Forsaken Compound [DOOM Episode 1 Replacement]

[Oxyde]

I absolutely loved Bloodworks and I was eagerly anticipating the full seeing screenshots here and there on Discord. This is an absolute blast of an episode!

 

Elephant out of the room, this palette is nothing short of exceptional. I'll say it again, but, it gives me the same vibes as those old box art blurry and overly saturated game screenshots. A very, very moody atmosphere, it feels like you are suffocating just by staring at the screen. The level design is very well done and complements the palette greatly. This episode has a detailing style I have rarely seen and it felt unique, start to end.

At no point did Ultimate Doom's limited enemy roster felt like a nuisance, the combat flow is nothing short of very good, and the global progression is, minor a few hiccups from me, fantastic work.

 

My biggest gripe with this episode though are secrets. I barely couldn't any of them and I'm genuinely curious as to why. I usually can find a decent amount of secrets in levels, but I'm puzzled as to where they were here. I could not find the secret exit to E1M9 so I used -warp instead. Maybe the palette makes it too distracting to see the secrets, maybe the level design is just too smart for me, I can't really say, I'm just at a loss how I could often see powerups but I could rarely grab them.

 

I didn't find E1M9's "lesser experience" an issue since I always see secret levels as bonus set-pieces that don't necessarily need to fit in the rest of the episode. It's as simple as it comes and I enjoyed this level.

 

E1M8's abstract reality and sense of scale is an interesting level, I really liked the concept of it.

Spoiler

I'm not so fond of the final battle though, because an armor is pretty much mandatory to win. I saw the blue armor in the main courtyard/starting area but as mentioned previously, I could not get to it. This feels like a kind of "mandatory secret" for such a fight, which is arguably not ideal design to me.

 

There is one minor issue in E1M5 where you can press the switch behind the Yellow Skull locked bars, making this key completely useless. Is it worth a fix is another topic though because speedrunners will enjoy this.

 

 

 

Edited April 17 by Oxyde

[slowfade]

I couldn't find secrets either. I think I found like one. Seems they really are secret and well hidden.

[Chris Hansen]

Forgot to mention this in my earlier post, but I had an absolute blast with that end fight in M8! It had me grinning and smiling like my old ganny when she found her secret stash of liquor! I had so much with that fight because it was so utterly ridiculous!

Edited April 16 by Chris Hansen

[ivymagnapinna]

8 hours ago, Oxyde said:

I absolutely loved Bloodworks and I was eagerly anticipating the full seeing screenshots here and there on Discord. This is an absolute blast of an episode!

 

Elephant out of the room, this palette is nothing short of exceptional. I'll say it again, but, it gives me the same vibes as those old box art blurry and overly saturated game screenshots. A very, very moody atmosphere, it feels like you are suffocating just by staring at the screen. The level design is very well done and complements the palette greatly. This episode has a detailing style I have rarely seen and it felt unique, start to end.

At no point did Ultimate Doom's limited enemy roster felt like a nuisance, the combat flow is nothing short of very good, and the global progression is, minor a few hiccups from me, fantastic work.

 

My biggest gripe with this episode though are secrets. I barely couldn't any of them and I'm genuinely curious as to why. I usually can find a decent amount of secrets in levels, but I'm puzzled as to where they were here. I could not find the secret exit to E1M9 so I used -warp instead. Maybe the palette makes it too distracting to see the secrets, maybe the level design is just too smart for me, I can't really say, I'm just at a loss how I could often see powerups but I could rarely grab them.

 

I didn't find E1M9's "lesser experience" an issue since I always see secret levels as bonus set-pieces that don't necessarily need to fit in the rest of the episode. It's as simple as it comes and I enjoyed this level.

 

E1M8's abstract reality and sense of scale is an interesting level, I really liked the concept of it.

  Reveal hidden contents

I'm not so fond of the final battle though, because an armor is pretty much mandatory to win. I saw the blue armor in the main courtyard/starting area but as mentioned previously, I could not get to it. This feels like a kind of "mandatory secret" for such a fight, which is arguably not ideal design to me.

 

There is one minor issue in E1M5 where you can press the switch behind the Yellow Skull locked bars, making this key completely useless. Is it worth a fix is another topic though because speedrunners will enjoy this.

 

Mandatory FDA here though YouTube is still processing so quality will be at the bare minimum.

Thank you for your comments, very glad you enjoyed this wad so much! I know the FDAs are mandatory but I appreciate your recording them anyway.

I actually tried to fix the E1M5 switch press in my April 13th update, but seems like it's still totally doable haha. Your point about speedrunners potentially liking it is valid and I'm not too bothered by there being sequence-breaks in my stuff, so I might just leave it in. As to not repeat what I've said in the thread already too much, the E1M8 fight was a bit of burnout mapping and not my best work, but I'm glad you liked the level overall anyways.

5 hours ago, slowfade said:

I couldn't find secrets either. I think I found like one. Seems they really are secret and well hidden.

