[DOOM II] "Lava Dungeon" - My first wad!

[Norb]

Hello! This is my first wad that I have been working on. Enjoy!

 

IWAD: Doom II

Tested with: GZDoom

Map Format: Doom II

Levels: LAV01 - LAV10 (LAV11 - Secret level)

No jumping and crouching.

 

This wad adds 6 custom textures.

LAV04, LAV09, LAV10 and end screen theme use custom songs which you can find here:

LAV04: Remstage - Neomorph

LAV09: Remstage - Destruction

LAV10: David Levy - Violence and War (Mixed by SLAD3)

End Screen Theme: Remstage - Speedrun

 

Download here.

 

Screenshots:

 

Have fun!

[LadyMistDragon]

My first death was suffered to a demon at the very start. The second came from a sneak shotgunner.

 

In many ways, these are a fairly good start, although there were a few maps it seemed you may have been running out of ideas. But one serious issue not related to texture misalignment is the cramped combat. It's not too unfair for the most part  until you get to certain maps like the ridiculous ending of 04, but generally, players like some move to move which there practically is none. Also, there were several groups of enemies not awaken by gunfire for some reason. Finally, stuffing Arch-viles into tight spaces is probably not a tactic you'll want to overdo.

 

Last map seemed to be some attempt at innovation, though the darkened and tight corridors were still quite annoying to navigate, imo.

[Biodegradable]

I'm terribly sorry, but I couldn't finish this legitimately and had to resort to cheating half the time just to make some semblance of progress. I threw in the towel at MAP09 because it was just getting a bit too silly. Everything is much too cramped, you use hurt floors around sharp bends without any radsuits to help besides MAP01, which makes some encounters literally impossible to beat legitimately. The aforementioned cramped spaces make the combat all feel very boring, clumsy or outright don't work at all with zero consideration to how the demons move and act in said cramped spaces. Filling narrow corridors with piles of meat isn't fun, it's just tedious and as the WAD goes on, it feels like the maps keep getting smaller and more cramped to the point of ridiculousness. There doesn't feel like much planning at all went into how the combat is supposed to flow, and considering half the time demons can't even move because of all the tight spaces, it doesn't really flow at all.

 

It all just feels like a terribly cramped, scatter-brained mess that desperately needs to be revised from top to bottom. While your texturing and lighting are good and there were some secrets that I thought were neat; the gameplay, progression and level design suffer from a lack of understanding of Doom's mechanics and what makes the game thrive. I really recommend you open your levels up and I mean REALLY open them up so that both the player and the demons have enough room to move. This isn't to say you can never use a cramped area, but you have to put a lot more thought into why it's cramped and what demons you use to make a fight feel not only fair but also interesting. When both the player and the demons can actually move and traverse the environment, combat becomes so much more interesting. I also recommend you develop a better understanding of how each demon works so you can make better use of their behaviour and abilities to make combat work to the best of your ability.

 

Keep practicing, fam.

[IcarusOfDaggers]

@Norb

I had to quit on UV and replay the mapset on hurt me plenty. Even though Hurt me plenty was playable, i still have a lot to say. I hate to do this, but I will not send the recording of my gameplay. And that's just because of the amount of raw critics I can give in a single level. In 9(give or take 1, I lost count and quit after showdown) levels I did play, i could only point out 4 good things (total) and about 10 bad things.

 

I am a total noobie myself. I like your ambition and your texture work is pretty solid, with a few mistakes. But, take that ambition down a notch, increase the patience and try to release one or two seperate maps at first.

 

1) Monster placement! Make sure the monster hitboxes (Those square things around the monsters) do not go outside of the wall or into each other. In some levels, all your monsters were stuck so it made it very easy to just remove them. If a monster is not a threat, you may as well remove it.

 

Spoiler

Stuck monsters on HMP difficulty

 

And there are many more examples of those.

 

 

2) Your best level of the set happens to be "The Damned Cave", which is mediocre at best. All the other levels feel like they were put together and not tested at all.

 

 

3) Skill level! Design your maps for your level of play. If you play standard doom II well on HMP(Hurt me Plenty), then design for HMP (Hurt me Plenty). If you play it on Hey, not Too rough(HNTR) then design for HNTR. Trick to increasing difficulty is not always resource starving the player or using way too many monsters. I fall into that trap myself. 

 

 

4) There were some good moments and I will point them out in the screenshots below:

Spoiler

I liked this secret:

 

I liked this ambush:

 

 

 

I like this room, but you may want to move the computer panels just enough for the ceiling texture to align and show a full lamp instead of a part of it.

 

 

 

I liked the cyberdemon fight in showdown, but unfortunately I can't seem to screenshot that.

 

 

5) Most of the mapset feels unifinished. It's like you built the maps, put them together and moved on once you ran out of ideas. Instead of making so many maps, try to put your energy into refining 1 or 2 maps. You can implement ideas from one map into another and gain inspiration from 2 completely seperate projects.

 

6) Try with 1 or 2 maps at first. It is much less overwhelming doing 1 or 2 maps well than trying to compile together a whole megawad.

Showdown was the last level I played. The Damned Cave and Showdown were the highlights of the wad file. But they still need work.

I did skip the earths core, because I was tired of dealing with monsters that posed no challenge at all.

 

@Biodegradable @LadyMistDragon His mapset is far more playable on HMP difficulty settings. A lot less monsters are stuck for once, and their placement makes more sense. Even then, lot of resources are lacking and the same issues you two pointed out still stand. If you're willing, you can give it another try.

Edited May 31, 2022 by IcarusOfDaggers

[Norb]

Thank you all for you feedback! This is my first wad so yeah it's not the best, so i'm going to have to practice.