Hydrologica (1.1 update)

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Shawny
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Hydrologica (1.1 update)

Post by Shawny »

After a long time I have finally finished it. I am pretty happy with the result, although nobody else played it yet, so who knows if it any good.
It a quite big map, but it also mostly open with key "markers" so no switches or keys hunting.
No fancy scripting or fancy dynamic lighting. :?

https://ibb.co/cjLEw9
https://ibb.co/b1CG9U
https://ibb.co/nkiOpU
https://ibb.co/bDnipU
https://ibb.co/iLKUUU
https://ibb.co/hnydOp
https://ibb.co/mNG9UU

12.10.2018 edit.
First of all I would like to thank you for your feedback and support.
And now thing I have forgotten to ask from you when I upolad this.
it should work with the newer version, but I was testing this with GZdoom v3.3.2.
Rendering I was using and map was built is Dark (even though some sectors may obscure enemies in the darker areas, so this is completely preference).
Please tell me what difficulty have you played on and if the resources were sufficient. And also some triggers on UV, NM may cause issues (trying to avoid spoilers) I couldn´t find a way around.

Download.
https://www.mediafire.com/file/l5akb2dl ... a.rar/file Old v1.0
http://www.mediafire.com/file/lbz8wmoew ... 1.rar/file current version

Thanks for playing and I would love to hear your feedback.

1.1 Patchnotes
Some rooms had been revamped to look better or to improve engagements.
Added few ambient sounds (waves, waterfalls, humming machinery and thomping sounds near the BFG room locks secrets).
Added details to some secret rooms triggers helping players secret hunting, in the case of BFG room secrets, sounds were added instead (as specified earlier).
Added more teleporter trigger lines and teleporter destinations from monster closets to help prevent enemies getting stuck and not teleporting properly.
Added endgame area where player faces enemies from really specific monster closets that hasn´t been activated (helping player get 100% kill count without activating every more route depending encounters).
A lot of block sound triggers had been moved or removed completely.
Killing former mankind enemies (humans, sergeants, chaingunners) now sometimes spawn lost souls or revenents near the area to divide player attention (mostly in early game).
Killing demon dogs now spawn real (ingame) demons (pinkies/specters).
Added encounters and ambush points. Added some normal difficulty (HMP) specific fights near the keys.
Goodies in some secret rooms had been replaced/rebalanced.
Number of backpacks had been lowered, ammo rebalanced not to max out too early (note that there should be enough ammo to kill everything by doing some exploration).
Amount of healing items (stimpacks, medkits and souls spheres) had been reduced, few berserk power ups added.
Some stimpacks are medkits on the UV+ difficulty (mostly in the early game to slightly compensate for no green armor at the start).
This map version uses updated version of DavidN´s plasma zombie scientist (this version drops cells).
Some glass panels are now "breakable" so that enemies will now attack player (or start infighting, some enemies are weird).
Hard difficulty (UV/NM) arenas had been slightly altered.
1. Ammo spawners are now one use only, but there are more of them and now spawn variety of ammo. (there is just enough to complete the arena - in case you had no ammo after teleporting)
2. Spider mastermind arena had been revamped (it´s far from perfect, but it is far better than V1.0 was).
3. Blue key arena now has usable switch on the player side instead of shootable one on the opposite platform.
4. Every arena now has a Soul sphere instead of regular healing items.
5. Teleporters placements and enemy count/variety had been slightly rebalanced.
Last edited by Shawny on Mon Jan 07, 2019 6:39 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Rex705
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Re: Hydrologica

Post by Rex705 »

wow, this map is beyond large it just never ends! Lot's to explore and get lost in. the level design is very cool I liked all the different areas and visuals. It's fun when you come back around to an area you have been and say " Oh I remember this from a few hours ago". I never did make it to the end or see all the locations they finally got me. I found the red key in one play but never saw the others. It's lots of fun and looks great just so big. Could easily be made into multiple maps. I was going to do a video like I do for other maps but this would be a looooong video lol :)
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Shawny
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Re: Hydrologica

