Progressive Duel II
Progressive Duel Had Me Hooked
I became part of the Progressive Duel II team because I thoroughly enjoyed playing the mod! There was a period of my life where I used to do irregular shift work, so being awake at 04:00 am wasn’t uncommon for me; this unusual schedule presented me opportunities to play Doom online with people from America when a British person such as myself would normally be asleep.
After speaking to Decay & Fonze, I was roped into playing a bit of 1v1 duel mode on a beta copy of Progressive Duel II against them. Coming from a mostly single-player background, it was a fresh experience for me to go into an online, competitive environment. Needless to say, I loved it!
I felt like the effort that had been put into Progressive Duel II’s maps was inspirational – this, coupled with the project leader Ru5tK1ng’s request for more mappers, influenced me to contribute a map. After thinking about it for a moment, I realised my less-than-perfect background in Doom multiplayer was going to be my downfall, so I opted in to making a “Doomy” version of Quake Live’s “Toxicity”, with an interesting new lava-based texture theme.
After the initial layout build it was clear that the teleporters seen in the original map were best off not being present in this version – they enabled telefragging and essentially took any opportunity of catching an opponent off guard away from you due to the sound queues a teleporter gives. So to rectify this and enhance the flow of the map, I expanded the level’s geometry to have a couple of additional stair sets and an elevator. This change made the map immensely more playable, so I could get into the process of working on the visuals and tweaking the weapon placement and spawn locations.
With much back-and-forth contact with the team, I was able to make a new-school duel map that I can genuinely say I am proud to call my work, even if it is heavily referencing an already existing map for another game. After Progressive Duel II’s release, it was lucky enough to be awarded a Cacoward, something that only further reinforces that it’s a product to be proud of! I’d like to take this opportunity to say a massive thanks to Decay & Fonze for dragging me onto Zandronum and letting me join in on the fun, and to Ru5tK1ng and the team for letting me contribute to this fantastic map set.
Release Date
December 05th, 2017
My Contribuitions
- Map11 – “Ardens Oppressio”
Tools Used
- GZDoom Builder Bugfix