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Post by snowy44 on Feb 3, 2023 4:11:52 GMT -5
 DOWNLOADBe born into a twisted digital hellscape to learn what it's like to inhabit a reality that rejects you.    "The Cognition Engine" is a single Doom 2 map for limit-removing ports. Was tested in and should run in DSDA, Crispy Doom, PrBoom+ and Gzdoom 4.5 (but probably any version). The format is "Doom in Doom 2". No advanced features (jumping, crouching, freelook, etc) are intended. The map is somewhat exploration-focused, takes roughly 25-35 minutes to beat (depending on difficulty and how thorough you are with said exploration). Difficulties are implemented, UV starts off pretty easy but has a few tough fights near the end, though the difficulty may vary greatly depending on the amount exploration and secret hunting the player does. Because of that, and since the map is fairly lenghty, I recommend saving a few times. Expect HNTR and HMP to be on a significantly easier side. The map includes a secret exit that leads to a small secret level (it's mostly just for flavor purposes, does not include actual gameplay), UMAPINFO support is required to get to that level. Map includes custom textures from the following resources: rfhelltx texture pack, 32in24-15 Tex texture pack, Duke Nukem 3D, Bounce Tales. Music used is: Dark Seed 2 - MM018GM (main midi), Blood - Track 10 (menu midi), Cool Spot - Shellshock (secret level midi). Custom pallete is Technipal by Urban Space Cowboy. --- More higher res screenshots. |
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SilverMiner
You're trying to say you like DOS better than me, right?
The code isn't free if one can't close it
Posts: 1,039
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Post by SilverMiner on Feb 3, 2023 4:30:01 GMT -5
Looks interesting
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kvsari
Doomer
I like mapping.
Posts: 267
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Post by kvsari on Feb 3, 2023 8:30:02 GMT -5
snowy44COGEN_kvsari_fda.lmp (289.9 KB) Did not finish. Had a quick first playthrough and indeed I'll need to use saves for this. But I think the difficulty is just right so far and it does give the feeling it can be completed on UV first try blind, if only I had more skill. A very aesthetically pleasing level. It evokes suspense with spaces re-used for tougher battles. Especially those wall pods where successive waves come from. This feels like a very Doomy Doom level. High-end Techbase, or perhaps FleshTech. A very nice style and I think a good level. Keep it up!
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Post by snowy44 on Feb 3, 2023 8:42:26 GMT -5
kvsari Thanks for playing and thanks for the demo!
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roebloz
Doomer
HAUSE_ROEBLOZ
Posts: 111
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Post by roebloz on Feb 3, 2023 23:16:33 GMT -5
Mmmm, seems like a very interesting map!!!!
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Feb 4, 2023 13:31:55 GMT -5
A nice map with a cool setting! The Cognition Engine reminded me of the old, high-profile Tormentor667 maps. City of the Damned was the first to spring to mind. I didn't know these things were still in production but I'm glad that they are. I guess that it's borderline nostalgia now, more than a decade later. Well done snowy44 ! |
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Post by AskYourDrAboutUVFast on Feb 4, 2023 13:35:07 GMT -5
I played through the map, but didn't take notes since it was late. Figured I would re-watch the demo and then pull from there but the map took me like 1hr+ to complete. I think I accidentally played on complevel 21 but nothing seemed to break, if anything I probably made it a bit harder on myself in the final fight by removing the lost soul limit...oh well.
Here are my thoughts and some issue I think you should address. The map has a very cool theme. I really liked the pod that the player starts in and how they are littered throughout the map and used as monster closets and stuff like that. Nice recurring thematic element. The design is very abstract and the atmosphere made it quite uncomfortable to play the map, which I'm guessing is what you were going for. On the downside here, since the map's theme calls for the textures to be sort of smashed together into this 'twisted digital hellscape', I found quite often it was hard to get my bearings, or identify landmarks, especially in the indoor areas. A few times I even got completely lost progression-wise, notably when I was looking for the yellow key (i think?) around the large outdoor area. There is probably not much you can do about that given the maps theme and I can't think of any suggestions on improving it, but just figured it would be worth noting.
I think the start of the map was pretty light on hp. I was barely scraping by (health between 20-40%) up until about the blue key. Some spots I probably should have died to hitscanners but got pretty lucky. After the blue key I felt like it loosened up a bit and got more generous. If you were going for that sort of tight hp balance at the start then cool, if not I'd maybe suggest replacing one or two stimpaks with a medikit in the early goings. Later on in the map I got myself into a lot of trouble by trying to punch stuff, so me being pretty low on health throughout the remainder of the map was my own fault.