Responding to this as well, I've realized at this point I probably hide secrets a bit too well and think more in terms of how smart it feels to put them together than how satisfying it is to find them. Ofc everyone's ability with secret-hunting will be different and some people seem to have liked them in this set, but I think I should be more fair with them in the future.

[Treehouseminis]

Just played through all of it this morning.  Really good stuff!  I do echo some other users sentiments though, the last few levels feel rushed compared to the rest of the set, mostly map 7 8 and 9.  Combat is solid all around just these levels have a lack of detail compared to the rest of the set, in either texture work or lighting.  Map 8 especially felt a little off as a final level of an episode.  I Think adding a few cybers to the final fight would make it a tad more interesting than just herding cattle but it does leave a certain impression.  The final area of the "house" was great though. 

 

Favorite levels were 1,2,3 and 6.  Oh and the marble faces on map5 looked like they smoked too much weed lol.

[DreadWanderer]

Very glad that this set is getting more attention, my full playthrough is going to be up in a couple of days and it's getting a decent number of views, hope it will inspire more people to pick it up.

[slowfade]

Just to say, I don't mind them well hidden. In fact, I quite like seeing (in demos) really difficult secrets even if I'm not one to find them.

 

Also, I liked the final fight!

Edited April 17 by slowfade

[ivymagnapinna]

3 hours ago, Treehouseminis said:

Just played through all of it this morning.  Really good stuff!  I do echo some other users sentiments though, the last few levels feel rushed compared to the rest of the set, mostly map 7 8 and 9.  Combat is solid all around just these levels have a lack of detail compared to the rest of the set, in either texture work or lighting.  Map 8 especially felt a little off as a final level of an episode.  I Think adding a few cybers to the final fight would make it a tad more interesting than just herding cattle but it does leave a certain impression.  The final area of the "house" was great though. 

 

Favorite levels were 1,2,3 and 6.  Oh and the marble faces on map5 looked like they smoked too much weed lol.

Glad you enjoyed it! I also find it kinda funny that we both used Plasma and a Snaxolotl track as music in our sets that released on the same day lol

[DrR0Ck]

I had a blast with this!  I don't have a ton to add that hasn't been already said, but some very nice work here!

[Doom Wads]

Damn, great! Thanks you for the good maps. That was very fun to play, especially slaughter parts. There is no place where I lost, good progression. Awesome job, I hope you don't stop and keep doing next episodes :)

[DreadWanderer]

Long overdue but here's my UV max playthrough:

 

 

All in all, a great way to freshen up UD, which is always in the shadow of its successors. Thanks again @ivymagnapinna for the experience and I hope to see more of your wads in the future!

[Napeyear]

Got to E1M4 before I stopped to take a break, I'm really enjoying this episode so far. It reminds me a lot of of No End In Sight, with the grand architecture in E1M3 along with the overall atmosphere and excellent texture work throughout. I love how much you utilize the scrolling textures and lighting effects, with scrolling faces staring the player down almost everywhere you look, and the lights going dim when the player gets into certain traps. Despite being an episode one replacement, it looks and plays nothing like it but instead has an identity of its own (a very unique and refreshing one). The gameplay is really solid on HMP, and you give the player plenty of rockets to deal with cacos and barons, and I didn't find myself shotgunning all of the higher tier monsters as is the case in some Doom 1 WADs. Great work so far!

Edited April 19 by Napeyear
grammar

[ivymagnapinna]

6 hours ago, DreadWanderer said:

Long overdue but here's my UV max playthrough:

 

 

All in all, a great way to freshen up UD, which is always in the shadow of its successors. Thanks again @ivymagnapinna for the experience and I hope to see more of your wads in the future!

I haven't commented on most of them but thank you very much for doing all these playthroughs! It gets the maps some extra attention and they're a good way for me to show off my work to my friends who don't play doom :)

[DreadWanderer]

33 minutes ago, ivymagnapinna said:

I haven't commented on most of them but thank you very much for doing all these playthroughs! It gets the maps some extra attention and they're a good way for me to show off my work to my friends who don't play doom :)

 

My pleasure, hopefully it will encourage them to start Dooming!

[Napeyear]

Finally finished the remainder of your episode since my last post, I thought this was an absolutely incredible mapset, and many of my positive comments from before apply to the rest of the WAD, as the texturing and level of detail seemed to improve map by map. The glowing eyeballs on the MARBFACE textures and the doomcute in E1M5 was one such highlight. My favorite maps were from E1M3-E1M6, though the other levels were great too. The slaughter maps were very intriguing, and this was the first time that I've played a Doom 1 mapset with good large scale fights. You gave the player plenty of space and ammo to work with, though it was still a challenge even on HMP. I liked how you ended E1M8, the baron fight at the end really caught me off guard and made for a nice surprise to end the episode (though I should have seen it coming with all the ammo that was scattered around lol). Overall, the gameplay was really good and you make great use of the verticality in each map which made exploring the maps and the combat in general really dynamic, leaving plenty of opportunities for infighting as well.

