Hey guys

I finished a single player level for doom3,

DoomedbyZizZ 2 - Tower - A theme mix of hell and industial assets.

Tower is the first chapter in a serie of three maps. I hope the second and third will follow soon enough. (as in not next christmas)

download: (updated: 25/12/2007)

http://rapidshare.com/files/78972820/Tower.zip.html

Have fun!

Looks nice, going to try it out!

Cool, I've been waiting for this one, thanks

Nice you got it for download! Thanks Zizz, and nice job! I'll have to try this when I'm on my other computer =/.... On this comp I have Wacom Tablet as a mouse, not a very good demon killing device

.

Cool stuff ZizZ, had fun playing this awhile back will try it soon as, I'll try to give some feedback soon as i try it.

What a pleasant surprise this is! Nice work zizz, downloading now.

Just played through and must say, bra-freakin'-vo! I haven't fired up doom3 in a few months, but boy am I glad I did. The atmosphere was absolutely top notch!! Visuals, audio, pacing, item placement... all great! The lack of the flashlight combined with the frequent ambient music & sparse monster placement had me totally sucked in. I also really enjoyed the 'find your own way out' style of navigating some of the later sections. It feels good not to have my hand held throughout a level. On a couple of occasions I did get stuck in some funky bits of geometry, eg. the spiral ramp prior to the trites. I also noticed a few instances of texture stretching on some of the patchwork, but the darkness covered that right up

Overall, great job mate, the visual style of the level was spot on & the atmosphere was as thick as it gets, definitely looking out for the follow up!

*edit* The mancubus fight was also a bit off, as you had to open the rotating door to get a shot at them, yet they would be pushed back by it & then couldn't get through it. I think this would have played out a lot better if you put the player in the same room as them after they get the plasmagun.

hey!

Not bad for a first comment! Really happy you liked it

I made a trigger mistake with the mancubus! :oops:

New mancubus fixed version uploaded

oh wow this is superb. Ok i had to use the r_gamma command, i admit it :oops:

It was just a little 'too' dark imho. There was also some strange effects that happened now and then. The bottom half of the screen was blocked out by a black triangle when looking in a specific direction, but nothing major. I just turned slightly! :wink:

Hey this is a great map! Kinda reminds me of the older classic doom in it's feel and design. (not the d3 mod classic doom!).
I loved this map!! Brilliant work - make more!

Strider

Yeh like strider i had to use r_gamma, real good map though, my only main thing was was BKT mentioned with the mancabus. so nothing major

Hey guys

I finished a single player level for doom3,

DoomedbyZizZ 2 - Tower - A theme mix of hell and industial assets.

Tower is the first chapter in a serie of three maps. I hope the second and third will follow soon enough. (as in not next christmas)

download: (updated: 1/1/2008)

http://www.mediafire.com/?85b9xnxxwkf

Have fun!

Looks nice, going to try it out!

Cool, I've been waiting for this one, thanks

Nice you got it for download! Thanks Zizz, and nice job! I'll have to try this when I'm on my other computer =/.... On this comp I have Wacom Tablet as a mouse, not a very good demon killing device

.

Cool stuff ZizZ, had fun playing this awhile back will try it soon as, I'll try to give some feedback soon as i try it.

What a pleasant surprise this is! Nice work zizz, downloading now.

Just played through and must say, bra-freakin'-vo! I haven't fired up doom3 in a few months, but boy am I glad I did. The atmosphere was absolutely top notch!! Visuals, audio, pacing, item placement... all great! The lack of the flashlight combined with the frequent ambient music & sparse monster placement had me totally sucked in. I also really enjoyed the 'find your own way out' style of navigating some of the later sections. It feels good not to have my hand held throughout a level. On a couple of occasions I did get stuck in some funky bits of geometry, eg. the spiral ramp prior to the trites. I also noticed a few instances of texture stretching on some of the patchwork, but the darkness covered that right up

Overall, great job mate, the visual style of the level was spot on & the atmosphere was as thick as it gets, definitely looking out for the follow up!

*edit* The mancubus fight was also a bit off, as you had to open the rotating door to get a shot at them, yet they would be pushed back by it & then couldn't get through it. I think this would have played out a lot better if you put the player in the same room as them after they get the plasmagun.

hey!

