EX INFERIS - 31 Map Slaughter (ish) wad

[Ex Inferis]

GET IT HERE: https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/megawads/inferus

 

I just published a big megawad which attempts to continue the tradition of such illustrious megawads as Speed of Doom, Hell Revealed, Sunder, the Slaughterfest series, etc. 31 maps, 25000+ monsters, pretty views.

 

-It was conceived to be played as an episode but all maps were balanced and tested for pistol starts.

-Main focus is on combat and aesthetics, though it contains a fair amount of platforming and some basic switch puzzles.

-Mouselook is required, disable autoaim.

-Maps range from large to huge in size and are densely populated. M01 has a hot start, be warned.

-No jumping or crouching.

-Difficulty levels are implemented and were balanced for rewarding play regardless of the skill level you choose.

-I kept it as mod-friendly as possible. However, a few maps will bug out with some popular mods (their fault, not mine - sorry).

-This took me 8 years to build - where's my mordeth award?

 

I'd really appreciate it if you gave it a try and helped me spread the word. Thanks!

 

EDIT: This should be treated as a GZDoom release regardless of what the text file says. Freelook is necessary for a significant portion of the combat (and you'd be missing out on the architecture), and apparently it needs OpenGL rendering in order to prevent some of the maps from glitching out. I apologize to anyone i may have misled with the text file while i figure out a way to make this Boom compatible without hacking it to pieces.

Edited April 27, 2022 by Ex Inferis

[Thelokk]

Playing through at the moment, reserving this spot for thoughts. Not sure if I'd call M01 a hot start, found it well within the parameters of contemporary gameplay. It's fun though.

 

EDIT: up to map 11, quality stuff all around. My only irk so far is its advertisement as a "slaughterwad" - maybe it'll change in later maps but, for now, the monster count and density hardly qualifies as slaughter, I'd say it's much more in the SoD camp. Doesn't detract much from the experience, I'm enjoying the combat and the visuals are top notch, one can see why it took 8 years to make.

 

EDIT EDIT: ok, Cacoward material in my book, or at the very least a runner up. The craft that must have gone into this is INSANE. 

Edited April 25, 2022 by Thelokk

[Shepardus]

Looks interesting, however I'd like to point out that "Mouselook is required, disable autoaim" is incongruous with "Should work on any limit-removing port," as limit-removing source ports don't always have a way to disable the vanilla autoaim. If it's not too much of a change, I'd recommend making sure it's playable without freelook because otherwise that'll rule out speedrunning the maps in any demo-compatible source port.

[Thelokk]

31 minutes ago, Shepardus said:

Looks interesting, however I'd like to point out that "Mouselook is required, disable autoaim" is incongruous with "Should work on any limit-removing port," as limit-removing source ports don't always have a way to disable the vanilla autoaim. If it's not too much of a change, I'd recommend making sure it's playable without freelook because otherwise that'll rule out speedrunning the maps in any demo-compatible source port.

 

@Ex Inferis a very good point to look into, actually. Some of the combat would be very awkward without freelook, lots of very tall ledges. There are also a couple more imperfections here and there - personally I'd have let it sit a few days on DW before uploading to /idgames, which is usually accepted to be the 'perfect' version.

Edited April 25, 2022 by Thelokk

[Shepardus]

By the way, I just tried launching this with dsda-doom and it gave me the error "createPatch: Unknown patch format TITLEPIC." It appears that the TITLEPIC is in PNG format, which dsda-doom doesn't support. Workaround for now is to launch directly into a map with the -warp parameter.

 

The maps themselves look great, though, at least from my first look just skipping around. Not sure I have the time (or skill) to give this a full playthrough, but I'll note any issues I find in this thread, starting with the following:

• In MAP23, the weapon pickups at the start are made very awkward by the hanging corpses, which block movement due to infinite height actors.
• In MAP24, something funky is going on with these pop-up arachnotrons. I don't know exactly what, but I guess there's some vanilla quirk at play, since it occurs in -complevel 2 (vanilla/limit-removing) but not -complevel 9 (Boom compatibility). It's not a Boom linedef special though, I checked for those and didn't find any.
  Spoiler

  

   

• In MAP26, the hanging corpse to the right of the switch at the start and some of the ones in the next room block movement (can be walked around, but it's awkward). Also, the gate at the start bleeds through the floor if you look back at it after lowering it and walking through, as do these fences (this is a software renderer thing; I also checked GZDoom's software renderer and found the same).

  Spoiler

  

   

I'm using dsda-doom 0.24.2, testing primarily with -complevel 2 and -skill 2.

