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nicolas monti

Favillesco episode 2: Tragedy over Europa released!

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This is the second episode of what is intended to be a four episode replacement for ultimate doom taking place on the four galilean moons of jupiter. This mapset emulates the shores of hell style, but there is a big difference, no hell parts, I know this breaks the concept of the second episode but what I've tried to do is to is to make "clean" deimos bases with the Tom Hall touch seen in the doom alpha maps, but without being plain and giving up spookiness. there is a strong Sandy Petersen influence in some maps as well.
The story is that uac has bases on the moons of jupiter as well on those of mars and the invasion event is simultaneous to the one on mars.
This second episode takes place on the moon Europa.

New levels :

e2m1: europa anomaly
e2m2: digamma quadrant
e2m3: storage facility
e2m4: europa lab
e2m5: epsilon base
e2m6: medical department
e2m7: back to tei tenga
e2m8: field of humiliation
e2m9: confinement area

Direct Link with updated version (1.1): http://www.mediafire.com/download/gjatpc81lsq2qgz/favie211.zip
Idgames link: http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/?id=17326

* changes from version 1.0 to 1.1 *
increased the difficulty a bit by enlarging the monster count by 25-45 % depending on the level except on e2m2 & e2m8 and adding the necessary ammo (thanks LodiB88)

e2m1: change of secret items placement (thanks scifista42)

e2m2: deleted 2 redundant shell boxes and some rockets

e2m3: fixed wrong comp texture on SE section

e2m5: switch on the NE area is more visible (thanks scifista42).
new specters trap.
removed redundant ammo.

e2m7: removed redundant ammo.

e2m9: secret blue armor now is visible through a new window
removed redundant ammo.

Screens:









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Just a suggestion here, the DWMC has given feedback fire E1 and above anything else, I am left with the impression they found it lacking in punch. I haven't played any of this, but looking at E2 it's more big maps with perhaps too small monster counts. Either way you might want to look at the thread, could be done good conducive criticism to consider. Again, just suggesting.

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LodiB88 said:

Just a suggestion here, the DWMC has given feedback fire E1 and above anything else, I am left with the impression they found it lacking in punch. I haven't played any of this, but looking at E2 it's more big maps with perhaps too small monster counts. Either way you might want to look at the thread, could be done good conducive criticism to consider. Again, just suggesting.

yeah, I've read the thread, I'll wait for some criticism and then if it's necessary I'll eventually make the fix, however this time the monster count includes barons, lost souls and cacodemons so I think it'll help a bit to increase the difficulty. thanks!

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I am sorry, but if you ask me, gameplay of the first map is pretty much destroyed by (don't read before playing!)

Spoiler

the early found secrets, which I personally would remove completely, because it's a wasted opportunity for a balanced pistol gameplay. This just leads to another eternal overabundance of ammo and...

and I'm afraid LodiB88 was true about the difficulty (but I know, it's just a first map). Interesting layout however, it seems it's hard for you to avoid homages at least of some kind. Gonna play more.

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scifista42 said:

I am sorry, but if you ask me, gameplay of the first map is pretty much destroyed by (don't read before playing!)

Spoiler

the early found secrets, which I personally would remove completely, because it's a wasted opportunity for a balanced pistol gameplay. This just leads to another eternal overabundance of ammo and...

and I'm afraid LodiB88 was true about the difficulty (but I know, it's just a first map). Interesting layout however, it seems it's hard for you to avoid homages at least of some kind. Gonna play more.

Perhaps, let's see what happens next, even though this mapset is not intended to be harder than the original shores of hell. I can offer you my early work, eviltech: http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=16686 which I think is more challenging from map12 onwards. thanks for playing!

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I think these levels are better in design than those in Eviltech. Many of those were actually a bit too hard or confusing.

See what happens for sure, but it might be not hard to fix, just raise monster count to as high as 1.5x or so of current value, perhaps add a little ammo to be safe, but not health. Should work okay.

