[-cl 21] Firefly.wad (RC2)

[eater29]

Hidden away on an alien moon, a colossal demonic machine threatens to steal the power of your home planet's star.

Firefly is a set of 7 (+1 end map) MBF21-compatible (-cl21) maps centered around difficult, chaotic slaughter combat. They're orange.

IMPORTANT STUFF

• iwad: Doom II
• Format: MBF21 (-Cl 21)
• Takes up maps 01-08 though 08 is an ending map.
• 1000Hp Siege Cow (Yellow wiring) replaces the Spiderdemon
• No Coop or DM support
• Jumping and crouching have been disabled, freelook is ok but can break some insta-pop pits and other stuff
• Difficulties implemented - The set has been balanced and tested around UV being the "intended" difficulty, but later maps can get quite abusive. If you're having serious trouble, please drop the difficulty down a notch. I've tried to make the lower difficulties still fun without being so stressful of an experience for those less acquainted to slaughter.
• Maps 01-06 can be maxed in under a half hour, Map07 can take over an hour to beat
• Tested in dsda-doom 0.27.0+ and GZDoom 4.10.0

 

Download: RC2

 

Hi again :]

You might have seen one of the many screenshots I've been posting in doomworld and various discords, and I'm happy to finally release this wad. I wanted to experiment with more combat setups and other stuff I like (Chaotic setups, BFG-heavy combat, pushing through hordes of monsters) and so this wad's progression is very lock-in/setpiece heavy for most of the maps. The maps start off with vaguely micro-slaughter/combat puzzle stuff with a couple dips into larger monster brawls, while map07 goes fully off the deep end into macroslaughter goodness. I also tried to give these maps a sense of continuity, with most maps ending with a hint to the next map. All maps are meant to be played from pistol start but only map06 enforces this. 

There's probably a bunch of stuff that I missed while making the set. If you have any bugs or feedback, put it in the thread!

Credits:

Spoiler

Firstly, thanks to Insane_Gazebo for the stellar titlepic and interpic, and Taviow for some UDBScript that made mapping less painful. Both also helped to playtest the WAD and provide some valuable feedback. Thanks guys!

Additional Credits to: Bytefyre for the DSDACR lump, Maribo for COLORMAP and Demos, Stx-Vile for the streams, and anyone else in the thread for feedback!

 

Hud recoloured from swtw.wad

 

Textures from:

• CC4-tex
• AA-tex
• Otex
• NiGHTMARE's hellish texture pack
• Green brick texture from mutiny.wad
• DVII
• Exitsign edit by Nootrac4751
• Darkbase textures
• UAC ultra

Full credits & some map commentary in firefly_credits.txt

 

Changelog:

RC2:

Spoiler

General:

• New DSDACR lump (Thanks @Bytefyre!)
• New COLORMAP (Thanks @Maribo!) and red invuln palette suggested by ravendesk
• Health rebalancing across the entire wad. Mostly removing excessive health pickups and replacing them with weaker variants or medikits. map04 was the worst offender

01:

• Ammo balancing changes
• Reduced timer on orange key fight
• Reduced number of switches in gold key fight
• Moved megasphere in final fight to make it harder to accidentally pick up

02:

• Made picking up ammo in opening fight less annoying

03:

• Made one switch to open the exit easier to see

 

04:

• Not in the update, but a heads up. I plan to rework the archvile fight since it doesn't really play well and is easily cheesable.
• Buffed second fight in orange key route and swapped around the pain elemental and revenant teleports in the post-BFG section.

05:

• Made picking up ammo in certain fights less annoying
• Tried making progression clearer

06:

• Replaced megasphere in secret fight with a berserk and armor

07:

• Monster blocklines to stop enemies from flying too far
• Extra cybers in the BFG fight
• Fixed a massive cheese in the archvile cage fight
• Reduced timer in final fight by 20 seconds or so.

