DescentBB

I am not good at making levels so if anyone wants they can help make this level for me. It's a D2 level.

Okay, when it starts out you are in a medium sized square room. There are no visible exits or entrances, but there are some powerups, notably:

1 laser boost
2 energy boosts
2 shield boosts
1 4-pack of concussion missiles

On the wall in front of you, there are two switches, one on the right and one on the left. If you shoot the one on the right, it opens a wall on the right of the room leading to another equally-sized room which releases around two dozen thiefbots and 3 boarshead robots.

If you hit the one on the left, it opens a wall leading to a tunnel to the left and below the switch.

When you go through this tunnel, you go past two secret doors that open when you pass them. Each door has a Lou Guard and one has a 4-pack of homing missiles and the other one has an energy to shield converter. At the end of the tunnel there's a 4-pack of guided missiles and a locked door. It's the kind of door that looks like a grate, and you can shoot through it. On the room in the other side there are the following robots:

2 Lou Guards
3 Diamond Claws
4 ITD bots
1 ITSC bot

To open the door, you have to shoot one of your guided missiles through the door, and move it around to hit a secret door on the back of a column in the middle of the room. Then you have to quickly shoot a second guided missile and guide it into that door before it closes, make a very sharp turn upwards, and hit a switch on the ceiling of a small tunnel behind the secret door.

In the room, besides the robots, there are the following powerups:

2 energy powerups
2 shield powerups
1 4pack of Mercury missiles
1 Smart missile
1 laser boost
1 4pack of Proximity Bombs

We'll call this room A. There are 3 exits to the room, one on the right (from where you came in), one on the left, and one on the opposite side of the column. If you take the one on the left, it leads you to a large open room with 4 earthshaker missiles in the center. If you grab the missiles, the door you came in from will lock, and the floor will open up under you to reveal a level 24 boss (alien 2 boss). There are some tunnels you can go in to hide, and in the tunnels there are the following powerups:

1 invulnerability
1 cloaking device
2 mega missiles
4 shield boosts
2 energy boosts
1 extra life

The only way to get out of the room is to defeat the boss. When you kill it, it doesn't end the level, it just dies like a normal robot. Then the door you came in from unlocks.

If you take the front exit from Room A (opposite the column), it leads to a small room with the following robots and powerups:

1 boarshead
2 Spiders
4 Red hornets
1 4pack of concussion missiles
1 4pack of homing missiles
1 Vulcan cannon
2 containers of vulcan ammo

There is also a tunnel in the back of the room that leads to a looping energy center, like a ring. If you enter it, however, the door you entered the room from will lock and you are trapped.

If you take the right passage from Room A, it leads to a 3 - way intersection. We'll call this intersection Room B. If you go to the left, it leads to a tunnel with 4 diamond claws in a row, as well as 3 boarsheads behind them. There is a spreadfire cannon at the end of the tunnel.

If you go straight ahead in Room B, you see a dead end with a mega missile at the end. If you grab the mega missile, a forcefield appears behind you and you are trapped.

If you take the right passage from Room B, it leads to a room with 3 energy thieves and a Lou Guard. The Blue Key is in this room, but when you approach it grates appear around it. You can't get to it from here.

To progress, in Room B you have to hit a secret door on the ceiling, which has a switch that you shoot to unlock a door. Then you shoot opposite the first secret door to open another secret door on the floor. As soon as you enter the floor door, the secret door locks behind you. After a short turn in the tunnel, there is another door. The reason you had to hit that switch is because if you didn't, the door in front of you would be locked too and you would be trapped.

Anyway, go through the door, it will lead to a very small room with two other doors in it. This will be called Room C. The left door leads to what is apparently a dead end, but if you shoot the wall to the right it opens a secret door that leads to the Blue Key behind the grates that you saw earlier. Go back to Room C and take the other door.

