DURANDOS:a hispanic deathmatch megawad

[Master O]

2 minutes ago, Downcologo one said:

I had no idea about that  xd

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlandos_d'Amour is its actual title.

 

 

[The_Gennie]

:O

[Downcologo one]

5 minutes ago, The_Gennie said:

:O

Genni I'm a big fan of your machinemas in doom

[The_Gennie]

15 minutes ago, Downcologo one said:

Genni I'm a big fan of your machinemas in doom

Waoz, Thank you very much Downco, it is good to see that a project culminates to give time for rest, Durandos will break all the wad dm, it will be so good that even its admirers will make their own versions, Durandos will create its own source port to play it more efficiently and will be called Duzandos.

[Downcologo one]

1 minute ago, The_Gennie said:

Waoz, Thank you very much Downco, it is good to see that a project culminates to give time for rest, Durandos will break all the wad dm, it will be so good that even its admirers will make their own versions, Durandos will create its own source port to play it more efficiently and will be called Duzandos.

it doesn't happen in duzando

[Decay]

Hell yea brothers, keep up the good work, esta es muy bien!

 

Next wad no more dwango parodies though!

[Master O]

2 minutes ago, Decay said:

Hell yea brothers, keep up the good work, esta es muy bien!

 

Next wad no more dwango parodies though!

 

Instead, there needs to be Dragonfly parodies or Eviternity.

Edited January 28 by Master O

[Decay]

17 minutes ago, Master O said:

 

Instead, there needs to be Dragonfly parodies or Eviternity.

Actually no I don't want to see any parodies, I like original work.

[Pancrasio]

14 minutes ago, Decay said:

Actually no I don't want to see any parodies, I like original work.

This actually is mostly original work, the 'Dwango parody' aspect is somewhat of a remnant of Durango 1 (and well, it's simply fun to parody something, of course...)

[Decay]

Just now, Pancrasio said:

This actually is mostly original work, the 'Dwango parody' aspect is somewhat of a remnant of Durango 1 (and well, it's simply fun to parody something, of course...)

Good to hear! I figured it was more original, the screenshots looked good.

[Downcologo one]

2 hours ago, Decay said:

Hell yea brothers, keep up the good work, esta es muy bien!

 

Next wad no more dwango parodies though!

Thank you very much decay

[Downcologo one]

2 hours ago, Master O said:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlandos_d'Amour is its actual title.

 

 

They look almost nothing alike xd

[Downcologo one]

Another new update and final I warn you that Flambeau made a permanent server of DURANDOS

Edited January 28 by Downcologo one

[DevilMyEyes]

zdaemon malibu session

 

Edited January 28 by DevilMyEyes

[Downcologo one]

2 hours ago, DevilMyEyes said:

zdaemon malibu session

 

Esa partida fue genial espero logre meterse mas gente al server otro dia

 

12 hours ago, rita remton said:

 

enhorabuena por el lanzamiento del wad! según las screenshots, los mapas se ven increíbles! :)

Muchas gracias Rita!

 

 

[Demion]

Ese loguito, no hay forma de no reconocerlo... qué viejita loca sos jaja un abrazo argento

[Downcologo one]

4 minutes ago, Demion said:

Ese loguito, no hay forma de no reconocerlo... qué viejita loca sos jaja un abrazo argento

Jajjaja Un abrazo loco tambien desde argentina 

[Vosolokoviteh]

Epicock

[DankMetal]

Este año es pa los perdicion jugadores latinos wn, felicidades por el lanzamiento ctm.

[Downcologo one]

44 minutes ago, DankMetal said:

Este año es pa los perdicion jugadores latinos wn, felicidades por el lanzamiento ctm.

Si este año se vienen bastante proyectos Hispanos y gracias Dank te queremos 

[Ozcar]

Carajo, me perdí el momento de entrar en el servidor zdaemon, oh bueno, de vuelta al tema DURANDOS, felicitaciones a todos los miembros que trabajaron en este proyecto, hicieron un gran trabajo.

Edited January 29 by Ozcar

[Downcologo one]

Just now, Ozcar said:

Carajo, perdi el momento para entrar el servidor de zdaemon, oh bueno, volviendo de tema de DURANDOS, le felicito a todo miembros que trabajaron en este proyecto, le quedaron bien trabajo. 

Muchas gracias ozcar 

Otro fin de semana vamos a invadir aquel server de zdaemon

[Krawa]

 

Date: February 10th, 2024
19:30 UTC (2:30 PM ET)

[Downcologo one]

11 minutes ago, Krawa said:

 

Date: February 10th, 2024
19:30 UTC (2:30 PM ET)

Nice

[Krawa]

Thanks for playing ZDS!

There are some screenshots of the session in the ZDS post.

[Downcologo one]

1 hour ago, Krawa said:

Thanks for playing ZDS!

There are some screenshots of the session in the ZDS post.

Thank you very much krawa

[EmZee712]

Played some for ZDS, now I have enough experience to relay back some of the excellent work that was done for this wad.

 

I do want to say there was an unfortunate event when I was chatting about the maps where the map editors did not take too kindly to their maps being criticized which lead to some attempts at """trolling""" for some time. This will not effect my review, but mappers should understand that all media released can and will be subject to criticism of all types, whether they want to hear it or not. And behaviors like that certainly highlight a stubborn nature that makes me fearful if those particular mappers actually wish to improve their skill.

 

I think now that there has been substantial changes between durango and this wad, I'll go through each map and break each one down individually for a more indepth review:

 

Map01:

Spoiler

Fairly standard deathmatch map here. Nothing particularly outstanding and there's nothing that is dragging this map down either, it's just well balanced enough an sticks within a comfort zone of sorts. Only nitpick I can pull for this one is the lift for the ssg, possibly make it faster or just turn it into stairs? There's already stairs on both sides, so I can see the intent was to have some variety, so I think this is suitable if it stayed the same. I also gave the eyeballs an eyepatch, just for fun.

 

Map02:

Spoiler

Another generically suitable map for deathmatch. Unlike Map01, this one is a bit more tighter so gameplay becomes slightly more frantic. Don't know if this was mapper intention but the switch to open the bfg door is possible after lowering the lift, only reason to ride the lift would be to grab the plasma gun if the player isn't very good with plasma bump. This is fine however as the map is small enough where anyone going for the bfg will meet plenty of resistance and often won't get to use it as effectively.