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LodiB88 said:

I think these levels are better in design than those in Eviltech. Many of those were actually a bit too hard or confusing.

See what happens for sure, but it might be not hard to fix, just raise monster count to as high as 1.5x or so of current value, perhaps add a little ammo to be safe, but not health. Should work okay.

Good suggestion, I'll keep it in mind, not more health off course!

EDIT: I'll wait for people to play through all the levels to see what may be necessary to add in each one of them. :)

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I just finished up Favillesco episode 1 for the DWMC, and I'm still interested enough to take a look. I am worried going in though that removing the hellish E2 elements won't leave you with enough texture variety, though.

EDIT: After playing through a few levels, I see that you used the vines, the ickywalls, and even some of the demon switch faces, so probably enough.

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Definitely interested here; E2 tends to be my favourite episode theme and I want to see how it's tackled.

I am, however, on E2M4 right now and already with the labyrinthine layouts. That said, I didn't have much trouble with E1 second time around.

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Magnusblitz said:

I just finished up Favillesco episode 1 for the DWMC, and I'm still interested enough to take a look. I am worried going in though that removing the hellish E2 elements won't leave you with enough texture variety, though.

Great! about the texturing, I think it has enough variety, vines, cement, gray, ick, computer panels, shawn, compohso, metal, etc. btw criticism is always welcome. thanks!

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I played through all E2. I'm a little disappointed, liked it less than E1. I'll explain why.

Before I say anything, I have to tell you that I don't quite like original Doom's E2 too, just for you to understand why I'm not enthusiastic this time.

Like in Favillesco E1, the maps in E2 are very large and complex, at least compared to original maps. Unfortunately, while in E1 could be a talk about nonlinearity and exploration, in E2 this turns wordly into straying. I started to genuinely feel this in E2M4. E1 maps were interconnected into one large cluster and if you wanted to go somewhere (looking at automap), you could just go roughly in the direction and the map itself finally guided you where you wanted to. E2 on the other hand features a lot of one-way paths (with jumps from height etc.), damaging floors covering large areas, and to get from point A to point B, you'll often have to take a long and unobvious detour. At practically every of the maps past E2M3 it happened me that I was running in circles many times before finally figuring out what to do, some of these circles drained health from me as I was forced to go through nukage, and it took a long time. This is not the kind of exploration I like. In E2M7 I somehow got to the exit while quite a part of the map unexplored yet, and I rather exited right away than to backtrack to the other side of the map. I see it's something you can't much improve at this point already, but it's just the main thing that spoils this for me.

One of my problems was a switch that opens the north-east courtyard in E2M5. I didn't notice the switch. Repeatedly. I wandered the map back and forth too many times. You know, there's a problem with original E2 that the one-main-right way is not highlighted, and in fact, in many instances it's somewhat hidden. You've borrowed this concept and amplified it in your E2 to create hard to navigate mazes. Once you get familiar with them, they become easier - that's probably why you don't see any problem. But if you're exploring for a first time, running in circles will likely occur on the middle and later maps.

I also must say that combat in your E2 becomes easy to that extent it's getting boring. Even the traps which features a lot of monsters are mostly easy, because you've got a lot of space to avoid danger. Also there's again too much ammunition. I could almost play all the maps with just a shotgun, and I used bigger weapons only sometimes and mainly for one reason: Not because it was a difficult fight, not because I lacked shotgun ammo, but because otherwise the monsters would take annoyingly long to kill. I find that bad. Exceptions to this were rare, in fact just two: The yellow key ambush in E2M7 (which I can't imagine being possible without the nearby invulnerability secret-nonsecret), and E2M8, which I gave up. I'm all for increasing monster counts, but also to make them attack you from multiple directions and from mid-to-close range, possibly in ambushes/encounters, so they'll actually pose a threat more often. Not just place additional demons in the corridors.