There will be a triangular room with a bunch of robots, including BPers, ITD bots, ITSC bots, Diamond Claws, Energy Thieves, and Spiders. Behind them is an energy center, as well as two shield powerups and a Gauss cannon with 2 containers of Vulcan ammo. Go through a door at the end of the room, and it will lead you into a forcefield - lined corridor in the middle of a large room, with 2 4packs of Homing missiles and 2 4packs of Guided missiles in it. In the room outside of the forcefield, there will be the following robots:

2 Lou Guards
2 Boarsheads
2 Spiders
2 ITSC bots
2 Seeker bots
1 Miniboss (Orange Fatty)

After you have passed the forcefield corridor, it leads to another tunnel with 2 doors at the end. We'll call this Room D. Opening the right door appears to be a dead end, but there is a secret door in the ceiling, it has a switch that you can shoot. Then you have to race back to the forcefield corridor because a secret door has temporarily opened leading into the room outside of the forcefield with all of the robots. In this room, there are the following powerups:

2 Earthshaker missiles
1 Omega Cannon
1 Fusion Cannon
4 energy boosts
2 shield boosts
1 Invulnerability
1 Cloaking device
2 4packs of Mercury Missiles

There is also a secret door on the floor that has an extra life in it, but if you try to grab the extra life, a forcefield appears behind you and you are trapped. You can get it however by shooting a different secret door open, then following a tunnel to open a door on the opposite side of the Extra Life compartment that only opens one way. Now go back to Room D and take the door on the left. It will lead you to your first Mandatory Boss Challenge.

There will be a medium - sized room with a Red Fatty Boss, except it will have a yellow texture on it because it will be carrying the Yellow Key. Once you kill it (it does not end the level), several walls around the room will open, revealing a much larger room with 6 more Red Fatty bosses, as well as:

2 Seeker bots
2 Fox Attack Bots
2 Ice Spindle defense bots
4 PESTS
2 PIGs
2 Repulsion smelters
1 Thief

and

2 Earthshaker missiles
2 Mega missiles
2 4packs of Guided missiles
1 Helix cannon
4 energy boosts
6 shield boosts
1 cloaking device
1 Gauss cannon
2 containers of Vulcan ammo.

Once you have killed all of the robots and bosses, a door will open on the opposite side of the room. This door will lead to a small room with 9 doors on the opposite wall, arranged in a square. This is a puzzle. You can open all of the doors, but they all appear to be dead ends, with just a single cube of space behind each.

Now if you number the doors from 1 to 9, the make a pattern like this:

123
456
789

You have to enter the doors in the following order:

1,4,5,9,8,2,7,3,6

If you enter them in any other order then you can't proceed in the level. Once you complete the puzzle, a wall will open in the back of the cube behind the central door (door 5). Behind this wall there will be a long corridor where you can see the Red Key about halfway through it. Immediately in front of you however there will be an afterburner powerup. Move through the corridor, but when you grab the red key the walls will open around you, and you will find yourself in a room with 2 Level 12 bosses (Lava bosses) pointing at you from opposite directions. The exit to the room in front of you is so far away that even using the full charge of the afterburner you will only get 3/4s of the way there.

If you manage to kill the Lava bosses they drop an extra life and an Earthshaker (1 in each), but you don't have to, just escape the room. The Red Door is on the other side. When you go through it you'll enter a large room with the following robots and powerups:

2 Seeker bots
2 Minibosses (Orange Fatties)
2 Smelters
6 ITD bots
6 Red Hornets
6 Green hornets
4 Omega Defense Spawn
2 ITSC bots
2 Cloaked Diamond Claws (they each drop cloaking devices when killed)
1 Sidearm
4 energy boosts
4 shield boosts
1 4pack of Concussion missiles
1 4pack of Homing Missiles
1 4pack of Guided Missiles
1 4pack of Mercury Missiles
1 4pack of Proximity Bombs
1 Plasma Cannon
1 Headlight

There are also several secret doors in the room that lead to other powerups, however, half of them will trap you with a forcefield when you try to grab the powerups (make which ones be random, I like a surprise)

The powerups behind the secret doors are (one powerup per door unless otherwise indicated):

1 Extra Life
1 Invulnerability
1 Cloaking Device
2 Earthshaker missiles
2 Mega Missiles
1 Phoenix Cannon
1 Ammo rack
3 shield boosts (behind the same door)
3 energy boosts (behind the same door)
4 Containers of Vulcan Ammo (behind two separate doors, 2 behind each door)

There is a screen at the top of the room hidden behind a corner, the one that shows the Red Fatty boss. If you shoot it, it opens the walls above the room, leading to the room with the Reactor, which is floating in the middle of the room on a floating platform. Around it are:

1 Thief
1 Sidearm
2 Seekers

After you kill them and blow up the reactor, 3 doors will open in front of it. Going into any one of these doors will lead to a dead end and a forcefield will trap you.