 

E1M9 was definitely the oddball of the bunch, but since it was a secret map I didn't really think it was too jarring. It ended up being the final level I played, as I couldn't find the secret exit on E1M3, so I was already used to the slaughter from the later levels in the mapset, and I found it to be pretty fun. I would recommend this WAD to anyone looking to play a chaotic and well designed episode one replacement, that does something different than the usual 'Knee Deep in The Dead' spinoff that most episode one mapsets seem to trend towards. Excellent work!

 

[cannonball]

Thought I would give this a go;

 

E1M1 - Like pretty much everyone else, the palette alterations add to the shores of hell/Doom 64 element of horror in a good way. The combat is spicier than your normal UDoom openers (Especially for an E1 replacement), mostly serviceable with a mix of narrow corridors and a few more open location. This was fine.

 

E1M2 - This felt easier than the first map, most mosts you can line up with ease and dispose of. Not much else to complain about because you get the rocket launcher and enough rockets to deal with the barons with ease.

 

E1M3 - Okay this was a good one, the platforming towards the end was surprisingly audacious and was a great way of using the same area for a second time. The fight that follows is quite nice to blow through to. Again the atmosphere is top notch here.

[KevvyLava]

This is very very good!  The only minor complaint I can muster is that levels 5 and 6 are easy to get lost.  But I can't say enough about the texture work.  You mix together textures that I never would've expected would go together.  Very unique style!  The changed sound effects aren't over-the-top and really make it feel like a continuation of the original game.  I also appreciate that the difficulty is even-handed, and the occasional traps are manageable on a first time play-through.

 

You should be very proud of this, it's excellent.  This one will get saved in the special folder of wads I want to play through every now and again.

[ivymagnapinna]

On 4/20/2024 at 9:05 PM, cannonball said:

Thought I would give this a go;

 

E1M1 - Like pretty much everyone else, the palette alterations add to the shores of hell/Doom 64 element of horror in a good way. The combat is spicier than your normal UDoom openers (Especially for an E1 replacement), mostly serviceable with a mix of narrow corridors and a few more open location. This was fine.

 

E1M2 - This felt easier than the first map, most mosts you can line up with ease and dispose of. Not much else to complain about because you get the rocket launcher and enough rockets to deal with the barons with ease.

 

E1M3 - Okay this was a good one, the platforming towards the end was surprisingly audacious and was a great way of using the same area for a second time. The fight that follows is quite nice to blow through to. Again the atmosphere is top notch here.

Wow, really cool to see you give my wad a playthrough, I'm glad you like it so far! Honestly I'm really happy to have any kinda criticism/feedback from an accomplished mapper so I hope you have more to say about the rest of the episode once you've gone through it.

 

19 hours ago, KevvyLava said:

This is very very good!  The only minor complaint I can muster is that levels 5 and 6 are easy to get lost.  But I can't say enough about the texture work.  You mix together textures that I never would've expected would go together.  Very unique style!  The changed sound effects aren't over-the-top and really make it feel like a continuation of the original game.  I also appreciate that the difficulty is even-handed, and the occasional traps are manageable on a first time play-through.

 

You should be very proud of this, it's excellent.  This one will get saved in the special folder of wads I want to play through every now and again.

Thank you very much for the comment about the texturing, I was pretty proud of myself for being able to do what I did staying within IWAD textures. Makes me very happy that the wad stuck with you that much.

[cannonball]

Continuing on

 

E1M9 - This map is what it is, it is a secret map and one where you can just blow off some steam. I have no real issues with this one. The start and red key fights can easily be solved by infighting, or you can just blow everything away, the blue key is the only one with a little bit of risk because you do need to clear the walkway quickly to avoid being swamped by cacos. The only real issue is accessing the exit via those switches because at this point it is just killing time. 

 

E1M4 - I really liked this one, first off it is nice to see some natural landscapes, and it this one is nicely fleshed out, I also like the fact that you get this compound that has multiple points of entry and this doesn't really hinder the progression or combat at all. Another point for it (And I say this as someone who is in the "Rocket launcher is the best weapon" club) is that there is plenty of stuff to blow up, the red key trench is fun to blaze through, but with the expectation that you only have limited time with the radsuit, the yellow key is just one of those messy fights that offers enough pressure without being too over the top.

Probably the best map so far.

 

E1M5 - Heh I completely missed the fact that the plasma gun is available early if you go the right way, funilly enough I think I only used this on the baron near the yellow key. I like the slower paced mood of this one and actually this is completely fine with just the chaingun and shotgun. The red key trap is well executed too, there is enough cover to make this section not feel like too much hard work but put sufficient pressure on the player. 

 

Hopefully I will get through the rest over the next couple of days.

[cannonball]

E1M6 - Okay this was the best map so far, the texture usage really compliments the palette and the combat is fast and frenetic. It is a great map to blast through and the 700 or so monsters pass really quickly. Not very much to say, this is just good fun.

 

E1M7 - This was somewhat low key, I do like the visual again and the silver techbase is a nice juxtaposition to the browns/pinks and reds that dominate the wad so far. However I must confess that the combat was a little underwhelming, especially after the last map. 