There was one switch in the large outdoor area, the one that the big red arrow points to that I had no idea what it did when I hit it.
Some of the combat felt a little bit samey in a few places. By about the halfway point of the map I started to notice a general vibe of like, ok here is another trap where some closets open with pinkies and imps, the pinkies are often behind me, etc. While not as noticeable in a short run-n-gun map like your dbp55 entries, it stood out more to me here because of the slower-pace of this exploration/horror map. Another area where I thought this was really noticeable was the big outdoor arena. While I appreciate you repopulating the area to denote progression, it felt like i fought cacos/lost souls out there like 3 or 4 times, and the same with the mancs/imps across the red ravine a few times. On the other hand, I quite enjoyed two of the fights near the end. The one behind the yellow key was good fun, especially once the revs were introduced. Seemed like they were always getting behind me somehow. The penultimate fight was pretty good as well. I actually died here a couple times, mostly because I failed to clear out the specters in the pit. I replayed this fight a few times until I developed a pretty good cheese strat for it. Maybe you could put a window in the spider closet or something to prevent that? idk. pretty fun stuff.
It is criminal that the final fight doesn't have a BFG. cmon bro. It was like getting blueballs for Xmas. I'd dock the map an entire letter grade for taking an hour+ of my time and then making me plasma/rocket cybers at the end, it left that sour of a taste in my mouth :[
I think I found 8 out of the 11 secrets and judging by the lift at the exit, I'm guessing I must have missed one story secret? Oh well. I liked the story segments, thats always a nice touch and the secrets had USEFUL shit in them which I always appreciate.
My last and most important note is that there are TOO many blocking decorations everywhere. Get that shit out of the playable area or make a dehacked patch and unflag them as blocking. The hanging bodies everywhere were immensely annoying, there was one evil eye which made going up some blood steps super painful, but the most egregious decoration was that stupid marble pillar tucked into a random corner in the outside area that made me fall down off the top path leading to the red key door. I swear to god i almost rage quit the map. I would highly recommend going through and getting rid of decorations that block player movement in combat areas. Between the wild texture use and the myriad of blinking and strobe light sectors, this map is busy enough. All these decorations get lost in the shuffle.
Hope the feedback helps, I enjoyed my time in the map.
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Post by snowy44 on Feb 4, 2023 13:57:44 GMT -5
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nnnvork
Doomer
Nom-nom Chomsky
Posts: 542
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Post by nnnvork on Feb 4, 2023 17:18:28 GMT -5
Cool map. Here's a 30 minute FDA to view at your own discretion: noisy_COGEN.zip (47.94 KB) |
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Post by snowy44 on Feb 5, 2023 1:51:51 GMT -5
nnnvork Thanks for playing the map!
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Post by lunchlunch on Feb 5, 2023 3:11:52 GMT -5
COGEN_lunchFDAAnother half-hour long FDA for ya. Nice map, feels fair. The fight behind the yellow key door was especially nasty but I liked it. A couple comments- There were lots of blocking lines where it felt like there shouldn't be, like indentations in the wall or the tiny bloodfall midtexture. These are annoying and immersion-breaking. Your monsters kept revealing secrets by opening them, so you should make those doors not openable by monsters. I didn't love the way the palette change made some of the monsters look, like the zombies having red skin. If you imported their frames from the IWAD, you could have easily remapped the colors in SLADE so instead of orangey red skin, it could use a range in the light pink or light orange part of the chart. I think that would have looked better but that's just me.
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Post by snowy44 on Feb 5, 2023 8:15:11 GMT -5
lunchlunchThanks for the feedback and thanks for the demo!
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Post by Killer5 on Feb 5, 2023 13:43:22 GMT -5
Fun map. Comments in zip.
Edit:
I forgot to mention that I wished these bright red areas in this large outdoor area where you get the non-secret ssg were pain sectors. Was sad when they weren't.
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Post by snowy44 on Feb 5, 2023 14:14:56 GMT -5
Killer5 Thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback! If you exited the map non-romero way that's defo a secret exit. If you weren't taken to a secret level that might be a prboom thing, I don't know if it has something to do with UMAPINFO or something, but I never really managed to make the secret exit work correctly on prboom. So feel free to warp yourself manually to map31 if you want to see the secret level.
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Post by Killer5 on Feb 5, 2023 16:43:44 GMT -5
I know. I just wished that there was something more to it than that, but I always have this kind of complaint with maps which are more abstract (Lullaby was a recent one that did the same thing). Maybe give us something more than a teleport away at the end to the true ending if you don't want to give a fight at the end. IMO you can definitely elaborate on that bit at the end.
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