Post by Shawny »

Honored to hear that.. It was the intention, to get lost, the good kind of lost. The keys are indicated on the map from the start, so if you wanna just rush the keys, you probably can, if you have the means - weapons, ammo, etc. There are multiple all around the different parts of the map. In theory you can go any way you want and not be punished. I tried to place resources that way. Thank you for you time and have fun finding everything.
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Gorec
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Re: Hydrologica

Post by Gorec »

voted this for cacoward-cool design,lots of enemies and it doesnt lag(even with mods),there was no markers on map for keys(maybe cuz of the mod)but i found them anyway
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DavidN
 
 
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Re: Hydrologica

Post by DavidN »

I've made it about a sixth of the way through this so far going by monster count - an epic map in the true sense of the word :) I love how it wraps around itself, showing you future areas that you're going to get to by looking out across courtyards and so on, and there's a good balance between making these rooms resemble places like a lecture hall and observation chamber without them being to the detriment of the level design.

I appreciate the pockets of big clusters of human enemies, which make sure your ammunition stays topped up - in fact in general I like the difficulty level, being a large WAD that's actually intended to be completed by humans (or maybe everything just seems easier now because I've just tried playing Plutonia and there aren't eight thousand chaingunners everywhere). And it's nice to see the plasma zombie scientist in the wild :)

At first I tried to keep all the routes I was missing in mind and go back to explore them later, but by this stage I definitely know I've got a ton of open areas left unexplored - despite it all being a tech base, I feel that each place has its own personality which makes it less confusing to navigate than it could easily have been. Will finish this over the next couple of nights :)
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Enjay
 
 
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Re: Hydrologica

Post by Enjay »

An impressive map. It's almost like an entire episode in one map (to be fair, I might have preferred a series of smaller maps myself, but that's just a personal "maybe" preference).

For the most part the exploration, enemies and difficulty curve seemed fair and well paced and the visuals were nice and varied but with each area having a logic to why it was different. It's interesting and refreshing to see such a large map depending on very few additional textures, making it a very old-school tiny sized download.

The only thing that really irked me is the one armed zombie scientist is only drawn from the basic 5 angles - so his missing arm keeps changing sides. It's a very minor thing - but it got under my skin for some reason, and I couldn't not see it whenever I encountered them. I I think that I used the same sprite in my Waterlab map but I added (probably quite badly) the missing angles. Perhaps I should upload them to Realm667.
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Shawny
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Re: Hydrologica

Post by Shawny »