[ByRntStarOEI]

So, I been wanting to play this for awhile, but I didn't have the time and I was also lacking the original doom wad (Had to search for my old windoom CD, which I eventually managed to find). I eventually had the time to play this the other evening and figured I would give my input as well, since I enjoyed it. I also figured the feedback would be helpful since you mentioned this was you first major release and I, having recently done the same, found the feedback from others not only helpful, but also a huge motivation to push forward and encouraging to do more mapping in the future. Basically I'll be keeping an eye out for anything you release in the future.

I'm a fan of the style with the rusty palette and the way you managed to make some textures work together that wouldn't otherwise do so, with the architecture blending in nicely, as well.  I found the game play enjoyable too, especially for a doom1 wad that is limited in some enemies and weapons when compared to doom2.

I did record some demos of my playthroughs, but I don't expect you to watch through it since it's around 2 hrs. long. It's there if you're curious to how it plays for another person playing through it for the first time on UV difficulty.  I was playing in a rather casual manner, not to focus in getting 100% completion and not always doing a pistol start, although a lot of the time I didn't use a weapon until I found it in the level.

 

Here a breakdown of each level's demos:

 

1st lvl: The start of the demo is actually the second attempt, but the first didn't last long anyway since I was promptly murdered my a group of shotgunners around the corner (I was having a bad day with the hitscanner rng being highly accurate). Figured I would start the second attempt recording a demo because I'm new to recording demos and they help me with writing reviews, which I need more practice in. Any who, first level was pretty standard stuff. At some point I decide to stick with melee only and managed to make it work, so it may be a bit different in that regard. Good intro to your wad, with some nice texture work and fun combat encounters.

 

2nd lvl: Decided to keep going with melee only, but eventually decided against it when I seen a open room with a lot of hit scanners. Not much to this level, rather short and maybe a bit of a letdown when compared to the other levels, but still good nonetheless.

 

3rd lvl: Simple, yet great texture work here and I like the music track in this one (Actually, all the music was great throughout the wad). This is where the damaging floors start to show up, which I'm not a fan of, but understand why they are here. Combat switch between periods of being relax to to decent pressure. A good level all around. Disclaimer: I suck at doom platforming, so the demo has a long period (I believe over 10 mins and 50 hp lost) of me struggling to get through that section. This one was rather simply compared to others, but I wouldn't be against having a half way "checkpoint" to recover from, for those who aren't good at it. I pushed myself forward though, cause I wanted to see the rest of the level.

 

4th lvl: Nice open outdoor level. Seems to be multiple avenues of approach, which I'm a fan of. I liked the blue key area the most. A lot of combat, but rather slow burning in a good way. I eventually die towards the end of the level when I caught a baron ball for over 50 dmg. I bit unlucky, but considering I lucked out with a sliver of 4 hp moments before due to sloppy play, it evens out. I was a bit out of it at this point, so I ended the first demo there.

 

5th lvl: Great cave lvl with a few ways to approach and probably my most favorite out of the wad. Great texture work throughout. I like the glowing eyes and especially liked the bulldozer (Probably can see me admire it a couple times in the demo). I did die my first go around due to me falling off the ledge to the crusher area into the lava (Imp was blocking me I believe). Combat wasn't all that difficult, but was enjoyable enough to not be boring. Think I actually managed to find all the secrets here, too, which was a bit of dumb luck i reckon.

Not sure if this is intended or not, but in the demo you can see me activate the switch from below the platform behind the yellow skull door, thus skipping the need for the yellow key.

 

6th lvl: Nice flesh area with arena style battles. This one took awhile for me to finish, in part due to the large battle sequences, but mostly due to me not knowing where to go next. I did a lot of aimless running around in this level, because it was not always clear where I needed to be for the next step.  I like the combat in this one though, especially towards the beginning of the level. Great use of rocket launcher based combat.  I did die once in the beginning when I accidentally blasted a barrel that I ran in front of, however. Also, got a kick out of the mastermind getting mauled to death by demons towards the end.

 

7th lvl: Pretty basic tech level with what I guessing are some rather cool energy blast tearing throughout the base? I feel this level should have been place towards the beginning of the wad in regards to the difficulty. Rather simply and somewhat short. Wasn't a fan of the damaging floor area as I felt it didn't really add anything to the encounter. (Although there is a warning sign there, I though I was getting pelted by hitscanners at first) Maybe some of it had to do with some disappointment with the lack of awesome texture work, like you did in other areas, to really warn the player that this is a highly radiated/dangerous area...

 

Not sure what the intended behavior towards the level exit was, but I don't believe I fully die, as I was able to start the next level with my previous full inventory. I did start with hardly any health though, so maybe that what was intended?

 

8th lvl: Once again, some great use of textures here. A twisted blend of textures gives the level a chaotic feel like it's bending apart. Combat was fairly standard, nothing too challenging until the end. The baron fight was nicely done. I was surprised how quickly I got overwhelmed and had to retreat back from the wave. I did get trapped and kill after escaping to a position to what I figured would be a sure thing. I guessed wrong. I don't think I ever seen that many barons used in a fight before. Well done level.

