New Wad - Attack on IO

[Bri]

Attack on IO is a 7 map wad with themes of tech bases, castles and bloody unholy landscapes. It has you stationed on the moon of IO and has you being dragged through hell and back.

 

This wad features custom textures by Ukiro (Otex) and music by Jason "Jay" Reichard and Jimmy Paddock.

 

All levels have been designed with pistol start in mind, although you can also play continuously.

 

IWad: Doom 2

Number of maps: 7

Difficulty settings: Yes

Tested with: GZDoom, PrBoom+, DSDA

 

Mouselook: Optional

Crouch: No

Jump: No

 

 

Download:

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/a-c/attack-on-io

 

Screenshots:

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As of now this is the final release, as I'd like to move to other projects. I hope you have fun. Thanks!

Edited June 21, 2021 by Bri
Update

[Paul814]

The screenshots look amazing, definitely playing this asap. I love the use of Otex.

[Walter confetti]

Impressive stuff for a first time map!

[Phytolizer]

Looks amazing! Do you think it would run on an MBF port (PrBoom+)?

 

EDIT: Looks like it runs, even on complevel 2!

EDIT2: Red door doesn't open on complevel 2. Maybe 9 will work?

Edited February 24, 2021 by Phytolizer

[Phytolizer]

I couldn't get very far in the map. Those archviles are a pain.

From what I saw, the map is very detailed and well textured. There is a revenant that is stuck right at the beginning with all the barrels. Here's a demo of me attempting to get a foothold.

 

CurseOfReverence.lmp.zip

 

EDIT: I beat the first room! It gets easier once you learn to use barrels :)

CurseOfReverence.lmp.zip

 

EDIT2: Just noticed that was MAP04, not MAP01. I was playing Hell Ground earlier and forgot :P

Edited February 24, 2021 by Phytolizer

[Bri]

I'm not really sure what MBF or complevel means, sorry. I still need to learn many of the terms that are used. I am aware of some monsters getting stuck in other ports, but I haven't done much testing in anything other than GZDoom at the moment. I'm going to start testing it better in PrBoom+ when I have the time. I've made many maps in other games in the past but so far I find mapping for Doom 2 much more fun. Thanks!

 

Map 04 has a pretty chaotic start. I designed it around the idea of having to go fast to avoid most monsters at the start and grabbing the SSG then going from there. But it looks like switch's aren't working from those demos I watched?

 

- Bri

[SP_FACE1]

My god, I was just going to test the first map but here I am two hours later because I just couldn't stop playing. Fun, addictive and gorgeous looking maps!

[Phytolizer]

1 hour ago, Bri said:

I'm not really sure what MBF or complevel means, sorry. I still need to learn many of the terms that are used. I am aware of some monsters getting stuck in other ports, but I haven't done much testing in anything other than GZDoom at the moment. I'm going to start testing it better in PrBoom+ when I have the time. I've made many maps in other games in the past but so far I find mapping for Doom 2 much more fun. Thanks!

 

Map 04 has a pretty chaotic start. I designed it around the idea of having to go fast to avoid most monsters at the start and grabbing the SSG then going from there. But it looks like switch's aren't working from those demos I watched?

 

- Bri

Switches do seem to be working. (I hadn't bound my controls properly so I got stuck remembering what key was Use.) Not sure what you mean.

[Bri]

On 2/25/2021 at 10:40 AM, Phytolizer said:

Not sure what you mean.

 

Nevermind. I'm not sure either. :P

 

Anyway, I updated the wad. Download is in the original post. Cheers!

 

- Bri

Edited February 26, 2021 by Bri

[Bri]

On 2/25/2021 at 9:46 AM, SP_FACE1 said:

My god, I was just going to test the first map but here I am two hours later because I just couldn't stop playing. Fun, addictive and gorgeous looking maps!

Thankyou so much!

[Not Jabba]

Hey, nice maps!

(Edit: never mind about the bug/compat report, looks like I was playing an outdated version and the skies are fixed now)

[Bri]

9 hours ago, Not Jabba said:

Hey, nice maps!

(Edit: never mind about the bug/compat report, looks like I was playing an outdated version and the skies are fixed now)

Thankyou very much! 

