DTWiD - My version of Episode One of DOOM

I stumbled upon the DTWiD thread a few years back, and thought it was such a neat idea.

In 2012 I started my own version while buying my first house, and all the other things life keeps us busy with.
I haven't really played much of "DTWiD", so I based all my levels off of the original DOOM episode one.

Because this level set was created over the span of two years, I hope that I have achieved some level of consistency between levels, and not strayed too far from the original.

I was born in 1985, and have fond memories of playing DOOM since the early 90's when I was just a lad. I have always made levels off and on since then. It's one of my creative outlets and a fun way to unwind.

Let me know what you guys think of the levels :)

Note: They were designed to be moderately difficult played from pistol start on each level.
No one has play tested these for me other than myself, so please report any bugs I missed.









Latest version:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/ydn2xye6ohe69bb/Jareds_Doom_3_7.wad

Sounds good! Please use a less shitty file host, though (4shared forces people to register or log to Facebook or something, just to download a file). Use a site like Mediafire, or Dropbox, or Sendspace, or Filesmelt.

looks pretty cool, but why for God's sake you uploaded it on 4shared? It could be much more better uploaded on other upload services like mega or mediafire...

I wasn't aware that 4shared required login? That is stupid. I just used it because I knew I had an old account there.


EDIT: OP has been updated with a new file

Congratulations on buying a house! I bought my first house in 2012 too and it certainly keeps you busy. This looks like a lot of fun, ill give it a try and post back after I've played it :)

For now, here is my FDA for E1M1, recorded in PrBoom-plus -complevel 3. In case that you don't know, FDA stands for First Demo Attempt, and you can view it on your computer using PrBoom-plus launched via command line with parameters: "prboom-plus -iwad doom.wad -file your_wad_name.wad -playdemo jareds1.lmp", all the files mentioned should be in your PrBoom-plus directory and your_wad_name shouldn't contain spaces. Or you can try to launch the .lmp on double-click in PrBoom-plus, but again, the files should be in PrBoom-plus directory.

I liked the map. It was very DTWID-like, indeed, and fun to play despite relative crampedness. Despite being blatantly easy, I've died there for my own mistake, so that's what made me appreciate the map a little more (way too easy = usually boring for me). Good secrets - in modern maps, it's unusual to see walkover-activated secrets or anything else than traps, so you get bonus points for utilizing them nicely. :)

I've seen multiple texture misalignments, but nothing too bad. After all, idSoftware maps have misalignments too, and this wad aims to appeal by resembling them, which seems to work. Still, you could have fixed them for the better.

40oz - Congrats buddy! :) It's a good feeling, eh?

scifista42 - Appreciate the feedback!
After a lot of messing around, I (think) got your demo to work. Maybe it didn't render correctly though. You just stayed in the first area at the beginning of the level, mostly shooting at walls and killed a few enemies. Never even got to the end of the level - does that sound right?

No, it doesn't sound right (I've finished the level with 96% kills and 100% secrets on a 2nd attempt). You must play it back with a compatible sourceport and a compatible complevel. If you've tried it in ZDoom or something similar, then it's no miracle that the demo desynced (=desynchronized). Try manually stating -complevel 3 when running the demo in PrBoom-plus from a command line.

scifista42 said:

NIf you've tried it in ZDoom

ZDoom doesn't play back vanilla/Boom demos. Instead it logs a message to the console saying that it cannot run the demo.

I'm guessing this is meant for vanilla engine? If so you got some HOM on E1M2:
http://i.imgur.com/h1TcaJS.png?1
I switched to automap and back so the HOM stands out better (and there's also another window on the right outside the view...)

Don't mind the "look", it's just Freedoom IWAD running inside Chocolate Doom. It's effectively the same as running Doom in dosbox.

scifista42 said:

No, it doesn't sound right (I've finished the level with 96% kills and 100% secrets on a 2nd attempt). You must play it back with a compatible sourceport and a compatible complevel. If you've tried it in ZDoom or something similar, then it's no miracle that the demo desynced (=desynchronized). Try manually stating -complevel 3 when running the demo in PrBoom-plus from a command line.

I couldn't get PrBoom to work, but eventually I did get the demo to play through glBoom - is that the problem?


hex11 - It's meant for Vanilla, but I don't have any tools to actually launch it vanilla.

I'm using GZDoom, because it's what I have installed from years back. I assumed it was good enough to test with but perhaps I'm mistaken. I'm terribly out of the loop with all these different Doom launchers etc.

Dolman said:
hex11 - It's meant for Vanilla, but I don't have any tools to actually launch it vanilla.

I'm using GZDoom, because it's what I have installed from years back. I assumed it was good enough to test with but perhaps I'm mistaken. I'm terribly out of the loop with all these different Doom launchers etc.

