extremely tight window.  so tight i couldn't do it with anything but a hit scan weapon.  then even after being able to shoot the switch, the platform it raises, goes up immediately, so unless you know where it is, i didnt even have enough time to make it back down the stairs, to get on.  I have 2 sudgesstions for this that i think could help:

Either increase the time that the shootable switch is open & also increase the delay between shooting the switch and platform raise.

OR

simply make the raised platform return to ground level after a few seconds, that way if the player misses it, they can just hit the button again, run up the stairs, and try again.

Overall I had alot of fun, might try to play through on a lower difficulty to see if its a bit less brutal and maybe eaiser to figure out what to do.  the progression isnt always clear, but that's not really a bad thing.  just keep going where the map lets you go and eventually you will reach the end, with or without the extra gold key.

This one is going in the collection of maps i need to replay for 100%

Amazing job, I can definitely tell you put a lot of time into this and I think you did a great job!

Initial apologies for the crappy gameplay.

At the same time, I felt you wouldn't have any clue on lowering the trap Megasphere when you don't know the switches' location beforehand in...ugh.

That was REALLY nice when you created those lighting effects at the beginning though!

7 hours ago, shroomzy5000 said:

Wow this was brutal.  39 deaths to get thru the map on UV.

 

I will admit, I played the map on GZDoom, and did not encounter any errors, but some of the issues I had encountered may have been caused by this, so if you know anything im saying is a discrepancy between PRBoom+ & GZ, just ignore it.

 

With that context out of the way heres my feedback:

 

The style of the map is very... masochistic, in my opinion.  I'm not a huge fan of this style that basically forces death onto unsuspecting players.  Like that archvile wave near the end,  i cant imagine anyone, regardless of experience beating that the first time.  Infact i feel very few of the encounters are beatable without prior knowledge of how they work.  Even the very first room was a bit of a grind to figure out the proper strategy to just get thru it without dying.  I think my biggest complaint is that, the encounters feel very linear.  like there is only one reliable method to get thru them, and you just need to keep dying to discover that method.  because of this i got into a routine of saving before pressing a button, just so i could see what happens, then die and start fresh... Its bit hard to describe what that feels like in game - but in a few words I guess I would say the map feels unfair at times.  Dropping the player into encounters that basically force a death without prior knowledge of how it plays out.

 

That being said, i had SO MUCH FUN playing this.  about an hour and 1/2 to get thru the map and i was never able to figure out how to get the gold skull.  nor was i able to get every secret.  (im gonna try to find all the secrets and get that gold skull cuz i saw it didnt unlock a new secret rather just your nice little end message, so i have a feeling all secrets are required for GS)

 

I also have some pain points in the playability I want to address:

The blue key staircase that leads to the red key i think is not timed very well.  Even when strafe running, hitting that button at the bottom to have to run up the stairs to shoot the switch is an extremely tight window.  so tight i couldn't do it with anything but a hit scan weapon.  then even after being able to shoot the switch, the platform it raises, goes up immediately, so unless you know where it is, i didnt even have enough time to make it back down the stairs, to get on.  I have 2 sudgesstions for this that i think could help:

 

Either increase the time that the shootable switch is open & also increase the delay between shooting the switch and platform raise.

OR

simply make the raised platform return to ground level after a few seconds, that way if the player misses it, they can just hit the button again, run up the stairs, and try again.

 

Overall I had alot of fun, might try to play through on a lower difficulty to see if its a bit less brutal and maybe eaiser to figure out what to do.  the progression isnt always clear, but that's not really a bad thing.  just keep going where the map lets you go and eventually you will reach the end, with or without the extra gold key.

 

This one is going in the collection of maps i need to replay for 100%

 

Amazing job, I can definitely tell you put a lot of time into this and I think you did a great job!

 

Thanks for the review!

I will admit I didn't test this on GZDoom, but I enjoyed reading your comments. Admittedly this map isn't designed for blind play.

With regards to the staircase fight,

With regards to the final fight,

About the yellow skull key, it is not required to get all secrets to find the yellow key. The yellow key can be obtained by

All in all, thank you SO MUCH for playing and leaving a comment. I really enjoyed reading it.

7 hours ago, LadyMistDragon said:

Initial apologies for the crappy gameplay.

 

At the same time, I felt you wouldn't have any clue on lowering the trap Megasphere when you don't know the switches' location beforehand in...ugh.

 

That was REALLY nice when you created those lighting effects at the beginning though!

 

 

Thanks for the review and the video! 

I was very impressed you beat the fight in the icon of sin room first try! I also can tell you liked the icon of sin texture :)

The fight on top of the rock structure with barons, revenants, mancubi, and cacodemons, the intended strategy is to jump down onto the metal catwalk and kill the enemies from below, or through infighting.

The intended way to get the mega armor secret is

For the Archvile fight with the color-coded switches,

I also noticed you reloaded your save almost every time you fell into the darkness, there are teleporters, and the darkness doesn't damage you, so I thought that was very interesting. I anticipated players falling off and didn't want to punish them.

