Darkmoon [New maps added!]

****Old thread, please check the new thread if you're interested in the project****

"Looks like you're stuck on the shores of hell... and the only way out is through!"

Darkmoon is a mod for GZDoom, Taking place in the overrun deimos base as a reimagining (Not a remake) of "The shores of hell" you must fight your way out to escape from deimos!. It features a revamped version of the Doom monsters (along with some variants), doom 3 style weapons and a semi-linear mapset (each map has two exits to a diferent map) ensuring that each playthrough is different. The history of this proyect is an odd one, we started sometime in 2005, as we worked on it we made some mistakes and by 2009/2010 it was pretty much dead. This time were determined to get it done

Right now are looking for some people to help us to test our proyect as we develop it. Since we want to make the best wad possible we want to hear any feedback about the maps... weapons... anything we could improve!

Here's the complete mapset plus some screenshots:
MAP01 - Deimos Landing Station (Z0k) [COMPLETE]

MAP02 - Administration Office Complex (DMPhobos) [COMPLETE]

MAP03 - Storage area (z0k) [COMPLETE]

MAP04 - Power Plant (DMPhobos) [COMPLETE]

MAP05 - Toxic proccesing (z0k) [IN PROGRESS]
MAP06 - Construction Site (DMPhobos) [IN PROGRESS]
MAP07 - Military grounds (z0k)
MAP08 - Deimos Labs Sector 1 (DMPhobos)
MAP09 - Deimos Labs Sector 2 (z0k)
MAP10 - Tower of babel

Due to the increasing size of the proyect, we decided for the moment to split the music wad out of the current build
Current build:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/05ynpdwko56g273/darkmoon.pk3?dl=0
Music wad::
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vx7ybdny7o4n2uv/dark_music.wad?dl=0

Since

Credits:

screenshots look p cool

This looks great, too bad it will be about a month until I have a PC that can run DOOM, i'm in the middle of a trip. I will play it as soon as early february and tell you what I think of it, hope there are more maps by then.

Ah sweet; I've been looking forward to playing this! It's a bit late for me tonight, but I'll definitely play through these first two maps tomorrow and be back with some feedback.

I played it and it was awesome, the maps were consistently detailed and very impressive, almost like a non-linear Doom 3. Some criticism:

-The brightness is too monotonous and there's almost no variation across the maps. Take for example the entrance area of map01, there's no difference in the light levels of the exterior and interior of the base. I think some higher contrast would enhance greatly the atmosphere of the wad.
-I'm not very fond of the combination of Doom 3 textures and original Doom textures, especially SHAWN and METAL ones, but this is not very offensive and is most my personal taste.
-There was a exit in map01 that lead to a non-existant map03, making me have to cheat to acess map02.

I have noticed that the grey imp doesn't face its target during its leaping attack (doesn't call A_FaceTarget in Jump state). I was also confused about the grenades, I didn't realize that they're supposed to be used as an inventory item rather than a weapon until I checked out their DECORATE, maybe consider making them an alt attack of each existing weapon if not a weapon on its own, and in any case make it clearer for the player how he's supposed to use them. Seems like an impressive DECORATE work otherwise! The architecture/design so far seems impressive and immersive too, but I thought that way too many monsters appeared so early on in the wad (in the large room behind the big doors).

Many thanks for the kind words guys, as we look these kind of feedback to improve the wad.

@PedroVC:
-dont worry pedro i will work on it! i tried to find a balance in darkness since gzdoom tends to make darker some sectors without too much brightness now that i know 128 its an acceptable level of darkness i will work around it as base darkness (though probably darkness 96 could still acceptable)
-hehe yeah im still working in map03, forgot to change that swicht to map02 since the west side of the base would take you to storage area (my map03) while the north side of the base would take you to office complex (phobos map02) but the next update (however will take us a bit more time) will have map03 and map4, since we want every map have 2 exits so players can decide where to go.

@scifista42

grenades used to be their own weapon but i dont know the reasons why phobos change it now as inventory, on my opinion worked nice as inventory since you can use it anytime like the flechettes, probably grenades can have some sort of sign that indicate its a inventory item, like that big arrow that tell you "press use on this" in the first console panel in KDIZD, but i think its phobos decision :P since he made most of the decorate work for the mod.

about too much monsters in the large room behind the big room i dont know if you refeer to the map01, i tried to make some of sort of a lot people coming trough it as some "survivors" failed to reach in time to the exit. but i would appreciate any suggestion for it. if the trites are too much for that entrance i can replace them for some items in the vents :P so players know can use crouch there.

