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ChameleonVXV

Doom: The Penumbra Episodes

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A while back I posted about my work in progress Ultimate Doom megawad, called Doom: The Penumbra Episodes. Well it's now finished (well, I might continue to work on it and release updates, but for the time being I'm sick of working on this thing, haha) and I want to finally share it with people for the first time. Here's the level listing once again:

Episode 1 - A Terrestrial Nightmare

E1M1 - The Armory
E1M2 - Data Mainframes
E1M3 - Bunker
E1M4 - Security Station
E1M5 - Laboratories
E1M6 - Garbage Disposal
E1M7 - Atomic Engineering
E1M8 - Base Core
E1M9 - Subterraneans (Secret Level)


Episode 2 - The Hallows of Limbo

E2M1 - Limbo Entrance
E2M2 - Place of the Lost
E2M3 - Valley of Skulls
E2M4 - Styx
E2M5 - The Tombs
E2M6 - Altar of Blood
E2M7 - Wastelands
E2M8 - Tartarus
E2M9 - Hidden Chamber (Secret Level)


Episode 3 - Ganymede Hellhive

E3M1 - Ganymede Anomaly
E3M2 - Abandoned Plant
E3M3 - Infernal Outpost
E3M4 - Infested Station
E3M5 - Resource Processing
E3M6 - Dilapidated Area
E3M7 - Hellhive
E3M8 - Gates of Hell
E3M9 - Restricted Sector (Secret Level)


Episode 4 - Hell of All Hells

E4M1 - Hells Entrance
E4M2 - Depths of Hades
E4M3 - Judecca
E4M4 - The Malebolge
E4M5 - The Abyss
E4M6 - Fires of Gehenna
E4M7 - Hell Tabernacle
E4M8 - Unholy of Unholies
E4M9 - Lost Sanctuary (Secret Level)

And here's the link to the megawad: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qlt32qhlt6yhszm/DOOM%20Penumbra.WAD?dl=0

I still cannot figure out how to take screen captures in zdoom, hope you'll forgive me for that. Hope you like it, I've worked for many months by myself on this thing and I can't look at it anymore but I think (and hope) I did a pretty deccent job. :)

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I think your link is busted, it only gives me a page to sign in.

Edit:PRTSC should be the default for ZDoom screenshots.


Edit2:yea it's fixed.

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I'm new to posting wads. I was under the impression that those need to be included in order for the thing to be playable.

What should I remove from the wad file?

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if you download just about any random pwad from idgames and look inside, you'll see that the only resources included are custom resources. i dont really know what all you added but the only new stuff to me is a handful of skies, interpics, and mapinfo stuff, as well as the maps themselves. i would purge anything you didnt add yourself, which would make it a much smaller download.

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There are still many redundant IWAD lumps:

-DMXGUS.
-Duplicated D_E1M1 to D_E1M9.
-Intro / Intermission / Victory / D_BUNNY music.
-HELP1, CREDIT graphics
-Empty S_START, S_END markers.
-Unnecessary P1_START, P1_END, P2_START, P2_END markers. (it's enough to put P_START and P_END)
-Empty F_START to F_END markers.

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Played through E1M1... maybe it's just the presence of redundant data in the IWAD but the doors seem to move very slowly and to have virtually no wait time while open, is this intentional?

EDIT: My bad... opened this up in DoomBuilder and saw that it was in ZDoom (Doom in Hexen format) configuration. I'll admit a certain confusion over what you feel the WAD gains from using this format, unless there's some fairly significant use of ZDoom-specific effects later in the WAD.

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played this evening the version with the earlier version, kind of nice mapset, needs more light variation but for the rest it works for me...

Anyway e2m2 and e4m4 crashes in zandronum because there's lot of lines broken or something like that...

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The door behaviour is very unnatural, and any too slow motion is generally annoying. E1M1 appeared to be really simplistic for a ZDoom map in Hexen format. There were stuck monsters in the blue key room in this map. I've briefly checked out a few random maps. Aesthetics, structure and gameplay generally stroke me as newbie-ish, with little to no challenge or idea, and even worse visuals and detail level than the IWADs have. The monsters just fill space, they don't pose enough threat at all, it's mostly tedious to take them down and best to skip them whenever possible. These are my first impressions - sorry for sounding negative, it's simply how I see it.

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Well I AM a bit of a newb at Doom building so I guess I'm not too surprised there. I consider the IWAD Doom levels to be pretty spectacular, id be astounded if my levels looked as good as John Romeros or Sandy Petersens (aside from Nirvana and The Chasm). I don't know, I guess I intend for this megawad to be seen for what they are rather than be seen as attempting to break new ground in the ZDoom community or anythingg like that.

Perhaps I should have made the doors move faster though. A movement speed of 10 seemed fine to me prior to being told otherwise :p

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ChameleonVXV said:

Perhaps I should have made the doors move faster though. A movement speed of 10 seemed fine to me prior to being told otherwise :p

Make them behave exactly like classic Doom's slow or fast doors, if possible. In fact, you would outright convert the maps to a Doom format and accustomize them to be playable in vanilla / limit removing / Boom port, because you're so close and you know, many players prefer non-ZDoom ports. It doesn't seem that difficult, given how simplistic your maps are.

