For 12 years, Ben Mansell has dreamed of putting his digital cartography skills to the test. Foursite marks that long-awaited achievement—a singleplayer Doom 2 map that houses four miniature arenas joined by a single hub corridor, each with its own theme and playstyle—which took him 300 hours to craft, and takes anywhere between one and three hours (or more) to complete.
"The overall concept of the four circular quadrants based around a single horizontal corridor I originally thought up in a particular dull accounting lecture at university in 2004," says Mansell on the map's ModDB page. "I was building the occasional Doom 3 map at the time, and originally envisioned it as a level for that. Unfortunately with school-work piling up, I only got as far as creating a single room before the project was abandoned."
Fast forward 12 years and Mansell has arrived at Foursite. Besides boasting its own unique enemies, each quadrant culminates with a boss room—"some are environmental, some are enemy based, some are a combination of the two", adds Mansell. Once all four are felled, a grand boss can be accessed which rounds off the level.
Mansell's work is going down a treat over on Reddit, and here's the man himself making Foursite look easier than it most likely is:
In conversation with Eurogamer, Mansell spoke of his inspiration over and above his 12-year process: "A recent trend in Doom mapping, as computers get ever more powerful, is to create so-called 'Slaughtermaps', where it's the player and a thousand enemies in a single room.
"It's a perfectly legitimate style of play, but I always enjoyed the more environmental elements of the original games: the complex levels, the non-linear progress, the environmental storytelling. So I tried to build a map that didn't just rely on shooting enemies for the enjoyment."
If that tickles your fancy, Mansell's Foursite 4-in-1 map can be downloaded via ModDB—make sure you have Doom 2 installed beforehand.
