Xerxesia - My Wadography in 32 Maps

[Xyzzу]

What I have here is a compilation consisting of the best of five years of Xyzzymapping (2017 - 2021).

I tend to make short, punchy maps that are usually a bit quirky and quite gimmicky; at least, that's what I've gathered from you all playing various levels of mine. So if you're in to that stuff, or just wanted my work which was scattered across many projects all in one convenient package (and polished to boot!), here you go!

Due to the nature of this WAD, some maps were touched up just a smidge while others had a few liberties taken for them to fit in with the rest better. And it's all under -complevel 21* to account for new monsters and some other changes necessary for a mishmash album like this to be at least somewhat cohesive.

PLEASE treat this WAD with respect, play it in the appropriate source ports (DSDA-Doom or the Eternity Engine) and if you're having trouble with the difficulty of certain maps, lower the difficulty! I worked my butt off making a "full" experience for most maps that isn't just "a lesser version of UV". I never design maps to cater to first-time players, so expect a few deaths here and there that could be considered "cheap" or "requires foreknowledge (read: BFG) to avoid". 

*though you don't need to set it yourself since the WAD comes with a "COMPLVL" text lump that tells DSDA-Doom to run this WAD in -cl21 automatically.

 

Here are pictures of some of the biggest selling points to this wad. I know many of you have played some things of mine, but none of you have played everything:

Spoiler

Oh, and be sure to play using the software renderer or indexed mode so you get the nice pain palette! Also if it "Signal 11"s when you try to run it, just keep doing so until it works; it appears to happen randomly for me and a few others as well. Farewell, for now!

Download

Edited April 24, 2023 by Χyzzy

[GarrettChan]

X, y, z are the cooler letters and my name has none of them :^)

 

BTW, Happy birthday.

 

EDIT: Feels the years of the maps should be put in bottom left. Now they are blocked by IL time and total time. Don't know whether it's too much to change it though.

Edited June 17, 2022 by GarrettChan

[Xyzzу]

16 minutes ago, GarrettChan said:

EDIT: Feels the years of the maps should be put in bottom left. Now they are blocked by IL time and total time. Don't know whether it's too much to change it though.

Thanks for the wishes!

 

And yeah, I didn't really care for the placement of that since it also takes the place of the optional secret map symbols, so it's fine c:

[Altazimuth]

For the record I fixed a bug that caused MAP03 (and potential later maps) to have incorrect things spawning in Eternity. I don't have the time to test the full set, but it should all work in Eternity now starting from today's DRDTeam devbuilds.

[Shepardus]

40 minutes ago, Altazimuth said:

For the record I fixed a bug that caused MAP03 (and potential later maps) to have incorrect things spawning in Eternity. I don't have the time to test the full set, but it should all work in Eternity now starting from today's DRDTeam devbuilds.

I decided to give MAP03 a spin and ran into a couple issues in Eternity Engine. I'll list them below, but if you'd rather that I open an issue on GitHub I can do that as well:

Spoiler

• The player can walk through these walls in the room before the yellow key corridor, while in dsda-doom and GZDoom they cannot:
• No monsters teleport into the yellow key corridor. There's also a big monster that shows up when you return to the starting area after getting the yellow key, that doesn't show up in Eternity.
• The big enemy that lies beyond the yellow door shoots projectiles too high, and they just sail over the player's head.
• The gate leading to the exit at the center of the map does nothing when used, instead of slowly lowering.
• The enemies around the ring near the start of the map seem to wake up all at once, while in dsda-doom they don't seem to do anything until you get closer to them.

 

[Altazimuth]

Eh don't worry about it. Proper support would more have been an accident than intentional, to be honest. People shouldn't really use Hexen-in-Doom right now as an exact cross-port standard. There's probably some ZDoom-specific bits Eternity is missing or something.

[Xyzzу]

Bump. I've been slowly drifting away from Doom, WAD-making in particular as the text screens late in this mapset suggest. The pressures of life and what I wanna do with it as I'm getting older are a bit much for me at the moment. It may be an incredibly long while before you get anything substantial outta me, so enjoy the idgames release of what I consider to be a good personal stopping point for this hobby. Here's hoping I return with that "Stella" project depicted in this WAD's ending someday!