 

Map03:

Spoiler

This map is where the height of some rooms is starting to be seen as a slight issue. The map is fine, the outside flat sand area plays well and the texture job is decent to look at, but the constant changing of the player's view everywhere else is what makes the outside area with the waterfalls the more preferred place to run to and fight in. From my point of view, the places where the RL is sat and the other being the switch to lower the chaingun could be lowered slightly so that the stairs are not so tall, would also make the stairs themselves look a bit more appealing. Speaking of the chaingun; I think the editor here originally had an item where that chaingun is, hence why there's a switch to lower it, but now it doesn't seem quite as useful to lower the chaingun other than if I really wanted that medikit.

 

Map04:

Spoiler

Map04 is the start of what some maps in this wad tend to make a habit of which is visuals over gameplay. To begin with, the map is set against a dusk setting where the gimmick is the lighting around the central arena is casted all around, creating shadows off the objects it bounces off of. It is visually appealing to the eyes, and it seems like someone made good use of the shadowing tool in doom builder, at least I hope it was through a tool because it would be a shame if they drew all these shadows themselves. I say that because there are a lot of node building artifacts (bleeding floors of the sort) where it breaks the illusion very easily, see the examples below:

 

 

Gameplay wise - it just barely reaches the passing mark as a lot of the arena in the middle is tight and packed with boxes, giving little room to maneuver around. The spawns along the dirt edge are a bit cruel as they place players kind of far from the action, but maybe that's just me as my first instinct with a plasma gun is not to run to the nearest end of a corridor to start holding down the fire button. So I'll leave the spawns alone for now as this could have very well been a personal experience for them. This is still a circle arena map with not much in variation to keep it interesting.

 

Map05:

Spoiler

Possibly one of the better ones for gameplay in this wad. Good flow and good placement of weapons and items. Only nitpicks I have, and they are fairly minor nitpicks, is the pistol spawn after the soulsphere drop which wouldn't be an issue but every other spawn on the map is on a weapon of some kind. Other being the small jump over lava to get to the other side, feels like that lava shouldn't be there as a punishment for failing that jump? Almost could instead have it turn into brown water and have it run to the other side of the wall as a continuation of that, so it acts more appropriately as an inconvenience that a player falls rather than a painful punishment:

 

Map06:

Spoiler

What seems to be primarily a meme map. A lot of chainguns here. I do like the idea of a deathmatch taking place in a undersized small village where gnomes would live, kind of strange that some of them are going about their daily lives when one of them was murdered not far away but also there's a bunch of doomguys running around shooting eachother. Almost feels like it should have dipped more into the gnome culture, maybe section off parts of the map and have "events" where there's a load more gnomes doing something? Perhaps the murder scene has a load of police tape blocking players and loads of onlooking gnomes curious and vicarious about one of their fallen brethren. Also the size of the gnomes don't really match up with the size of their houses/castle, unless the pictures on the walls explain some of that?

 

Speaking of which; Meme maps and pictures that require reading don't translate well into the deathmatch format, regardless of whether people can understand the language and take time to read them all. Deathmatch is a very quick affair, and cluttering up a scene with visual noise will only create distraction for those playing, we will revisit this point later. This map also has a lot of height variation along the floors and it's getting around to be a slight distraction as this also messes with player movement a lot as well as being a constant shift in height for players running over all the different floor heights.

 

Map07:

Spoiler

A copy and pasted Dwango map with edits done by an editor. I think out of all the dwango maps to adapt, this is not one where keeping most of it intact is a good idea. The map itself has been made more open compared to its predecessor, which does play more to its strengths, but the overall feeling of the map is left rather bland as the editor's vision and style of mapping clashes heavily with the original author which leaves a map that has a lot of conflicting styling and layout. There is a one-sided mid texture on the entrance to the grey brick building and the corner of the red building wasn't properly mirrored, small nuances like that give the map an general look of not being tidy, to the point it seems like it would have been a better idea to recreate the map from scratch so the changes in details are not so jarring.

 

Map08:

Spoiler

Adapted doom 1 map from episode 3.

 

Right here is where the first of many maps that were designed with trying its best not to repeat the same mistakes of durango, but in this example, the execution really lacks a lot to be desired. Every spawn is a pistol spawn, this means that spawn fragging and sitting on spawns is heavily encouraged here, anyone that is too slow to get a weapon or is too far from a weapon at spawn is already at a very heavy disadvantage and that is not really a good thing to have in your deathmatch map. The amount of weapons is too little, and with what there are, they are not very spread out or easily spotted, making everyone's first impressions of the map is to start with a scavenger hunt of sorts which gets more tough the more players die and their bodies litter the floor making items harder to spot initially. The bfg itself is just too far away and will never be a preferred option over grabbing the nearest ssg and running in a circle around the outside area to catch 4 unsuspecting pistol spawns too weak to defend themselves.

 

I can't be too harsh and will give credit to the texturing job, the harsh reds are a nice contrast to the grey flooring and brown tech areas.

 

Map09:

Spoiler

Another circle arena map. Looks appealing to the eyes with the blues against greys and black, but the gameplay gets stale fairly quickly as there isn't anything different to do in the map besides grabbing a super shotty and getting killing sprees off players trying to go for the rocket launcher. Most of the spawns are in the center chamber anyway making it more appealing to sit on them rather than move around the arena.

 

Map10:

Spoiler

A map that would have been a lot better if not brought down by the amount of pistol spawns it has, going into double digits with the amount of spawns as well that are pistol only. This wouldn't be as weird if there weren't already a chaingun and shotgun spawn right next to eachother, or if there were more weapons easily accessible throughout the map. It seems like whoever made this only wanted players to go for the bfg and not much else as there are 3 switches dedicated to lowering the tele for the bfg with all the weapons located within that same central room so that spamming a bfg will always result in a tremendous amount of kills while the pistol spawns can do nothing but... well I guess not spawn to avoid death by bfg with most of the spawns being near or around the central room.

 

The method to get the bfg is also a bit convoluted, with there being a lot of textures around the map that have the switch faces on them like the satyr and gargoyle, but only a couple of them actually work with the hellknight head being the most confusing being a shoot based switch. Players don't have time like they do in singleplayer to explore a map and test out theories when jumping into a deathmatch, they need information to come across as quickly as possible so they don't feel cheated out of an experience because they didn't bother to look ahead at an entire wad before playing. This is why greenwar is such a popular mapset as the maps require very little understanding of their mechanics to play them, making them far more appealing to start playing and easier to master.