On the other hand, I sometimes found myself lacking health. Specially in E2M3, which doesn't contain nearly any health (early on). I don't understand why your maps give lots of ammo, but so little health, not counting secret soulspheres, on which I was reliant in E2M3 case (on a soulsphere and armor brought from previous level, more precisely). Cutting down ammo would actually influence difficulty in a similar manner like adding monsters. Being you, I'd think about it.

Please, change E2M8. You've seen reviews of E1M8 in the DWMClub thread. E1M8 was not a game of skill, but a game of patience, since the barons didn't pose any danger unless you forgot to dodge. Now E2M8 is also not a game of skill, but a game of both patience and endurance of your good luck. Seriously, ...

Spoiler

a cyberdemon may get in your way and destroy you point blank at any time, your only hope is to spam plasma and survive 5+ minutes, depending on how succesfully you've been shooting. Because they also like to teleport away right after you fire a row of plasma.

To be fair to you, the maps had also good points. More than any of the homages, I specially liked some of the parts that apparently were your original. One map had a thin ledge by a wall, and you had to crawl along the wall to get further. Down there was just a nondamaging water so you were safe in this regard, and while in the middle of your (short, true) way, two cacodemons appeared. Shooting them while staying on the ledge was entertaining. Some ambushes and encounters actually were nice, they were just too rare in comparison to quite pointless battles in corridors. Some secrets were nicely hidden (again, shame that I can't say it about all of them, that were just a slightly unfitting bumpable texture). Before the later maps turned into mazes and style got repetitive, I actually enjoyed most of the playing and shooting and exploring, while I admit, grabbing up to all 400 bullets right in first level bugged me. First level had about the right size and structure for a pleasuring-exploratory gameplay. Well, to sum this up (sorry for soooo long text), as I'm not keen on original E2, I'm not getting biased about your one, though it definitely has some goods, and E2 fans would appreciate them more than me. That's about it.

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What source port should I play with? I tried with Zdoom but it takes me to the level 1 entryway of doom 2 instead.

Every other wad has worked when I selected new game.

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Lombardi said:

What source port should I play with? I tried with Zdoom but it takes me to the level 1 entryway of doom 2 instead.

Every other wad has worked when I selected new game.


Works fine on ZDoom for me. You did remember to play with the Ultimate Doom IWAD, yes?

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Magnusblitz said:

Works fine on ZDoom for me. You did remember to play with the Ultimate Doom IWAD, yes?


Oh, I must get it then. I thought that you can play doom 1 with zdoom too.

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Thanks scifista42, even if you didn't liked much your observations are helpful for me (that switch on e2m5 and the health issue in e2m3). I succeded several times on the e2m7 trap and beating e2m8 on UV and believe me, I'm far from being the best player. About e2m7, you can skip big parts, that was the idea, an exploratory mission but with some mandatory sections as many original E2 levels although those skippable sections contain some useful rewards as well. Again, thanks for giving this a try.

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Just finished. I say 'finished', but I didn't. After succumbing to the yellow key trap in E2M7 (and I hadn't saved), I didn't feel like another 20 minutes finding my way there again, so warped to E2M8...

...the buildup is nice, but the actual battle? I'm sorry Nicolas, it was terrible. I echo scifista42's points on it, total agreement there.

This isn't all bad; E2M6 was much better than the original Halls of the Damned - although I'd have left out the switches needed for the bars, and just made the bars themselves openable. The rest was pretty good, if a little labyrinthine (and I couldn't for the life of me find the exit to E2M9, so I haven't played that one yet).

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Jayextee said:

Just finished. I say 'finished', but I didn't. After succumbing to the yellow key trap in E2M7 (and I hadn't saved), I didn't feel like another 20 minutes finding my way there again, so warped to E2M8...

...the buildup is nice, but the actual battle? I'm sorry Nicolas, it was terrible. I echo scifista42's points on it, total agreement there.

This isn't all bad; E2M6 was much better than the original Halls of the Damned - although I'd have left out the switches needed for the bars, and just made the bars themselves openable. The rest was pretty good, if a little labyrinthine (and I couldn't for the life of me find the exit to E2M9, so I haven't played that one yet).

