Ultimate Doom "In Name Only" - On IDgames

[cannonball]

It has almost been an eternity, but finally just before the 30th anniversary of the release of Doom. UDINO is finally here in an approaching finished state.

 

 

 

(Titlepic - Courtesy of Sincity2100)

 

Final release;

 

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom/Ports/megawads/udino

 

—————————————————————————————————————————

The project was designed to be a creative exercise in building levels around the original map titles for all 36 maps of the Ultimate Doom with an increasing emphasis on creating challenging but enjoyable maps that will even given experienced veterans a stern test (Especially for an Ultimate Doom megawad and especially so for episodes 3 and 4). All maps are built to a limit removing (complevel 3) format and are beatable from a pistol start, difficulty setting are included, but some may need a little refinement to pitch the difficulty with more precision. Co-op starts are included but anything beyond this will be patchy and dependent on the author who made the map.

 

Maps and respective authors

Spoiler

 

E1M1: Hangar - Eli Cohen (Processingcontrol) 
E1M2: Nuclear Plant - Steve Duff (SteveD) 
E1M3: Toxin Refinery - Stuart Rynn (Stewboy) - with edits by Jawsinspace and Cannonball
E1M4: Command Control - Stuart Rynn (Stewboy) - with edits by DJVCardmaster, dobu gabu maru and Cannonball
E1M5: Phobos Lab - Sincity2100 - with edits by Jawsinspace, dobu gabu maru and Cannonball
E1M6: Central Processing - Matt Powell (Cannonball)
E1M7: Computer Station - Darryl Steffan (dobu gabu maru)
E1M8: Phobos Anomaly - Armaetus - with edits by Cannonball
E1M9: Military Base - Matt Powell (Cannonball)

E2M1: Deimos Anomaly - PedroVC - with edits by dobu gabu maru
E2M2: Containment Area - Riderr3
E2M3: Refinery - DJVCardmaster - with edits by Jawsinspace and Cannonball
E2M4: Deimos Lab - Scifista42 - with edits by dobu gabu maru

E2M5: Command Center - Cyriak Harris (Mouldy)
E2M6: Halls of the Damned - PedroVC - with edits by dobu gabu maru

E2M7: Spawning Vats - General Rainbow Bacon - with edits by dobu gabu maru
E2M8: Tower of Babel - Alex Scott (Scotty)
E2M9: Fortress of Mystery - Dreadopp - with edits by dobu gabu maru

E3M1: Hell Keep - JMickle - with edits by Cannonball
E3M2: Slough of Despair - Benjogami
E3M3: Pandemonium - Darryl Steffan (dobu gabu maru)
E3M4: House of Pain - Walter Confalonieri - with edits by dobu gabu maru
E3M5: Unholy Cathedral - Corsair - with edits by dobu gabu maru

E3M6: Mt. Erebus - Nine Inch Heels
E3M7: Limbo - Matt Powell (Cannonball)
E3M8: Dis - Nine Inch Heels
E3M9: Warrens - Darryl Steffan (dobu gabu maru)

E4M1: Hell Beneath - _Bruce_
E4M2: Perfect Hatred - Steve Duff (SteveD)
E4M3: Sever the Wicked - Darryl Steffan (dobu gabu maru)
E4M4: Unruly Evil - Tourniquet
E4M5: They Will Repent - Matt Powell (Cannonball)
E4M6: Against Thee Wickedly - Steve Duff (SteveD)
E4M7: And Hell Followed - Peanut - with edits by dobu gabu maru
E4M8: Unto the Cruel - Darryl Steffan (dobu gabu maru)
E4M9: Fear - TimeOfDeath 

 

 

Many thanks to everyone involved during the development of this project, from inception to the very end where we are now, these include and possibly more;

 

dobu gabu maru - Co-project lead and the person who picked up the slack when I wasn't around here as much.

Tristan
mouldy
Ledillman
Jaws in Space
CorSair
plums
Steve D
EffinghamHuffnagel
Alfonzo & Tarnsman
Scotty
galileo31dos01
Nine Inch Heels
and *Magnusblitz*, our MVP: Most Valuable Playtester!