Neat map Darth Plagus—it's very different from what I think most folks' first maps tend to look like! It's clear you have an eye towards designing tough encounters, as the map basically funnels you directly from one right to another. I think out of them, the archvile red/blue fight was definitely the most creative, although it's a lot better in theory than it is in practice. I'll run down my thoughts on the map:

- Visual design is a tricky thing to balance, isn't it? That starting room with it's angular lights leaves a strong impression (must've taken a while to make!) but almost every room in that portion of the map uses the same floor & ceiling flats, as well as the same level of brightness. This makes the eastern section of the map feel very "samey", especially considering how all the rooms are really just big rectangles too. The best tip I can give you here is to change flats & brightness when you change sector height. You can reuse old combinations at certain spots, but ideally each major combat room should look & feel distinct from one another. For instance I would've liked to see more usage of the TANROCK5 SFALL combo you hinted at in the second room, as it made me think the base was built into the side of nukage volcano or something.

- The first couple fights play fine, although the drop down in Icon room can get scuffed real quick if the player is facing the wrong direction. Probably would've been better to stick a few enemies (the revs?) down south near the icon, and give the player a little more room to breathe in the first few seconds. Also, I wonder if the pinkies should be able to move around the pillars in the first room, as the dominant strategy is to hole up next to one of the rev pillars and SSG the wandering AV to death.

- I both like and hate the whole darkroom section. On one hand it's really striking and I like having to move around this big sand structure, but on the other hand progression through this thing is ass. The blue & yellow keys are entirely unnecessary, I had no idea what switch at Linedef 973 did (and it could be activated from the pit below), and the climb to the north section where you have to leap onto a 1-pixel wide ledge was idiotic. Like it's unique I guess, but it's frustrating as it made me feel like I was missing something in order to get up to that ledge safely. I also wish there was an easier way to get back up after falling down, as the only warp available to the player sends them back to the start. Why give me skull keys if I can't even open shortcuts with them?

- Another spot I got stuck at was the switch at Linedef 1864 that temporarily opens up the shoot switch. I can't emphasize how important it is to give the player clear directions as to what the switches they press do, especially if its a timed switch in such a long room. There should be an arrow of candles on the floor pointing backwards or something—or better yet just toss that part and make Linedef 1864  raise that lift that will allow the player to escape. I get that you're trying to keep the player down there longer, but the slow raise of the lift being near the warp-in point already does that.

- Like shroomzy, I saw the final exit puzzle/fight and literally just quit right there, as I was in no mood to safely rocket like 30 archviles to death one at a time. I like the idea of the puzzle in theory, but it's just too many archviles to fight in such a boring corner. That, and the fight takes so long that the player probably doesn't even have to lock in the AVs and can just grind away at them down in the muck anyway. I think you could remove two rows of AVs to get your point across here. Or redeisgn the fight so the nukage room is like four times as long and the switch is at the south end of it, so the player has to block in the archviles or they'll escape by the time they get back to the MIDBAR steps.

- As I mentioend before, the red/blue AV fight is really creative once you figure out how it works, but it suffers from two huge problems: 1) the amount of megaspheres scattered about will have the player inevitably bumping into one or two of them before they mean to (especially if an AV tosses them) and 2) since the player can't see when/where the enemies are warping in, it feels very luck-based. Throw in the fact that you cap it off with an entirely unnecessary squad of archviles that are there just to burn down your megasphere, and I can't help but feel the fight plays way more sloppy than it's should. Seriously, nobles, demons, and hitscanners are all you need to apply pressure to the player.

- You have the reverse problem with some of the final fights, namely the specters in the dark and mastermind. These are woefully underpowered encounters, considering everything you threw at the player before. A breather fight now and then is fine, but it was just weird here, especially since you're not afraid to toss archviles at the player when they have 0 cover.

Ultimately, it was an entertaining map that showed a lot of promise. Keep at it and I'm sure you'll be able to look back in 5 years and laugh at some of these decisions.

EDIT: Also a minor thing I suggest every author does is to beat the map having gotten 0 secrets. The only one I got was the soulsphere near the chaingunners (when I was trying to look for the intended path forward), and some of these fights are really brutal when you lack the nice cushion of a blue armor.

16 minutes ago, dobu gabu maru said:

Neat map Darth Plagus—it's very different from what I think most folks' first maps tend to look like! It's clear you have an eye towards designing tough encounters, as the map basically funnels you directly from one right to another. I think out of them, the archvile red/blue fight was definitely the most creative, although it's a lot better in theory than it is in practice. I'll run down my thoughts on the map:

 

- Visual design is a tricky thing to balance, isn't it? That starting room with it's angular lights leaves a strong impression (must've taken a while to make!) but almost every room in that portion of the map uses the same floor & ceiling flats, as well as the same level of brightness. This makes the eastern section of the map feel very "samey", especially considering how all the rooms are really just big rectangles too. The best tip I can give you here is to change flats & brightness when you change sector height. You can reuse old combinations at certain spots, but ideally each major combat room should look & feel distinct from one another. For instance I would've liked to see more usage of the TANROCK5 SFALL combo you hinted at in the second room, as it made me think the base was built into the side of nukage volcano or something.