 

However the layout and flow of the map is still good enough that it can be salvaged from the state that it's in.

 

Map11:

Spoiler

Tight map with a focus on street combat and it succeeds at that. Still maintains good flow and has nice distribution of weapons and health pickups. Weird scrolling lights. Doors should have more visual indication as to what can be opened and what cannot be opened - I opened that one brown UAC door, only to drop down from the lift to run to another door using the same texture to find out it does not open.

 

That lift by the chaingun and tele should be made much much faster, potentially instant, as there is no reason to use it over just running around and using the stairs.

 

Map12:

Spoiler

Doom 2 map01 reimagining, or dwango5 map01 reimagining. This map seems to still have a lot of the same issues as highlighted in durango; slightly too many hallways, method to grab bfg is flawed by keeping the switch to open the door much further than the actual bfg and items out of the way of players with needless actions required to get them. Again like in map02, can open the bfg door without needing to ride the lift all the way up.

 

Map13:

Spoiler

Reimagining of an earlier durango map. Massive stepup from the previous iteration visually speaking, the map retains a lot of its hallmarks with the long winding paths and connecting corridors. Things get a little slow even if there are 4 players in the game, I couldn't imagine how it would look with any player count less than that but I can see the timelimit is what ends most matches rather than frag count. Only real nitpick I can make here is the invisible lift using the step textures as its "floor" - this is hard to tell when on the floor beneath that there is a lift there with no indication that it will also block players driving more of that point I'm making about providing information to the player so they can determine these things quickly.

 

Map14:

Spoiler

Simple dm map following a 3 lane structure with 2 outside "space" areas. A good detailing job with nice trimmings and set pieces around the map. The friction changes when going out into space is a nice touch, but there are player spawns that are outside as well which goes back on that idea of punishing players for spawning where they spawn - loss of movement control when respawning makes player significantly easier targets to spawnfragging as they can't juke shots anymore.

 

Minor nitpick for this map too, but either move the spawns onto the weapons or the weapons onto the spawns, fun fact about doom's weapon pickup animations: if the player picks up a weapon before the pistol shows up on screen, then they spend less time switching to their new weapon so they can use it faster. Putting the player further back from a weapon on spawn means they are guaranteed to go through the pistol being pulled up first before they can switch it out, making it harder to react to high octane situations.

 

First instance of a mid-texture bleeding into the floor here, if you want to mitigate this; change the brightness of at least one of the two sectors that is sharing your mid-texture.

 

Map15:

Spoiler

Very simple map with emphasis on spawn control. I like that this map actually maintains a height at most of its levels, so there *can* be action in most of the areas if not for the spawns;

 

I played this map last night and found it to be very clunky with a mixture of pistol spawns and 2 regular spawns, upon further reflection, I found out this map only has 4 spawns in the map and 3 of them are way too close together for comfort. At the top of the map there is a shotgun spawn that drops down onto an ssg and just behind that shotgun spawn, no less than 256px units away is a pistol spawn. This led to funny situations where getting that pistol spawn meant I couldn't grab the shotgun spawn if players were spawning on top of it and blocking me from grabbing it, forcing me to run somewhere else and find a weapon. Could just do with spreading out the spawns a bit more. Also that spawn down by the chainsaw makes me think the map author here was playing with a mod that replaces the chainsaw for a railgun, as I don't see what use the chainsaw could have in a map like this but I would prefer it to be a railgun.

 

Overall this map is being held back by the fact only a portion if it is being used during gameplay, spread the spawns more and also look at the one hallway leading to the bfg as the length of it is rather long and only serves to probably prolong players getting to the bfg? This makes the bfg a complete waste of time to grab especially when I would have to jumpmaze over to get it, remember that the bfg is only good when up against players that don't know how to play against it, the gun dramatically drops in use during most other cases.

 

Map16:

Spoiler

A map, which I was told in the server, is based off a plutonia "dm" map. And nothing against the editor of this map, but it shows that it was a variation of a singleplayer map. They did what they could and ultimately have created something far more competent than any singleplayer map with dm starts could do, but that dna is still trapped within some of the areas as some rooms are still linear in nature with only one entrance and not much room to vary up gameplay besides charging through very small openings. Could do with a couple more loops, and the tall ssg pedestal brought down a lot as it is unnecessary to keep climbing up and over for.

 

Map17:

Spoiler

Right then, to be as blunt as possible, this map has way too much visual noise to the point that it is very very distracting when running around and trying to frag. I can see the intent here; make something that is supremely abstract and appeal to that demographic, which it is incredibly abstract and interesting to digest. Trouble is there is way too many things going on, I've got an icon of sin spitting out blue balls, monsters spawning, waking up and dying, the walls flash very fast and suddenly when players walk over certain sectors (DO NOT PLAY IF YOU ARE EPILEPTIC) and other sectors may change colors when walking over them. This map has a LOT to take in as a first time player, especially as a player that tries to track other players during dm it's very hard when there are so many other things that want to grab my attention. Humans are very susceptible to moving objects, we naturally look to identify something that is in motion, and this map has you covered in that department.

 

There are also those floating platforms to run across that look like you could shoot through them, but due to how they were made, they are very deceiving.

 

Map18:

Spoiler

Spawn spawns and more spawns. Way waaaaaaaay too many spawns in this map with only a few of them actually on a gun. Every spawn is indicated by a candle, except one of them. Map layout is actually quite alright, and had an alright time playing it when I could actually spawn closer to a weapon.

 

Megasphere can be lowered, but I wouldn't want to give other players a chance and would rather straferun onto the platform from the supershotgun perched up on the grey floor side. I'd probably make that one lift by the 4 ssgs much faster, just a time sink to sit on that thing and way for it to go up.

 

Map19:

Spoiler

A map I really enjoy the look of, but the execution on the gameplay just isn't there. This map seems more like it belongs in durango but it has its visuals all updated to be a little more detailed.

 

Firstly the issues are similar to before, there are just too many pistol spawns, and for a massive map like this that isn't very good when trying to get back into a battle quickly when you have a long ways to travel.