(plus Antroid & the Doominati for discussions)

 

Screenshot from each map

 

Spoiler

      

 

      

 

      

 

      

 

      

 

      

 

      

 

     

 

      

 

      

 

      

 

      

 

Spoiler

Private sweepstakes on the time taken to find a catastrophic game-breaking bugs are actively encouraged - The time is 22:25 BST :)

 

Edit - 8/7/23 at 3am, It was discovered that Cannonball managed to mis-spell Mt Erebus, subsequently Cannonball has been sentenced to life in the phantom zone…..

 

Edited December 7, 2023 by cannonball

[Firedust]

You've finally done it, madmen!

Thank you, cannonball and dobu, for taking over the reins on this project! I've been keeping an eye on it since its inception. Been a wild ride lmao

Edited July 6, 2023 by Firedust

[TJG1289]

Well, this is an instant play. I've been looking forward to this one for a while! Congrats on the release! 

[Bobby :D]

Playing this right now, on E1M5. If the wad is consistently around this level of quality so far, you guys fucking knocked it out of the park!

[Reigada]

Simply amazing work

[DJVCardMaster]

I will celebrate this awaited release with whisky, I was going to do it anyway, but now I have an excuse.
I'm happy to take part in this one, although I did have problems with my submission in development.
Cheers to all!

[Rudolph]

Cool! Hopefully, this one's difficulty is going to be more reasonable than D2INO...

 

Anyway, I need help with E1M1:

 

Spoiler

How do I lower the bars leading to the secret area with the rocket launcher?

 

Edited July 7, 2023 by Rudolph

[kalensar]

Very nice! I really enjoyed the early versions a lot so this should be awesome.

[TheShep]

golly this is gun be gud

[cannonball]

3 hours ago, Rudolph said:

Cool! Hopefully, this one's difficulty is going to be more reasonable than D2INO...

 

Anyway, I need help with E1M1:

 

  Hide contents

How do I lower the bars leading to the secret area with the rocket launcher?

 

I would hold that thought on the difficulty until completing all of the maps. Hopefully many flaws from D2INO are not present here though.

Spoiler

This one isn't obvious (But then getting a rocket launcher in the first map isn't to be expected). Now there is an earlier secret in the main base section of the map that contains health bonuses (Sector 331). Now down that pathway there is a wall that can be lowered (It should be clear which one) to reveal a switch. The switch lowers the bars to the section near the end of the map that houses the rocket launcher.

 

Edited July 7, 2023 by cannonball

[dobu gabu maru]

Very happy to have this thing out in a playable state! E4 in particular was a lot of fun to design for, as every map is a concept rather than a location.

 

Also we are super eager for some playtesting feedback, and everyone that playtests at least one episode will get their name added to the playtesters portion of the text file.

 

26 minutes ago, cannonball said:

Hopefully many flaws from D2INO are not present here though.

At the very least, there's no maps as painfully long as MAP07 & MAP19 this time around (as impressive as they were conceptually).

Edited July 7, 2023 by dobu gabu maru

[Capellan]

Are you okay with playtesting in the form of youtube videos?

[cannonball]

7 minutes ago, Capellan said:

Are you okay with playtesting in the form of youtube videos?

YouTube videos are absolutely fine. It will be great to see how you get on.

[plums]

Fuck, I've come and gone from this place like three times since this started and you guys are just finishing it up? ;D

 

In all seriousness congrats on sticking with it. I'll try to play through this sometime soon, though I commit to nothing and probably can't pump out the detailed analysis like I have previously. I know I've played some of these maps before but it's been a while, and I'm sure there's lots of new and changed stuff since.

 

2 hours ago, dobu gabu maru said:

At the very least, there's no maps as painfully long as MAP07 & MAP19 this time around (as impressive as they were conceptually).

 

I will defend D2INO MAP07 to the death as being one of the best trollmaps ever made! But of course I appreciate why you wouldn't want to go that route...

Edited July 7, 2023 by plums

[s4f3s3x]

Holy hell, those screenies!

Edited July 7, 2023 by s4f3s3x

[Walter confetti]

OH YEAH! Party time!

