Secretdoom: Hell's Memento - 12 Map GZDoom Episode

Story:
You were stationed at the Alpha-E082 Ammunition Storage when a Hell Gate rose in a nearby sector causing an extreme warp to the landscape in the area. Your job is to find out how the hell to get home, and if you even can.
------------
HELL'S MEMENTO is a 12-Map GZDoom wad that has heavy inspiration from classic wads like "Memento Mori", "TNT Evilution", "Requiem", etc. with GZDoom features such as 3D Floors, ACS Scripts, and Decorate Powerups/Monsters.

This is the beta, so feel free to provide any constructive notes or miscellaneous feedback you may have for the maps, or if you find any major bugs or glitches, please let me know!
-------------
MAP LIST:
MAP01: Ammunition Storage
MAP02: Processing Station
MAP03: The Bridge of Silence
MAP04: Frost
MAP05: Library of the Accursed
MAP06: Fortress of Blood
MAP07: ...And Hell Awaits
MAP08: Demonic Barbeque
MAP09: Plaque on the Plague
MAP10: A Requiem From Hell

MAP11: Suite Dreams
MAP12: Revelation
-------------
Screenshots
Download (Final Beta)

like the screenshots. especially the last ones. feels like you're in an alternate dimension.

I played all the maps. Here's some thoughts and issues I found. I played on UV, pistol starts:

-MAP01: nice opener. The sector that lowers the path to the secret blur-sphere should bettet be raised a bit or change the floor like the water.

-MAP02: I really liked this one, and everything looks allright. I think it would better to swap the secret blue armor with a green one, at least for UV.

-MAP03: The area on the gray water where you can find the secret with the backpacks and the rocket looks extremely dull. There too many rockets given I think.

-MAP04: This one was really more difficult than the previous ones. I really liked all the closets in the wooden area. After the red key door the bars that block you give you a safe place where to shoot the coming cacodemons. Also the nearby closets have unpegged walls, it was just pretty odd to see.

-MAP05: I couldn't open the blue door. The cyberdemon fight was pretty good, maybe you can add more cacos there. I think that 2 soulspheres and a megasphere is too much (though 2 of them are secret) as the map is small.

-MAP06: The gun-switch to exit the secret area in the red building in front of the yellow key hasn't a repeatable action, but idk if that it's intentional. The bottom of the crusher pit has hom. I couldn't open the door to get the yellow key (similar to MAP05). Also I had some problems pressing the blue and the yellow switch, I had to press them more times to activate them.

-MAP07: I'm not sure about that Pain Elemental.

-MAP08: The bars that lower after you pick the plasma gun could use different texture. The first AV with no cover was a bit cheap, but maybe its fine since I noticed and used the custom powerup at the second AV.

-MAP09: Too many cells, I could spam with the BFG on almost all the traps. There's an hom on linedef 1131.

-MAP10: An IoS fight a bit different from usual. The section with the yellow key was the more interesting, having the pression of the monsters that keep spawning on the main area. The big horde of demons and the one with the revs and the flying mancubi was underwhelming, I pretty much skipped the latter. Using the custom power up doesn't add to much imo.

-MAP11: This one was interesting, maybe it needs some more armor. The last fight didn't looked so interesting to engage, I just skipped when I saw the exit.

-MAP12: Monsters just put in hallways and in front of you. It wasn't so much fun to play this. There are homs at the closets in the blue key room.

I really enjoyed the first nine maps. It was really cool to see a wad with a strong vibe of those classics from the 90's you have mentioned. And it was actually pretty interesting to see more modern touches like other textures and the custom enemies. I liked these ones, but maybe seeing them only one time was a bit weird (the chainsaw zombies, flying mancubi, custom barons). I didn't like the last 3 maps, both visuals and gameplay haven't offer to me so much to enjoy playing them like the other maps. sorry.
Overall many areas (like the thing I mentioned on MAP03), especially the outdoor, look really rough. For example the caves of MAP09, and worst of all MAP10. I think that some, at least little, touch-ups on the visuals would be better.
Another problem is the balance of the ammo: I think that it is too much. Especially on the first 4 maps which I could exit them pretty much full stacked of shells and bullets. I keep to found lots of ammo which also tends to tune-down the difficulty of the situations I encounter.
And about the situations I basically kept encountering the same: getting locked in an area, a closet gets revealed or both. Since it's a small mapset it wouldn't be too much of a deal, but after a while it started to become really predictable.
Anyway this is pretty solid, the maps are all distinct and without falling in making just tasteless homages but offering something new.