 

The darkness hurts the map's coherent nature, it's difficult to determine the fastest way back (or even the correct way back) when a lot of the background textures are shrouded in darkness.

 

I didn't even notice this, but if someone was to spawn on top of the plasma gun in the outdoor section, you can't leave that room at all until someone flips an unassuming switch somewhere in the tunnels. There is a reason why players don't put one time use switches in their maps that open up other vast sections of a map.

 

All in all, the underground tunnels and train station vibes really got me thinkin of cybercrime, and this could have been a lot better but, again, the execution just isn't there to bring all these themes together with a map that can carry the gameplay

 

Map20:

Spoiler

Back to generic proper dm maps. Map is very basic in layout and texturing, plays to its own strengths by giving players many large areas to fight in.

 

Could dial back the amount of spawns by some. The conveyor idea is cute and I'm honestly unsure how good it was in execution seeing as it has a bfg and a blue armor on it.

 

Map21:

Spoiler

Just an outdoorsy fighting arena situated by a cave and waterfront. The winding paths make the fights drag on a bit, but nothing too major here, just be prepared to turn around a lot. Only wish that the sand castle the soulsphere sits on was slightly lower so I could walk on it from all sides, got stuck on it a couple times and slanted linedefs like to snag players pretty well.

 

Map22:

Spoiler

Another map that is a product of being hindered by the author wishing to be abstract. While not as visually distracting as Map17 was, this map has plenty of sector floor height variation and it is prevalent all over meaning player speed is constantly being slowed down and gaining too much air time making turns more difficult. Maps like these remind me of my days in MXU where I cried myself to sleep most nights after Decay blasted my maps for doing the same thing, but after many years of mapping I can certainly say that he is right about that and in more ways than he might have realized at the time. The bfg that requires killing a super beefy monster is certainly an odd touch. Probably one of the few maps I could say might do better with cutting down some of the sizing, the outside area with the rockets adds too much space to the map.

 

Map23:

Spoiler

Clearly this guy like depeche mode, not bad taste in music I gotta give it to them. However I feel bad critiquing this map as it definitely looks like a first time mapper making a map here.

 

The usual issues crop up here as well; too many spawns, none of the spawns are on guns, maps are too large, side areas and passages offer little to nothing as a reward for going out of your way.

 

Kind of feels like this person should make a singleplayer/coop wad first as a base to start off with. That means they can use all the depeche mode midis they want, and there are a few midis created from dm songs that are quite good for doom as a personal note there.

 

Map24:

Spoiler

circular arena with not a lot to go off on. It was frustrating during the playthrough as some of the spawns start players off with little to no visibility, most of them are either in the back or tucked away in a crevice.

 

Map25:

Spoiler

While not quite as pleasant as some of the other maps on offer, this map at least has a decent understanding to have a good flow for gameplay. Moving between the mini arenas is fluid enough and I know where I am at most times and where I need to go. Could see this being a good map overtime with some tweaks to a few side rooms, namely that castle one where it's expected to go around a bunch of "towers" to get to a tele and be rewarded a soulsphere, but you can just sr40 off one of the towers and make the jump perfectly. This map also showcases what happens when someone is not thinking about their environment's consistency with itself!

 

 

Map26:

Spoiler

A map inspired by plutonia map11. Looks good, plays good, not really much else to say besides that it's a symmetrical map on top of that. Megasphere is hidden through a series of teleporters, which I think is not a great thing to have when both sides of your map look exactly the same except mirrored, just means that those with more map knowledge than other players have an unfair advantage.

 

Map27:

Spoiler

A map that may be inspired by a doom 1 episode 3 map? One of the maps that is definitely 'out there' in terms of design. Not a lot of versatility, it's just a straight forward map with hallways, corridors and hallways that lead to rooms that are essentially dead ends. A switch that teleports the player, could easily be just a teleporter to give that information to the player that wants to use it? There are also quite a few switches in this map in general, making it kind of confusing when hitting one and not being sure what it did. In a deathmatch game, I can see most of them just never being used unless someone takes that time and effort out first, but I'm too focused on staying alive and getting frags to really juggle the idea of what each of the 4 switches may or may not do. The map is fine for the most part though, could just do with not spamming floor height changes in small rooms.

 

Map28:

Spoiler

Another very large and very open map. Neither being too large or too open is a bad thing, but this map boasts even more pistol spawns and the weapon placement seems almost random, making it difficult to tell where a gun is to grab after spawning when there are loads of other players running around shooting and spamming weapons. Not really much else to talk about here, I do like the outdoor dining area, reminds me a bit of a mad hatter from Alice in Wonderland situation and maybe he's holding tea parties here or something.

 

Map29:

Spoiler

This map got a lot of flak in last night's playthrough, and observing it a 3rd time now with no other players confirms a lot of the issues already highlighted during the match; Too many pistol spawns again, and a majority of the weapons are essentially hidden by players getting lost in the large layout of the tech base. Weapons should be placed in locations that are easy to remember and sit either off to the side of or above where a sea of dead players may be, so that players will still be able to go grab those weapons should they need them again.

 

Map30:

Spoiler

Another meme sort of map. The walkways make everything too tight to really run around. The intended goal here is to grab the rocket launcher from the center and start covering spawns, but due to how the map is designed, that actually gives players not going for the rocket launcher an easier time for kills as players get stuck on top of eachother when going for the rocket launcher because the map is so tight. If that is the intention then this is not really a criticism.

 

Map31:

Spoiler

A meme chainsaw/berserk map we've seen plenty of before. I like the eye texture used for one of the revenant marble textures. It's also a bit weird that the same red revenant marble face texture is the sky texture, but it's a meme map so I assume it's for the memes.

 

Map32:

Spoiler

Another meme map, rocket launcher pedestals everywhere and a plasma gun spawn in the middle. I swear I've seen this before, I think in a UDM map?

 

In summation:

Looks like a lot of people learned a lot from their time with Durango, and it shows in a really positive way. There are a lot more nuance issues to pick up through this wad, and it's clear that quite a few individuals were motivated to make their own start to a mapping career in this wad as well which is all very much welcome. Please continue to learn from the shortcomings and make even more maps as I'm sure you'll eventually land a very good batch of maps here soon with all that has been shown as an improvement with this current mapset.