The issue is that you'll miss the less evident differences between the way GZDoom and vanilla function, so some bugs may result when running the WAD on the DOS engine. These are sometimes called "ZDoomisms" and "Boomisms". You won't also notice if you hit any of vanilla's internal limits under GZDoom (or even PrBoom).

For testing purposes, you could try installing Chocolate Doom, which is a modernized portable incarnation and generally more user-friendly nowadays than the DOS vanilla under DOSBox.

Yeah for testing vanilla stuff, the Chocolate Doom port is your best bet:
http://www.chocolate-doom.org/wiki/index.php/Chocolate_Doom

I'm surprised at how good your wad looks/plays considering it was only tested in ZDoom. I didn't notice anything weird on E1M1, and apart from the HOM mentioned earlier, there was also another HOM right after the blue door, and a couple instances of tutti fruti (on the very same steps as that screenshot, and also at location of the yellow key). Didn't play past second map yet though.

Looks epic, i'll try it out tomorrow.

I got up to e1m6. I liked it but I did find you to be a little stingy with health and ammo. I think I only found one shell box, and I think kditd often has groups of shotgun guys at a time. As far as simulating Dooms E1, you nailed the texturing right. The layouts were a bit mazy and complex and certainly a good bit more difficult. I think these may be symptoms of testing the maps yourself. I remember hearing John Romero talking about something peculiar about E1M2, that everytime he played it he always took the left door up to the red key room, but whenever he watched someone play it for the first time, they always went right. Sometimes things get overlooked by playtesting alone.

These maps are far from bad, though! I liked it a lot but if DTWiD is your goal, you might wanna consider how stupidly easy Dooms e1 was made to be, because it was the first levels of the game. So mandatory 20 damage slime pits to run across and crushing ceilings in the dark would be a mean way to treat a newbie doom player.

Otherwise it was a fun and exciting take on the phoboa base style and complete with no homages or tributes that made it feel very fresh and different. Nice work!

Really appreciate the feedback guys!

I feel silly for not vanilla testing before releasing the wad. :/

I'm not sure why the HOM is happening , but I just got Chocolate DOOM loaded, and I'm having to change a few of the ways I make levels to get rid of these artifacts.

I have quickly gone through all the levels and performed fixes... and have updated the original file, so please re-download from the OP.

Gonna have to try this out Dolman, I haven't looked into ammo balance or anything but the difficulty likely seems correct just idclipping throughout the maps.

Dolman said:

I have quickly gone through all the levels and performed fixes... and have updated the original file, so please re-download from the OP.

Thanks for stating this. I haven't played the next maps yet. May I ask, do you want more FDA demos as a form of feedback? (would they be possibly helpful for you, or at least entertain you?)

40oz : Thank you :)
I agree about being stingy on ammo, especially shotgun boxes. (I have slightly tweaked the newest version though, and it's a bit better now)

Because I wanted these levels to be difficult, perhaps more-so than the original, I was walking a very fine line with the ammo. I was just worried about the levels being too easy for a lot of the veteran players.
But my first objective was definitely the aesthetics.

----

scifista42: Yes, I love the idea of watching you play my maps! If it's not hard for you to do, then by all means.
But I still haven't figured out how to properly watch them. I'm working on it.
EDIT: Now I can load your demo through PrBoom (by double clicking the demo file), and I have edited the cfg file to

default_compatibility_level 3

Still isn't right though...

HOM is usually caused by a missing texture. In old version of your map, you can see the editor (in this case DEU 5.21) highlights sidedefs with missing textures in red at the bottom of the screen. There's also a "check" menu function to run basic sanity checks on the map and find errors such as these missing textures.
http://i.imgur.com/MxzfP3W.png?1

I never used Doom Builder so dunno how or even if it marks such missing textures, but I'm guessing it must somehow.

Btw, good book for vanilla mapping:
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/post/1349471

hex11 said:

HOM is usually caused by a missing texture.

Thanks for the link!

Yeah, to fix the problem areas, I just created a tiny room outside the window which then had my low "sky".

I continued to leave my lowered "sky" sector missing its upper texture and now everything is fine. (With the space between sky and window)

Just played through the whole thing and my only complaint really is that I got lost a lot and thought there were a bit too many pinkies to kill at the start of e1m9 :P

Still they were nice neato maps, barrel action here and there is always great too. Also thanks for not having super obvious homages :D

SuperCupcakeTactics said:

Just played through the whole thing and my only complaint really is that I got lost a lot and thought there were a bit too many pinkies to kill at the start of e1m9 :P

Still they were nice neato maps, barrel action here and there is always great too. Also thanks for not having super obvious homages :D

Thanks! :D

Only played the first map and half a minute or so of the second, but it's good stuff so far!

Dolman said:

scifista42: Yes, I love the idea of watching you play my maps! If it's not hard for you to do, then by all means.
But I still haven't figured out how to properly watch them. I'm working on it.
EDIT: Now I can load your demo through PrBoom (by double clicking the demo file), and I have edited the cfg file to

default_compatibility_level 3

Still isn't right though...