[Biodegradable]

This is very beautiful and very challenging so far. Your use of nasty, tight and surprising combat left me quite tense but in a good way. You know how to present a challenge without being sadistic about it, which I for one really appreciate. Your map layout, design and use of Ukiro's awesome textures are also phenomenal. Here's my playthrough of the first two maps. My brain's fried, my hands are sore and I'm left beaten, bloody, bruised and begging for more! ;^) Will post the other maps as I go.

 

 

[AwakeOnPhobos]

Played the first four maps of the wad so far and I'm very impressed. It looks great, it plays very smoothly and it challenges the player without going the full-scale slaughter route in every encounter. MAP03 is probably my favorite, but MAP04 definitely has the most fitting name: getting through that beginning sequence from a pistol start is not easy. Feels great once you do manage it, though.

 

I had a blast playing through these and I'm very much looking forward to what the last map has to offer. Thank you for sharing your work with the community!

 

[Bri]

20 hours ago, Biodegradable said:

This is very beautiful and very challenging so far. Your use of nasty, tight and surprising combat left me quite tense but in a good way. You know how to present a challenge without being sadistic about it, which I for one really appreciate. Your map layout, design and use of Ukiro's awesome textures are also phenomenal. Here's my playthrough of the first two maps. My brain's fried, my hands are sore and I'm left beaten, bloody, bruised and begging for more! ;^) Will post the other maps as I go.

 

 

Thanks very much. It was really interesting and helpful (and entertaining :P) to watch someone play through it blind. I always worry a bit that these maps might be too hard on UV and maybe turn people away, but you managed to get through it. I should probably make secrets a bit easier to find to help the player out, but I'm not sure. I really look forward to the next videos and hope they don't torture you too much. :P

 

By the way, what mod is that you're using? 

 

14 hours ago, AwakeOnPhobos said:

Played the first four maps of the wad so far and I'm very impressed. It looks great, it plays very smoothly and it challenges the player without going the full-scale slaughter route in every encounter. MAP03 is probably my favorite, but MAP04 definitely has the most fitting name: getting through that beginning sequence from a pistol start is not easy. Feels great once you do manage it, though.

 

I had a blast playing through these and I'm very much looking forward to what the last map has to offer. Thank you for sharing your work with the community!

 

Thankyou! Really glad you liked it. I try to use the Demons effectively and keep it tense without resorting to throwing waves of them at the player, so I'm glad that comes through. Although, map 05 may get a little close to slaughter with the amount of imps at the start, but I hope it's not too bad.

[Biodegradable]

1 minute ago, Bri said:

By the way, what mod is that you're using? 

 

Gosh, lot of folks seem to ask this now haha. It's called Dead Marine and it's another Vanilla enhancement mod by Smooth Doom author, @Gifty. 

[Bri]

Cheers mate.

[Biodegradable]

And now the thrilling conclusion, hehe. Honestly, really great stuff, Bri. I hope you stick around in the community and bring us more cool shit. :^)

 

 

Edited February 28, 2021 by Biodegradable

[Gifty]

Hey, thanks! Always happy to see Dead Marine get some love. :)

[Scorpio]

I am in the process of passing, but the impressions are only positive. Great design, gameplay, music - I have nothing to complain about. Great job!

[Bri]

On 3/1/2021 at 3:13 AM, Biodegradable said:

Honestly, really great stuff, Bri. I hope you stick around in the community and bring us more cool shit. :^)

Oh, I definitely will. I've still got a lot to improve on and more maps to make. Thanks again for the videos - they do help me a lot for future updates.

 

On 3/1/2021 at 5:44 AM, Gifty said:

Hey, thanks! Always happy to see Dead Marine get some love. :)

You deserve it. It's an awesome mod.

 

8 hours ago, Kuleshoff said:

I am in the process of passing, but the impressions are only positive. Great design, gameplay, music - I have nothing to complain about. Great job!

Thanks a lot! 

[Murdoch]

Holy balls. Another amazing looking first time effort, adding this one to the queue for the weekend too.

[Murdoch]

OK so I decided to give this one a go before the weekend. Played partially through the first map on UV and got my ass handed to me on a silver platter with a fine red wine and table side minstrels. The design itself, as the screenshots implied, are absolutely excellent. Good flow, texturing and lighting excellent. I handled the traps for the most part but really struggled to find enough ammo at times and the Archviles were a real bitch. Now I am no elite player by any means but I can handle the vast majority of maps I have played on UV. Did you get any external beta testing done out of curiosity? I may be wrong but I get the feeling you may have overthought things a bit and kept the resources to a bare minimum. You always have the advantage as the author as you know every beat of the level. Personally, I think your fight design and enemy placement is good enough to create challenge and fun without skimping on the ammo. Every bullet, shell and cell needs to count and there is not a lot of room for error.