So far, I've played 3 maps and a part of the 4th one. I have prevalently positive feelings about the wad, it seems to be a good successor to previous Secretdooms. I'm glad that a cool exploration factor + simple yet impressive environments are still present like in the previous wads, and I liked the varied ways to discover and access secrets. Other notes:

-There are way too many filler fights against Pinky Demons, Spectres and Imps. Imps are somewhat more tolerable, but the Demons are just pointlessly tedious to fight, they pose practically no challenge when randomly placed to guard corridors.

-On a similar note, Blood Demons and Baby Cacos have too much health for the minor challenge they pose, to the point that Blood Demons add nothing good to gameplay.

-IMO, the 300% armor with 100% protection sucks. It absorbs full damage without even making your screen flash red, then eventually wears out to 0% and you're suddenly screwed. For this reason, I would change its "Armor.SavePercent" to a lesser value than "100.0", for example "90.0" or lesser, to make it powerful while not really invincibility-like.

-There are misalignments here and there, for example bricks behind a tech column in the eastern crate room in MAP01.

gaspe said:

-MAP01: nice opener. The sector that lowers the path to the secret blur-sphere should bettet be raised a bit or change the floor like the water.

Fixed.

-MAP03: The area on the gray water where you can find the secret with the backpacks and the rocket looks extremely dull. There too many rockets given I think.

Does this look better?

-MAP04: This one was really more difficult than the previous ones. I really liked all the closets in the wooden area. After the red key door the bars that block you give you a safe place where to shoot the coming cacodemons. Also the nearby closets have unpegged walls, it was just pretty odd to see.

Tweaked the red key door room a bit to flow better.

-MAP05: I couldn't open the blue door. The cyberdemon fight was pretty good, maybe you can add more cacos there. I think that 2 soulspheres and a megasphere is too much (though 2 of them are secret) as the map is small.

The door works fine, you need to be playing on "default" compat mode, I tested with the others and it doesn't work correctly otherwise.

-MAP06: The gun-switch to exit the secret area in the red building in front of the yellow key hasn't a repeatable action, but idk if that it's intentional. The bottom of the crusher pit has hom. I couldn't open the door to get the yellow key (similar to MAP05). Also I had some problems pressing the blue and the yellow switch, I had to press them more times to activate them.

Again, compat mode issues. The hom isn't there when you progress intentionally, as well as the switch being repeatable shouldn't be necessary. As for the blue/yellow switch areas, I tweaked them a bit to work more efficiently.

-MAP07: I'm not sure about that Pain Elemental.

I added some impassible linedefs so he doesn't fling away too far.

-MAP08: The bars that lower after you pick the plasma gun could use different texture. The first AV with no cover was a bit cheap, but maybe its fine since I noticed and used the custom powerup at the second AV.

Changed textures, also the idea was to use the powerup to combat the first AV, and there's some little cover with the pillars on the side.

-MAP09: Too many cells, I could spam with the BFG on almost all the traps. There's an hom on linedef 1131.

No idea how that happened, fixed. I'll mess with ammo distribution as well.

-MAP10: An IoS fight a bit different from usual. The section with the yellow key was the more interesting, having the pression of the monsters that keep spawning on the main area. The big horde of demons and the one with the revs and the flying mancubi was underwhelming, I pretty much skipped the latter. Using the custom power up doesn't add to much imo.

Still not sure how I want to have the main area set up honestly, but I don't want to make it required to kill all the enemies, because having the option to run passed them is cool, but I will edit their placements to make it less like a stroll in the park.

-MAP11: This one was interesting, maybe it needs some more armor. The last fight didn't looked so interesting to engage, I just skipped when I saw the exit.

Will add more armor, also previous reasoning applies, I like optional battles.

-MAP12: Monsters just put in hallways and in front of you. It wasn't so much fun to play this. There are homs at the closets in the blue key room.

This is a map I made in hell revealed's style, which is why it was a secret one :P


Also @Scifista42, I'll mess around with some enemy placements to make it less sloggish in certain areas, and I'm not quite sure about the supershield edit you suggest. Personally, I like the 100% reduction, I think it's neat, but that is why I use the powerup sparingly throughout the maps.

Cyberdemon531 said:

Does this look better?

Yeah.
And about the compat mode you're right.

Updated some of the maps, and messed with some item layouts and ammo distribution. Updated beta in OP.

Oh hey, I'm gonna be uploading this to the archive finally after ending my procrastinating laziness in a few days, so I've uploaded the *final* beta, in case anyone plays it and finds a bug before I pop this fucker in and call it quits.

Final Beta