 

I will also second Decay's wishes and say no more dwango parodies - personal tangent, but whenever someone tells me that they make something "dwango inspired" they only ever are referring to exactly Dwango5 and the 5-6 maps that they remember fondly from that wad, no one recalls the other 13 (yes 13 wads excluding the spinoffs that Doomkid has done) of dwango where we learned through the many years that they are very much a product of their time and a reason why they are not really played much these days. Make your own flavor of doom map, that's a much better step than emulating a style that is definitely outdated to today's standards.

Edited February 11 by EmZee712

[Downcologo one]

35 minutes ago, EmZee712 said:

Played some for ZDS, now I have enough experience to relay back some of the excellent work that was done for this wad.

 

I do want to say there was an unfortunate event when I was chatting about the maps where the map editors did not take too kindly to their maps being criticized which lead to some attempts at """trolling""" for some time. This will not effect my review, but mappers should understand that all media released can and will be subject to criticism of all types, whether they want to hear it or not. And behaviors like that certainly highlight a stubborn nature that makes me fearful if those particular mappers actually wish to improve their skill.

 

I think now that there has been substantial changes between durango and this wad, I'll go through each map and break each one down individually for a more indepth review:

 

Map01:

  Hide contents

Fairly standard deathmatch map here. Nothing particularly outstanding and there's nothing that is dragging this map down either, it's just well balanced enough an sticks within a comfort zone of sorts. Only nitpick I can pull for this one is the lift for the ssg, possibly make it faster or just turn it into stairs? There's already stairs on both sides, so I can see the intent was to have some variety, so I think this is suitable if it stayed the same. I also gave the eyeballs an eyepatch, just for fun.

 

Map02:

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Another generically suitable map for deathmatch. Unlike Map01, this one is a bit more tighter so gameplay becomes slightly more frantic. Don't know if this was mapper intention but the switch to open the bfg door is possible after lowering the lift, only reason to ride the lift would be to grab the plasma gun if the player isn't very good with plasma bump. This is fine however as the map is small enough where anyone going for the bfg will meet plenty of resistance and often won't get to use it as effectively.

 

Map03:

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This map is where the height of some rooms is starting to be seen as a slight issue. The map is fine, the outside flat sand area plays well and the texture job is decent to look at, but the constant changing of the player's view everywhere else is what makes the outside area with the waterfalls the more preferred place to run to and fight in. From my point of view, the places where the RL is sat and the other being the switch to lower the chaingun could be lowered slightly so that the stairs are not so tall, would also make the stairs themselves look a bit more appealing. Speaking of the chaingun; I think the editor here originally had an item where that chaingun is, hence why there's a switch to lower it, but now it doesn't seem quite as useful to lower the chaingun other than if I really wanted that medikit.

 

Map04:

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Map04 is the start of what some maps in this wad tend to make a habit of which is visuals over gameplay. To begin with, the map is set against a dusk setting where the gimmick is the lighting around the central arena is casted all around, creating shadows off the objects it bounces off of. It is visually appealing to the eyes, and it seems like someone made good use of the shadowing tool in doom builder, at least I hope it was through a tool because it would be a shame if they drew all these shadows themselves. I say that because there are a lot of node building artifacts (bleeding floors of the sort) where it breaks the illusion very easily, see the examples below:

 

 

Gameplay wise - it just barely reaches the passing mark as a lot of the arena in the middle is tight and packed with boxes, giving little room to maneuver around. The spawns along the dirt edge are a bit cruel as they place players kind of far from the action, but maybe that's just me as my first instinct with a plasma gun is not to run to the nearest end of a corridor to start holding down the fire button. So I'll leave the spawns alone for now as this could have very well been a personal experience for them. This is still a circle arena map with not much in variation to keep it interesting.

 

Map05:

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Possibly one of the better ones for gameplay in this wad. Good flow and good placement of weapons and items. Only nitpicks I have, and they are fairly minor nitpicks, is the pistol spawn after the soulsphere drop which wouldn't be an issue but every other spawn on the map is on a weapon of some kind. Other being the small jump over lava to get to the other side, feels like that lava shouldn't be there as a punishment for failing that jump? Almost could instead have it turn into brown water and have it run to the other side of the wall as a continuation of that, so it acts more appropriately as an inconvenience that a player falls rather than a painful punishment:

 

Map06:

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What seems to be primarily a meme map. A lot of chainguns here. I do like the idea of a deathmatch taking place in a undersized small village where gnomes would live, kind of strange that some of them are going about their daily lives when one of them was murdered not far away but also there's a bunch of doomguys running around shooting eachother. Almost feels like it should have dipped more into the gnome culture, maybe section off parts of the map and have "events" where there's a load more gnomes doing something? Perhaps the murder scene has a load of police tape blocking players and loads of onlooking gnomes curious and vicarious about one of their fallen brethren. Also the size of the gnomes don't really match up with the size of their houses/castle, unless the pictures on the walls explain some of that?

 

Speaking of which; Meme maps and pictures that require reading don't translate well into the deathmatch format, regardless of whether people can understand the language and take time to read them all. Deathmatch is a very quick affair, and cluttering up a scene with visual noise will only create distraction for those playing, we will revisit this point later. This map also has a lot of height variation along the floors and it's getting around to be a slight distraction as this also messes with player movement a lot as well as being a constant shift in height for players running over all the different floor heights.

 

Map07:

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A copy and pasted Dwango map with edits done by an editor. I think out of all the dwango maps to adapt, this is not one where keeping most of it intact is a good idea. The map itself has been made more open compared to its predecessor, which does play more to its strengths, but the overall feeling of the map is left rather bland as the editor's vision and style of mapping clashes heavily with the original author which leaves a map that has a lot of conflicting styling and layout. There is a one-sided mid texture on the entrance to the grey brick building and the corner of the red building wasn't properly mirrored, small nuances like that give the map an general look of not being tidy, to the point it seems like it would have been a better idea to recreate the map from scratch so the changes in details are not so jarring.

 

Map08:

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Adapted doom 1 map from episode 3.