Not bad for a first comment! Really happy you liked it

I made a trigger mistake with the mancubus! :oops:

New mancubus fixed version uploaded

oh wow this is superb. Ok i had to use the r_gamma command, i admit it :oops:

It was just a little 'too' dark imho. There was also some strange effects that happened now and then. The bottom half of the screen was blocked out by a black triangle when looking in a specific direction, but nothing major. I just turned slightly! :wink:

Hey this is a great map! Kinda reminds me of the older classic doom in it's feel and design. (not the d3 mod classic doom!).
I loved this map!! Brilliant work - make more!

Strider

Yeh like strider i had to use r_gamma, real good map though, my only main thing was was BKT mentioned with the mancabus. so nothing major

Really really interesting motif and a nicely detailed map; I can tell you spent some time on the arcitechture of the map. Reminds me of classic Doom Hell levels. I take it the inspiration for the basic idea might have come from the classic Doom Hell maps?
Also, interesting gameplay direction, depriving players of their light source and forcing them to think and explore a bit better, although I'm not really a fan of this, but you deserve props for going in a different direction than the usual D3 sp maps.

Which brings me to the aspects I'm less fond of.

I usually don't like the lack of a flashlight, because it means potentially unexplored areas of the map. Without a flashlight, it means you can't get a good look of the room you're in. Your map seems to have been designed specifically to place the player in a weak position without the flashlight, so I can't really criticize that as it's a matter of gameplay and gameplay taste.
The lack of a PDA with which to review mission objectives annoys me, however, and while some people seem to like having to run around confused as to what to do next, I'm not one of them. Again, a gameplay taste thing, but I still think a PDA with some measure of an overall goal to stick to would be nice. After killing the Commandos, I really didn't know if it was a mission accomplished (I doubted it, but you never know), or if there was more to do. In fact, the tip telling you to kill the Commandos was superflous in my opinion and it should rather have told you: "Find a way to deactivate the force field" and perhaps provide some subtle hint that the Commandos were upholding it.
If you must put puzzling puzzles in your map, at least put some measure of direction into it, so you know for sure that you haven't run into a bug that prevents the map from ending.

I can't say I'm a fan of the place with the two Mancubi and the constantly harassing Maggots. I generally hate the very idea of "running away from the enemy", unless it's a "tactical retreat" to acquire more firepower to return later to blast them back to Hell, so having an area that spits out a neverending supply of enemies (or seemingly neverending - I didn't stick around to figure out if it really was a neverending spawning of enemies, but it sure seemed like it), in this case Maggots, that force you to leave an area still teeming with enemies tends to render an otherwise cool map into a one-time experience for me, which is really a pity. I used to enjoy trying to get "perfect score" back in the classic Doom days, and getting 100% monster kills each time was my top priority. Leaving a map with anything but every single monster wiped out is severely dissatisfying to me.

Finally, I'm not a big fan of using "crawling imps" as enemies; at least not in fairly open spaces. They always strike me as out of place when used in the open. I'd rather save them for cramped spaces where it makes sense for them to constantly crawl around on all fours (because there's no room for them to stand up).

I also would have preferred a bit more activity surrounding the final "tram car" ride. The outside view of the tower is awesome, but it does seem to get a bit boring very quickly (perhaps it's because you can barely move on that platform?). The Lost Souls did spice it up a bit, but I think they should have shown up a slight bit more frequently.

Other than those "little annoyances" (don't let the fact that they take up a large section of this post scare you

- they just take a lot of explanation), I don't really have any negative criticism to level in your direction. The arcitechtural design is sound (outside view of the tower is impressive to look at in my opinion), and speaking of sound, the sfx was well used and also had some nice additions that fit really well with the mood. The lack of ammo is another good thing. I haven't played a game (custom made or otherwise) that made me watch my ammo counter as much as this for a long, long time. At time it seemed almost annoying, but only because I'm too used to have a fair amount of ammo, so suddenly running around with what seems like a bare minimum required some adjustment.
The puzzles also seemed to be fairly well balanced. Even the harder ones didn't take an excess of my precious time to figure out.

So overall, I'd say you did a quite good, above-average map that was interesting and exciting to check out, but sadly for me, it wasn't exactly the style that was right up my alley.