Edited April 25, 2022 by Shepardus

[amackert]

Looks pretty good! Will give it a try soon.

[Dubium]

Detailed slaughter maps? Neat! I got a feeling this wad is going to be my cup of tea. I will try it later :p

 

But judging from previous replies, it seems it will not work nicely with PrBoom+/DSDA-doom (which I mostly use to avoid lag in large maps with so many monsters). Unless you implemented advanced (G)ZDoom features, perhaps it will be better if the wad is more compatible on other ports, so it will be accessable to larger audience and more speedrunning-friendly (as Shepardus said), just a thought though.

Edited April 25, 2022 by Dubium

[Pixel Fiend]

Amazing atmosphere visually (I'm not particularly impressed by the midi choices from what I heard so far), and really fun gameplay. A big surprise with this high quality wad. No, I really mean it. It has some of the coolest views I've ever seen in this game.

 

The skybox glitches in maps 17, 20, 26, 30 and more, in Woof. Whatever's behind the glass in map11 as well. As mentioned before, the TITLEPIC is in the wrong format. 

 

If you'd be interested and you make the wad run properly in Woof/DSDA-Doom, I could make some atmospheric interface graphics for you to use.

 

Please let me know which places you expect to have the mouselook enabled so I can check if they are beatable without it.

Edited April 25, 2022 by Pixel Fiend

[Ex Inferis]

7 hours ago, Thelokk said:

 

@Ex Inferis a very good point to look into, actually. Some of the combat would be very awkward without freelook, lots of very tall ledges. There are also a couple more imperfections here and there - personally I'd have let it sit a few days on DW before uploading to /idgames, which is usually accepted to be the 'perfect' version.

Fair enough. Maybe i did rush the upload a bit, as i'm finding issues myself. I guess i was just itching too badly lol.

Will most likely update and will appreciate any feedback (and help on some things like the M26 issues pointed out by Shepardus which never showed up on any of my testing).

 

As for the tall ledges, i did deliberately design this with freelook in mind (IMO this corrects a technical limitation the original engine had, of which autoaim and infinitely tall actors were an imperfect solution). Apologize for recommending this for all limit-removing ports

Edited April 25, 2022 by Ex Inferis

[TheCyberDruid]

Just played it using IDCLEV for about half an hour and maps 1-6 and 8-9 feel like a completely different mapset. It's especially weird to go 'back' to that mapset after map 7. Maybe split the mapset into two? Maps 10-13 feel like the slaughter maps (haven't tried much further, but I assume it continues in that fashion.

 

Don't get me wrong: All maps look pretty nice design wise. It's just that the earlier maps don't match the later ones encounter design wise (and switch hunting in the dark wise if you catch my drift ;).

[ElPadrecitoCholo]

EX INFERIS

@Ex Inferis First of all, I have to say that I've really been liking this Wad because of the kind of things it offers, so that's why I started doing a kind of Longplay but in parts, since it's really complicated to be killing lots of enemies, and then go looking for secrets in maps that are confusing because of the kind of architecture they have, more however, it does not take away from the fact that each of the maps that I have been playing so far look pretty good, so which, in the Longplay you will see the maps from 01 to 04, since that was where I stayed the last time, although that is... for reasons of time, and to avoid boring people by taking hours just to complete a map and look for its secrets, I have given myself the task of playing it with a mod, therefore, excuse me if you did not expect this type of gameplay in your maps but, unfortunately, I am short of time, and I do not want to be making a map either every day, so... I hope you enjoy the video
 

(And if possible, a like and a comment from you would help a lot if it wasn't too much to ask, thanks.)

[Ex Inferis]

9 hours ago, ElPadrecitoCholo said:

EX INFERIS

@Ex Inferis First of all, I have to say that I've really been liking this Wad because of the kind of things it offers, so that's why I started doing a kind of Longplay but in parts, since it's really complicated to be killing lots of enemies, and then go looking for secrets in maps that are confusing because of the kind of architecture they have, more however, it does not take away from the fact that each of the maps that I have been playing so far look pretty good, so which, in the Longplay you will see the maps from 01 to 04, since that was where I stayed the last time, although that is... for reasons of time, and to avoid boring people by taking hours just to complete a map and look for its secrets, I have given myself the task of playing it with a mod, therefore, excuse me if you did not expect this type of gameplay in your maps but, unfortunately, I am short of time, and I do not want to be making a map either every day, so... I hope you enjoy the video
 

(And if possible, a like and a comment from you would help a lot if it wasn't too much to ask, thanks.)