 

Right here is where the first of many maps that were designed with trying its best not to repeat the same mistakes of durango, but in this example, the execution really lacks a lot to be desired. Every spawn is a pistol spawn, this means that spawn fragging and sitting on spawns is heavily encouraged here, anyone that is too slow to get a weapon or is too far from a weapon at spawn is already at a very heavy disadvantage and that is not really a good thing to have in your deathmatch map. The amount of weapons is too little, and with what there are, they are not very spread out or easily spotted, making everyone's first impressions of the map is to start with a scavenger hunt of sorts which gets more tough the more players die and their bodies litter the floor making items harder to spot initially. The bfg itself is just too far away and will never be a preferred option over grabbing the nearest ssg and running in a circle around the outside area to catch 4 unsuspecting pistol spawns too weak to defend themselves.

 

I can't be too harsh and will give credit to the texturing job, the harsh reds are a nice contrast to the grey flooring and brown tech areas.

 

Map09:

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Another circle arena map. Looks appealing to the eyes with the blues against greys and black, but the gameplay gets stale fairly quickly as there isn't anything different to do in the map besides grabbing a super shotty and getting killing sprees off players trying to go for the rocket launcher. Most of the spawns are in the center chamber anyway making it more appealing to sit on them rather than move around the arena.

 

Map10:

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A map that would have been a lot better if not brought down by the amount of pistol spawns it has, going into double digits with the amount of spawns as well that are pistol only. This wouldn't be as weird if there weren't already a chaingun and shotgun spawn right next to eachother, or if there were more weapons easily accessible throughout the map. It seems like whoever made this only wanted players to go for the bfg and not much else as there are 3 switches dedicated to lowering the tele for the bfg with all the weapons located within that same central room so that spamming a bfg will always result in a tremendous amount of kills while the pistol spawns can do nothing but... well I guess not spawn to avoid death by bfg with most of the spawns being near or around the central room.

 

The method to get the bfg is also a bit convoluted, with there being a lot of textures around the map that have the switch faces on them like the satyr and gargoyle, but only a couple of them actually work with the hellknight head being the most confusing being a shoot based switch. Players don't have time like they do in singleplayer to explore a map and test out theories when jumping into a deathmatch, they need information to come across as quickly as possible so they don't feel cheated out of an experience because they didn't bother to look ahead at an entire wad before playing. This is why greenwar is such a popular mapset as the maps require very little understanding of their mechanics to play them, making them far more appealing to start playing and easier to master.

 

However the layout and flow of the map is still good enough that it can be salvaged from the state that it's in.

 

Map11:

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Tight map with a focus on street combat and it succeeds at that. Still maintains good flow and has nice distribution of weapons and health pickups. Weird scrolling lights. Doors should have more visual indication as to what can be opened and what cannot be opened - I opened that one brown UAC door, only to drop down from the lift to run to another door using the same texture to find out it does not open.

 

That lift by the chaingun and tele should be made much much faster, potentially instant, as there is no reason to use it over just running around and using the stairs.

 

Map12:

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Doom 2 map01 reimagining, or dwango5 map01 reimagining. This map seems to still have a lot of the same issues as highlighted in durango; slightly too many hallways, method to grab bfg is flawed by keeping the switch to open the door much further than the actual bfg and items out of the way of players with needless actions required to get them. Again like in map02, can open the bfg door without needing to ride the lift all the way up.

 

Map13:

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Reimagining of an earlier durango map. Massive stepup from the previous iteration visually speaking, the map retains a lot of its hallmarks with the long winding paths and connecting corridors. Things get a little slow even if there are 4 players in the game, I couldn't imagine how it would look with any player count less than that but I can see the timelimit is what ends most matches rather than frag count. Only real nitpick I can make here is the invisible lift using the step textures as its "floor" - this is hard to tell when on the floor beneath that there is a lift there with no indication that it will also block players driving more of that point I'm making about providing information to the player so they can determine these things quickly.

 

Map14:

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Simple dm map following a 3 lane structure with 2 outside "space" areas. A good detailing job with nice trimmings and set pieces around the map. The friction changes when going out into space is a nice touch, but there are player spawns that are outside as well which goes back on that idea of punishing players for spawning where they spawn - loss of movement control when respawning makes player significantly easier targets to spawnfragging as they can't juke shots anymore.

 

Minor nitpick for this map too, but either move the spawns onto the weapons or the weapons onto the spawns, fun fact about doom's weapon pickup animations: if the player picks up a weapon before the pistol shows up on screen, then they spend less time switching to their new weapon so they can use it faster. Putting the player further back from a weapon on spawn means they are guaranteed to go through the pistol being pulled up first before they can switch it out, making it harder to react to high octane situations.

 

First instance of a mid-texture bleeding into the floor here, if you want to mitigate this; change the brightness of at least one of the two sectors that is sharing your mid-texture.

 

Map15:

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Very simple map with emphasis on spawn control. I like that this map actually maintains a height at most of its levels, so there *can* be action in most of the areas if not for the spawns;

 

I played this map last night and found it to be very clunky with a mixture of pistol spawns and 2 regular spawns, upon further reflection, I found out this map only has 4 spawns in the map and 3 of them are way too close together for comfort. At the top of the map there is a shotgun spawn that drops down onto an ssg and just behind that shotgun spawn, no less than 256px units away is a pistol spawn. This led to funny situations where getting that pistol spawn meant I couldn't grab the shotgun spawn if players were spawning on top of it and blocking me from grabbing it, forcing me to run somewhere else and find a weapon. Could just do with spreading out the spawns a bit more. Also that spawn down by the chainsaw makes me think the map author here was playing with a mod that replaces the chainsaw for a railgun, as I don't see what use the chainsaw could have in a map like this but I would prefer it to be a railgun.

 

Overall this map is being held back by the fact only a portion if it is being used during gameplay, spread the spawns more and also look at the one hallway leading to the bfg as the length of it is rather long and only serves to probably prolong players getting to the bfg? This makes the bfg a complete waste of time to grab especially when I would have to jumpmaze over to get it, remember that the bfg is only good when up against players that don't know how to play against it, the gun dramatically drops in use during most other cases.

 

Map16:

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A map, which I was told in the server, is based off a plutonia "dm" map. And nothing against the editor of this map, but it shows that it was a variation of a singleplayer map. They did what they could and ultimately have created something far more competent than any singleplayer map with dm starts could do, but that dna is still trapped within some of the areas as some rooms are still linear in nature with only one entrance and not much room to vary up gameplay besides charging through very small openings. Could do with a couple more loops, and the tall ssg pedestal brought down a lot as it is unnecessary to keep climbing up and over for.