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so i played the first couple levels. the texture scheme is ugly as hell but i liked the layouts. the architecture isnt great but it looks like a long way away from the typical pitfalls of boxes and corridors. i checked out e4m7 and was less impressed. it reminds me of bob carter's levels from the lost episodes, with really huge ceilings and big, open spaces, and your stuff looks even more basic. it was also quite a surprise to find nary a weapon anywhere with tons of cacodemons, imps, and lost souls. i personally wouldnt be thrilled to play through this map pack, but it shows more promise than some of the stuff ive seen.

i dont know if you designed it around this but based on e4m7 im guessing you are more balancing stuff for continuous playthroughs (carrying over stuff from previous levels). personally, i find this playstyle boring as fuck. in my experience, if a map pack is balanced around carryovers, it is trivial to play through unless you are being completely reckless with the given resources (or in rare cases the exact opposite, a thoughtless torrent of enemies). different strokes for different folks, though. i just really enjoy experiencing weapon progression over and over again, like im collecting powerups that give me different attacks, i guess.

DEFINITELY ditch the slow doors. that shit is really boring, especially when the really basic enemy layout encourages blazing around at light speed like the god of demon murder that you are. i wont really argue for aiming at boom / limit-removing compat but limit-removing with pistol start support will get more players giving you feedback than zdoom in hexen with NO pistol start support. heck, some dude might even record some demos! i know they have played worse looking stuff.

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kmxexii said:

so i played the first couple levels. the texture scheme is ugly as hell but i liked the layouts. the architecture isnt great but it looks like a long way away from the typical pitfalls of boxes and corridors. i checked out e4m7 and was less impressed. it reminds me of bob carter's levels from the lost episodes, with really huge ceilings and big, open spaces, and your stuff looks even more basic. it was also quite a surprise to find nary a weapon anywhere with tons of cacodemons, imps, and lost souls. i personally wouldnt be thrilled to play through this map pack, but it shows more promise than some of the stuff ive seen.

i dont know if you designed it around this but based on e4m7 im guessing you are more balancing stuff for continuous playthroughs (carrying over stuff from previous levels). personally, i find this playstyle boring as fuck. in my experience, if a map pack is balanced around carryovers, it is trivial to play through unless you are being completely reckless with the given resources (or in rare cases the exact opposite, a thoughtless torrent of enemies). different strokes for different folks, though. i just really enjoy experiencing weapon progression over and over again, like im collecting powerups that give me different attacks, i guess.

DEFINITELY ditch the slow doors. that shit is really boring, especially when the really basic enemy layout encourages blazing around at light speed like the god of demon murder that you are. i wont really argue for aiming at boom / limit-removing compat but limit-removing with pistol start support will get more players giving you feedback than zdoom in hexen with NO pistol start support. heck, some dude might even record some demos! i know they have played worse looking stuff.


kmxexii..

Your avatar turns me on.

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I will repost my feedback here as I did on the Doomworld Facebook group:

Cleaned version of the WAD here: http://www.mediafire.com/download/l7esajtwmzrhbv5/Doom+Penumbra.zip (Go nuts with your mods now while playing this! Original WAD had IWAD resources in it which I culled out)

1) Too easy, at least E1 was. Either reduce amount of ammo or increase monster count.

2) Linear. I know it might be first mapset but consider putting multiple paths in some of the levels.

3) Please use normal door speeds. Slow doors and lifts can get annoying to some players.

4) Underdetailed. Put in some detail such as computers or other things for the player to look at rather than walls.

5) This is nitpicky but increase texture variation and consider trying to match texture colors with the flats (esp. door undersides). It's not 100% necessary (See original Doom IWAD levels/Final Doom, etc) but it does look nice.

6) Set secret walls to the "Secret" tag and use some sort of visual clue so one doesn't need to wallhump to find secrets. Same applies to the trap linedefs facing into a room.

7) Align traps' texture to match surrounding if using same texture.

8) Doors are generally 128, 104, 96 or 72 units tall. Try to have a small sector keep it from tiling as tiling doors can look ugly.

9) E3M1's courtyard with the 3 lost souls and red door will not let you open it from one side once it closes again. This must be fixed.

10) Make sure all normal usable doors have their door tracks set to Lower Unpegged and have a reasonable texture (DOORTRAK/DOORSTOP for base/hell-base, METAL works nice with hell and urban levels).

11) Use more variation in lighting levels and heights. Vary it up more, even if there's sections of lighter/darker rooms or flickering/pulsing lighting.

12) E1M6's blue switch that opens the door to the baron and caco doesn't seem to have a way for the player out of they spend too much time in or getting to the door, getting trapped inside.

13) You forgot to mention this was a Doom in Hexen format set of maps.


Also, I recorded E1M1 (no M9) through E2M8, so they will show up eventually. If there were any maps I played so far I liked the most, it would be E2M6.

How much time did you spend making these maps? I would suggest spending more time on your next map/set of maps along with taking advice from those here.

@walter: The maps do not crash under GZDoom but again, I rebuilt the nodes with Zennode before uploading them as well.

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