Design

I’ve been trying to get over a terrible sinus infection for almost two weeks now. It has pretty much made me completely useless as far as getting any work done. Today I’m finally starting to feel almost 100% back to normal, so I’ve been trying to get back into the swing of my Doom projects lately.

In my downtime, a fellow Doom modder called Vader worked on detailing a speed map I made for the Back to Saturn X project. He finished it up a few days ago and, after some additional editing from myself, the map is pretty much done! Of course you’ll have to wait until BTSX is done to play it, but why not have some screenshots

The name of the map is Shocker in Gloomtown. The theme is some sort of weathered and worn looking castle ruins. I really wanted to play with the ruin textures in the resource but never really got a chance to since most of my maps were already done before the textures were made. This speedmap gave me a really good opportunity to use them, although in this instance Vader was the one doing all of the texturing and detailing work. I didn’t really specify to use the ruin textures in this map; mostly I just gave Vader a vague idea of what I had envisioned and then let him run with it. The end result turned out better than I was expecting, and I was expecting a lot! Vader is probably very well known in the mapping community for this exquisite sense of detailing. Don’t believe me? Go and play some of his works (I highly recommend Thunderpeak and Blackrock…but you really can’t go wrong with anything he touches). Vader has also contributed many maps for BtsX, so this map isn’t the only one where you’ll see his work.

Anyways, if you haven’t figured it out yet, this was a collaboration map between Vader and myself. I did the layout and gameplay elements while Vader did all the pretty visuals. We both contributed bits to gameplay and visuals as well. I spent about 3 hours doing the bare layout and then another 8 hours adding gameplay, flow, and map things. 11 hours still counts as a speedmap, right? The map is pretty interesting in the gameplay sense. It’s fairly dense and compact with monsters around every corner bearing down on you. The normal flow is linear but allows for some exploration, which might get you into trouble if your not well prepared. However the map utilizes two secret keys which drastically changes how the map can be played and makes it a bit more non-linear. In fact you can be the map with just the two secret keys while ignoring the normal key. It’s a fairly short map, well in relation to my other BtsX contributions at least. In fact that was the main reason why I made this map. Essel was asking for some shorter maps to mix in with the many larger, more complex maps. While it didn’t turn out as small as I would have liked, it is definitely not the 1-hour adventure fest like many of my other maps are.

It was a real pleasure working with Vader on this map! He did a fantastic job detailing it so I hope you guys enjoy it once it is released. I don’t do collaborations very often, but if they all went as smooth and fun as the one I did with Vader, then I’d definitely be up for it more often.

This map officially marks the end of my contributions to the Back to Saturn X project. I’ve done a total of 5 maps for the project which have kept me very busy for the past 1-1/2 years. And it has been a blast! I’ve recently played through a testing version of E1 and it is one of the best map packs I’ve played in a long time. Seriously, I’m not saying this just because I a part of the team. It really is a lovingly crafted work of art from some of the most prolific and talented minds in the Doom community! And it should be released not too long from now, so keep your eyes peeled. You can bet I’ll have a post ready here once it does launch