 

I will swallow my manly pride and give it another crack on Hurt Me Plenty and report back because the quality of the design definitely makes me want more. May need to leave it to the weekend.

[Murdoch]

Decided to give it a go in HMP and looks like that's more my style. Completed the map, absolutely excellent. Challenging with well thought out traps but without skimping on the resources so much as UV. I thought I was going to run out of ammo again at the yellow key Archvile trap and died again. Decided to give it another go and spotted the newly opened door with that glorious cell pack. That was just *insert chef's kiss noise here*. Really smart design.

 

Look forward to playing the rest. Absolutely recommended.

[Bri]

20 hours ago, Murdoch said:

Did you get any external beta testing done out of curiosity? I may be wrong but I get the feeling you may have overthought things a bit and kept the resources to a bare minimum. You always have the advantage as the author as you know every beat of the level. Personally, I think your fight design and enemy placement is good enough to create challenge and fun without skimping on the ammo. Every bullet, shell and cell needs to count and there is not a lot of room for error.

This is true - I haven't really had anyone to properly test it for me, just trying to balance it best I can. This feedback is really good for me to take on board though, and I might make adjustments to it, so thankyou for that. I'm already in the process of adjusting the levels with some quality of life enhancements, as well as overhauling map 05 so it isn't as slaughtery and is a bit more intuitive.

 

I love wads like Sunlust, Plutonia and the like, so I try to emulate that similar difficulty for UV. I want to make it really tough and tense but also make it fair and do-able. It's a type of difficulty I really like. But this type of difficulty can be more reliant on familiarity of the level. Finding secrets in this mode also helps a lot.

 

But HMP I'm trying to design to be more accessible fun run-n-gun style gameplay.

 

Thanks again. 

[Murdoch]

Then i would have to say that on the whole without external testing you have done a pretty good job of accomplishing both. Hmp is pretty dead on and uv pretty close on map01 at least. Maybe around 7% extra ammo in uv might do the trick.

[Bri]

Updated the Wad. See original post.

[xvertigox]

I've played through the first 4 maps and this is a really, really solid wad so far. The difficulty is very tight, it's challenging but not overly so. I'm a big, big fan of small, small arenas and this wad has it in spades. There's something supremely satisfyingly tense about dodging rev rockets while using your own rocket launcher at 33hp all in a narrow corridor/arena. The detailing is superb as is the map flow. It's clear you've put a lot of effort in making sure that both the combat and traversing the map are smooth and efficient. Fantastic visuals, awesome detailing.

 

As for notes on what I think you should change ... there isn't much. Here's a list in random order of my suggestions (only map01 so far, it's late so I'll do the rest tomorrow).

 

Change the step textures in the opening area of map01. Something to give it slightly more contrast and to not reuse OROCKO2A as much. You can also see a texture alignment issue on the far left.

Spoiler

 

I would also change these OROCKO2A textures on the side of the techbase. It doesn't look like the rock is taking over the base like you see with the vanilla fleshy textures in other wads.

Spoiler

 

Rather than making a 'sound pipe' you can instead join the sectors so they act as one. This means that if you fire in one sector it wakes up monsters in the tele closet because technically they're both the same sector. To join them select both and press 'J' in DB. To separate them press 'M' to enter 'create a sector' mode and click on whichever sector you want to separate. I apologize if you already knew this.

Spoiler

 

 

Here's a video of my playthrough. Ignore the below average gameplay and savescumming (fuck having to replay large chunks of the map while recording, people don't wanna see that. Hopefully the FDA video will partially compensate for my lack of a writeup

 

 

Edited May 6, 2021 by xvertigox

[Bri]

All good feedback. I appreciate it. And thanks so much for playing it.

 

I didn't know about the sector thing with J; I was wondering how mappers did teleporting enemies without using a pipe. So that's good to learn. I suspect there's heaps more stuff I'm not aware of too, haha.

[Sectorslayer]

You are aware of making beautiful maps. No doubt about it! ;-)