Uprising (Megawad)

[Noise]

Just finished this megawad. Great mapset.

 

I've played all maps in UV with pistol start. Nice difficulty balance and good level design especially later maps (10+) with a distinctive playstyle. Maybe map 32 was my favorite.

 

Spoiler

Usually your start are quite scarce in ammunition and you delay giving the SSG until half map so I guess that continuous play would be quite easier.

 

My only complain would be the few slaughter maps. It seems you are not really comfortable with that playstyle and those maps weren't as polished as the others.

 

[Azure_Horror]

Came here for the Cacobot, stayed for the finely crafted maps and wonderful gameplay flow.

 

In my opinion, Uprising is one of the best WADs with "Doom 1 and Doom 2 re-imagined" style of gameplay.

OG Doom 1 and Doom 2 were focused on careful advance trough Demon-infested spaces. Massive fights and lock-in arenas are rare in Doom1/2, and often times of the danger in OG Dooms comes from few insidiously positioned foes. But standard doom bestiary is far from perfect for such gameplay: most of the monsters are too slow and non-threatening to pose much of a threat in long corridors/open rooms of a typical OG Doom map. There are, of course, monsters that do present notable danger in such conditions: mancubi, hitscanners, revenants, archviles. But using exlusively them can quickly get stale.

 

Enter the Uprising DeHacked changes. Now there are much more dangerous low-tiers, and each can serve as either a sniper, or a part of ground-attack force in unique ways. Now there are new midtiers like mancubus and revenant: Chaos Knight may be easy to outrun, but his attacks are devastating, and he is noticeably more agile than a mancubus. Cacobot combines durability of a mancubus, persistence of a revenant and mobility of an archvile. And Cyber-gunners are essentially Annihilators from Eviternity, but protected from their own rockets. In short, Uprsing offers a very diverse bestiary, which fits perfectly to the OG Doom-inspired gameplay.

(Of course, those wonderful monsters can also be used as a part of bigger fights. And Uprising delivers such fights too!)

 

Expanded low-tier enemy roster also makes chaingun much more potent. Now chaingun feels like a proper mid-tier weapon, which bridges the gap between SG and SSG. Buffs to a pistol and combat shotty also help a lot. In particular, sniping midtier enemies with SG feels much less grindy now.

 

And last, but not least, Uprising has the Atmosphere. Its maps have that feeling of lingering dread and grim determination which is present in Doom1 and Doom2, as well as TNT:Evilution.

 

In short, Uprising feels great, and it manages to capture the truly old-school gameplay of two OG Doom games. Truly an amazing megawad.

 

Spoiler

Does the star lift with 4 cyber-gunners on map 26 of Uprising reference map 26 of Eviternity, with its 4 annihilator star lift? Or I am overthinking things?

 

[Cheesewheel]

2 hours ago, Azure_Horror said:

Does the star lift with 4 cyber-gunners on map 26 of Uprising reference map 26 of Eviternity, with its 4 annihilator star lift? Or I am overthinking things? 

 

 

Yep it's a reference :)

[Rudolph]

This looks like a fun mapset, but... why make the weapons and some enemies red?

[ReaperAA]

6 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

This looks like a fun mapset, but... why make the weapons and some enemies red?

 

Was gonna say the same thing just now. IMO, the red plasma/BFG and red cyberdemon don't look very good (the chaos knight looks fine though).

[Azure_Horror]

8 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

This looks like a fun mapset, but... why make the weapons and some enemies red?

 

I think, I know the answer. Everything is red, because color blue was already taken by Antares031 and used for Struggle: Antaresian Legacy.

 

In all seriousness, restricted pallete choice works like it does in Magnolia, Swim with the Whales, Sunlust, Struggle, or Tangerine Nightmare: it highlights the grim hostility of the maps. Red-grey-black color scheme looks amazing in game, and cyberdemons are especially cool. (They look much better in game than at the first post of this thread).

 

[Rudolph]

The Dark Imp seems to be bleeding red, even though its corpse is covered in green blood. I thought of using Nevander's Blood Fixer mod to address that, since it is replacing the Hell Knight, but now the Dark Imp is making Hell Knight sounds! :o

 

What is even weirder is that the Cacobot does not bleed by default, but its body gets covered in blue blood upon death.

