Lunatic.wad - idgames download available

[skillsaw]

GENERAL
Lunatic is a small side project I've been working on for a few months. The goal was to make a short episode that combined the gameplay of Doom with the upbeat setting, music, and feeling of retro/arcade scrolling shooters, while still remaining faithful to Doom.

I think the resulting project turned out to be Doom with upbeat music and moon themed graphics, but I can live with that :)


PLAY INFO
Lunatic is compatible with strong limit removing, Boom compatible ports. It has been playtested in PrBoom+, Eternity, and ZDoom. Other ports may work but remain untested. I strongly recommend against using any sort of gameplay or randomizer mod with Lunatic as there is a not insignificant amount of Dehacked work and conflicts may result.

BUGS
-Slime Trails
-a custom sound effect in MAP05 is very quiet - if anyone knows how to raise it's volume and save it in a format friendly with all 3 target ports please let me know.
-Doom's way of projecting the sky in a cylinder is not really suited for this type of sky texture, and sometimes you'll see weird stretching if you look closely.

SCREENS






CREDITS
Lunatic contains graphics by: NiGHTMARE, Espi, Eriance, Fredrik Johansson, Janitor, DaGGeR, Ola Bjorling, Vader, XDelusion, esselfortium, RottKing, Nuxius, Afterglow, AgentSpork, Enjay, Huy Pham, SargeBaldy, Tormentor667, Iikka Keranen, skillsaw, Xim, Ghastly_Dragon, Captain Toenail, ItsNatureToDie, neoworm, scalliano, GothicDM Team, Requiem Team, Eternal Doom Team, id Software, Raven Software, Rogue Entertainment, Valve, 3d Realms

Much thanks to esselfortium for nitpicking his way through the levels a couple of weeks ago.

DOWNLOAD

http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/?id=16551

BETA 2 (August 8): http://www.mediafire.com/?dyi7ywt2w17n5s3
(OLD)BETA 1: http://www.mediafire.com/?52ttja0wpo3vo37

SHAMELESS SELF PLUG:
Other stuff I've been involved with:
Sector 666 (1998)
Aeternum (2007)
ZPack (2008)
Stronghold: On the Edge of Chaos (2010)
Vanguard (2011)

Edited April 22, 2023 by skillsaw

[fullmetalvaran33]

I'll give this a shot today, as it looks quite good (and I normally don't like tech base maps).I like your other work, so I have confidence that this will also be appealing :).

[esselfortium]

*jumps up and down* Awesome, great to see you've completed this! :)

Minor detail: Your credits list might be a bit excessive; I think you used CC4-tex as a base, right? A lot of the stuff you've listed that's in there doesn't actually appear in any of the maps. Oh well :P

[Jimmy]

Oh lordy. First Vanguard and now this? :O

Mapper of the year, hands down.

/me tosses jenesis3.wad in the trash

[valkiriforce]

Jimmy91 said:

Oh lordy. First Vanguard and now this? :O

Mapper of the year, hands down.

/me tosses jenesis3.wad in the trash

Seconded, except don't toss Jenesis 3 away; we could use all the amazing WADs we can get!

[skillsaw]

@Jimmy: Let's not be hasty, we're all looking forward to the conclusion of Jenesis :)

@essel: I used CC4-Tex as a base again but I have no idea who did what textures so I just went the safe route and credited everyone... I also need to go through this and purge (MANY. MANY.) unused textures but that's a task for another day I guess.

[Memfis]

THANK YOU FOR MAKING THIS WAD. I haven't been so excited in months!

Here is my FDAs: http://www.mediafire.com/?5fnycda15g8damr

And who made those Tyrian midis? They are awesome, way better than "borgmidi".

[skillsaw]

Oooh, can't wait to watch the FDA!

I got the Tyrian midis from VGMusic. The music used on MAP01 was sequenced by Alex Rentz, and the music used on MAP04 was sequenced by "X".

[Hitherto]

Amazing outdoor screens, just amazing! :o

[DeathevokatioN]

Fucking awesome, I'd download and play this right now... but I'm so pissed off at the moment with the resource pack I'm trying to get working, and I don't wanna ruin the experience of another solid Skillsaw mapset. So I'll download this tomorrow. :)

[Melon]

At this rate we might as well just rename the Cacowards to the Skillsawwards.

[Vordakk]

Goddamn those screenshots are nice.

[skillsaw]

Thanks everyone :)

I watched through your FDAs Memfis - your time on the first map was better than mine usually is, and you also handled MAP05 quite a bit better than I can. Interestingly I didn't really notice anything working in an unintended way(other than a monster teleport on MAP04 that seemed to trigger late).

[Phml]

Great stuff. I played up to MAP03, where after a few deaths I got killed right as I was walking on a soulsphere. Coincidentally and in a completely unrelated way I decided to take a break at this point!

[lupinx-Kassman]

I like.

[pavera]

Man, this stuff is brilliant. I love Vanguard but this here is your 2011 masterpiece. Map03 and Map04 are great achievements and Map05 is intense and slaughtery while still being manageable enough for me to enjoy.

Now I'm inspired to map.

[Phobus]

I love the look of those outdoor areas, with their stark contrasting shadows. Definitely will have to give this a go at some point :)

[MegaDoomer]

This might be good but it can't top Vanguard. That's just impossible. Not to mention it only has 5 maps; Vanguard has 12.

