N0rdberg wanted there to be donuts. So there's donuts.

In my early days of playing deathmatch maps in DooM, I happened into servers running The Last Strike Deathmatch 2004. It's a pretty excellent set of maps and one map in particular I found amazing; map10: The Void. This was the first time I'd ever seen the trampoline/springboard function. In map authoring terms, it uses a feature called ThrustThing. I sat there with my mouth agape. "How the F?!"

The other year I had a map I finally deployed this ThrustThing feature in called Dystopian Playground. This map was an extension of an idea from my fake son, Curtis. What Curtis had done in Doom Builder is he created a tall cliff with a crapload of ammo and weapons. At the bottom of the cliff, he placed a nuts.wad amount of Revenants facing away from the cliff edge. So the idea was you grab a weapon and fire it at the edge of the cliff in the direction of the Revenants, they wake up and immediately launch their fireball rockets up at you. You step back and look up to enjoy the fireworks show. Genius! When I was revisiting this concept looking for something new to create, I figured those trampolines would make a great way to get around to try to avoid being tagged by Revenant rockets.

Well, it was fun for a little bit. I really did like the custom Revenant I made for this but then I started monkeying around with Monster Replacement Theory and found that the map was much better with hordes of Cacodemons instead. In fact, servers I've run in this configuration have probably lasted ten times as long as the original Revenant deployed ones.

Every time I play these days though, I keep saying to myself, "I need to re-do this map". The glaring (to me) issue is this damn skybox error. Most people probably don't notice it but to me, as a mapper, it sticks out like a sore thumb:

Yah, those two pictures are of the same error just shot from different angles and as you may or may not be able to see, the skybox background "bleeds through" where the flat surface should exist. In fact, the area immediately below it is a very useful landing location where a box of rocket ammo is located. So I see this error multiple times every time I play this map as grabbing that particular box of rockets is part of a sortof mail route I do in my strategy to cull the herd of monsters.

Obviously, having hordes of Cacodementals instead of Revenants without the use of the MRT modifier wad adds more reason to replace this map. Furthermore, I've evolved the Cacolauncher weapon since this map was made. Now, it's called the Master Blaster. It uses energy cell ammo instead of rockets. It shares slot 7 with the BFG instead of slot 5 with the normal rocket launcher. And in all of my maps of late, Yavin's Clone, Monsta BBQ and now, this map, Mo'Tanky Enemeesh, one obtains the weapon by first killing off a Carcinobus monster.

Anyhow, so I set out to make an improved version of Dystopian Playground. The final results are something I've never been more pleased with. There are 13 unique monsters, 14 if you include the Mechademon's disembodied leg. The liquid flat (actually it's a texture and that's one of the reasons it doesn't display on the floor in Odamex nor ZDaemon) was something I already had going back to Yavin's Clone. I did some new ASHWALL and IKROCK textures to match that liquid. There's new animated flats for the trampolines/springboards and not a whole lot of much else in terms of texture assets. The skybox is definitely an improvement from what I used in Dystopian Playground. The cliffs aren't quite as tall but there's still variance in heights which is nice.

The pod/spheres which hatch into Test Pattern Junkies were something else I already had for an external wad asset substitution I did on a server running Darkwave's Moonhenge map in mega5.wad. That mini project actually predates the Fyrepods I made for Monsta BBQ. The new pods for hatching Electrodemons were based on work by DeVloek who I can't thank enough but unfortunately, not an easy person to contact to convey those thanks.

The new purple Cacodemon, the Poisonberry Mental, was made specifically for this map so that's new for sure. I was just doing another recolor when thoughts struck me about modifying the firing behaviour. The odd shaped fireballs which drop straight down and bounce on floors a bit can't actually harm the player. They're just there to give this monster a look of drooling with energy. I think that turned out awesome.

Did I mention that things get blowed up? Things get blowed up real good!

Pages:

Downloads: