Doom II Hell Unleashed - DEMO RELEASED

If you've been following doomworld through facebook, you may or may not have heard of my up and coming Doom 2 remake titled Doom 2: Hell Unleaashed. This friday, I will be publicly releasing the remade Map 2 - The Underhalls.

The idea of this beta release is to showcase the ideas and structure at hand with the first ten levels as Episode I, as well as allow others who are interested in what they see as an opportunity to allow me to network with others.

November 7th, 2014 - Map 2 will be released as a version 0.99b, as an opportunity for the community to beta test and give suggestions, comments, complaints, etc.

Levels 1, 2 and 4 are currently in beta phasing.
3 and 5 are incomplete
6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 are still up for grabs or a collab with other mappers.

Still looking for sprite/texture/weapon artists and mappers.
Original music is currently provided by Myself, Elric Sullivan and Zachary Miles Walker. Still open to other musicians as well.


https://www.facebook.com/HellUnleashedD2 Screenshots on page. Please Like!

The screenshots look good. Now I wonder if the map will also play well. Nice to see this project being continued (since springtime), even if it's just yet-another remake project of IWAD maps.

In the meantime the levels provide a challenge to vets of Doom. Until custom monsters are implemented, I'm doing the best I can do with the stock beastiary.

Whoever told you the best part of waking up was having folgers in your cup was a damn dirty liar. RELEASED. PLAY D2HU DEMO NOW!!!

http://s000.tinyupload.com/download.php?file_id=90131836093072954589&t=9013183609307295458925881

Idclev to map02. Follow the FB page if you havent already. Constructive criticism is appreciated. Have a suggestion? Great! Let us know and you might see it implemented.

The whole thing distinctly reminded me of KDiZD, despite not targeting ZDoom. Really impressive detailed visuals, that's for sure - congrats. I felt it was a shame that the map was actually just a well-known IWAD layout tweaked visually and with minimum structural changes; but well, it's just a remake. And having that in mind, I liked it - good experience. Gameplay was principially quite faithful to the original (pretty shell-heavy), just with a lot of high-tier monsters added - I had no problem with that.

I've found a bug in the exit room - wires on the ceiling glitched as the lights were blinking, it was noticeable in PrBoom+ and ZDoom and even more so in Zandronum.

scifista42 said:

and with minimum structural changes; but well, it's just a remake.

Levels 1 and 4 feature additional rooms as well as alternative routes you can take. In some levels I have plans to even add entirely new routes and alternate exits (mainly just a secondary exit).

Nice. Really like the upgrade. Great re-texturing. Feels like "If id were creating Doom2 today - a successor to KDIZD (but we're not trying to make Doom3 lite. And no 360-view Medikits)."

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A little thing. In the first room there are red lights everywhere. So the same red lights next to the Red Key door don't indicate that door is different. Maybe a different red light. Or make those lights pulsate. Of course, then you'd have to make the blue lights next to the Blue Key doors pulsate, too. You'd have to be consistent across all levels. All Keyed Door indicator lights pulsate. Okay, maybe not so little a thing.

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The Caco behind the barrier is pointless. You can shoot him through the spaces next to the barrier with very little danger to yourself. If the easy kill was your intent, as a kind of foreshadowing of future monsters, then never mind. It works as intended.

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The Pinkies in the first alcove can't attack you. You have an 8-unit wide sector between the stairs and the water which is lower than both. The Pinkies can't enter that sector before entering the water sector, so they're stuck. Easy kills.

Also, the floor of that 8-unit wide sector is SLIME04. So you have blue water dropping and becoming brown slime, then turning back to blue water under the floor grate. Odd.

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The next Pinky is an easy kill because you monster-blocked the hall. Just pointing out the obvious.

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Wow. Arachos on MAP02? Seriously? And on Easy, not just on UV? At least they're not much of a threat because of the cramped hall. But at that level of progression, MAP07 will replace all the Mancs with Cybers and all the Arachnos with Spiderbosses. Hmmm, actually that would be an interesting, if silly, one-off. Somebody probably already did that, though.