Congrats for the release, It was a pleasure being part of this!

[Roofi]

Damn, I thought U "Dino" was extinct ! Congrats for the release !

Edited July 7, 2023 by Roofi

[mouldy]

wow finally. I hope there are some crazy controversial masterpieces in this one.

[Rudolph]

5 hours ago, dobu gabu maru said:

At the very least, there's no maps as painfully long as MAP07 & MAP19 this time around (as impressive as they were conceptually).

This. This. I am sorry, but it is simply not fun to have to wander around for minutes, if not hours, trying to figure out where to go while taking unavoidable damage from damaging floor because I have used all the radiation suits and there is no other way around. I was generally fine with D2INO up until that point; yes, even MAP06's unforgivingly deadly reimagining of the titular crusher.

 

@cannonball Thanks!!! E1M1 is done: pretty good map overall, except the weird ending. I was actually half-expecting E1M2 to start underwater or something, so I was a bit disappointed when it turned out not to be the case.

Edited July 7, 2023 by Rudolph

[FEDEX]

9 years later... aged like a good wine. 

[DoctorNuriel]

This looks incredible!

[Catpho]

Grats on the RC!

 

9 hours ago, dobu gabu maru said:

everyone that playtests at least one episode will get their name added to the playtesters portion of the text file.

What bounty! My sword is yours.
 

Fwiw, I played E3M3, E3M9, and E4M3 during the alpha stages. I foolishly didn't write down any notes nor record any footage, but they were all fun, good, and functional last time I played. I particularly liked E4M3's  extended chainsaw play, which is on the shortlist of the set's highlights, while E3M3 and E3M9 struck me as works from different dobu era, but still great joy. E3M3 is more ambitious and contains more moving parts, and some of those parts are top-tier - I'm thinking of the flesh elevator fight, the imp void, the strange metal vines garden - while others I didn't immediately click with. First there's the volcano exploration that dominates the incidental portion, which probably the two reasons I didn't vibe with it being how the visuals could probably be even more mad with today's Dobu, and that it's actually kinda snoozy to slay so much trash for so long in a winding magma cavern without much shake-up until you reach one of the setpieces. There's also the blink or you'll miss it climax after exiting the elevator fight, which felt strangely rushed. Still, lots to think about that map, but I would rather play something new at the moment, heh. E3M9 is a fine concept piece, a brisk cleanser. No complaints on that one.

Outside of the bugs I've already reported in the thread, I haven't stumbled upon any more in these three.

[Nine Inch Heels]

Well then. Let's see what manner of insights the sacrifices playtesters will provide.

 

[Ravendesk]

Played through e1 today, here are fdas with saves. Recorded with dsda-doom 0.26.2 (-complevel 3), so should be played back with the same version.

udino-e1-fdas.zip
Also please don't consider this "playtesting", I did not max the maps, and only hunted for secrets a little bit where I felt like it. I also don't think I can provide any useful feedback, however hopefully fdas are still somewhat useful.

 

The big highlight of the episode for me was e1m8, the baron fight was super intense, and visuals and midi added a lot to add to this feeling of fighting for your life. Awesome map overall. e1m7 was also very interesting.

 

In e1m7 I think something broke for me (?) or I just missed something obvious:

Spoiler

I did both puzzles in both normal world and computer world, however the secrets did now lower for me. You can see it in fda for e1m7. I think they should lower right away when I'm done with the computer world puzzle? They did not however and even raised I think, which made them look kinda broken visually as well.

Also a small note about the lifts puzzle in e1m7:

Spoiler

The puzzle is cool, but it took me awhile to realise where walkover lines that lower the lifts are. I assumed they are right in front of the switch so puzzle seemed theoretically impossible. Only after I figured that the lines that lower it are right after the numbers (which in hindsight makes a lot of sense) I got the solution. However, I don't know what can be done to make this more clear and maybe I'm the only one confused by that, so just saying.