Rex705 wrote:Could easily be made into multiple maps. I was going to do a video like I do for other maps but this would be a looooong video lol :)
Well, I started that in ZDoom Hexen config and it was planned to be like a hub based map, but later on I combined (really eary stages) parts of the both maps and it kinda fitted so I used them all together. Map can be completed in 30 minutes or less with the right route if you wanna kill things along the way and not just speedrun it.
If you want to do all, that takes about an hour. More on UV+
Spoiler:
Gorec wrote:there was no markers on map for keys(maybe cuz of the mod)but i found them anyway
The markers aren´t really modded in indicator or anything. They are sectors shaped as keys lowered by 1 and set to be visible from the start. They are also set to raise when you are trigger the line near them, so I guess that is why you have not seen them.
DavidN wrote:I love how it wraps around itself, showing you future areas that you're going to get to by looking out across courtyards and so on, and there's a good balance between making these rooms resemble places like a lecture hall and observation chamber without them being to the detriment of the level design.
I wanted to do a more open map in a "go any direction you want and explore" style map and I feel I (for the most part) did that. And yes, I have (like everyone) a personal design preferences and approach to placement, map structure etc. That is why scientist zombies are located only in "computer rooms", there are no demons and possesed enemies together on the same plane and the different room are connected "semi-realistic/logical".
DavidN wrote:I appreciate the pockets of big clusters of human enemies, which make sure your ammunition stays topped up...
I wanted to do a little more with the enemies behind glass, but I am not sure if what I wanted is even possible (probably, I just can´t script a thing atm). About the chaingunners... yeah, Plutonia is know for that, we all know . :D
And I have few parts with them on higher ground too.
Enjay wrote:An impressive map. It's almost like an entire episode in one map (to be fair, I might have preferred a series of smaller maps myself, but that's just a personal "maybe" preference).
To be honest, I went down the rabbit hole with this one. As I mentioned earlier it wasn´t planned from the beginning to be that big, but I said to myself, "this would be cool here and this and that...". The result is not bad if I do say myself.
Enjay wrote:It's interesting and refreshing to see such a large map depending on very few additional textures, making it a very old-school tiny sized download.
I worked on that map for 1,5 year (on and off) on a ZDoom Hexen format in the older version of Doom builder (this is why I have no dynamic lights). And also I am familiar with the default textures so it is easier to theme the map that way. If I tried to do all the fancy stuff that I am not familiar yet, the map would probably never be finished. But I plan to learn a few new things, add new textures etc. for the new projects.[/quote]
Enjay wrote:The only thing that really irked me is the one armed zombie scientist is only drawn from the basic 5 angles - so his missing arm keeps changing sides. It's a very minor thing - but it got under my skin for some reason, and I couldn't not see it whenever I encountered them. I I think that I used the same sprite in my Waterlab map but I added (probably quite badly) the missing angles. Perhaps I should upload them to Realm667.
I haven´t noticed, even if I had, I can´t do graphic so I am absolutely grateful for the custom sprites, they really fit nicely to the overall them I went for. I just hope the use of the sprites in my map makes authors justice.

I would like to thank you for your feedback. I am flattered. :D
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DavidN
 
 
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Re: Hydrologica

Post by DavidN »

Finished it! 1 hour 57 minutes, and I absolutely loved it - it felt great to explore in all directions, and I only found myself stuck once or twice, scouring the automap for where to go next. The blue key was the last one I found even though in hindsight its location is fairly obvious. You really kept the momentum going right up until the end, I couldn't imagine how you could end a map like this in anywhere near a climactic enough way but you did it justice - it felt like a triumphant escape after all of that, and continuing to Underhalls has never felt so boring by comparison :)
Spoiler:
@Enjay, I'd love it if you could submit those sprites to me or to Realm667 as an improvement! I originally gave the plasma scientist a missing arm just so that I didn't have to draw it in the walk cycle :) But it instead made it much more obvious when the sprite was flipped.
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Shawny
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Re: Hydrologica

Post by Shawny »

DavidN wrote:The blue key was the last one I found even though in hindsight its location is fairly obvious.
One of the reasons why I decided to "make" a key marker on the map. Keys are kinda obscured in general.
Spoiler:
Also, my apology for not noticing earlier that you are the author of the plasma zombie. :?
The name seemed familiar to me, but never connected the dots, even after my last comment... then I stopped being lazy and checked the credits.
Thank you again for creating that sprite and for your positive feedback. Glad you like it.
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Shawny
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Re: Hydrologica (1.1 update)

Post by Shawny »

Hi everyone.
After I got an amazing feedback from a doomforum user I decided to update the map.
I would like to thank everyone who played v1.0. I hope you had a decent time.
I updated the download link and posted patchnotes for v1.1 in the original post.
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scalliano
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Re: Hydrologica (1.1 update)

Post by scalliano »

Thoroughly enjoyed this. The sheer scale and open-endedness of the map gave it a real Metroid vibe - many times I found myself going, "Oh, I'm here again!" as the map doubled back on itself time and time again. Al in all it took me the better part of two hours to beat and I still only managed 16% of the secrets. The only gripe I had was that it seemed that at every corner I was being mauled from behind by a group of Lost Souls.

This one's a keeper. I'll definitely be firing it up again.
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