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Pipicz

Bloodstain DEMO released!

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Hi all, remember me saying that one day I might release a little DEMO version of Bloodstain? That day has come!

Check the Download section at my Bloodstain website to get it! :-)

The BSdemo.wad contains only MAP01 to MAP06 (and of course textures, music etc.), but it's just a DEMO, so hey!

Well, I think that's what I wanted to say, so go for it and have as much fun as possible! And, of course, leave some feedback, please :-)

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Since DW needs more people providing feedback, I will download this later and give you some input.

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Lol where to go on map01? I found the shotgun, after that - nothing, dead ends and blocking bars everywhere.
edit: oh, so it's for complevel 9? People usually think of complevel 2 when they see "limit removing".

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Oh, sorry for that, it's quite possible that there will be bugs, I haven't put too much effort into testing it on various complevels. But I'm aware of the necessity of proper functioning on complevel 2 and in the future I'll do my best to fix it :-)

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On complevel 2 it breaks on that shotgun lift already because finding highest floor doesn't work correctly with sectors that have linedefs inside them. Boom fixes this.

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Played the first 4 maps, I maxed it pretty fast and found out that secrets are way to easy to discover. map03 has 3 green armor in it, why is that? the maps aren't that hard anyway so why include so many armors in one map? make them worth their value. I kindda liked the new zombie, the other was a bit useless IMO but its cool that you included something new.

Gameplay was too generic for me, slowy progressing with monter types but mostly very easy opposition, for me atleast. layout wise, I really enjoyed them. they interconnect pretty well and are well textured and detail although I did find some cramped and overdetailed small rooms that was a big no no to me.

Overall I enjoyed it and I think that you've done a great job so far.
I hope to get the other two maps that left as soon as possible.

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I know the first few levels are easy, but I'm not planning to change their difficulty, I want it to be scaled more consistently. The latter maps are way harder, but still I'm definitely not into HR-style gameplay. Also regarding those cramped rooms, that isn't that common thing in Bloodstain, but MAP04 is built that way - and TBH not even I like it :-D

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I played it, here are some thoughts:

- It sure is nice to see a new megawad with high quality detail in the works. Almost everything looks very pleasant and there are lots of cool original design decisions everywhere.

- A little too buggy so far, even with complevel 9 there are problems like getting stuck behind a crate (sector 117) on map05, getting outside of the playing area on map06 (jump from sector 424\425 to sector 407) or seeing the sky tiling on map01 when looking from the secret "towers".

- Rather naive traps by modern standards, in many cases backing off to a safe spot is completely trivial (which is not so bad perhaps, it's good that we still get some non-rapey traps in 2014). But in non-traps the placement is often naive too: "shooting monsters in front of you" as I like to say. It gets especially noticeable on map06 with all these spiders and mancubi.

- Midi of a Blur song seemed a bit silly to me, that's 90s wads caliber. :) By the way, map02 midi is Nine Inch Nails - Dead Souls and map03 midi is from Memento Mori 2 map19.

- New PE and especially lost souls look stilistically out of place to me. Especially the lost souls, they are almost like paintings: way too different from Doom's visual style.

- And yeah, why are there multiple green armors on these small maps? It's probably not even possible to waste all of them.

Sorry I focused mostly on the negatives, well I hope some of it helps.

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Don't worry about hurting my feelings, Memfis, I really appreciate your observations :-) And information about midis as well. And regarding those pain elemental and lost soul sprites, I've been wondering about removing them too - I feel it exactly the same as you do. The only thing is that those lost souls fit nicely in MAP32, while original ones don't, but that's not such problem :-)

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FDAs for maps 02-05 (GLBoom+ 2.5.1.4 -complevel 2): http://www.sendspace.com/file/3hw5fv
FDA for map01 didn't go very well because of the bug Memfis mentioned and I didn't feel like redoing map06 after I died stupidly once.

One thing I don't like is when there is a health potion or armor bonus there's always 4 of them at the same place resulting in a stronger pallette change than usually. Maybe change the value the items add with an internal dehacked?

On -complevel 2 all the new zombies that are in map05 standing on the boxes seem "stuck" without being able to shoot at you. On -complevel 9 they only retaliate after you shoot them first.

Also in map05 there is a couple of shells flying in the air, *however* this only happens in GLBoom+ rendering and only with -complevel 2.
http://i.imgur.com/SAQtaua.png
http://i.imgur.com/Fp16uTy.png

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neat. I was interested in seeing your E2/E3 maps ever since you posted those screenshot galleries awhile back. E1 looked a bit more mundane, but I'm still down for some testing... Overall I like the visuals, above-average visual coherence, good texture combos for the most part. oh yeah, I played on cl9 and experienced no issues, other than the quirk of monsters falling off platforms occasionally.

some misc thoughts:

- easier than what I tend to enjoy, but since you said you have no intention of beefing anything up this is a moot point. Plenty of room in a megawad though to span a wide range of difficulties, so I'll be looking forward to trying later maps still. Difficulty aside there did indeed seem to be a pretty intense excess of hp/armor
- many of the midi are kind of annoying, map05,06 mainly.
- taking down mid/high-tier enemies (e.g. caco, hk) in an open area with a single shotty is simply not enjoyable. I found myself skipping many enemies as a result. This stopped being a problem at map04 when I eventually found a ssg.
- I'll echo memfis' "shooting enemies in front of you" criticism. open door, there are hitscanners facing you, hide behind door and shoot them to death, enter cleared out room, repeat. I think map06 was a bit better in mixing up the way enemies are presented to the player.
- the SS replacement isn't too bad, I kinda like the idea of a higher hp hitscanner.
- the PE and lost soul sprite replacements look kind of silly imo, doesn't really jive with the stock doom aesthetics.

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Keyboard_Doomer said:

One thing I don't like is when there is a health potion or armor bonus there's always 4 of them at the same place resulting in a stronger pallette change than usually. Maybe change the value the items add with an internal dehacked?

That's impossible to do with dehacked unfortunately. You can change the soulsphere health value though, so one could give the soulsphere a health bonus sprite and make it give 4 HP, but that would mean sacrificing the soulsphere of course.

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Well the screenshots certainly look nice. I like it when a WAD mixes up the textures a little. It makes it feel like your walking around a different place rather than just the same old UAC base or Hell... :)

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I like it!

Two things I noticed:

Map01: the fake 3D bridge near the shotgun trap only lowers, when you get close to it on the lower floor. So shooting the monsters on the far side from a distance doesn't work.

Map06: In the invisibility sphere trap room you can use the grey teleport exit pads as a stepping stone to get outside, is that intended?

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I really enjoyed it. The only issue I found was the bridge issue in map 01 that boris has mentioned. If the bridge is between you and an enemy you can't hurt them.

Apart from that I really like the layouts and the texture choices, as I hoped, gave the whole thing a sense of place. I felt like I was somewhere else other than Deimos or Phobos. Good work! :)

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boris said:

Map01: the fake 3D bridge near the shotgun trap only lowers, when you get close to it on the lower floor. So shooting the monsters on the far side from a distance doesn't work.


Yup, I know, I usually do everything to prevent stuff like this, but sometimes it sneaks by... anyways it's fixed by now.

Map06: In the invisibility sphere trap room you can use the grey teleport exit pads as a stepping stone to get outside, is that intended?


It wasn't intended, I put impassible lines at the places like this, sometimes you just miss it though - but now it's fixed as well :-)

I also fixed that shotgun platform in MAP01, boxes with monsters in MAP05 and removed those Pain Elemental and Lost Soul sprites.

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Played through the demo on pistol start (well, not actually pistol start, but I died in levels 3,4 and 5, so that's what it turned into), and I really enjoyed it (haven't finished map 6, prboom crashed and I called it quits). I actually thought the LS sprite was ok, but the PE reminded me of Pirate Doom.

- taking down mid/high-tier enemies (e.g. caco, hk) in an open area with a single shotty is simply not enjoyable


This, so much this. In particular that first map is begging for an SSG, a RL with just enough ammo to take down the two HKs faster, or something. It's not hard to kill them with a shotgun, just tedious. That happens a couple times.

I really liked map 5. I had a lot of trouble with the hitscanners in the opening area, and then it's a mad rush to get the ammo to handle everything as you make your way to the main open area. The room with the barrels and the hitscanners is a lot of fun, and I always enjoy an AV in a cage.

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I've written some feedback to Pipicz on the Czech forums. Here, let me just say that I'm impressed by Bloodstain, I consider it a great piece of work, and I'm looking forward to the full version. It's apparently going to be a highly-detailed, elaborated classic-style mapset, where the gameplay won't bring as many surprises or innovations as it could, but it doesn't mean it won't bring any at all. And anyway, it looks awesome. ;)

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7hm said:

This, so much this. In particular that first map is begging for an SSG, a RL with just enough ammo to take down the two HKs faster, or something.

Well, there is a berserk. Punch, punch. ;)

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Memfis said:

Well, there is a berserk. Punch, punch. ;)


Now that you mention it, that reminds me that is actually what I did. I punched most of the monsters that weren't shotgunners. If that's what he was going for its OK I guess.

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scifista42 said:

I've written some feedback to Pipicz on the Czech forums. Here, let me just say that I'm impressed by Bloodstain, I consider it a great piece of work, and I'm looking forward to the full version. It's apparently going to be a highly-detailed, elaborated classic-style mapset, where the gameplay won't bring as many surprises or innovations as it could, but it doesn't mean it won't bring any at all. And anyway, it looks awesome. ;)


Actually the latter maps aren't in such classical style as you might think - in fact I was even wondering if these first six maps are proper example of what you might expect in Bloodstain - and, well, they probably aren't :-D

The earlier maps are rather straightforward maps full of that many times mentioned "shooting enemies in front of you" stuff and without more possible ways, however, the latter maps have more possible ways to finish and are quite complex (MAP25 being my masterpiece in this manner - it is imho the best map I've ever made so far; and in case of MAP25, it is long and complex as hell - Gusta told me it took him almost two hours to finish it when I sent it to him :-)) and the difficulty there is rather high - and there definitely isn't too much ammo as you mentioned on idoom.cz ;-)

But I simply can't release these 'jewels' (lol) from among my work yet... I have to keep something for the release of the actual megawad once I finish it :-)

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^Sounds good and I'm glad to hear it, you make me curious. Now I want to get my hands on the finished megawad even more. ;)

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There's more of the stuff flying in the air in map06. But again, only occuring in GLBoom+ and only when run with -complevel 2 so it's up to you if you'll bother fixing it. Not sure how many people use -complevel 2 in command line, GLBoom+ is rather popular for running vanilla (limit-removing) WADs though, I think.

http://i.imgur.com/siRUFum.png
http://i.imgur.com/J6OFvT3.png
http://i.imgur.com/4fdsoQd.png
http://i.imgur.com/0f6k6LF.png

Imgur refused to create an album for me. o_0

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BUMP

I wanted to look at the screenshots again for inspiration but apparently the site is down. Should I start worrying?

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