THEME-GAWAD: A Doom II Megawad

[Ofisil]

                                                            

 

                                Official Release on /Idgames: https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/megawads/thgawd01

 

Welcome fellow DOOMers. What you can see here is a labour of love from a variety of mappers, beginner to pro. The concept behind it? Each mapper has taken a specific theme, and then tried to make something nice looking, but also fun, within specific confines (3072*3072 Grid or Smaller, bar some exceptions, and stock textures-only). This Doom II megawad is divided between chapters of varying difficulty, with each chapter using specific monsters and enemies, with the purpose of the whole thing feeling like a gradually more challenging adventure. While this is playable from pistol-start, it is mean to be experienced continuously in UV as it has been balanced for that purpose and that purpose alone. CAUTION: Designed only for solo play!

 

Now, this begun at a period where I had way more free time (lock-downs and so on), so progress was super-fast initially, but life got in the way, so things slowed down a bit. Thankfully, few abandoned the project, and thus we are very happy to offer you THEME-GAWAD - a set of levels aimed at those who want something a bit more "traditional" in terms of gameplay, and with a severely less steep challenge. The project was always meant to be a simple one; a chance for mappers of all skills to have some mapping fun. Having said that, there are some genuine masterpieces here.

 

Have fun playing, and drop a post or two if you like what you see.

Cheers!

 

SCREENS:

 

Spoiler

 

 

MAPPERS (Note: some names have changed / the WAD uses the names as they were in the start of the project)
@rouge_means_red @Michael Jensen @Bri @DavidN @Dwimepon @E.M. @magicsofa @RemoveUwU @T.Will @StarSpun5000 @Rymante @Nimiauredhel @forgettable pyromaniac @DFF @eLeR Creative @ViolentBeetle @Fiendish @Azuris @Skronkidonk @Titanoxus @Ofisil @Jakub Majewski @Spectre01 @xScavengerWolfx

COMPOSERS:
@continuum.mid @Nimiauredhel @Greenjay @Bobby "J @Ofisil @DavidN @Demonic Meatball @Dragonfly @Doomride @Skronkidonk

thgawd01.rar

Edited November 15, 2023 by Ofisil

[ViolentBeetle]

It's happening!

[RaRu Des2122]

Dear @Ofisil, accept my congratulations! Thank you and your entire team!

I really hope that I will complete this megawad and record UV-Max videos (not demos, I'm totally not a speedrunner :D) on it no later than 2023 year...

[Walter confetti]

Congrats for the release! Another interesting community project!

[Firedust]

Congrats! You finally done did it!

[Dwimepon]

Congratulations to everyone involved, this was a super fun project to be a part of!

[RED77]

Congrats! I'll give it a try later

 

[rita remton]

woah! this is a pleasant surprise. congrats to the team!

[Mr Masker]

Cool to see this finally release. Credits to @xScavengerWolfx for keeping my map going after the start of my (mostly still on going) mapping burn out. And congrats to everyone involved with this for getting here. Will be sure to check this out when I get a chance.

Edited January 12, 2023 by Mr Masker

[E.M.]

At long last, it's finally here. It was good to be part of this project.

[Demonic Meatball]

Much props to everyone involved, and special thanks to @Ofisil for leading the project. Feels unreal seeing this megawad officially done. I’m glad to have this Wad as my first real contribution to the community.

Edited December 19, 2023 by Demonic Meatball

[TheCyberDruid]

Already playing map 8! Quite addictive stuff :D So far the maps have been really great. Hats off, one of the best mapsets I've played for a couple of months so far.

[Bobby :D]

Can’t wait for people to listen to a test midi I made in like an hour and go, hmm, kinda bops tho :P

[DavidN]

Well done for getting this to the finish line :)

[xScavengerWolfx]

Cognates team and @Ofisil for making this happen. I'm glade we manged to get this finished and everything. Can't wait for the next one, as always thank you for letting me be apart of this community project and i'm still proud that i remade map03 in a week.

