Unfortunate Relations - 6 Map mini-episode

[MissBeverly]

Hey, bev here, long time listener, first time caller, decided to make a doom wad after yelling "I CAN DO BETTER THAN THIS" at Doom2's Map08, and wondering if I really could.

 

Criticism is more than welcome but may fall on deaf ears, as I set out to make something I enjoy playing myself, (and successfully I might add) and don't plan on spending much more time fixing little details and whathaveyou, like texture alignment, since gameplay was my main goal (not that I didnt spend forever on details) but I'd love to hear what you have to say regardless, and am excited to share something I made so others can enjoy my wad as much as I've enjoyed theirs'.

 

I find im a huge stickler for gameplay consistency, and things like gun spread and unavoidable damage make something feel unengaging to me and keep me from most modern shooter games. Doom's pistol/chaingun being focusable by waiting for the animation to finish make me really happy. With the mix of avoidable projectiles and proper cover for hitscanners, it seems the guys down at ID really knew how to make something good and fun. I dont know if I have the skill to do this wad without taking damage myself but I made sure nothing seemed like it forced damage on the player, I'm quite careful about hitscanner placement.

And yet, I find myself almost drawn to playing "crappy" wads, something about cheap square room-corridor-square room levels from the 90s are still greatly fun to play, especially the ones that go all out whacky with the design, somehow managing to be still really fun to play. Maybe I'll credit ID for making an engine so fun even the mediocre levels are good. (Edit: This is not a wad I would describe as either "crappy" or "room-c-r-c", just to be clear LOL)

 

THE INFO:

Story:
During a recon mission, you find yourself trapped between two opposing forces, one, a hostile alien invasion, and the other, a foreign military superpower set on capturing and using them for world domination.

6 Maps, (5 normal stages and one Boss)

Designed for DoomII and tested on Chocolate Doom using Ultimate Doom Builder.

Designed for Ultra Violence, and Single Player, other difficulties should work just fine, but arent special.

Tested and working on GZDoom, Zandronum, and somewhat tested on Crispy Doom, should work on DOS too, I hope.

Difficulty is really high I think, gives me trouble, which is good. Lots of enemies, strict ammo, but I made sure without secrets there was enough ammo to finish everyone off on UV necessary to exit, provided you make most of the shots count. I like mouse-only on chocolate doom (although i wish it was like Wolfenstein3D's mouse-only, i.e. without the character momentum)

Works fine with Jumping and Freelook, only one sequence break I can think of and its minor.

Balanced for Pistol Start

 

Screenshots:

https://i.imgur.com/DPFFSpo.png

https://i.imgur.com/nF1TVhm.png

 

 

Video:

 

Video of me completing the "secret" area

Spoiler

 

 

Music and links to it are in the video description :)

 

Downloads:

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Kfyx3hS4Gz4DRxSWAFKJZOR_CQLDOGkw/view?usp=sharing

Edited version for PSP-Legacy R4.01: (Fixes so all brightness levels max-out at 240 instead of 256, and moved a couple vertices to make it render properly.

PSP: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16Yi8J0U6qmfaN6mvPksQ6_NMAlxwXhGz/view?usp=sharing

Edited March 7, 2022 by MissBeverly
Added psp version

[Valboom]

I'm going to play it today, is it balanced for pistol start?

[MissBeverly]

7 minutes ago, Valboom said:

I'm going to play it today, is it balanced for pistol start?

Yes, absolutely

[Doomkid]

As long as you credit the transcriber (when known), no one is going to mind you using the MIDIs :) (just for reference). Screenshots look super interesting to me.. Gonna give this a whirl soon!

[Dragonfly]

MIDI CREDITS, sourced from the MIDI Metadata.

D_COUNTD: "Mega Man 10 - Solar Man's Stage"; MIDI by "Slash Man"
D_DOOM: "Mega Man 10 - Cybersheep's Dream"; MIDI by "Slash Man"
D_STALKS: "Wicked Ninety-Nine"; MIDI by Aaron Baldwin

D_RUNNIN: "POW"; by Robert C. Prince, from Wolfenstein 3D

D_THE_DA: "Metal Mosh"; MIDI by either Prod Designs, Inc; or Music Data Company (© Copyright 1991)
D_BETWEE: "Piece of Cake"; MIDI by either Prod Designs, Inc; or Music Data Company (© Copyright 1991)

D_DM2TTL / D_DM2INT: Unknown, Sorry.

[Walter confetti]

Hi Beverly, welcome to the club!

 

Also, you can see who made the midis you have downloaded in Slade... Anyway, seconding Doomkid with saying that from the screenshot looks pretty interesting...