 

9th lvl: A decent slaughter style level that is not as long as it seems. A lot of fun can be had with infighting. I like how it's used in the beginning in having to wait to get the bfg or risk getting overwhelmed if to hasty. Wasn't a fan of how the blue water damaged the player and in some area felt unnecessary (Except for the bridge area, that area makes sense to have it). I died a number of times in this one compared to the others, and it mostly had to do with the bridge fight section. I felt it a bit rng dependent with how it played out.  I did play this level some more afterwards (Wanted to see if the other teleporter at the exit lead somewhere else) and this section was still always hit or miss, which kinda makes choosing to go the other route first a bit of a risk. I wasn't recording at the time which was unfortunate, because there was a hilarious bit with a mastermind being taken down by some imps.

 

 

All in all, great work and hope to see more maps from you in the future

 

 

The demos: (I've included the wad I used, since I noticed you did some updates and wasn't sure which one I had)

BSCOMP-00001.zip

Edited April 24 by ByRntStarOEI
grammer

[cannonball]

E1M8 - Some strange looking computer pillars near the start, this whole map is essentially about the final fight, which is strange to say the least, a massive wall of barons. Not sure how I feel about this. It is an absurd amount of barons but I don't know whether I consider this fight to be fun. One option would be to make the barons come from more than one direction and potentially add a cyber turret or two the generate a secondary threat/help.

 

Overall - This was an interesting set of 9 maps. This was harder than you usual Doom PWads, but I wouldn't overall say that it lays on the punishment too much. The wad peaks in the middle (E1M4 to E1M6, with E1M6 being my favourite). The final two maps are a little underwhelming, E1M7 is too low key and the final map feels like too much of a throwaway fight. However you made this episode feel different and that is clearly the selling point. Overall I liked this set and well done for having a clear vision and executing it well.

[ivymagnapinna]

On 4/22/2024 at 7:27 PM, cannonball said:

Continuing on

 

E1M9 - This map is what it is, it is a secret map and one where you can just blow off some steam. I have no real issues with this one. The start and red key fights can easily be solved by infighting, or you can just blow everything away, the blue key is the only one with a little bit of risk because you do need to clear the walkway quickly to avoid being swamped by cacos. The only real issue is accessing the exit via those switches because at this point it is just killing time. 

 

E1M4 - I really liked this one, first off it is nice to see some natural landscapes, and it this one is nicely fleshed out, I also like the fact that you get this compound that has multiple points of entry and this doesn't really hinder the progression or combat at all. Another point for it (And I say this as someone who is in the "Rocket launcher is the best weapon" club) is that there is plenty of stuff to blow up, the red key trench is fun to blaze through, but with the expectation that you only have limited time with the radsuit, the yellow key is just one of those messy fights that offers enough pressure without being too over the top.

Probably the best map so far.

 

E1M5 - Heh I completely missed the fact that the plasma gun is available early if you go the right way, funilly enough I think I only used this on the baron near the yellow key. I like the slower paced mood of this one and actually this is completely fine with just the chaingun and shotgun. The red key trap is well executed too, there is enough cover to make this section not feel like too much hard work but put sufficient pressure on the player. 

 

Hopefully I will get through the rest over the next couple of days.

The early plasma being easy to miss in E1M5 is intentional haha, good thing it doesn't really mess with the ammo balance though as I was worried about that.

 

On 4/23/2024 at 7:13 PM, cannonball said:

E1M6 - Okay this was the best map so far, the texture usage really compliments the palette and the combat is fast and frenetic. It is a great map to blast through and the 700 or so monsters pass really quickly. Not very much to say, this is just good fun.

 

E1M7 - This was somewhat low key, I do like the visual again and the silver techbase is a nice juxtaposition to the browns/pinks and reds that dominate the wad so far. However I must confess that the combat was a little underwhelming, especially after the last map. 

E1M6 was meant to encourage being played fast like that, I thought it was at its most fun that way. The fallback in difficulty/intensity towards the end with E1M7 was intentional, but I can see why people wouldn't enjoy it very much esp when paired with the last map, I think in E1M6 I had exhausted my good ideas for big fights so I fell back on a simpler map.

 

5 hours ago, cannonball said:

E1M8 - Some strange looking computer pillars near the start, this whole map is essentially about the final fight, which is strange to say the least, a massive wall of barons. Not sure how I feel about this. It is an absurd amount of barons but I don't know whether I consider this fight to be fun. One option would be to make the barons come from more than one direction and potentially add a cyber turret or two the generate a secondary threat/help.

 

Overall - This was an interesting set of 9 maps. This was harder than you usual Doom PWads, but I wouldn't overall say that it lays on the punishment too much. The wad peaks in the middle (E1M4 to E1M6, with E1M6 being my favourite). The final two maps are a little underwhelming, E1M7 is too low key and the final map feels like too much of a throwaway fight. However you made this episode feel different and that is clearly the selling point. Overall I liked this set and well done for having a clear vision and executing it well.