In order to escape, you have to perform a maneuver around the reactor. First assume that the front end of the reactor is the one that is facing the three doors. Now go to the back end of the reactor, slide upwards and on top of it, then slide to the right and down the right side, then under the reactor and up the left side, then down the front side, then back to where you started. This will open a wall behind the middle door. Go through it and there will be a long corridor containing lots of mines and smart - mine laying robots. Also 1 or two theives and 2 energy thieves and 2 Diamond Claws.

When you get to the end of the corridor (it's pretty long), there will be 1 Level 24 boss (Alien 2 boss) and 1 level 20 boss (Alien 1 Boss). The Alien 1 Boss will be modified to fire mega missiles instead of its usual armament. If you can get past them you can enter the exit and escape.

If a level has a reactor and bosses, the reactor will be removed from the level when the level is played. It may be possible to make a mini-reactor (from secret level 6 of D2 Counterstrike) into a boss robot, but then when it's destroyed, the bosses will be destroyed as well (unless it's a D2X-XL type level, in which case all of the bosses have to be destroyed to start the self-destruct sequence.)

There are some other things that make this level impossible to build, even in D2X-XL. It would require scripting, which is impossible in any D2 version.

Darn. Is there any way to edit the bosses to behave as normal robots?

yes, RBotEdit

You probably can do the flight path puzzles with a series of sophisticated \"master\" trigger chains, but the question remains as to whether you should - how is the player supposed to know what they have to do?

There's no way to have robot triggers activated from the destruction of multiple robots, though (at least not as far as I know).

Sirius wrote:You probably can do the flight path puzzles with a series of sophisticated "master" trigger chains, but the question remains as to whether you should - how is the player supposed to know what they have to do?

Trial and error. The point of this level is to be ridiculously difficult.

Alright. Do keep in mind, though, that there are 362,880 different orders in which you can enter the nine doors, and only one will be right.

Hey, if enough people play it, someone will eventually figure it out.

or get tired of it

Players will figure that out via level editor, not actually playing it. There's a difference between fighting the level 24 boss underarmed and completing a puzzle of hundreds of thousands of combinations that requires no real engagement. One's difficult, the other's just pointlessly boring.

I would cut down on the number of doors for the puzzle. Dozens of potential combinations to try is one thing, but 1/3 of a million is just insane. It's just not that interesting of a puzzle for anyone to spend that much time on it.

Okay, I know what I can do. I can use a custom wall texture with the combination written on it, but the only way to see it is to open a secret door with a grate behind it, then fire a guided missile through a complicated system of tunnels until you see the combination on your guided missile view, and you have about half a second to memorize it before the guided missile hits the wall.

Did this level set ever get completed? If it's been uploaded I would like to try it!

No. I still don't think it's possible to do what he's asking.
Though if he is commissioning the level I'd like to know what he'd pay

I personally don't see the reason to include rooms and items the player would want only to have them make the game unwinnable when they're entered or collected. It's equivalent to just not having them there in the first place, since the player can't use them in any meaningful way. Impossibility is not the same as difficulty, because a thing that's difficult can still be done if you put that work in.
Random puzzles without their mechanics explained up-front are also not difficulty, they're just expecting the player to read the designer's mind.
'xpect most of his players would just decide not to put up with those sorts of things, and leave -- these kinds of trollish design are not exactly fun for anyone except maybe the designer.

If he really wants to make something along these lines I think he should learn to map for D3, not D2. It would be a lot easier to do, and so maybe one person would have fun.

It’s so cool replying to ten year old posts so frivolously and then getting good answers. Re reading the op I actually agree. I would probably only play this for around five minutes. I’m an old player who got away from the games and literally discovered all of the fan made content all at once and so I’m a glut for all the levels/missions/mods what have you

Oh there is a metric tonne of good stuff out there for sure.
And many folks who'll be maybe even a little too happy to give recommendations if you make a thread asking.
Browse a few pages and you'll probably see one by somebody else, but nobody will mind if you make a new one. We all love telling other people what to like