 

More screens:

Spoiler

01 /// Twilight Constriction

02 /// Firefly

03 /// Phosphor

04 /// Derelict


05 /// Voidspace Ballet

06 /// Atrophy


07 /// Syzygy

OLD VERSIONS:

• RC1 (demos by Maribo, Ryiron, SleepyVelvet)

Edited March 10 by eater29
RC2

[taviow]

Absolutely epic release, this is an amazing set that fully deserves the recognition it's gonna get. I feel honored to have playtested it and can vouch for the love and care put into the maps. Congratulations on this monumental achievement :)

[OniriA]

Very Sunlust-like vibes, looks ominous.

[Insane_Gazebo]

I hereby am delighted by and endorse all this orange.

(This is a fantastic set.)

[BohdanZPM]

Oh, cool! It looks amazing! Reminds me of Sunder map14 a little bit. Need to try it immediately.

[Jinxie]

WAD of the year dropping this early in the year? More likely than you think!

[El Juancho]

This looks incredible

[senpaigru]

my favorite thing about doomworld is waking up to stuff to like this. very stoked to play!

[dististik]

Oh wow this looks really cool. I look forward to playing it!

[Berubaretto]

Posted in a cacoward-winning mapset's release thread

[DreadWanderer]

I'm getting major Arceon vibes from this. Will check out soon!

[Carmelo]

I'll play the shit out of this

[DaRkWeZ]

Nice work, it looks awesome !

[CacoKnight]

Geez this one looks good, have to give it a try!

[Dagazur]

Looks killer, cant wait to dive in to it soon

[Bytefyre]

After watching Vile play through this and noticing that the extended HUD text colors were off (the time being gray, which happens because there's no green in the palette, and full stats being light purple), I made the attached DSDACR lump to embed in the WAD for DSDA-Doom versions 0.26 and above.

 

DSDACR.zip

Edited March 8 by Bytefyre

[ivymagnapinna]

Just finished map01 of this and it's already incredible. was somewhat difficult for me on hmp and I'm not as familiar with this whole genre of mapping so it might not end up being for me, but everything still felt satisfying to beat once my bonehead self figured it out and I really really love how it looks, very Sunlust-y. great stuff!

Edited March 8 by ivymagnapinna
messed up

[Dheta]

Absolute beast of a mapset, gorgeous maps and great fights, been a while since i felt like binging a mapset in a day. Map 5 and 7 in particular stood out. echoing what others said above this is an easy lock-in for a cacoaward.

 

Some small feedback bits:

First fight of map 2: I don't know if i missed something, but even with having all barons and imps fight the cyber i was still down to pistol and rockets to finish the cyber in all my attempts. might want to add some more shells, unless that's the point?

End of map 5: I'm probably just stupid, but even with the rockets in the exit room i still had to open up UDB too see what i had to do to exit, but that's probably just me being a idiot, cause I'm not sure how you can make it more clear.

Map 6: Probably the only negative thing i can say about this WAD, the secret fight was a big disappointment(just very easy and somewhat standard fight) for how hard to keys were to find, yellow key in particular was a pain.

 

And speaking of that yellow key.

Spoiler

I'm curious what the intended way to get to it is, i ended up using a rocket jump at the lift facing the center of the map, but i feel like that can't be the only/easiest way of getting onto the highest ledge.

 

Entering Super nitpick territory: most of the big fights in map 7 were disappointedly not that hard, only the "60" chaingunner room kicked my teeth in(also my fav for sure). For a big slaughtermap as the final map i think you could have dialed up the notch on UV at least, but maybe I'm just a doom masochists at this point. Still a 10/10 map tho.  

Edited March 9 by Dheta

[eater29]

1 hour ago, Dheta said:

Absolute beast of a mapset, gorgeous maps and great fights, been a while since i felt like binging a mapset in a day.

Thanks for playing! Glad you had fun :)

About the feedback:

02 opening fight: Hitting the switches at the end of both baron-imp closets instakills the cyber. Admittedly this isn't really telegraphed well.

06 secret fight: hmm yeah this one's a little disappointing I suppose. When designing the secret fight route it was more of a "the reward is the journey" kind of adventure. The megasphere is definitely overkill though.

