Kiwi Farms Community Doom Mapping Project

[Judge Dredd]

What's 94 Protons?

 

[Pierre D'Olnique]

What's 94 Protons?

Apparently some /vr/ megawad that's taking Star Citizen time to finish release.

 

[Smithfield Ham]

Jersh's Day Out is my favorite map so far. The layout is kino.

 

[Evil LISA Clown]

ah bugger! missed thy legendary weeweefarms speedmapping collab! I doth not able to make me Liz Fong Jones boss fight in time...

Know where I can (eventually) submit this as a seperate wad?

 

[Dull Pencil]

ah bugger! missed thy legendary weeweefarms speedmapping collab! I doth not able to make me Liz Fong Jones boss fight in time...
View attachment 5854835
Know where I can (eventually) submit this as a seperate wad?

Try here. https://kiwifarms.st/threads/the-kiwi-farms-community-doom-wad-workshop.187437/

 

[Judge Dredd]

Updated the OP with screenshots stolen from the thread, and an extras file which includes the texture pack and a slightly modified version of the mod that allows you carry weapons from map to map.

 

[Dull Pencil]

I have created a thread for custom assets for future projects. Come and share your non-mapping Doom creations. https://kiwifarms.st/threads/kiwi-farms-community-doom-project-custom-assets-thread.187762/

​

 

[AnOminous]

It will make you through most of the level with nothing but just enough shotgun shells and clips, and then will throw rocket launchers/BFG at you at the very last moment just for a very specific part.

This is actually really common imo. That's why the instant you find a rocket launcher/BMG you should expect something extremely nasty to show up.

As a GM in D&D I once had a chest with a vorpal blade in it. Next monster was a hydra.

 

[Judex Meus]

Just finished playing through it today. I'll sperg like an autist give my review

Spoiler

General impressions:
+ Good amount of participation. I liked that there was a good mix of experienced mappers and noobs, even if some of the noob maps were of...questionable quality
+ I'm assuming a lot of these were people's first attempts at making maps, but overall I thought the quality was decent all things considered.
+ The maps made by who I assume were the experienced mappers were very fun. Jersh's Day Out, Rat's Den, and Troon Station 41 come to mind...although I lost my first run to a ghost chaingunner because I set my compatibility flags like a boomer in the last one
+ Texture swaps were kino
+ Humor was a bit cheesy in places but appreciated. Like starting a map by watching a room of troons die from exploding barrels.
+ Healthy amount of doomcute (furniture, props, etc.)
+/- Difficulty curve was fairly consistent and reasonable in the main set, not as much in the big maps. I still enjoyed most of the big maps though. Probably 90% of the "big" fights could be beaten with good ol' circlestrafing, but I wasn't going into this expecting Sunlust levels of hard or anything.
+/- Music was hit or miss. Mostly decent overall, although I wasn't thrilled that some vanilla tracks were left in when others had original ones.
+/- Poe's Law was in full effect for some maps - YWNB comes to mind. I genuinely couldn't tell if some of them were troll maps or just shitty.
- I'm kind of a boomer when it comes to port compatibility so I'm a tad biased toward everything being Boom compatible, but I don't think most maps took advantage of using gzdoom. Some of the gimmicks were cute if not totally original (for example, the non-Euclidean doors to get the keys in Server Suicide was a neat idea), but they mostly felt like baby's first time using gzdoom.
- What was the point of having two Fatrick maps separated out from the main set? Neither of them were particularly long (I also didn't read the whole thread so that might be on me).
- Speaking of the Fatrick maps: the first one was meh, not terrible for a first map perhaps. Fatrick's Intestines wasn't fun in the slightest. Again, I can't tell if it's supposed to be a troll map, but it's the only map I've ever played where the only ammo is actual BFGs littered around the floor. It plays like someone got pissass drunk, drew the linedefs in 5 minutes, dumped random groups of enemies and torches everywhere, and forgot to set the brightness above 20.
- The maps where everything is dark as hell, just in general. I know I can work around it, it's just annoying and doesn't add anything to the map unless you're clever with it.
- I would have liked to see some commentary from the mappers in the readme as well as track names for the music. I know I can throw it in slade, I'm just lazy.
- It felt like there were a lot of house maps. They weren't all bad or anything (I loved Rat's Den), but it felt kind of samey.