I've said this before in the thread but my intent with the final fight was for it to be absurd and not necessarily fun (or at least, that was my excuse for running out of good fight ideas), I agree there were some simple ways I could have made it more fun but I don't think I'll change it in the future.

 

I'll admit I can't think of much more to respond with and sound original in this thread but I'm really glad you liked a lot of my visuals/execution and fight design, I feel a lot more confident now in my ability to make high-action stuff like in M4 and M6 now that I've had the experience of a bigger mapper giving good feedback on it, can't thank you enough for your comments.

[ivymagnapinna]

23 hours ago, ByRntStarOEI said:

So, I been wanting to play this for awhile, but I didn't have the time and I was also lacking the original doom wad (Had to search for my old windoom CD, which I eventually managed to find). I eventually had the time to play this the other evening and figured I would give my input as well, since I enjoyed it. I also figured the feedback would be helpful since you mentioned this was you first major release and I, having recently done the same, found the feedback from others not only helpful, but also a huge motivation to push forward and encouraging to do more mapping in the future. Basically I'll be keeping an eye out for anything you release in the future.

I'm a fan of the style with the rusty palette and the way you managed to make some textures work together that wouldn't otherwise do so, with the architecture blending in nicely, as well.  I found the game play enjoyable too, especially for a doom1 wad that is limited in some enemies and weapons when compared to doom2.

I did record some demos of my playthroughs, but I don't expect you to watch through it since it's around 2 hrs. long. It's there if you're curious to how it plays for another person playing through it for the first time on UV difficulty.  I was playing in a rather casual manner, not to focus in getting 100% completion and not always doing a pistol start, although a lot of the time I didn't use a weapon until I found it in the level.

 

Here a breakdown of each level's demos:

 

1st lvl: The start of the demo is actually the second attempt, but the first didn't last long anyway since I was promptly murdered my a group of shotgunners around the corner (I was having a bad day with the hitscanner rng being highly accurate). Figured I would start the second attempt recording a demo because I'm new to recording demos and they help me with writing reviews, which I need more practice in. Any who, first level was pretty standard stuff. At some point I decide to stick with melee only and managed to make it work, so it may be a bit different in that regard. Good intro to your wad, with some nice texture work and fun combat encounters.

 

2nd lvl: Decided to keep going with melee only, but eventually decided against it when I seen a open room with a lot of hit scanners. Not much to this level, rather short and maybe a bit of a letdown when compared to the other levels, but still good nonetheless.

 

3rd lvl: Simple, yet great texture work here and I like the music track in this one (Actually, all the music was great throughout the wad). This is where the damaging floors start to show up, which I'm not a fan of, but understand why they are here. Combat switch between periods of being relax to to decent pressure. A good level all around. Disclaimer: I suck at doom platforming, so the demo has a long period (I believe over 10 mins and 50 hp lost) of me struggling to get through that section. This one was rather simply compared to others, but I wouldn't be against having a half way "checkpoint" to recover from, for those who aren't good at it. I pushed myself forward though, cause I wanted to see the rest of the level.

 

4th lvl: Nice open outdoor level. Seems to be multiple avenues of approach, which I'm a fan of. I liked the blue key area the most. A lot of combat, but rather slow burning in a good way. I eventually die towards the end of the level when I caught a baron ball for over 50 dmg. I bit unlucky, but considering I lucked out with a sliver of 4 hp moments before due to sloppy play, it evens out. I was a bit out of it at this point, so I ended the first demo there.

 

5th lvl: Great cave lvl with a few ways to approach and probably my most favorite out of the wad. Great texture work throughout. I like the glowing eyes and especially liked the bulldozer (Probably can see me admire it a couple times in the demo). I did die my first go around due to me falling off the ledge to the crusher area into the lava (Imp was blocking me I believe). Combat wasn't all that difficult, but was enjoyable enough to not be boring. Think I actually managed to find all the secrets here, too, which was a bit of dumb luck i reckon.

Not sure if this is intended or not, but in the demo you can see me activate the switch from below the platform behind the yellow skull door, thus skipping the need for the yellow key.

 

6th lvl: Nice flesh area with arena style battles. This one took awhile for me to finish, in part due to the large battle sequences, but mostly due to me not knowing where to go next. I did a lot of aimless running around in this level, because it was not always clear where I needed to be for the next step.  I like the combat in this one though, especially towards the beginning of the level. Great use of rocket launcher based combat.  I did die once in the beginning when I accidentally blasted a barrel that I ran in front of, however. Also, got a kick out of the mastermind getting mauled to death by demons towards the end.

 

7th lvl: Pretty basic tech level with what I guessing are some rather cool energy blast tearing throughout the base? I feel this level should have been place towards the beginning of the wad in regards to the difficulty. Rather simply and somewhat short. Wasn't a fan of the damaging floor area as I felt it didn't really add anything to the encounter. (Although there is a warning sign there, I though I was getting pelted by hitscanners at first) Maybe some of it had to do with some disappointment with the lack of awesome texture work, like you did in other areas, to really warn the player that this is a highly radiated/dangerous area...

 

Not sure what the intended behavior towards the level exit was, but I don't believe I fully die, as I was able to start the next level with my previous full inventory. I did start with hardly any health though, so maybe that what was intended?

 

8th lvl: Once again, some great use of textures here. A twisted blend of textures gives the level a chaotic feel like it's bending apart. Combat was fairly standard, nothing too challenging until the end. The baron fight was nicely done. I was surprised how quickly I got overwhelmed and had to retreat back from the wave. I did get trapped and kill after escaping to a position to what I figured would be a sure thing. I guessed wrong. I don't think I ever seen that many barons used in a fight before. Well done level.

 

9th lvl: A decent slaughter style level that is not as long as it seems. A lot of fun can be had with infighting. I like how it's used in the beginning in having to wait to get the bfg or risk getting overwhelmed if to hasty. Wasn't a fan of how the blue water damaged the player and in some area felt unnecessary (Except for the bridge area, that area makes sense to have it). I died a number of times in this one compared to the others, and it mostly had to do with the bridge fight section. I felt it a bit rng dependent with how it played out.  I did play this level some more afterwards (Wanted to see if the other teleporter at the exit lead somewhere else) and this section was still always hit or miss, which kinda makes choosing to go the other route first a bit of a risk. I wasn't recording at the time which was unfortunate, because there was a hilarious bit with a mastermind being taken down by some imps.

 

 

All in all, great work and hope to see more maps from you in the future

 

 

The demos: (I've included the wad I used, since I noticed you did some updates and wasn't sure which one I had)

BSCOMP-00001.zip

Thanks a bunch for the feedback! A few things:

- There is actually a checkpoint for the E1M3 platforming in the form of one of the secrets, but I guess I can't expect the player to always find it lol

- Thanks for the doomcute bulldozer appreciation, I was quite proud of it.

- The early switch press in E1M5 wasn't intentional originally, but I think it works fine as a speedrun thing and skipping the yellow key only really skips one room so I'm fine with it now that I've found out.

- The low-health exit in E1M7 is intentional, I kind of wanted to do a death exit but wasn't really sure how that's done in limit-removing UDoom and I liked the impression entering the next map with low health gave it anyway.

- The Baron fight (it's 256 of em by the way) in E1M8 seems to be pretty divisive among people, but I think you're the first person who's commented who engaged with it in the way I was imagining at first, where you'd initially see it as trivial BFG spam but get surprised by how easy it is to get overwhelmed by the wall of meat. It's a bit gratifying to see that pay off but given how a lot of people found it too absurd I probably won't do a similar fight in the future.

 

Glad you liked it!

[Arsinikk]

2 hours ago, ivymagnapinna said:

- The Baron fight (it's 256 of em by the way) in E1M8 seems to be pretty divisive among people, but I think you're the first person who's commented who engaged with it in the way I was imagining at first, where you'd initially see it as trivial BFG spam but get surprised by how easy it is to get overwhelmed by the wall of meat. It's a bit gratifying to see that pay off but given how a lot of people found it too absurd I probably won't do a similar fight in the future.

 

I've been planning to write a review / bug report for this WAD after I played it on stream, but haven't got around to it yet.

 

However, I felt the need to respond to this final E1M8 fight:

Spoiler

First of all, let me say that I like the concept and idea of this fight. However I did not like the execution.

 

I don't think people didn't like the fight because it was "too absurd". Many slaughter-type wads throw hundreds of groups of Hell Knights / Barons, and people don't tend to complain about those. I think the main problem is that the fight wasn't very engaging or interesting to deal with.

 

Let me break down how the fight works: You have 256 Barons that show up and then walk towards you. All you have to do is BFG them enough so that you can get around them and gain ammo. Once you've done this, the fight is over. All that's left is the mandatory clean up of Barons, and making sure you don't get sandwiched.

 

I think the main reason I didn't like this fight (besides the minor slog of cleanup), was that there's a whole maze arena in this section that I just didn't need to use. All I had to do was sit near the entrance of where the Barons came from and just clear enough out (while maybe going back for Cell packs) to get around behind them.

 

This kinda fight would work 100 times better with a faster monster such as a Revenant (I know this is Doom 1, and that you used this due to the Baron action of E1M8, but hear me out). Barons are extremely slow, and while they can be threatening by the player getting sandwiched, going back for ammo isn't a big deal. Just going back to the Barons after an ammo run and they are pretty much in the same place as they were. A pack of a bunch of Revs is simply scarier because retreating for ammo would mean the Revs could get closer to you.

 

Now because this WAD has some slaughter elements (like in E1M6 and E1M9), let me explain how a slaughter fight with large groups of enemies usually works. The main goal of a fight like this is to herd the monsters all in a single area, and once you can circle strafe them, you've basically won. I think this is the main problem of this fight, is that Barons are just all together and there's nothing else the player has to worry about behind or around them.