Finding the yellow key:

Spoiler

The intended route to the yellow key was to climb onto the ledge from the zombieman-archvile fight in the building using the steps as shown below.

 

1 hour ago, Dheta said:

most of the big fights in map 7 were disappointedly not that hard

Map07's fights were originally a lot harder to the point where I wasn't really having much fun with them (I'd consider myself a rather average slaughter player), so some of them are a bit easy to those who can stomach more crazy stuff (in the current version). Watching Vile's stream however made me realise quite a few fights across the whole wad definitely didn't need megaspheres or that much health, so I'll push an RC2 eventually to re-tune some of the health balancing in those fights.

[Maribo]

Phenomenal work that calls to mind Sunlust's early orange themes and later ominous moments, along with Sunder's grand scope, and with added dashes of Magnolia, Fractured Worlds, and various other contemporary void-metal-tech-gorgeous challenge / slaughter releases. Not an unexpected pivot, given the very clear slaughter influence within Mudman, but a very smooth one.

 

firefly-maribo.zip - UV playthroughs for every map on RC1, -dsdademo, play back on v0.27.5

[fefor]

Just finished map04 (great midi choice btw, love seeing SoR in Doom) playing on HMP and its been a blast so far, I'm not used to this genre of mapping but it can be fun to step out of your comfort zone every once in a while, also these are some of the most beautiful maps I've seen so it really makes it worthwhile. Very striking stuff.

[Gothic Box]

My cheeks are aching from the whooping UV is giving me so far only 2 maps in. Absolutely jaw-dropping set, this could win a Cacoward purely with the visuals and architecture alone.

[dististik]

I've gotten through the first two maps on UV so far; goodness these are some very very clever fights. Really enjoying the wad so far!

[BCHQ]

Tangerine SunderLust, YES please! Looks absolutely gorgeous, I'm sure it's as deadly as it seems to be :) *looks at title* Does it have reavers?

Edited March 9 by BCHQ

[Not Jabba]

4 minutes ago, BCHQ said:

*looks at title* Does it have reavers?

In this part of the 'verse they have shoulder-mounted homing missile launchers, but are otherwise the same.

[LadyMistDragon]

I didn't think too much of it until around Map 03 or so. It looks nice however.

 

 

 

[DreadWanderer]

11 minutes ago, LadyMistDragon said:

I didn't think too much of it until around Map 03 or so. It looks nice however.

 

 

 

 

I didn't expect a walk in the park but this set is absolutely brutal on UV, more brutal than I had prepared for. Don't feel ready for it at all, it's Altars of Madness on steroids. As to the aesthetics, I think they're wonderful - neony orange plus black is a combo that always gets me.

[slowfade]

It's an incredible set, I've been keeping my eye on its release ever since seeing screenshots during development. Some sets just have that magic, that special mood. I love these kinds of cohesive sets that keep their style and look matching from map to map but develop it along the way. One beautiful arena after another. I didn't even try to beat the fights, I played invincibility on and admired the designs, the texturing, everything... I'm going to just walk through these with no monsters at some point. I can't describe what it is, the mood just hits right. Also can't wait to see demos which I think will be recorded from these maps for sure.

[DreadWanderer]

43 minutes ago, slowfade said:

It's an incredible set, I've been keeping my eye on its release ever since seeing screenshots during development. Some sets just have that magic, that special mood. I love these kinds of cohesive sets that keep their style and look matching from map to map but develop it along the way. One beautiful arena after another. I didn't even try to beat the fights, I played invincibility on and admired the designs, the texturing, everything... I'm going to just walk through these with no monsters at some point. I can't describe what it is, the mood just hits right. Also can't wait to see demos which I think will be recorded from these maps for sure.

 

Agreed, aesthetic cohesion is something I always enjoy. Regarding the gameplay, I am a crotchety bastard who refuses to play on lower difficulties. I need to git gud.

[SleepyVelvet]

Woo!  These maps are chonkers.  A bit much for my drive-by Doom sessions.  Good stuff tho.

Here's FDAs for the first couple maps on HNTR: noisy_fireflyRC1_hntr.zip