MAP15: The Inmost Con'dens'ed (Claustrophobia 1024)

MAP15: The Inmost Con'dens'ed is the fifteenth map of Claustrophobia 1024. It was designed by James Paddock (Jimmy), with edits by Brett Harrell (Mechadon), and uses the music track "Watz Next?" from ROTT by Lee Jackson.

This level contains a secret exit leading to MAP31: Skyscrape IV.

Walkthrough

 * Letters in italics refer to marked spots on the map. Sector numbers in boldface are secrets which count toward the end-of-level tally.

Essentials

 * Normal exit:


 * Secret exit:

There is a small trapezoid-shaped opening with a candle in it at the far end of the starting corridor. Walk up to it, back into the left-hand corner and face slightly towards the right (a very tiny arrow-shaped sector (sector 245) can be used to tell you roughly where you should stand). A switch should be visible in the far wall, though it may be slightly obscured by the candle in the opening. Shoot the switch with an impact weapon, then proceed through the level normally.

It should be noted that the switch should be activated before progressing too far through the level; crossing linedef 1716 (in front of the second wooden door) will deliberately hide the switch, making it impossible to trigger the secret switch legimiately, and extremely difficult (but still possible) to do so via idclip.

Once you reach the exit, you will walk over an invisible sector (sector 250) that will trigger a secret (playing in a modern sourceport will bring up a message to denote this). An opening in the right-hand wall has opened up, revealing a red switch. Pressing it will take you to the first secret level, MAP31: Skyscrape IV.

Secrets

 * 1) After the retracting skull switch (sector 230) is pressed, it lowers a set of bars into the middle "courtyard" which houses a raised pedestal on which is a blur sphere. If the player performs a running jump off the ledge with the now lowered bars, he should be able to reach far enough to land on top of the pedestal (sector 255) and grab the sphere and trigger the secret.
 * 2) Shooting the switch that exposes the secret level entrance switch raises a floor (sector 250) near the exit which is tagged as secret. The floor is 128 mapunits below the ground level and its sides are untextured, so the player will not notice it at all even after it has risen. The player will only trigger the secret after it has raised, however.

Bugs

 * Linedefs 1335, 1319, and 1340 are misaligned.
 * Linedefs 265, 267, 214, 251, 242, 215, 235, 229, 223, 209, 205, 196, 213, 183, and 150 are all 1 mapunit in length, and adjacent. They suffer from an extremely bad misalignment but due to the way they are set up (they create the illusion of a slope in their respective sectors), aligning them properly without causing glaring misalignments in the rest of the map would be nigh impossible.

Deathmatch
The map has deathmatch starts and additional weapons are provided in multiplayer, but due to its cramped layout and reliance on voodoo dolls for certain effects, including opening doors and lowering bars, it is not suited to deathmatch at all.

Inspiration and development
This map takes a lot of inspiration from MAP14 of Doom II (the use of BIGBRIK*, BSTONE*, WOODMET* and FLAT10 in its texture set) and MAP18 of the Plutonia Experiment (the tan bricks, the blood surrounding the playing field).

The author, James Paddock (Jimmy), had to submit the map to the project several times, as it was one of the buggiest maps in its early stages. Eventually, the author decided that he no longer had the time to work on the map further, so he turned over the finishing touches to Brett Harrell (Mechadon), who ironed out the final few bugs and added aesthetic touch-ups to some areas of the map (two of his most prominent edits are the addition of wall detail to sector 234, and the addition of a voodoo doll crusher which is activated if a player crosses over the 1024x1024 boundary line).

The map's name itself is a pun; the inverted commas highlight the word "dens" in the word "Condensed".