[Rymante]

Congratulations!  Working on this project was pretty fun & quite the learning experience, looking forward to trying the full wad.  ^_^

 

Hoping to hear impressions from others as well!

[continuum.mid]

Wish I could have contributed more, but I'm glad this project is finally out! I'll have to play through it again, now that it's actually done.

[ViolentBeetle]

On MAP06, things 99 and 252 are hanging from the edge of a raised sector. They probably should not do that because this looks weird.

[IRod54]

How do I download this as a wad file?

 

[DFF]

1 hour ago, IRod54 said:

How do I download this as a wad file?

 

Download the .rar file at the top. It is a kinda funky way of sharing especially since WADs tend to be smaller files usually.

 

You will need a program to extract it I think, such as WinZip or 7zip, both are free. There may be easier methods but that's what I use.

[ViolentBeetle]

Vile started doing the playthrough on twitch

Another wad ends and Theme-Gawad starts at about 2:26

[Fernito]

The screenhots look gorgeous, I definitely have to give this a try!

[Bri0che]

I remember I played some maps of this project time ago. Congrats for the release, it just make my WAD playlist longer ! 

Edited January 13, 2023 by Briøche

[ViolentBeetle]

Vile is back playing more of the wad.

He's usually pretty good at spotting issues, so it's worth watching now or in VOD.

 

I will post here some things found on stream as they come up.

MAP10: Sector 265 can be easily flown over and secret not tagged. It doesn't really need to be a secret, or the entire balcony could be secret instead.

MAP12: Rock formation with tag 16 fails to lower entirely. It appears barrels around Romero's head are the cause, probably due to being partially stuck in a wall. Doom is weird about collision and moving platforms.

MAP15: Monsters have hard time getting out of fiery holes?

There's a lot of items that hang from the ledges on both maps made by DFF. Too many to list individual examples here. Might not be a big deal, but probably better move them.

Edited January 13, 2023 by ViolentBeetle

[DFF]

2 hours ago, ViolentBeetle said:

Vile is back playing more of the wad.

He's usually pretty good at spotting issues, so it's worth watching now or in VOD.

 

I will post here some things found on stream as they come up.

MAP10: Sector 265 can be easily flown over and secret not tagged. It doesn't really need to be a secret, or the entire balcony could be secret instead.

MAP12: Rock formation with tag 16 fails to lower entirely. It appears barrels around Romero's head are the cause, probably due to being partially stuck in a wall. Doom is weird about collision and moving platforms.

MAP15: Monsters have hard time getting out of fiery holes?

There's a lot of items that hang from the ledges on both maps made by DFF. Too many to list individual examples here. Might not be a big deal, but probably better move them.

Watched the streams, also noticed a floor lower effect in map17 didn't work correctly so if i can make changes i wouldn't mind fixing that and all the weird floating items. Swear i didn't encounter that many in testing but i haven't tested a bunch of different engines

[Kyka]

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

 

favoriting this thread. :) Congrats this project looks really cool.

[ViolentBeetle]

I've been adding this project into people's pages on Doomwiki and I noticed an oddity.

@Greenjay is listed as a composer here, but doesn't see to be in the readme. Name change?

[continuum.mid]

5 minutes ago, ViolentBeetle said:

I've been adding this project into people's pages on Doomwiki and I noticed an oddity.

@Greenjay is listed as a composer here, but doesn't see to be in the readme. Name change?

was syndoom i think?

[ViolentBeetle]

8 minutes ago, continuum.mid said:

was syndoom i think?

Looks like you are right, thanks.

[Vile]

Meant to comment here but I had a lot of fun with this set, so great work to everyone!

 

Spoiler

Concerning the last 10 maps (for ViolentBeetle since that stream was late), I think the main issue was more floating items - in particular, a soulsphere on map25 was out of reach because of this, resting far above the secret sector it was meant for.  On map29, there were also some monsters stuck in pens outside the map with no clear path for them to reach the playable area.