Thanks, I've uploaded an updated version, the changes are explained below the link!

EDIT: btw I'm planing to do something entirely new, original and fresh for doom2, smaller maps full of traps and challenge with unique style, let's see when I have the time ;)

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A pretty good mapset; particularly E2M4,6 and 7.

Though I echo the huge amount of ammo (even using v1.1), the dislike of the yellow key trap on E2M7 and the final battle on E2M8.

A little bug on E2M7; it is possible to grab the Berserk Pack through the wall without first pressing the switch.

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I've just finished playing through all the maps ( with v1.0, and then the last few maps with v1.1 ). Great episode :)
I liked it as much as E1.

Your layouts are clever and you have a lot of connectivity in your maps. Sometimes the player ends up being completely lost though, a bit like in Espi's Suspended in Dusk / Back to Basics ( and to me this is quite a good thing - when done reasonably ).

Too bad you didn't include Hell textures ( in early E2 maps, from what I recall the presence of Barons was often hinted by the presence of a MARBFAC3 panel, I missed that in your wad ), but that was your design choice, so it's ok.

I also missed

Spoiler

some crushers ( a key gameplay element which was, IIRC, introduced in E2 ), the E2M6 maze in the dark, and the fake exit ( from E2M6 as well ).

Still, all the other E2 themes / elements were there. :)

Minor bug : in E2M9, two Sergeants guarding the Red door are stuck - they're too close from the floor lamps.

Like with E1, I disliked the ending boss fight.
Spoiler

In E1M8 you gave too much space to dodge the Barons ( as well as barely enough ammo on Pistol Start ), and here in E2M8 the teleporting gimmick is lame and does not actually require skill from the player, as said in some posts above. Still, in 2013 I guess it may be hard to do a Cyberdemon fight which is actually "hard" and memorable in a non-gimmicky way... Good luck for E3M8 :p

Aside from E2M8, the wad is really cool, if only a bit too easy ( too many Cell Packs in later maps ).
A very nice and enjoyable E2 replacement. Brilliant work, can't wait for E3 :)

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Da Werecat said:

Level 5: / Level 9:

Nice catches Werecat, thanks for the warnings. I sucked a bit testing e2m9 but at least the level is fairly playable! I think it is too late because the 1.1 version is already uploaded to idgames and I don't want to bother ty with my updates, it'll be fixed in the future when the two or eventually four episodes will be released in a single pack, as well as gameplay adjustments!

Vermil said:

A pretty good mapset; particularly E2M4,6 and 7.

Though I echo the huge amount of ammo (even using v1.1), the dislike of the yellow key trap on E2M7 and the final battle on E2M8.

A little bug on E2M7; it is possible to grab the Berserk Pack through the wall without first pressing the switch.


Thanks Vermil, before that e2m7 trap 100% of health, a blue armor and several plasma packs are guaranteed so I think it is about dancing around the quartet :) (a secret help is purposely near too) about e2m8, maybe it is too much humiliation but believe me, after knocking down the first enemy everything becomes easier.
about that Berserk, I've tested it on chocolate doom and it doesn't happen, anyway I'll be careful next time to avoid the prboom grabby hands. I'm glad you liked e2m4, I think its atmosphere is a bit distressing!

[WH]-Wilou84 said:
I've just finished playing through all the maps ( with v1.0, and then the last few maps with v1.1 ). Great episode :)
I liked it as much as E1.

Your layouts are clever and you have a lot of connectivity in your maps. Sometimes the player ends up being completely lost though, a bit like in Espi's Suspended in Dusk / Back to Basics ( and to me this is quite a good thing - when done reasonably ).

Too bad you didn't include Hell textures ( in early E2 maps, from what I recall the presence of Barons was often hinted by the presence of a MARBFAC3 panel, I missed that in your wad ), but that was your design choice, so it's ok.