 

Map17:

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Right then, to be as blunt as possible, this map has way too much visual noise to the point that it is very very distracting when running around and trying to frag. I can see the intent here; make something that is supremely abstract and appeal to that demographic, which it is incredibly abstract and interesting to digest. Trouble is there is way too many things going on, I've got an icon of sin spitting out blue balls, monsters spawning, waking up and dying, the walls flash very fast and suddenly when players walk over certain sectors (DO NOT PLAY IF YOU ARE EPILEPTIC) and other sectors may change colors when walking over them. This map has a LOT to take in as a first time player, especially as a player that tries to track other players during dm it's very hard when there are so many other things that want to grab my attention. Humans are very susceptible to moving objects, we naturally look to identify something that is in motion, and this map has you covered in that department.

 

There are also those floating platforms to run across that look like you could shoot through them, but due to how they were made, they are very deceiving.

 

Map18:

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Spawn spawns and more spawns. Way waaaaaaaay too many spawns in this map with only a few of them actually on a gun. Every spawn is indicated by a candle, except one of them. Map layout is actually quite alright, and had an alright time playing it when I could actually spawn closer to a weapon.

 

Megasphere can be lowered, but I wouldn't want to give other players a chance and would rather straferun onto the platform from the supershotgun perched up on the grey floor side. I'd probably make that one lift by the 4 ssgs much faster, just a time sink to sit on that thing and way for it to go up.

 

Map19:

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A map I really enjoy the look of, but the execution on the gameplay just isn't there. This map seems more like it belongs in durango but it has its visuals all updated to be a little more detailed.

 

Firstly the issues are similar to before, there are just too many pistol spawns, and for a massive map like this that isn't very good when trying to get back into a battle quickly when you have a long ways to travel.

 

The darkness hurts the map's coherent nature, it's difficult to determine the fastest way back (or even the correct way back) when a lot of the background textures are shrouded in darkness.

 

I didn't even notice this, but if someone was to spawn on top of the plasma gun in the outdoor section, you can't leave that room at all until someone flips an unassuming switch somewhere in the tunnels. There is a reason why players don't put one time use switches in their maps that open up other vast sections of a map.

 

All in all, the underground tunnels and train station vibes really got me thinkin of cybercrime, and this could have been a lot better but, again, the execution just isn't there to bring all these themes together with a map that can carry the gameplay

 

Map20:

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Back to generic proper dm maps. Map is very basic in layout and texturing, plays to its own strengths by giving players many large areas to fight in.

 

Could dial back the amount of spawns by some. The conveyor idea is cute and I'm honestly unsure how good it was in execution seeing as it has a bfg and a blue armor on it.

 

Map21:

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Just an outdoorsy fighting arena situated by a cave and waterfront. The winding paths make the fights drag on a bit, but nothing too major here, just be prepared to turn around a lot. Only wish that the sand castle the soulsphere sits on was slightly lower so I could walk on it from all sides, got stuck on it a couple times and slanted linedefs like to snag players pretty well.

 

Map22:

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Another map that is a product of being hindered by the author wishing to be abstract. While not as visually distracting as Map17 was, this map has plenty of sector floor height variation and it is prevalent all over meaning player speed is constantly being slowed down and gaining too much air time making turns more difficult. Maps like these remind me of my days in MXU where I cried myself to sleep most nights after Decay blasted my maps for doing the same thing, but after many years of mapping I can certainly say that he is right about that and in more ways than he might have realized at the time. The bfg that requires killing a super beefy monster is certainly an odd touch. Probably one of the few maps I could say might do better with cutting down some of the sizing, the outside area with the rockets adds too much space to the map.

 

Map23:

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Clearly this guy like depeche mode, not bad taste in music I gotta give it to them. However I feel bad critiquing this map as it definitely looks like a first time mapper making a map here.

 

The usual issues crop up here as well; too many spawns, none of the spawns are on guns, maps are too large, side areas and passages offer little to nothing as a reward for going out of your way.

 

Kind of feels like this person should make a singleplayer/coop wad first as a base to start off with. That means they can use all the depeche mode midis they want, and there are a few midis created from dm songs that are quite good for doom as a personal note there.

 

Map24:

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circular arena with not a lot to go off on. It was frustrating during the playthrough as some of the spawns start players off with little to no visibility, most of them are either in the back or tucked away in a crevice.

 

Map25:

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While not quite as pleasant as some of the other maps on offer, this map at least has a decent understanding to have a good flow for gameplay. Moving between the mini arenas is fluid enough and I know where I am at most times and where I need to go. Could see this being a good map overtime with some tweaks to a few side rooms, namely that castle one where it's expected to go around a bunch of "towers" to get to a tele and be rewarded a soulsphere, but you can just sr40 off one of the towers and make the jump perfectly. This map also showcases what happens when someone is not thinking about their environment's consistency with itself!

 

 

Map26:

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A map inspired by plutonia map11. Looks good, plays good, not really much else to say besides that it's a symmetrical map on top of that. Megasphere is hidden through a series of teleporters, which I think is not a great thing to have when both sides of your map look exactly the same except mirrored, just means that those with more map knowledge than other players have an unfair advantage.

 

Map27:

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A map that may be inspired by a doom 1 episode 3 map? One of the maps that is definitely 'out there' in terms of design. Not a lot of versatility, it's just a straight forward map with hallways, corridors and hallways that lead to rooms that are essentially dead ends. A switch that teleports the player, could easily be just a teleporter to give that information to the player that wants to use it? There are also quite a few switches in this map in general, making it kind of confusing when hitting one and not being sure what it did. In a deathmatch game, I can see most of them just never being used unless someone takes that time and effort out first, but I'm too focused on staying alive and getting frags to really juggle the idea of what each of the 4 switches may or may not do. The map is fine for the most part though, could just do with not spamming floor height changes in small rooms.

 

Map28:

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Another very large and very open map. Neither being too large or too open is a bad thing, but this map boasts even more pistol spawns and the weapon placement seems almost random, making it difficult to tell where a gun is to grab after spawning when there are loads of other players running around shooting and spamming weapons. Not really much else to talk about here, I do like the outdoor dining area, reminds me a bit of a mad hatter from Alice in Wonderland situation and maybe he's holding tea parties here or something.