Edited November 21, 2021 by Rudolph

[Bryan T]

No one has uploaded any footage of this wad yet.

 

 

 

I just finished this, well except for map29. It was too laggy with my setup. It's 6 parts.

It's amazing how much variety there is. How someone can make a complete 32 map wad and then just a year later make another one.

The difficulty is definitely up there. Enough to satisfy even the most grizzled veteran.

 

Congrats on the release and thanks for curing my boredom for a while.

 

Edited November 25, 2021 by Bryan T

[Cheesewheel]

This is now finished, if no issues arise it will be on idgames soon.

 

Thank you everyone who has played this wad.

[Searcher]

outstanding mapset.  Nice job on it.  Working my way through it and very much Enjoying it.

[Azure_Horror]

Found a bug on map 20:

The lift under spoiler does not work.

Spoiler

This is a lift after yellow door, before you go down and fight a pinky-revenant-cacobot-chaos knight horde in the frosen ravine.

The lift on the opposite side also doesn't work.

 

I think this is a bug. Without that lift you cannot return to the previous part of the map. That seems to be unintended, because map 20 has another, designated point of no return, before the infernal chasm.

 

[kvothesixstring]

Just wanted to say I have really been enjoying your work, first on CPD and now this. You are a mapper to watch for sure. Lots of fun levels and CPD at least is fun to speedrun. I haven't started looking at Uprising levels to run yet, still playing it casually but I am sure I will. Anyway thanks for putting them out there and I look forward to what you do next!

 

[Chopper]

I think someone likes red.

In all seriousness, I really enjoyed this wad, the new weapon sprites and modifications along with the new demons helped freshen things up and I really appreciate the atmosphere and difficulty of the levels, although it never felt too hard to be frustrating, it never felt too easy to be boring.

Thanks for making a wad that had me hooked from beginning to end. I really enjoyed the semi-classic design of the maps and the satisfactory usage of the color red.

[kvothesixstring]

@Cheesewheel Do you have plans of doing an idgames release of this/is this final? I want to record demos for it and don't want to worry about desyncs.

 

[Lorenz0]

I just finished playing this wad on co-op and I enjoyed it a lot. Cool action and layouts, as well as handsome texturing. I appreciate that you made sure the wad is co-op compatible, so my experience was softlock-free.

 

My only complaints would be that the second half feels a bit bloated and repetetive. There are 4 or 5 maps that are long enough that they feel like they could be the final map. And I'm pretty sure they're all red too. Some more color variation would've been nice. Otherwise, really good job :)

[Cheesewheel]

Now available on idgames.

[kvothesixstring]

9 minutes ago, Cheesewheel said:

Now available on idgames.

YUSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

 

[Maribo]

I got around to playing the first ~10 maps of this last night (played maps 1 and 2 a few months ago, then decided to come back later) and goddamn... it flies by in the blink of an eye, I'm having so much fun. It always tickles me when I see the kill count racking up at a rate much faster than it feels like it's going. Phenomenal first episode, I'm sure the rest of the wad will keep the steam going.

[galileo31dos01]

Hello, I just happened to have finnished the wad earlier today and coincidentally saw it landed on idgames. Hope you don't mind me reporting a small number of issues I found by casual chance, and if they were fixed already then, sorry! 

 

(This is all via Crispy Doom, UV/PS)

 

- In m32, at the final area, a lot of monsters failed to teleport because of an issue with the actions: each switch was, from what I gathered, a raise by 24 or 32 or something along the lines, and the problem was that each switch was linked to basically all of the closets at the same time, which must have caused some to raise too high at wrong times, so while I was flipping switches with monsters still spawning in the centre, some just didn't find space for it in time.

 

- In m20, these dudes couldn't teleport. On the one side, the two cybergunners were ambush, so logically they wouldn't even care to move. On the other side, the two chaos knights at the top were stuck, because the sectors could move if I killed those, so a little more space is needed.

- I'd also like to mention this lone revenant who, for unknown reasons, was lost in an area I already cleaned up and revisited a couple times. What's more confusing is that I backtracked from the BFG room to the megasphere outside (that one on the snowy area) and at no point I ever saw or heard it screaming, so how come I miss it?!... (I add this if by any remote chance you have any idea of what could have happened :p)

- Small but large visual glitch over here in the final area.

 

- In m21, you can easily jump from the RK platform to grab the secret megaarmor. It's probably intentional, but in case it isn't...

- In the final bit, it seems I triggered another of those "raise by XX" lines and the sector affected revealed a subtle HOM (not visible in the screenie though :c).

 

- In m23, there were floating shells in this area that I'm pointing at.

 

- Visual glitch in m24 over here (automap)

- Spotted a texture not matching the rest over this step.

- Not sure if that piece should be metal or lava.

 

- Spotted a random darker square in this area (automap) in m27.

 

- An inaccessible medikit over here in m28, sunken between the pillar and steps.

 

- The cyb in the ending credits was green, not sure if there's a way around that but no big deal actually, he looks dope as a grinch.

 

 

Exquisite mapset btw.

[TheCyberDruid]

Played this wad the last couple of days and it is pretty amazing. The last 8 maps or so are bit too hard for my skill/taste, but other than that it is a great set of maps. The first maps have a neat classic design to them and slowly they change more and more towards a more modern feel both in design and gameplay. Hats off to the scope of this megawad.

[Gibbon]

Just wanna add that, since Sprinkled Doom was mentioned.  The latest version can now handle the megawad..  I mean it handles hellbound map29 so it should be playable now.  Just the sky has a lot of tutti’s.

[GarrettChan]

UV pistol starts with saves

Port: DSDA-Doom v0.19.7 -complevel 2

Total IGT: 8:02:05

Personal Difficulty Evaluation: 2.7 (2.8 = Scythe)

Personal Rating: 7.2 (out of 10)

 

A very red mapset with various different views. I really enjoyed the environmental design of some later maps. Though, it's a bit tiring to look at after 1~2 hour of playing.

 

I played with pistol starts, but I personally would suggest playing continuously in the first blind playthrough. Latter half of the mapset, there are quite a lot of maps start you in an awkward position, and the starter weapon (SG/CG) is not immediately within reach, which means you probably need to gun down a few things with your pistol. Despite the pistol being buffed, it's still a bit irritating to kill things with it. Also, I personally feel heavier guns should be offered earlier in many later maps as the maps requires you to gun down quite a bit of midtiers in order to get a Rocket Launcher etc.

 

I personally don't really like custom monsters because it screws up your muscle memories, so this part is basically my own preference. If you liked custom monsters, then the WAD is pretty good at them. My least favorite monster is the CyberCaco, which made the Rocket Launcher very awkward to use since they have higher movement speed and higher HP than regular Cacos. Their higher stats makes rocketing a group of CyberCaco is not really that fun as they can dodge, or just walk in front of your face... Then I would say the ChaosKnight is a bit overboard. Not only hitting you with 3 in a row really hurts, but it also limits your movement because of the longer length of the attack.

 

Overall I had quite a bit of fun from the mapset, but maps around 24~28 are definitely quite draining.

[Arwel]

Great mapset with remarkably sophisticated layouts and amplified incidental combat.

[Lingyan203]

Can the levels be completed with PrBoom+ v2.5.1.5? I seem to be able to run through the levels with no problems but my guess is to use -complevel 9 for it?

[galileo31dos01]

35 minutes ago, Lingyan203 said:

Can the levels be completed with PrBoom+ v2.5.1.5? I seem to be able to run through the levels with no problems but my guess is to use -complevel 9 for it?

 

I have had not a single serious obstacle playing in crispy-doom so you should theoretically be alright on cl2. That said, it's possible that cl9 automatically fixes the various lesser issues that I reported five posts above, unless Cheesewheel sorted them out already.

[Flower_XD]

Sorry for the bump, in MAP 29 that is a ominous voice at the begging. 
I Tried to find what it says, but I could not find it (MAybe is a referrance that I'm not aware of). 

Anyone knows ? I'm very curious :) 

[Cheesewheel]

6 hours ago, Flower_XD said:

Sorry for the bump, in MAP 29 that is a ominous voice at the begging. 
I Tried to find what it says, but I could not find it (MAybe is a referrance that I'm not aware of). 

Anyone knows ? I'm very curious :) 

 

Play it backwards :)