It can equal Vanguard, but after reading its /newstuff review, I don't see how you could "top" that review.

[Use]

Marvelous!

[fullmetalvaran33]

I've played through 3 of the 5 maps, and I must say, this is one of the better tech base WADs out there. It's quite slaughtery, which surprised me at first, but I like slaughter WADs so...

The music is a lot of fun, very fitting, and the graphics and lighting effects are excellent. This is definitely a job well done here, Sir. :)

[Joshy]

I want to play this if I could but I gotta study! Thanks for making it harder to get by through the week! :P

EDIT: I like the name by the way, clever referencing of the word's origin to the moon!

[Xaser]

Hehe, played through it earlier. Top-notch work! The lighting is too bloody awesome for words. @_@

Can't say I found any problems with it, 'cept that the automap gives away most of the secrets since the doors' lines aren't marked as such. But that's a small nitpick that doesn't change the fact that this wad is fun as hell and a damn fine work. Kudos. :)

[skillsaw]

Thanks guys!

@Xaser - good catch on the secrets. I actually didn't know about flagging lines as secret until Vader and esselfortium pointed it out to me on a certain project forum. wink wink.

@MegaDoomer - a review is just one person's (Snakes, in the case of the Vanguard /newstuff review) opinion of the wad. If Krispavera (or anyone else for that matter) likes Lunatic better it's totally subjective. More power to them. Myself, I think it's better in some ways (the short length keeps it from getting monotonous, this is important when you playtest something a million times) but worse in others (I think the difficulty curve is better in Vanguard, for instance - I also feel that Vanguard has more "standout" maps)

[MegaDoomer]

skillsaw said:

@MegaDoomer - a review is just one person's (Snakes, in the case of the Vanguard /newstuff review) opinion of the wad. If Krispavera (or anyone else for that matter) likes Lunatic better it's totally subjective. More power to them. Myself, I think it's better in some ways (the short length keeps it from getting monotonous, this is important when you playtest something a million times) but worse in others (I think the difficulty curve is better in Vanguard, for instance - I also feel that Vanguard has more "standout" maps)

Well I understand what you're saying, in that one opinion saying that Vanguard essentially could not be improved upon does not mean nothing can top it, but this does lead me to a question - are YOU overall happy with both works?

I mainly ask because I will note that with Vanguard, it's not just one stellar opinion (i.e. that of Snakes) - it's essentially everyone in the community who praises that set. And now Lunatic looks like it might be heading in the same direction.

[esselfortium]

Why would he release it if he wasn't happy with it? :-\

[Tango]

i quit mapping. again.

(again)






(again)

[MegaDoomer]

esselfortium said:

Why would he release it if he wasn't happy with it? :-\

Good question, but I'm not sure how I could justify either a clear yes or a clear no. Up for debate, I'd say. I'm sure there's some case in the past of an author knowingly and publicly releasing a wad that he/she was not satisfied with the final result of (and this is excluding jokewads/trollwads/any other form of intentionally bad wads), but to think of a particular one would be tougher.

[EarthQuake]

The screenshots are breathtaking. Downloading right now.

[skillsaw]

MegaDoomer said:

Well I understand what you're saying, in that one opinion saying that Vanguard essentially could not be improved upon does not mean nothing can top it, but this does lead me to a question - are YOU overall happy with both works?

I mainly ask because I will note that with Vanguard, it's not just one stellar opinion (i.e. that of Snakes) - it's essentially everyone in the community who praises that set. And now Lunatic looks like it might be heading in the same direction.

Since you put me on the spot,

I'm happy with both projects, with reservations of course. When making a large project, there are always ideas and plans that you never get around to, and you're left kind of regretting and wondering what might have been had you stuck to them.

So am I happy with my 2011 projects? Sure. I feel like they're close enough to what I set out to do, even though I can't help but see shortcomings when compared to my original intentions.

On the other hand, the opinions of the community aren't hampered by the ideas that I never really shared with them. Anyone who plays it can decide, unhampered by any sort sentimentality or prior knowledge of what my plans were, whether or not they think the wads are any good. Most people seem to like these maps. That makes me happy :)

By the way, there's one map in Vanguard that I think is fucking terrible. Like really terrible, horrible bad, but somehow no one's called me out on it. Wonder if anyone can figure out which.

[MegaDoomer]

Tango said:

i quit mapping. again.

(again)






(again)

I hope you're being sarcastic. Again.

Just because one person makes better maps than another, does NOT mean that the inferior mapper should stop releasing maps. Otherwise at least 80% of the community would cease to exist by now.

Personally I've played every level you've released after the Redemption series (which you yourself admitted was poor) and can not think of any that I didn't enjoy. Just because one map is not as good as another, does not mean it's unwelcome in the community. That would be like saying PCCP should never have been released because it's not as good overall as many other community projects, and clearly I'm not the only one who's glad that PCCP exists.

Doom releases go like this usually: a lot of good stuff, an occasional poor release, and then every once in a while something truely fantastic comes along. It's been that way for years and years, and will likely be that way as long as Doom exists.

Anyways I know this is way off topic so I'm not going to go any further, but just in the less than 1/100 of a percent chance you were being serious, I wanted to explain.