One thing I disagree with is texturing. Doom 2.5 resources (including weapon sprites) are very weak, and you also combine them with stock-looking textures, which is, well...

scifista42 said:

a weapon on its own

Please no. Grenades in a separate slot almost never get any use.

And what's so unusual about having to look at your inventory after picking up an item that seemingly doesn't have any effect? Wasn't Heretic like that?

It didn't cross my mind probably because I haven't played any wad with usable inventory items for at least a year. Also because this wad has a custom HUD, not the default one where I know how it looks like when I have usable items in inventory.

Thanks for the feedback, we're gonna work on some of this issues for the next batch of maps

@scifista42
Somehow i've never noticed that the imps never faced the player before they leapt, thanks, it's fixed by now.

Grenades work as part of the inventory since they are easier to use that way, but i guess you're right, it's not very obvious that they are part of the inventory. Maybe with some changes to the custom HUD, or a message will do.

@Pedro VC
We are still working on that map, at the moment you have to take the other exit =P

Ok, I've gotten the chance to play this bad boy; these are my thoughts:

For starters, as Pedro said the brightness levels could have been a bit more dynamic, but I don't mind that so much.

I could see Z0k all over the first map (no surprise as he made it) in the style of the detailing. Man, I think it looks just fantastic with the Doom 2.5/3/whatever textures. I didn't mind the use of stock textures with the new ones, either. The important thing to me is that they look good together, which I felt they did and that the level itself, all Doom knowledge aside, looks cool, which it genuinely does.

I noticed the two exits, but I wasn't that confused over it. At first I did a double-take when I encountered the second one (the northern one that takes you to MAP02), but after saving my game and trying both out I'm on board. I didn't realize that this was to be a general theme to this map set; I think that's really sweet and I look forward to how the episode develops with such a concept in mind. It reminds me a bit of the "Make your own story" Goosebumps novels they had for a little while, where you get to the end of a page and it gives you a choice: "Go into the dark scary cave (Turn to page 63)/Go home and forget about the whole thing while masturbating (Turn to page 101)" or something to that effect.

Are jumping and crouching meant to be used? I wound up seeing a vent upstairs and to the right after entering the building next to a grey imp, so I jumped and crouched through it and picked up a health pack. That place should be flagged as a secret, imo.

The first item I found was that health pack. I was on full-screen with just ammo and health and shit showing, so the items actually popped up on the bottom of the screen. When I saw the health kit down there, at first I thought "that's curious" but then I thought of Heretic and pressed enter and viola. That was before reading any of these other comments, so without any previous knowledge I came to that conclusion. The first grenade puzzled me for a second; I saw it in the inventory but checked the BD "grenade toss" button to see if it'd work. After it didn't I figured it was like the health kits and just hit enter and of course "[" and "]" scroll between items. So that's all standard Heretic controls there; easy stuff. My first few grenades I thought were bugged because I didn't see/hear them explode and they didn't kill the enemies, but I tossed some more after the fight to test it and they do work. I feel like the explosion (sprite too) should be bigger, but that's just me. (Nah, f*ck it, just make them mini-nukes and call it a day ;p ) I went back and used more grenades this second play-through and they do have a nice radius, so maybe nevermind this paragraph.

I noticed one thing that was bugged; the health station. No, I don't mean that I thought something should work that didn't, but it gave me a legit error message: "Unknown P-code 364 in Script 2" or Script 5 in MAP02. I'm sure y'all already know about this, but just in case it's an oversight I figure I'll mention it.

Ok, on to the monsters. I really liked the new monsters and their AI's.

The imps were far more deadly having that Doom 3 lunge attack. Quick question, is it possible to have a new sprite for a crouch before the lunge? It's highly unpredictable as it is and the only real way to avoid it is to stay the f*ck away. Some type of warning a millisecond in advance would make it far better to deal with.

The zombies were really cool and I liked the fact that they were not like the demon in that they do not waste time animating much before their attack. You really need to keep them away. That's prefect and just the way it should be. I also really liked how some appeared dead until you got close, then they got up.