Hey ! Congratulations for this release !

Ill give this a try today.

Thanks for the informative post dsm. Its very help full to hear it from a totally different perspective.

My premier goal is to get good a gameplay balance, have something for everyone to enjoy and yet not annoy someone else with it.
Its hard to satisfy everyone, especially when you try unusual directions like the flashlight left out. Some hate, some like it.

I agree with your points about the "tips" and also wasnt totally satisfied with the very end around the tower.

Originally i had no tips at all cause i felt the whole mission objective screen felt out of place. But some play testers had problems solving it and i decided to hint a bit.
I wanted to smooth the manner how out a bit but totally ignored it after a whille. Point taken!

The fight around the tower had imps throwing fireballs at you, cacodemon and lost souls fights. I even played around with imps flying on other platforms attacking you. but i felt the fps impact was to big. I'm pretty sure if my machine wasn't 5 years old the scene would have looked different. So i made the decision to keep it simple and just let the scene serve as a visual treat after being frustrated by the endless maggot spawns. A point i also partly agree with. As in the sense of not being able to kill all and feel more "mission accomplished". But my idea was indeed to have the player run away and "escape" on the platform.

I'll be sure to have your post in mind while balancing gameplay for chapter 2.

Will be downloading as soon as I get on the high-speed internet computer, and hopefuly have fun playing this!
Right now I'm on the crappy dial-up comp atm
Nice work btw!

well, the map looks pretty nice and all i like the level design, and the music is also well combined with an ambient, but yes, it sometimes does seem a bit too dark (i had to increase both r_brightness and r_gamma cvars)

Code:

*How to install*

Extract the tower.pk4 in your /doom3/base folder 

Load the game - open the console by pressing the tilde(²³) button - type map tower - press enter

This Really annoys me.....I guess ZizZ doesn't know how to set up a mod properly. maybe someday... :roll:

and It's not only ZizZ many others do it too. C'mon folks get it together. That's what the mods select on the main menu is for. but other than that It's a nice piece of work, I am impressed with that.
but for what it is, It's cool so far.
best luck with it!

Since it's a simple map and not a mod, I cannot see what's wrong with placing it in the base folder. :wink:

OK I stand corrected, i guess your right. as a map only that makes sense.
I would've liked to have seen a more complete presentation however to make it overall more finished.
but in this case I may not be nesscessary, still a cool map though.

Hey guys

I finished a single player level for doom3,

DoomedbyZizZ 2 - Tower - A theme mix of hell and industial assets.

Tower is the first chapter in a serie of three maps. I hope the second and third will follow soon enough. (as in not next christmas)

download: (updated: 1/1/2008)

http://www.mediafire.com/?85b9xnxxwkf

Have fun!

Looks nice, going to try it out!

Cool, I've been waiting for this one, thanks

Nice you got it for download! Thanks Zizz, and nice job! I'll have to try this when I'm on my other computer =/.... On this comp I have Wacom Tablet as a mouse, not a very good demon killing device

.

Cool stuff ZizZ, had fun playing this awhile back will try it soon as, I'll try to give some feedback soon as i try it.

What a pleasant surprise this is! Nice work zizz, downloading now.

Just played through and must say, bra-freakin'-vo! I haven't fired up doom3 in a few months, but boy am I glad I did. The atmosphere was absolutely top notch!! Visuals, audio, pacing, item placement... all great! The lack of the flashlight combined with the frequent ambient music & sparse monster placement had me totally sucked in. I also really enjoyed the 'find your own way out' style of navigating some of the later sections. It feels good not to have my hand held throughout a level. On a couple of occasions I did get stuck in some funky bits of geometry, eg. the spiral ramp prior to the trites. I also noticed a few instances of texture stretching on some of the patchwork, but the darkness covered that right up

Overall, great job mate, the visual style of the level was spot on & the atmosphere was as thick as it gets, definitely looking out for the follow up!

*edit* The mancubus fight was also a bit off, as you had to open the rotating door to get a shot at them, yet they would be pushed back by it & then couldn't get through it. I think this would have played out a lot better if you put the player in the same room as them after they get the plasmagun.

hey!

Not bad for a first comment! Really happy you liked it

I made a trigger mistake with the mancubus! :oops: