STAHL DER VERDAMMNIS (Steel of Doom)

[ChestedArmor]

Here's a little wad I made,

It's a cluster of multiple experimental ideas I always wanted to try out, but never found an ocassion,

that's why it's exremly important to me for your feedback.

following criteria:

Spoiler

which part was:

- the best/worst?

- the most memorable?

- visually the most pleasing/unpleasing?

-  unfair/ overcompensating?

-----------------------

- Is the whole map consisent in tone in your opinion?

- Is the pacing lacking?

Anyways, it runs on GZ Doom and was build in Boom.

It's not ball bustingly hard, but I'd still recommend a quicksave or two.

It's just one map and ~10 minutes of playtime.

Screenshots:

Spoiler

The Wad: https://wadhosting.com/Wad/028CEB2C11307A604BEBE8B5C14447EEEB66EAC2

(now with some fixed visual bugs)

If you want the custom face, here's the file: experimental face.rar

Edited December 9, 2021 by ChestedArmor

[Biodegradable]

Not too bad, man. It's a bit rough around the edges with some textures missing and such, but nothing you cannot refine. It's rather eclectic and savage, but quite entertaining as well. I really enjoyed how the progression worked.

 

 

[ChestedArmor]

Thanks for the feedback and the lovely video,

helped me to see my work from a different perspective.

 

To answer some of your questions aksed in the video:

-You're not supposed to jump, but I disabled jump, so no difference if you'd have tried.

-The green sphere is a quad damage (probably should change the sprite to look more like quakes for people to notice)

 

Ps: what do you mean with "electric and savage"?

Edited December 6, 2021 by ChestedArmor

[Nihlith]

 

I gave it a shot and I've got a few points. First thing I noticed was that there was no music, which was my fault, I realized this and turned it on eventually but I didn't want to start over because I felt like that would spoil the look at a first impression I was trying to capture. Sorry about that. Once I got the music on it was actually a pretty nice track. 

 

On the negative side: I was expecting to see the HUD face we see on the previews, the arachnotrons on the platform in the blue room didn't seem to be able to fight very well up there, there were some weird texture issues that presented themselves during the cage fight.

 

On the positive side, I loved the texture pallet, the sky and generally how the visuals were composed. I'm always excited to see custom monsters and they made an appearance. Ditto custom powerups. It was interesting that you created foreshadowing in the map for an ambush that still caught me somehow totally by surprise.

The encounters were all radically different from one another. The opening gambit, cage room, stairway, pit, fire cave etc. were all distinct and well put together. 

There was some kind of issue I was having with the door in the blue room and the door after the cage ambush but I don't know what was going on.

The invisible barriers that keep you in the cage match were very surprising. It was a very distinct and memorable gimmick but I don't think it was my favorite part (though I did have fun discovering it and dealing with it). I think I liked the pit with the moving platforms and the fire cave the most. Didn't care for the blue room as much as the rest of the map, with the crazy power up and all of the monsters so constrained and with poor firing lines... it seemed like it was intended to be a tougher fight than it was...  

I think the blue room may have been too easy, though and the end ambush was definitely not balanced in any reasonable way. I was actually very amused to have my skull blasted out my ass when I went in but I saved right before hand. Given that there was foreshadowing it caused me to save way more often so I don't know what to say about it. Given the placement of the power up and the timing of my save I had fun with it but I don't know that I would recommend that sort of set up. 

Anyways, thanks for the wad. I am pleased.

 

[kalensar]

Pros:

-- Good Texture use and map structure.

 

Cons:

-- The Megasphere looking powerup, the Quad Damage or whatever it is, absolutely screwed my ammo conservation flow by the time I got to the Rocketlauncher room. So I cheated to make up for it just I could keep up the exploration flow.   

[Nihlith]

7 hours ago, kalensar said:

Pros:

-- Good Texture use and map structure.

 

Cons:

-- The Megasphere looking powerup, the Quad Damage or whatever it is, absolutely screwed my ammo conservation flow by the time I got to the Rocketlauncher room. So I cheated to make up for it just I could keep up the exploration flow.   

 

So you ran out of ammo because of a quad damage? How?

[ChestedArmor]

@Nihlith thanks for the feedback.

 

I've never thought about implementing my custom face into my own wads, because I wasn't sure if it would bother anybody. In case the demand for it is high enough I'll do it for future wads.

The blue room was only supposed to introduce the Quad-power up, but your critisism is still valid.

The texture bug on the invisible walls is pretty inevitable, since Doom dislikes moving sky tiles around.

[Nihlith]

Now that you mention it the custom HUD face might bother someone but I would suspect that most people either wouldn't care or would enjoy the novelty. when I'm playing I can make the HUD bar disappear at any time. You could have your cake and eat it too if you included the HUD images as a separate file and leave it up to the player to load it or not but it's definitely not a big deal one way or the other. I just like modded stuff.

 

I forgot to mention that the way your wads floor plan turns in on itself and uses moving sectors to reshape and reuse areas in very different ways is pretty tight. 

[ChestedArmor]

I am not sure if the last part is a critic-point, a compliment or a neutral statement, but yes, they sure do.

[Nihlith]

I was trying a double entendre, "tight" can mean having things close together, having mastery over organizing a thing or a thing being cool. In that way it is meant to be a critic-point, compliment and neutral statement.

[ChestedArmor]

But that doesn't help me improving my work...

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

20 minutes ago, ChestedArmor said:

But that doesn't help me improving my work...

How lol

 

What he is saying is that the way you "use moving sectors to reshape and reuse areas in very different ways" is good/cool/ultra-dank.

 

Anyway, really like the windows in the second screenshot. You might want to try adding a trim at the base of the window itself, I think that would look nice. And I really like the texturing of the third screenshot in general, very tasteful and unique.

 

As for the custom HUD face, if you're going to use it in future wads, just include it as a separate file. 

Edited December 7, 2021 by TheMagicMushroomMan

[Nihlith]

I think it does. Reusing the same spaces in different ways when the level architecture changes is a good feature and you'll want to return to that strategy from time to time. 

 

Of course I take the point that you might not be as interested in what you did right as what could be improved. 

 

I haven't played around with invisible walls enough to offer any advice on how to make it look better, but maybe we can talk about the quad damage and the blue room.

 

What if you put more monsters in the first room and placed a quad damage in plain view so that the ensuing slaughter demonstrated what the item does and how cool it is. Then you can make the blue room bigger and/or rearrange it so that the power up is in the open and you need to go far into the room and into the firing lines of the monsters inside. That way the player knows what it is when they get there and expose themselves to enemy fire and are forced into a run and gun fight where the power up is still a central feature.

 

 

 

[Gregor]

The thing about the name... Why call it Stahl der Verdammnis if you're gonna provide the translation right behind it? This way people are just gonna default to Steel of Doom anyway since most here don't speak German and have no idea how to pronounce it. I'd say, if you wanna give it a German name, just stick with that and scratch the translation. Otherwise you might as well just give it an English title to begin with. Just my two cents.

[Nihlith]

I think it's a good name. 

[ChestedArmor]

@Gregor The name is german, I just added the translation in fear somebody might be turned off, because they think it's something unplayable without prior language skills.

[whirledtsar]

Nice level. The custom textures and SS replacements look very cool. The level design and combat flows nicely. The end seems unfinished though, because when you go across the bridge for the megahealth, there are missing textures, invisible walls, and no apparent way to actually finish the level. My only other complaint would be that the baby cacos are too cute to kill, haha. Also, there should be some health and ammo in the lava section, instead of in the secret behind it.

[ChestedArmor]

Well @whirledtsar The inivisble walls are on purpose and the exit is the left door across the bridge.

[whirledtsar]

I went back and found the way out. It doesnt really look like a door, it just looks like a regular wall.

 

Anyways, there should be some visual indicator that you're locked in, like a fence raising, or a barrier lowering from the ceiling.

[ChestedArmor]

42 minutes ago, whirledtsar said:

I went back and found the way out. It doesnt really look like a door, it just looks like a regular wall.

 

Anyways, there should be some visual indicator that you're locked in, like a fence raising, or a barrier lowering from the ceiling.

The Fence idea is possible, but really tricky considering all of the microscopic sector movement already takes place in this area, but it's certainly worth a try.

[ChestedArmor]

@whirledtsar Thanks for the feedback, it really helped me a lot.

I've now added the fence and kept the sky bug to a 1 pixel wide gab. The door to the exit is now signaled more clearly.

You can try it yourself, I've updated the link.

 

[whirledtsar]

Cool, final room looks good now. But it seems the player start spot has been moved to the wrong spot (you start in the lava area).

 

Also, the textures on the border of doors (DOORTRAK) should be flagged as "lower unpegged" so that they dont move when the door raises.

[MundaneBoss]

I was gonna try it, but started in a rather tight spot :) Could guess something was off. Looking forward to next update.

[ChestedArmor]

Oh shit, what an embarassment.

I fixed it real quick.

 

Edited December 8, 2021 by ChestedArmor

[Clippy]

@Dubbag pointed this one out to me and hung out while I played it - nice map with interesting textures the quad damage was especially fun - especially with the way you get to use it at the end. Those little Jawas turned me into swiss cheese. I especially liked seeing the little cacodemon babies - I love em! Overall fun time decent map

 

 

[ChestedArmor]

Thanks @Clippy , I really enjoyed your let's play!

 

Im glad somebody discovered the color identities of the rooms, put extra work into giving them all unique color pairs.

 

When I first tried out the Quad damage, literally the first thing I tried was Super Shotgun a Cyber Demon; great to see Im not the only one who did it more than one time, just because it was fun.

 

It's a shame the lava segment went horribly wrong.

The Mancubus carcass blocked the view of the first switch, the goal was to shoot the eyes for the bridges and never even touch the lava;

the stairs are just to prevent unfun deaths by lava,

but that's a design problem I have to iron out.

(My idea is to make the switches in the green room eye switches, who require to shoot to start connecting eyes with shooting)

Still, the idea for the secret fire suit is welcome, I like my maps pretty linear, so secrets are always hard to implement.

 

In terms of custom face and hud, I usually don't implement them, in fear somebody might not like it, but I added at least the custom face in the original post for you to test out if you want.

 

 

Edited December 9, 2021 by ChestedArmor

[Nihlith]

Oh man, I just saw the experimental face download. I love this. I'm not sure why this is so amusing but it really is. I couldn't get him to grow horns but his iddqd face is great. I've replayed it a couple times with the face on. It's not a very long wad but it really grows on you. Good replay value for being so brief.

[ChestedArmor]

Thanks man! I really worked hard on it.

 

I guess the entertaining factor comes from the overexaggerated detailing, f.ex. the bandages, the sweat drops, the grimaces, etc.

(also because it's one of the more rare reskins that don't trace Doomguy)

 

The horns grow if you pick up a new weapon, so Im not sure why that didn't appear...