It literally must work. One possible problem is that you need the exact same version of the maps that I've been recording. If you have more versions of the same wad in your PrBoom-plus folder, and run the demo by a double click, it might choose a wrong one. With command line, you know for sure which wad is being launched.

Anyway, here are my FDAs for E1M2-M5. M5 probably has a ZDoomism that prevents the player from opening the first door (D1/DR doors should have tag 0, S1/SR doors should have non-zero tag), but maybe the cause is different. I wanted to say, I really like these maps, they're nice and pleasant to explore, very reminiscent of KDITD while not being overly homage-y. In my view, they're even more TWID-like than DTWID E1 itself. I've seen many misalignments and 1 HOM on a floor in E1M3, but this was minor, and actually fitted the wad's KDITD-like atmosphere. The broken door in E1M5 was bad, though (or did I miss something?).

scifista42 said:

It literally must work. One possible problem is that you need the exact same version of the maps that I've been recording. If you have more versions of the same wad in your PrBoom-plus folder, and run the demo by a double click, it might choose a wrong one. With command line, you know for sure which wad is being launched.

Anyway, here are my FDAs for E1M2-M5. M5 probably has a ZDoomism that prevents the player from opening the first door (D1/DR doors should have tag 0, S1/SR doors should have non-zero tag), but maybe the cause is different. I wanted to say, I really like these maps, they're nice and pleasant to explore, very reminiscent of KDITD while not being overly homage-y. In my view, they're even more TWID-like than DTWID E1 itself. I've seen many misalignments and 1 HOM on a floor in E1M3, but this was minor, and actually fitted the wad's KDITD-like atmosphere. The broken door in E1M5 was bad, though (or did I miss something?).

Good news, I just watched your E1M2 and it worked perfectly. (And I found yet more bugs while watching you play it....grr)

It's really cool to watch someone play for the first time :)
Thanks for uploading these, I can't wait to watch the rest.


On E1M5 - The first door is actually a trick door. There is a switch nearby used to open it. Maybe this is not keeping with KDITD...


I'm finding the ways I've made maps for years (and had no problems testing with ZDOOM) are very big problems to some other programs. An example is having hidden monsters up on a lift in the ceiling (with a sector height of 0)
I noticed in your demo of M2 the demons never showed up because the floor was stuck! Yet you could hear it constatly trying to lower.

Dolman said:

On E1M5 - The first door is actually a trick door. There is a switch nearby used to open it. Maybe this is not keeping with KDITD...

You're right, it's there. I've found the secret switch, but not the mandatory one. IMO, mandatory interactive objects shouldn't be hidden this way. Instead, they should be easy to find and impossible to overlook or to mistake for a non-interactive environment, at least in my belief. Even though the start area in E1M5 was small and I could have explored it more, the problem was that I've got an impression that it's simply broken and uncompletable.

More demos, including another attempt at E1M5. I actually didn't finish E1M5 and E1M9 due to rage quit. :) E1M8 wasn't specially great at all. E1M9 really could use more ammo, also the switches didn't animate properly, possibly because the linedefs have a switch on both upper and lower texture, which prevents the lower one from animating. The problem that followed through all maps was inconsistent damage of nukage floors (they're always 2-5% in KDITD), and on that note, a severe lack of radsuits, the player always had one chance only. The maps were relatively tight on ammo and also taking place in tight rooms, but I've found this perfectly OK (except E1M9). Good maps!

I'll give this a play/record footage and will post them to my channel in due time.

scifista42 said:

More demos, including another attempt at E1M5. I actually didn't finish E1M5 and E1M9 due to rage quit. :) E1M8 wasn't specially great at all. E1M9 really could use more ammo, also the switches didn't animate properly, possibly because the linedefs have a switch on both upper and lower texture, which prevents the lower one from animating. The problem that followed through all maps was inconsistent damage of nukage floors (they're always 2-5% in KDITD), and on that note, a severe lack of radsuits, the player always had one chance only. The maps were relatively tight on ammo and also taking place in tight rooms, but I've found this perfectly OK (except E1M9). Good maps!

Much thanks for all the time you've devoted to this!
Do you know which wad of mine you are running? (What time of day was it last modified?)

I can play some of your demos fine, others get out of sync bad.


Very good point on the nukage. I don't know why I hadn't considered this, other than I wanted the levels to be difficult and hadn't planned on releasing to the public. A big oversight though, thanks!


E1M8: Personally I don't find the original all that great either :)
Without directly ripping off the original, I wanted to maintain 2 things for the storyline.
1- Simple level with a large star shape
2- Two barons as final boss

So this level was my way of trying to bring a little bit of originality but still keep the main idea.
My theme was: Start in a desolate world, and have the long descent down, symbolizing death/Hell/Dungeon to prepare for Ep2.