[Biodegradable]

Yeah, this is a pretty bog-standard set of newbie maps. There's some interesting ideas, but most of these maps feel really flat with either too much space or too little with wide, desolete areas and frustratingly narrow rooms and corridors. The combat is pretty middling, progression felt rather confused and nonsensical at times and your texture work is really wonky, like you just grabbed any old thing and just slapped it together without much forethought; MAP05 being the worst offender. Fortunately for you, it's pretty typical stuff we see with new mappers and I've played much worse.

 

Keep practicing and I hope to see more from you build your skills should you decide to make more.

 

 

Edited February 24, 2022 by Biodegradable

[MissBeverly]

7 hours ago, Doomkid said:

As long as you credit the transcriber (when known), no one is going to mind you using the MIDIs :) (just for reference). Screenshots look super interesting to me.. Gonna give this a whirl soon!

Thank you! 

 

6 hours ago, Dragonfly said:

MIDI CREDITS, sourced from the MIDI Metadata.

D_COUNTD: "Mega Man 10 - Solar Man's Stage"; MIDI by "Slash Man"
D_DOOM: "Mega Man 10 - Cybersheep's Dream"; MIDI by "Slash Man"
D_STALKS: "Wicked Ninety-Nine"; MIDI by Aaron Baldwin

D_RUNNIN: "POW"; by Robert C. Prince, from Wolfenstein 3D

D_THE_DA: "Metal Mosh"; MIDI by either Prod Designs, Inc; or Music Data Company (© Copyright 1991)
D_BETWEE: "Piece of Cake"; MIDI by either Prod Designs, Inc; or Music Data Company (© Copyright 1991)

D_DM2TTL / D_DM2INT: Unknown, Sorry.

Thanks! Will add to the post and descriptions (luckily I do know where i got the last one)

 

3 hours ago, Biodegradable said:

Yeah, this is a pretty bog-standard set of newbie maps. There's some interesting ideas, but most of these maps feel really flat with either too much space or too little with wide, desolete areas and frustratingly narrow rooms and corridors. The combat is pretty middling, progression felt rather confused and nonsensical at times and your texture work is really wonky, like you just grabbed any old thing and just slapped it together without much forethought; MAP05 being the worst offender. Fortunately for you, it's pretty typical stuff we see with new mappers and I've played much worse.

 

Keep practicing and I hope to see more from you build your skills should you decide to make more.

 

<Will upload playthrough video tomorrow>

(Heads up: I got copyright claimed (monetized in other countries) for track 2, wicked child, the castlevania music (-_-) so keep that in mind b4 u upload your playthrough)

 

YE, thanks, you can see by Map05 I just couldn't be dealing with graphic design, I looked and nothing in the texture set I had ( only doom and duke) even remotely fit so I just went for something red/y/b, which often meant that gross mustard texture, since it was a pain figuring out how to grab the textures and import it all to work on chocolate doom, something about Texturex and patch tables and it all makes my head spin.

Ultimate Doom Builder is awesome and works pretty well, but having to remodel a room from scratch even though theres nothing (likely something small or the way stuff collides) thats causing odd behaviour, like enemies flickering in and out of existence on zandronum only, or my player clipping through the ground in a section of a sector with nothing in it, because of something on the other end of the map, gets boring pretty quickly. I'd say I spent about a week's worth of work making the wad and a 3rd of that was remaking/fixing/retooling stuff so that it works properly, for example the elevator in map04 had a really neat design originally, but it either wouldnt work properly, or I didn't have the actions that I wanted in original dos doom2 to make it all move in unison, so I had to simplify it, and then once it was simplified to working order I needed different textures, and I'm happy with the end result but it certainly could have looked nicer.

 

I probably would say the same thing about the combat and level design if I wasn't so familiar with it, but then thinking back to the levels I do enjoy from the 90s I probably would have loved this anyway. I notice I have way too many big enemies, barons and the like, to keep the combat flowing from one place to another evenly, but I myself really enjoy taking down a group of hell knights and barons with the regular shotgun, so it ended up being a tossup while designing map03, I knew that I should retool it a bit to make it better, widen some corridors, shorten some hallways, less big enemies and more small enemies, (or alternatively access to the super shotgun) but when I did I didnt enjoy it as much myself as I did being cramped and dodging baron fireballs by one pixel pressed up against the wall, so I ended up reverting it back a bit.

Maybe next time I'll look into adding extra enemy types or something, I always felt I needed some more enemy variety and didn't wanna bust out the big guys too early. I wonder if there are other enemy addition wads and if they work with UBD

 

 

 

EDIT: I'll add my own playthrough aswell, to my post, I did it last night before bed but it took all night to upload lmao

Edited February 23, 2022 by MissBeverly

[Dubbag]

 

 

[MissBeverly]

2 hours ago, Dubbag said:

[playthrough]

 

DAMN that lava doesn't damage you, now that I'll fix right away

 

Nice playthrough by the way! It was great fun to watch