 

- The first couple fights play fine, although the drop down in Icon room can get scuffed real quick if the player is facing the wrong direction. Probably would've been better to stick a few enemies (the revs?) down south near the icon, and give the player a little more room to breathe in the first few seconds. Also, I wonder if the pinkies should be able to move around the pillars in the first room, as the dominant strategy is to hole up next to one of the rev pillars and SSG the wandering AV to death.

 

- I both like and hate the whole darkroom section. On one hand it's really striking and I like having to move around this big sand structure, but on the other hand progression through this thing is ass. The blue & yellow keys are entirely unnecessary, I had no idea what switch at Linedef 973 did (and it could be activated from the pit below), and the climb to the north section where you have to leap onto a 1-pixel wide ledge was idiotic. Like it's unique I guess, but it's frustrating as it made me feel like I was missing something in order to get up to that ledge safely. I also wish there was an easier way to get back up after falling down, as the only warp available to the player sends them back to the start. Why give me skull keys if I can't even open shortcuts with them?

 

- Another spot I got stuck at was the switch at Linedef 1864 that temporarily opens up the shoot switch. I can't emphasize how important it is to give the player clear directions as to what the switches they press do, especially if its a timed switch in such a long room. There should be an arrow of candles on the floor pointing backwards or something—or better yet just toss that part and make Linedef 1864  raise that lift that will allow the player to escape. I get that you're trying to keep the player down there longer, but the slow raise of the lift being near the warp-in point already does that.

 

- Like shroomzy, I saw the final exit puzzle/fight and literally just quit right there, as I was in no mood to safely rocket like 30 archviles to death one at a time. I like the idea of the puzzle in theory, but it's just too many archviles to fight in such a boring corner. That, and the fight takes so long that the player probably doesn't even have to lock in the AVs and can just grind away at them down in the muck anyway. I think you could remove two rows of AVs to get your point across here. Or redeisgn the fight so the nukage room is like four times as long and the switch is at the south end of it, so the player has to block in the archviles or they'll escape by the time they get back to the MIDBAR steps.

 

- As I mentioend before, the red/blue AV fight is really creative once you figure out how it works, but it suffers from two huge problems: 1) the amount of megaspheres scattered about will have the player inevitably bumping into one or two of them before they mean to (especially if an AV tosses them) and 2) since the player can't see when/where the enemies are warping in, it feels very luck-based. Throw in the fact that you cap it off with an entirely unnecessary squad of archviles that are there just to burn down your megasphere, and I can't help but feel the fight plays way more sloppy than it's should. Seriously, nobles, demons, and hitscanners are all you need to apply pressure to the player.

 

- You have the reverse problem with some of the final fights, namely the specters in the dark and mastermind. These are woefully underpowered encounters, considering everything you threw at the player before. A breather fight now and then is fine, but it was just weird here, especially since you're not afraid to toss archviles at the player when they have 0 cover.

 

Ultimately, it was an entertaining map that showed a lot of promise. Keep at it and I'm sure you'll be able to look back in 5 years and laugh at some of these decisions.

 

EDIT: Also a minor thing I suggest every author does is to beat the map having gotten 0 secrets. The only one I got was the soulsphere near the chaingunners (when I was trying to look for the intended path forward), and some of these fights are really brutal when you lack the nice cushion of a blue armor.

Hey dobu gabu maru, thanks for the review! I certainly didn't expect a mapper of your level to play my map. 

I agree about the visual design, I spent a lot more time designing combat than I did on visuals. The TANROCK5 SFALL combo was actually one of the last things I added, because I thought that room looked too bland. 

Regarding the sand structure, being able to hit the switch at linedef 973 from below was intentional (although I definitely agree what the switch actually does could be telegraphed better). It's also possible to Archvile jump to the blue key, making it possible to skip the entire sand structure. This was all intentional.

The 1-pixel ledge thing was a bit of an experiment, and I agree it's too tedious. I tried to balance this by making the ledge wider after you pass it, so you only have to jump to it (while it's one pixel wide) once. There is another way onto the ledge, but it's very obscure. You have to

The yellow key is only used to open an optional "Thanks for playing" room at the end of the map and doesn't count as a secret.

I completely agree about the part with linedef 1864 being too obscure. There are numerous ways I could have improved progression there. 

The final has too many Archviles for sure. Although it is possible to kill them more efficiently using the BFG and the streetsweeper method, there's still too many. I think halving the number of Archviles would make the fight more fun.

The final 2 archviles in the Red/blue room with the lifts I agree are a touch over the top. I actually removed them from lower difficulties but decided to keep them for UV. 

I will note that I did beat the map with zero secrets during a playtest, although admittedly it is much harder. I also attempted to beat the map with -fast monsters, but it was too difficult for me.

All in all, thanks so much for the very in-depth review.