 

Edited July 7, 2023 by Ravendesk

[finnks13]

Been playing this over the last couple of evenings, only managed to get through Episode 1 so far but I'm having a great time. The combat has generally far exceeded my expectations for what's really possible in fairly easy Doom 1 maps, with E1M6 & E1M8 being especially highlights in this regard. I think E1M8 was my favourite map in the episode, the baron fight is basically perfect for what it's trying to do and I loved it, but E1M7 has some incredibly cool moments too, especially

Spoiler

the surprise return to E1M1 (the original :P) and the dash back through the corrupted version to safety

and felt like the most creative reinterpretation of it's title (though I imagine Computer Station probably lends itself more to an interesting concept for an E1-esque techbase than Command Control :P)

 

Did find a couple of issues in the maps I played:
- "Mt. Erebus" is misspelled in the textfile as "Mt Erubus" (you can stop the timer for gamebreaking bugs :P)

- Small texture misalignment in E1M9:

Spoiler

- E1M5: The yellow key door, and the sector behind it (Sectors #9 and #100) are damaging when they probably shouldn't be.

- E1M7: 

Spoiler

Two things I'm not sure are actually issues but might be, this map is kinda nuts so I could just be stupid!

- There's floating zombiemen on the left & right side of the red key arena, and they're so high up above the players view it seems weird

- When solving the puzzles for the secret items in the computer realm, they seem to raise into the ceiling afterwards instead of lowering like I expected. I could be missing a step to actually get them though.

- E1M8:

Spoiler

Neither of these are objective problems but I wanted to mention them anyway:

- I feel like the automap secret spoils the surprise of being teleported into the alternate dimension as it's all displayed on it. I think the automap secret is especially easy to find, and it's a cool enough reveal that it seems a shame that it can be spoiled early.

- While I understand why the backtracking teleporter exists, being able to go back to the original area really took away from the impact of being thrown into the alternate dimension for me and I feel like the map would be better off if it were removed.

 

Really looking forward to playing the other episodes :)

Edited July 8, 2023 by finnks13
rewording

[dobu gabu maru]

20 hours ago, plums said:

Fuck, I've come and gone from this place like three times since this started and you guys are just finishing it up? ;D

 

While looking through the OG thread to note the playtesters during development, I laughed when I saw your name pop up. We've both been at this a while!

 

11 hours ago, Catpho said:

There's also the blink or you'll miss it climax after exiting the elevator fight, which felt strangely rushed. Still, lots to think about that map, but I would rather play something new at the moment, heh. E3M9 is a fine concept piece, a brisk cleanser. No complaints on that one.

Outside of the bugs I've already reported in the thread, I haven't stumbled upon any more in these three.

 

Is that the sinking stone cyber fight? That was originally going to be more fleshed out but I was bumping up against the ZenNode limits by the time I got around to it so it had to be somewhat bare bones (which is good because otherwise the map would be like 10 minutes longer with my original idea of a sinking city). Also—I guess due to my penchant for detailing—you can tell I designed most of the big lava cave back when this project was supposed to be vanilla compatible!

 

6 hours ago, Ravendesk said:

In e1m7 I think something broke for me (?) or I just missed something obvious

 

45 minutes ago, finnks13 said:

- E1M7

 

Good catch! You both solved the puzzle correctly; it turns out there's a compatibility issue I hadn't accounted for on that map, where any "lower to highest floor" trigger takes sectors sky-high on -cl 3 for some reason. Didn't test it before release because I knew theoretically those sectors should work as intended, but alas, Doom is a fickle mistress :P

[cannonball]

4 hours ago, finnks13 said:

Been playing this over the last couple of evenings, only managed to get through Episode 1 so far but I'm having a great time. The combat has generally far exceeded my expectations for what's really possible in fairly easy Doom 1 maps, with E1M6 & E1M8 being especially highlights in this regard. I think E1M8 was my favourite map in the episode, the baron fight is basically perfect for what it's trying to do and I loved it, but E1M7 has some incredibly cool moments too, especially

  Reveal hidden contents

the surprise return to E1M1 (the original :P) and the dash back through the corrupted version to safety

and felt like the most creative reinterpretation of it's title (though I imagine Computer Station probably lends itself more to an interesting concept for an E1-esque techbase than Command Control :P)

 

Did find a couple of issues in the maps I played:
- "Mt. Erebus" is misspelled in the textfile as "Mt Erubus" (you can stop the timer for gamebreaking bugs :P)

- Small texture misalignment in E1M9:

  Reveal hidden contents

- E1M5: The yellow key door, and the sector behind it (Sectors #9 and #100) are damaging when they probably shouldn't be.