Big Maps

• Server Suicide
  • Not bad. Nothing particularly difficult or clever with the fights themselves (although I got a kick out of the last fight that started with a pinky teleporting in followed by a cyberdemon and spider mastermind, not gonna lie). Like I said before, some of the gzdoom tricks were somewhat neat if not particularly novel. Having Seek and Destroy as the track was a bit iffy, though I always enjoy pre-Black Album Metallica. Overall I thought the attention to detail was quite good; managed to mostly stay away from giant open spaces with nothing of interest.
• Stinkditch Fortress
  • Probably my favorite map in the wad, tied with Jersh's Day Out. Healthy amount of difficulty and there were a good number of clever ambushes. The nonlinearity was also appreciated, but there were times I struggled figuring out what hitting certain switches did so I spent a lot of time running around like an idiot trying to figure out where I was supposed to go next. Having enemies snipe you from distant buildings/cliffs gave me scythe 2 vibes, in a good way. I got a laugh out of hearing "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" the first time, but it got pretty grating around the half-hour mark. Might be intentional though. Personally I would have made this the last map of the big maps set.
• Enter the Balldo
  • Ehh. It was okay. It took the time to make gzdoom geometry (I think?) but didn't really do anything interesting with it except for the random messages. None of the fights were particularly difficult. I got softlocked in the "NIGGER" room because one of the platforms that were supposed to lower in order to hit the switch failed to lower properly (yes, I know I can idclip, I just wanted to point it out). Not a terrible map - especially if it was made by a beginner mapper - but it didn't stand out to me. Not really sure why this one didn't end up in the main set.
• Kaotic Fears
  • I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but the automap was broken and made this level really fucking annoying to navigate, especially because most of the hallways were dark. A couple of the monster rooms were okay, like the one with an archvile in the corner guarding the yellow key was a decent idea. The hallways were also way too fucking long, especially for being pitch black. Again, not a bad effort if it was someone's first map, but big, dark, empty spaces just aren't fun. Also not really sure why this one wasn't in the main set either.

Overall I'd go back and replay some of the fun ones later. If we end up doing another one, I'd definitely try to submit something. Also sorry if I came off as a dick or anything. If this was your first time making a map and I shat on it don't feel bad, I'm not that great at mapping myself.

 

[Kung Pow]

- I would have liked to see some commentary from the mappers

Yeah, my map (Kaotic Fears) is meant to be annoying in the beginning and I disable the automap because I was using a lot of portals, that would have been very jarring for the player to just jump around in the automap and break immersion, and I just dislike maps for this kind of game in general. I thought that only having two enemies in the labyrinth wouldn't piss off people, but oh well. On my end the hallways weren't that dark? And I always have sprint on. Anyway, I was trying to create something more artsy-fartsy, like when you go down stairs and the stairs disappear behind you or that hallway where you see those oceans of blood. Vanilla maps just look samey to me and I tried to create something different. Looking back at it, I should have gave it more time and effort.

 

[Judex Meus]

*snip*

I can appreciate more abstract level design. There were some in the Japanese community wad like that which I enjoyed. Part of it might have been my gzdoom settings fucking with my graphics settings - I usually use dsda-doom which looks and feels a lot different from gzdoom before tweaking the settings. The biggest issue I had was that it was difficult to tell which arena was which or where I was without stopping to peek inside (but that might have been on me again, I have a terrible sense of direction)

To your credit, I also thought the use of mirrors in the arenas was clever. Usually people don't put much effort into incorporating mirrors in their level design outside of props, at least not that I've seen.

e: I just realized the portals were probably part of the reason I was so disoriented. I'll give you credit where it's due if that was intentional.

 

[Laughing Muttley]

Someone reached out to me directly to signal a bug with a clearly marked door not opening on my map (Dilation Station 41) (in the stairs/crates room); I had encountered it once during development on weird/odd/old versions of ZDoom. It not being a thing on vanilla/chocolate and the latest GZDoom versions I thought it was a non-issue or a bug with specific ZDoom versions but if you guys encounter it too I'd love to hear your port and version so I can attempt a fix.
I think it may or may not have something to do with weird blockmap behavior.