I also missed

Spoiler

some crushers ( a key gameplay element which was, IIRC, introduced in E2 ), the E2M6 maze in the dark, and the fake exit ( from E2M6 as well ).

Still, all the other E2 themes / elements were there. :)

Minor bug : in E2M9, two Sergeants guarding the Red door are stuck - they're too close from the floor lamps.

Like with E1, I disliked the ending boss fight.
Spoiler

In E1M8 you gave too much space to dodge the Barons ( as well as barely enough ammo on Pistol Start ), and here in E2M8 the teleporting gimmick is lame and does not actually require skill from the player, as said in some posts above. Still, in 2013 I guess it may be hard to do a Cyberdemon fight which is actually "hard" and memorable in a non-gimmicky way... Good luck for E3M8 :p

Aside from E2M8, the wad is really cool, if only a bit too easy ( too many Cell Packs in later maps ).
A very nice and enjoyable E2 replacement. Brilliant work, can't wait for E3 :)

Thanks Wilou84, finally some pleasant words, I'm still genuflected because of the E1 reviews hehe, anyway I've learned a lot about what to do and what not to do in my maps. about those stuck sargeants, that map from 2008 was tested formetly with zdoom and that's why I didn't notice that, because in that port those sargeants are free.
About those absent features on e2m6 I thought it would be too much homagy, I mean, more than it is already.
About the plasma gun on latter maps, I conceived e2m7 to be a plasma gun oriented level more than any other on the episode, aside from e2m8 which would be impossible to beat without that weapon (that's the way I succede there).
before another favillesco episode I'm planning a megawad for doom 2 splitted in 6 parts, five levels each, just to keep the feedback flowing, it'll be hard but entertaining. thanks again for appreciating the layouts and E2esque elements in this wad!

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Does this mean episode 3 and 4 will take place on Ganymede and Callisto?

I'll run through this with a mod and post it, already did E1 with Accessories to Murder, will see how Brutal Doom handles.

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Mr. Chris said:

Does this mean episode 3 and 4 will take place on Ganymede and Callisto?

I'll run through this with a mod and post it, already did E1 with Accessories to Murder, will see how Brutal Doom handles.


Yes, Callisto and Ganymede, in that order, Io being the nearest to Jupiter and Ganymede the farthest.
Favillesco E2 with brutal doom? Cool, I'll be watching your videos!

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Yea, I finished them all yesterday evening and the only two I had some trouble with was E2M4 and E2M8. Fighting the Cyberdemon in that arena was quite annoying.

Also, any plans to do E3 and E4? When you're done with all of them, do you intend to put them all in a single WAD file?

PS: Here is M1..

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Mr. Chris said:

Yea, I finished them all yesterday evening and the only two I had some trouble with was E2M4 and E2M8. Fighting the Cyberdemon in that arena was quite annoying.

Also, any plans to do E3 and E4? When you're done with all of them, do you intend to put them all in a single WAD file?

PS: Here is M1..


Great! E2M4? some shotgun rape in the last trap I guess ;) It seems you succeeded with the yellow key in e2m7 and I'm glad to hear you finished e2m8 despite of the annoyance. I have plans to do E3 and E4 and have some ideas for them and sure, the four episodes will be included in a single megawad, but right now I'm taking a break off Favillesco and starting a new project for Doom2, in fact I have the first map done already, When I had five maps I'll make them public for playtesting.
Also Great video man! I like those fatalities, I'm a mortal kombat fan too. Can't wait for the next levels.

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Oh jeez, E2M7...that yellow key trap brought me down into the low teens in both health and armor even after picking that blue armor prior and being at 100%..

I died at least 10 times before I said fuck it and cheated to get the BFG so I didn't drag the video out more than 15 minutes trying to beat it. The problem mainly is because in BD the Cyber's projectiles are faster and shoots 6 instead of 3 in a fast succession, not to mention the projectiles are 50% faster. >.<

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