I'm not sure i 'expected' any kind of gameplay from my wad, other than people killing monsters and having fun with it lol. I play with mods all the time myself, and the one you're using here does an excellent job speeding up the process of giving a tour of this place, it's def the way to go. Please get back to me on any issues you may find, as this will in all likelihood see an update sometime soon. Thanks for playing!

[ElPadrecitoCholo]

On 4/27/2022 at 8:42 PM, Ex Inferis said:

I'm not sure i 'expected' any kind of gameplay from my wad, other than people killing monsters and having fun with it lol. I play with mods all the time myself, and the one you're using here does an excellent job speeding up the process of giving a tour of this place, it's def the way to go. Please get back to me on any issues you may find, as this will in all likelihood see an update sometime soon. Thanks for playing!

Okay, thank you very much for clarifying things for me, haha, and it's good to know that someone else is more interested in playing with mods than using the Default game, which to a certain extent becomes a bit boring from constantly playing it, but hey, da by fact brother that I will report anything that is happening to you, huh. Greetings from me to you and you're welcome!

[amackert]

Spent last night going through the first seven maps on UV. The first six or so were a little too "stop and go" for my tastes (lots of switches, elevators, and waiting), along with a lot of symmetry (this can get stale). Some were also loooong for the types of maps they are (one took me 30 minutes, and I didn't even die many times!). That said, regardless whether it's for me or not at this point, this is truly high quality stuff and I do suggest others try it.

 

Map 07 got my attention with the more Slaughterfest-style gameplay. I'll keep working my way through it to see where else the WAD goes. When it comes to enjoying WADs, I do lean much more towards slaughter stuff and less on more traditional DOOM gameplay.

 

I could personally do without the focus on verticality at some parts. I am not a fan of using freelook in DOOM engine games as it just doesn't feel right to me. Thankfully free-looking was only needed a small handful of times. Playing traditionally with the default vertical auto-aim system worked fine in the first seven maps, for the most part.

[hakros]

This is completely awesome, the level design is impressive, congratulations for this incredibly mapset !

And thanks so much for share it !

[Ex Inferis]

On 4/29/2022 at 8:30 AM, amackert said:

Spent last night going through the first seven maps on UV. The first six or so were a little too "stop and go" for my tastes (lots of switches, elevators, and waiting), along with a lot of symmetry (this can get stale). Some were also loooong for the types of maps they are (one took me 30 minutes, and I didn't even die many times!). That said, regardless whether it's for me or not at this point, this is truly high quality stuff and I do suggest others try it.

 

Map 07 got my attention with the more Slaughterfest-style gameplay. I'll keep working my way through it to see where else the WAD goes. When it comes to enjoying WADs, I do lean much more towards slaughter stuff and less on more traditional DOOM gameplay.

 

I could personally do without the focus on verticality at some parts. I am not a fan of using freelook in DOOM engine games as it just doesn't feel right to me. Thankfully free-looking was only needed a small handful of times. Playing traditionally with the default vertical auto-aim system worked fine in the first seven maps, for the most part.

Thanks for the feedback! If you're into full-on slaughter, i'd suggest you check out maps 20, 21, 28, 31 and maybe 23, 27 and 30. Those are more likely to be your cup of tea.

 

Personally i'm team freelook. 99.8% of my gameplay is with mods that usually rely on it, and back in the day it used to always piss me off how autoaim made you shoot the knight in front while you were getting hammered by the chaingunner on a ledge behind him lol. My personal belief is freelook corrects a technical limitation of the early engine. Strictly a matter of taste, though. 

Edited May 1, 2022 by Ex Inferis

[Ex Inferis]

On 4/29/2022 at 10:59 AM, hakros said:

This is completely awesome, the level design is impressive, congratulations for this incredibly mapset !

And thanks so much for share it !

Thanks for the great feedback, i appreciate it!

[samuelK]

Map 03
After killing all the monsters I have not found a way to go to the other side where I can insert the yellow key.
If I use IDDCLIP I get it, but then it's cheating. I think the creator of this level forgot to let the player see how to get from one side to the other without getting burned in the green lava

 

[boom_compatible]

7 hours ago, samuelK said:

Map 03
After killing all the monsters I have not found a way to go to the other side where I can insert the yellow key.
If I use IDDCLIP I get it, but then it's cheating. I think the creator of this level forgot to let the player see how to get from one side to the other without getting burned in the green lava

 

 

You can jump, there are arrows on the ground indicating where to jump

From the your pic, gamma is to high to see the arrow in the ground

[samuelK]

obrigado por responder porém no UV não consigo pular e percebi isso pois se fosse ainda no windows seven até dava ma sno windows 11 agora sem chance, ou é meu pc que tá com bug sei lá mesmo assim obrigado por responder.