 

Map29:

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This map got a lot of flak in last night's playthrough, and observing it a 3rd time now with no other players confirms a lot of the issues already highlighted during the match; Too many pistol spawns again, and a majority of the weapons are essentially hidden by players getting lost in the large layout of the tech base. Weapons should be placed in locations that are easy to remember and sit either off to the side of or above where a sea of dead players may be, so that players will still be able to go grab those weapons should they need them again.

 

Map30:

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Another meme sort of map. The walkways make everything too tight to really run around. The intended goal here is to grab the rocket launcher from the center and start covering spawns, but due to how the map is designed, that actually gives players not going for the rocket launcher an easier time for kills as players get stuck on top of eachother when going for the rocket launcher because the map is so tight. If that is the intention then this is not really a criticism.

 

Map31:

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A meme chainsaw/berserk map we've seen plenty of before. I like the eye texture used for one of the revenant marble textures. It's also a bit weird that the same red revenant marble face texture is the sky texture, but it's a meme map so I assume it's for the memes.

 

Map32:

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Another meme map, rocket launcher pedestals everywhere and a plasma gun spawn in the middle. I swear I've seen this before, I think in a UDM map?

 

In summation:

Looks like a lot of people learned a lot from their time with Durango, and it shows in a really positive way. There are a lot more nuance issues to pick up through this wad, and it's clear that quite a few individuals were motivated to make their own start to a mapping career in this wad as well which is all very much welcome. Please continue to learn from the shortcomings and make even more maps as I'm sure you'll eventually land a very good batch of maps here soon with all that has been shown as an improvement with this current mapset.

 

I will also second Decay's wishes and say no more dwango parodies - personal tangent, but whenever someone tells me that they make something "dwango inspired" they only ever are referring to exactly Dwango5 and the 5-6 maps that they remember fondly from that wad, no one recalls the other 13 (yes 13 wads excluding the spinoffs that Doomkid has done) of dwango where we learned through the many years that they are very much a product of their time and a reason why they are not really played much these days. Make your own flavor of doom map, that's a much better step than emulating a style that is definitely outdated to today's standards.

Honestly, thank you very much for the criticism.
I still wanted to clarify some things
It's just that some things you mentioned like spawns without weapons on map 8 were fixed in the FINAL version, what happens is that Krawa used an outdated version, rather the output version, not the updated one.

[OceanMadman]

48 minutes ago, EmZee712 said:

I do want to say there was an unfortunate event when I was chatting about the maps where the map editors did not take too kindly to their maps being criticized which lead to some attempts at """trolling""" for some time. This will not effect my review, but mappers should understand that all media released can and will be subject to criticism of all types, whether they want to hear it or not. And behaviors like that certainly highlight a stubborn nature that makes me fearful if those particular mappers actually wish to improve their skill.

I'd like to say that there was a misunderstanding there. I think most of us thought you were just a troll, since we seemed to only get complaints mostly about minor things or things that we hadn't even seen as flaws, and pretty much no appreciation for the things we did well (and the little appreciation was stuff like "this one flows decently"), so some mappers just took it as that, as someone trolling. Unfortunately it is not the first time that someone has trolled or criticized our work in a bad way, so everything indicated that this was another of those occasions. And we didn't recognize you either, as your name on zdaemon seems to be different from doomworld. If we had remembered you from your review of durango, we certainly would have taken more seriously, since your previous review and now this one, are very good, and we really appreciate them. We certainly want to keep improving, and already in this wad we put a lot of effort in trying to improve from the previous one, (We even re-made several maps several times just to polish them as much as we could after some of the reviews for Durango) so these reviews are still very much appreciated.

 

Thanks for playing, and sorry for the misunderstanding.

[EmZee712]

2 hours ago, Downcologo one said:

Honestly, thank you very much for the criticism.
I still wanted to clarify some things
It's just that some things you mentioned like spawns without weapons on map 8 were fixed in the FINAL version, what happens is that Krawa used an outdated version, rather the output version, not the updated one.

A beta being hosted and the author saying "well it's fixed in the upcoming release"? Man I am getting major corectf vibes off that. That is a shame and now I wish I could have seen and played the final product before this so my critique would be more accurate and on the mark, but it is what it is.

 

1 hour ago, OceanMadman said:

I'd like to say that there was a misunderstanding there. I think most of us thought you were just a troll, since we seemed to only get complaints mostly about minor things or things that we hadn't even seen as flaws, and pretty much no appreciation for the things we did well (and the little appreciation was stuff like "this one flows decently"), so some mappers just took it as that, as someone trolling. Unfortunately it is not the first time that someone has trolled or criticized our work in a bad way, so everything indicated that this was another of those occasions. And we didn't recognize you either, as your name on zdaemon seems to be different from doomworld. If we had remembered you from your review of durango, we certainly would have taken more seriously, since your previous review and now this one, are very good, and we really appreciate them. We certainly want to keep improving, and already in this wad we put a lot of effort in trying to improve from the previous one, (We even re-made several maps several times just to polish them as much as we could after some of the reviews for Durango) so these reviews are still very much appreciated.

 

Thanks for playing, and sorry for the misunderstanding.

And that's fine, maybe it's time for fledgling mappers like yourself to learn the trade of dealing with troll criticism and when it's real criticism. Even today I still get trolls commenting on my maps, and I follow a system to figure out if it's a troll comment or a helpful critique.

 

Don't stop at just the "this map is bad" comment and instead ask them to clarify some more; if they clarify by saying the map is bad again, then likely you have a troll trying to comment, but if they at least *try* and give something constructive, then it's a genuine comment from a player that may not be so knowledgeable about mapping. I actually tried to get Emann to clarify more when he mentioned last night that the maps were "bad" as everyone knows that's not really very helpful to mappers looking to improve. A lot of players that play the content that you release will often say what they feel off the top of their minds, now they are not dumb mind you, but these guys do help out in the long run and can provide clarity as people who don't live and breath mapping to give that outsider looking in perspective that a lot of mappers desperately could do with more of. This also puts you in a more advantageous position if it is a troll, I find that asking them to clarify quickly diffuses them as a troll because they see you acting not with emotion but as someone genuinely trying to learn and knowing if it is or not for sure makes it easier to simply put them on the ignore list.

 

Do take that with a pinch of salt, you can't please everyone with your mapping, and I mentioned it before so I'll say it again, just enjoy mapping and you won't really go wrong.

Edited February 11 by EmZee712