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Another Caco. And a Hell Knight. A good thing all these higher level monsters are singletons. They're a threat, but not deadly. More of an annoyance.

You have some pick-ups too close to the taller sectors so they float.

http://i.imgur.com/ZVj7b4v.png
http://i.imgur.com/Olp5GjN.png

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I think you're intent was for the player to follow the path around to the left, hit the switch in the central building, then continue on the path to grab the Red Key, which opens the monster closets. But you can just go to the right, right up to the Red Key, which opens the closets. No biggie, but maybe a grating which runs all the way around the edge to force you on the path, and also keep you from jumping off into the water away from a fight.

http://i.imgur.com/oruufMN.png

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There's a Trooper stuck underground next to the switch. Your floor heights are at -64. instead of 0.

http://i.imgur.com/0FL2OQz.png

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The Red Key switch lowers the second barrier to 8 Above Highest Adjacent, not Lowest Adjacent, so the barrier sticks out above ground. You can see the top of the barrier is FWATER1. Looks odd.

http://i.imgur.com/HQpines.png

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I like the hidden Rocket Launcher.

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Why is there an impassable linedef just before the barrier back to the Red Key area? Line 2109.

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Of course there's Mancs. Again, singletons. Huzzah.

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There's a problem with the hanging hoses in the exit room. They're blinking in and out in time with the lights.

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Nicely done. Aside from the minor issues I mentioned, my only concern is monster level progression. If you don't balance it carefully, the second half of Hell Unleashed will just be slaughtermaps.

One more thing. I was looking for a hidden switch in the monster closets around the Red Key. Wasn't there. Since you're planning on doing the whole enchilada, please also do MAP33 - Betray, from the XBox edition. I'd love to see that upgraded. Whether you keep the Nazis, or make them invisible, like in the BFG Edition, is up for discusion.

Effingham - Thanks for the bugfinds. I will resolve these right away.
The intentions were there with the singletons and what not. As of right now Im just using the original beastiary. The idea was to add at least 20 - 30 new enemies including variants of the original. So no, the maps wont be slaughterhouses. My objective for this demo is to find others who are interested in helping this project achieve the goals in mind.

Bloodskull said:

Levels 1 and 4 feature additional rooms as well as alternative routes you can take. In some levels I have plans to even add entirely new routes and alternate exits (mainly just a secondary exit).

You missed my point, my concern was simply the fact that the base layout wasn't original. Things like a couple new rooms and paths won't change this fact. You can't do much about it since you're doing a remake, I know. I meant that a completely original layout with these aesthetics could have made a multiple times better map. Then again, the detail level is stunning and quite competently used too, map plays okay, so it's awesome work.

Bloodskull said:

The idea was to add at least 20 - 30 new enemies including variants of the original.

!!!!!

If you're mapping for vanilla or Boom, then it's impossible. Only ZDoom and such ports allow you to add unlimited amount of animation code. Vanilla and Boom can only work with limited DEHACKED states. And I personally don't think you should move to ZDoom just because of adding monsters, unless you've already decided to do so for other reasons. It would also restrict the wad from speedrunners, demo recorders and other players whose preferred port is PrBoom+.

scifista42 said:

If you're mapping for vanilla or Boom, then it's impossible. Only ZDoom

Not entirely true. If most of your "new monsters" are simply recolour variants with simple attribute changes eg HP, pain chance, speed, spectre flag then you can make at least 3 variants of every Doom II monster using the DEHACKED pallette flag.

In my project I have so far used 4 new monsters and I plan on using at least 2-3 more.

You should give the second door a tag other than 0, because it kind of breaks things when playing on source ports which don't fix its behaviour.

Gameplay-wise I found the teleport ambushes to be a bit excessive with how many monsters they pour out. There's also the weird teleport when grabbing the red key which doesn't exactly feel like it should be there? Finally the trek back to the start after getting the red key is a bit uneventful if you've killed everything.

Otherwise the map plays fairly well, and is very impressive visually. I'm interested in seeing what you do with the rest of the maps.