 

Now I haven't tested this, so I'm unsure if it would work in this particular case, but I would say that the first thing I'd do to improve this fight, is to add some teleports where the barons come from. There are so many Barons that many will stay coming towards you. But you could teleport some of the Barons into the maze arena. This would immediately cause the player to have to worry about their surroundings, as Barons could be coming towards them in more than one direction. I think this would make the fight way more engaging and force the player to keep moving and fully utilise the entire arena.

 

[DreadWanderer]

@Arsinikk I pretty much flagged the exact same issues in my written commentary, bar the maze part. I remember using the word "tedious" to describe it, especially since barons are not only slow, but SO beefy in groups. All in all it's not a terrible fight, it's just a bit of a deflating finale. Ivy did say that E1M8 was a burnout map so context is important. The post-release discussion on it is interesting, and kinda confirms how useful the back and forth between creators and players is.

[ivymagnapinna]

On 4/25/2024 at 3:05 AM, Arsinikk said:

I've been planning to write a review / bug report for this WAD after I played it on stream, but haven't got around to it yet.

 

However, I felt the need to respond to this final E1M8 fight:

  Reveal hidden contents

First of all, let me say that I like the concept and idea of this fight. However I did not like the execution.

 

I don't think people didn't like the fight because it was "too absurd". Many slaughter-type wads throw hundreds of groups of Hell Knights / Barons, and people don't tend to complain about those. I think the main problem is that the fight wasn't very engaging or interesting to deal with.

 

Let me break down how the fight works: You have 256 Barons that show up and then walk towards you. All you have to do is BFG them enough so that you can get around them and gain ammo. Once you've done this, the fight is over. All that's left is the mandatory clean up of Barons, and making sure you don't get sandwiched.

 

I think the main reason I didn't like this fight (besides the minor slog of cleanup), was that there's a whole maze arena in this section that I just didn't need to use. All I had to do was sit near the entrance of where the Barons came from and just clear enough out (while maybe going back for Cell packs) to get around behind them.

 

This kinda fight would work 100 times better with a faster monster such as a Revenant (I know this is Doom 1, and that you used this due to the Baron action of E1M8, but hear me out). Barons are extremely slow, and while they can be threatening by the player getting sandwiched, going back for ammo isn't a big deal. Just going back to the Barons after an ammo run and they are pretty much in the same place as they were. A pack of a bunch of Revs is simply scarier because retreating for ammo would mean the Revs could get closer to you.

 

Now because this WAD has some slaughter elements (like in E1M6 and E1M9), let me explain how a slaughter fight with large groups of enemies usually works. The main goal of a fight like this is to herd the monsters all in a single area, and once you can circle strafe them, you've basically won. I think this is the main problem of this fight, is that Barons are just all together and there's nothing else the player has to worry about behind or around them.

 

Now I haven't tested this, so I'm unsure if it would work in this particular case, but I would say that the first thing I'd do to improve this fight, is to add some teleports where the barons come from. There are so many Barons that many will stay coming towards you. But you could teleport some of the Barons into the maze arena. This would immediately cause the player to have to worry about their surroundings, as Barons could be coming towards them in more than one direction. I think this would make the fight way more engaging and force the player to keep moving and fully utilise the entire arena.

 

I think @DreadWanderer already put basically the same response I would, but I do wanna say that I read the criticism and I pretty much agree with your assessment, at least based on how the fight played out for you yourself. If and when I do slaughter stuff again I definitely won't make something so one-note, and it'll be with access to the whole Doom 2 enemy roster as well which as you said is a lot better for this sort of thing.

[Arwel]

Just finished my playthrough. First of all, this is really great wad! Layouts are refreshing, neat and elegant, customized palette is a nice cherry on top! Combat is mostly incidental, with the exception of e1m6 being slaughter-lite. Maps e1m7 and e1m8 feel kinda undercooked though, and the final fight for me as a slaughter player was too ez (I beat it from the first try without losing a single hp, on UV).

Edited April 27 by Arwel

[DreadWanderer]

7 hours ago, ivymagnapinna said:

I think @DreadWanderer already put basically the same response I would, but I do wanna say that I read the criticism and I pretty much agree with your assessment, at least based on how the fight played out for you yourself. If and when I do slaughter stuff again I definitely won't make something so one-note, and it'll be with access to the whole Doom 2 enemy roster as well which as you said is a lot better for this sort of thing.

 

I don't think the limited Doom 1 roster was the issue since I really enjoyed 'G.R.I.N.D.E.R.', that one is an exceptional slaughtermap. The baron fight was just one dimensional that was all. As a very basic idea, something like cutting the number of barons (idk by how much) and adding a cyber or two from behind would have injected a different and to my mind more exciting kind of dynamic to the whole affair. 

 

My broader point would be: you shouldn't reach the conclusion that Doom 1 slaughter doesn't work, and/or feel the pressure of mapping for Doom II based on that fight alone. The most important thing is to find yourself in a comfort zone and be excited about what you're doing. I'm kinda rambling here but you get what I mean :)

[Artyoman]

Played it, amazing, I love the atmosphere made by modified color palette