 

[Pierre D'Olnique]

Poe's Law was in full effect for some maps - YWNB comes to mind. I genuinely couldn't tell if some of them were troll maps or just shitty.

I drew a shape and tried turning it into a level with at least some flow to it. Naturally just like with everything ever created the original design was much more ambitious but concessions had to be made in order to actually complete the fucking thing in a reasonable timeframe. If another project like that pops up I'll gladly participate again, provided there's more time. In hindsight, 1 month isn't a lot.

 

[Judex Meus]

*snip*

I should have elaborated. I actually thought it was a clever concept for a level and I really enjoyed it. It was just so antithetical to conventional doom mapping that I couldn't tell if it was intentionally done that way or not.

 

[stupid fufu]

newfag suggestion: maybe every march/april we could have a community mapping project?

 

[Migraine Box]

Jesus fucking Christ

I swear, I'm gonna have PTSD from Cyndi Lauper from now on

 

[ArticleWriter]

 

[Pierre D'Olnique]

Everybody keeps falling for the BFG greed trap. Unfortunate that the Fatrick secret did not make it in, though. I'm also really concerned about that fucking key not spawning. It's an actual issue that I can't fix because I'm unable to replicate it.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Fantastic video.

I've had my concerns that null might not have the best time, being a Doom noob, but that video is a great summation of the wad for those that don't want to play it. Also goes the extra mile and includes story elements too. Top marks.


While there are things I could change or add, I think the wad is in a good place and we can move on. I know there's at least one map revision I could add, but I'll leave it as is for now.


As for what to do next? I discussed most of this stuff in another thread, but I'll share my up-to-date thoughts here.

Spoiler: Future Projects?

This next month or two, I want to work on personal projects.

That said, I might run another KF community collab project in the summer. I have a few ideas I'm currently looking into.

More Doom​

Fairly self explanatory. I'd like to develop a proper theme and assets ahead of time. There's also all the people that said they would've entered if they'd known, as well as the hard work in the wad sharing thread.

Half-Life​

Pros

• I know it better than Doom (though that's still not much).
• More "realistic" and coherent setting.
• Less custom content clashing.

Cons

• Slightly higher barrier to entry.
• Tools?

When I last worked on Half-Life pre-covid, there were no good tools. Official tools were dated and buggy, and the community would get into slap fights about fan made tools. My initial research says this is mostly fixed with the free version of JACK, and Trenchbroom support being in a good place, but I'll have to look into it.

Half-Life (and Quake 2) is a game that's presented as one continuous level, so some co-ordination might be needed to make it work.

Half-Life 2/Ep 1/Ep 2/Left 4 Dead 2​

Pros

• Easy to install the mod?
• Lots of possibility

Cons

• Tools?
  • Set up?
• Wild swings between map quality
• No custom content?

Not worked with Half-Life 2 for almost a decade now. Back then tools were awkward and broken. A kiwi told me fan made tools have since been released.

Being the most graphically impressive game on the list, this can lead to huge gulfs between beginner maps and official quality maps.

There is a lot more creativity by using just map tools. Such as Left 4 Dead 2's "Let's Build" series, Nightmare House's jumpscare horror, or Research and Development's purely puzzle based gameplay.


For what it's worth, I also considered Quake 1 and 2, but I don't know if the gameplay of those is good enough to justify the legendary Trench Broom mapping tool. I'm open to it. I also thought about various 8-bit consoles and pseudo 8-bit fantasy consoles like Pico-8, Picotron, Tic-80, and Gameboy (via Gameboy Studio), but decided the barrier to entry and time investment would be too high. Though again, I'm open to suggestions.


At present, the siren's call of GoldSrc appeals to me, but all have their pros and cons.

 

[modern horrors]

Next project should get a front page pin as soon as it starts and not just after it's done.
I'm down to at least try and make something for HL or HL2, but I feel like entry barrier might be too high. If it's Doom again, then I'll make a map for sure.