- E1M7: 

  Reveal hidden contents

Two things I'm not sure are actually issues but might be, this map is kinda nuts so I could just be stupid!

- There's floating zombiemen on the left & right side of the red key arena, and they're so high up above the players view it seems weird

- When solving the puzzles for the secret items in the computer realm, they seem to raise into the ceiling afterwards instead of lowering like I expected. I could be missing a step to actually get them though.

- E1M8:

  Reveal hidden contents

Neither of these are objective problems but I wanted to mention them anyway:

- I feel like the automap secret spoils the surprise of being teleported into the alternate dimension as it's all displayed on it. I think the automap secret is especially easy to find, and it's a cool enough reveal that it seems a shame that it can be spoiled early.

- While I understand why the backtracking teleporter exists, being able to go back to the original area really took away from the impact of being thrown into the alternate dimension for me and I feel like the map would be better off if it were removed.

 

Really looking forward to playing the other episodes :)

Cheers for going through this, and shame on me for mid-spelling one of the iconic doom maps in the text file. I am sure the men in grey suits will deal with me at some point for that :p

 

Spoiler

E1M8 - I agree regarding the auto so, funnily enough I swapped out the items in some of the secrets because handing out the rocket launcher and plasma gun were redundant given they are presented when you actually need them.

The immersion breaking is an interesting one and something that I think I overlooked, as such I sacrificed this to make the function of being able to get anything that was missed earlier on in the map. In the end I actually think you have a point, in the end the starting version of the map is deliberately low key to the point where missing something (aside from the secrets) is actually quite hard and maybe it is better to just have the “anomaly” be the point of no return for the player. It will be something to mull over anyway.

 

Cheers for finding the few little oversights too, I will fix those (though I guess Dobu will look at his map). There were a few issues in E2 that were picked up in Vile’s stream last night that I have already fixed (Nothing game breaking but rendered 100% kills impossible).

 

[Catpho]

E4M1 (@_bruce_)

 

Video playthrough link (all my recorded playthroughs are on -cl 3)
 

I reasonably enjoyed this. It never deviates from a monotextured skin/wood/blood abyss so visually the map blurs together after a while, but I think that it kinda works because of some really great darkness play, and the structuring suggesting an organic bent to the location, despite no other overt flesh textures or bio-architecture present. Like you are lost in some nest of evil.
 

The play gives a similar feeling of overwhelming infestation. The fighting here consists of seemingly endless swarms of hitscanners, imps, and demons flooding into your shotgun range, and sometimes those things are standing on a second floor, and other times they are teleported directly in front of you. No, it's neither difficult nor complicated, but it feels like a lot, and thus very intense. I think it could stand to vary the formations and methods of deployment (I'm thinking of maps such as those I linked here, which had a similar gameplay strategy), but the level's length does leave little chance for this to become repetitive. Having at least one substantial/"staged" fight, preferably for the level's only key, would give its pacing a bit more impact.

Probably a bit too simplistic in overall conception for me to love it, but I thought it was decently entertaining.

[mouldy]

just whizzed through the first episode, great stuff. Highlights for me were Central processing for gameplay and Computer Station for insane levels of dobu. It definitely was the right choice to make this project limit removing

[EffinghamHuffnagel]

I've been waiting for this one to get released. Working my way through EP1. Lots of fun. Like Solar Struggle, this does not feel like Doom1. Happy to see Doom2 liquids added, but surprised to not see SLIME01-08.

 

Just finished E1M4, and a question:

Spoiler

How do you get to the secret Soul Sphere? The tag 3 switch which lowers the lift to get you to the platform is only revealed by the tag 1 switch, which is inside that secret. Is there another switch I missed?

 

 

Edited July 8, 2023 by EffinghamHuffnagel
Vicodin did something to my brain.