Idk if y'all are planning on adding in a headshot mechanic, but something feels weird playing something that looks like this and it not mattering where I shoot the monsters. Especially during the mob of zombie encounters where they all come from the front.

Speaking of that, there was one encounter that had 10-20 of them coming in from a big ole door. I really liked the variety in looks of the zombies there.

Ammo started off very abundant, but later got pretty tight. Idk why. Then again, that was from my playthrough of MAP01 last night while tired and whatnot. After my playthrough today I had no ammo problems.

Health was fairly tight as well. I died several times last night, mostly because of imp lunges and the trites, little buggas. During my playthrough today I got fairly low once or twice, but ended the level at 95 or 100% with one health kit remaining in my inventory.



For MAP02, I wound up pistol-starting it because I slipped a brain disk and exited the application to type this message, so yeah. From a pistol start I found ammo to be extremely abundant, while health would fluctuate from abundance to starvation. Grenades were non-existent until I was close to done with the map, but that's okay. This level had a bit of a different style of detailing to it, which is to be expected, but the two styles mesh well together and it's pretty tough to really notice much of a difference. If I didn't have previous knowledge of who built what map I might not be able to really differentiate much.

I really liked the secrets here; they both stumped me for a bit, though on the first pass I thought something looked different about the wall hiding the blue armor and idk why I didn't push use on it then. The other one took me a few minutes to find; I knew a switch had to be nearby, but that was well-hidden!

I like the guns so far as well, though the shotgun looks underpowered in it's firing animation. But that's just aesthetic and my opinion.

I love this so far, guys! If you had asked me before Doom 3 was released how I wanted it to be, I would have just about described this; keep up the awesome work!

Fonze said:

I noticed one thing that was bugged; the health station. No, I don't mean that I thought something should work that didn't, but it gave me a legit error message: "Unknown P-code 364 in Script 2" or Script 5 in MAP02. I'm sure y'all already know about this, but just in case it's an oversight I figure I'll mention it.

It took me a while to see what was happening, it's because we used the current Dev build of GZDoom instead of the last official. My bad, somehow i forgot to mention it. Since it's not a big deal and pretty much everything else works just fine, i changed the script to be compatible with the official release. Im updating the download link

Are jumping and crouching meant to be used? I wound up seeing a vent upstairs and to the right after entering the building next to a grey imp, so I jumped and crouched through it and picked up a health pack. That place should be flagged as a secret, imo.

Yes, jumping and crouching are meant to be used. The second map has some items hidden in the vents that you can only access by crouching

is it possible to have a new sprite for a crouch before the lunge? It's highly unpredictable as it is and the only real way to avoid it is to stay the f*ck away. Some type of warning a millisecond in advance would make it far better to deal with.

We would love to have a leaping sprite for the imps, but sadly we suck at editing sprites and the guy that helped us with some of the new sprites and textures is unavailable. Im hoping that we can do something about this at a later time, but a the moment the only warning they do before they leap towards the player its the sound the make before making the jump

Thanks for the feedback, we're glad you like it!

I want to try this one out, but I cannot get it to work.

What do I need to know exactly?

JohnnyTheWolf said:

I want to try this one out, but I cannot get it to work.

What do I need to know exactly?

You only need the lastest build of Gzdoom and Doom2.wad to play the wad, if you still have troubles after that you can post the message so we can know the problem.

i will talk with phobos about if it possible adding headshot mechanic, since that mean he have to alter a bit the code of the actual decorate, as he said too, we would like to add a sprite of the imp about to jump but sadly none of us know how to edit or make good sprites :(

Also questions for those who played the maps:

Did you feel okay that maps lenght should last around 8-10 mins? because i dont know if people like biggers maps (30 mins) or just maps that have standard doom lenght map (8-10 mins)

Fonze said:

Idk if y'all are planning on adding in a headshot mechanic, but something feels weird playing something that looks like this and it not mattering where I shoot the monsters. Especially during the mob of zombie encounters where they all come from the front.

Well... we never had plans for a headshot mechanin, we might consider adding headshots to zombies, however at the moment it's not something that we have in our plans for darkmoon

Z0k said:

You only need the lastest build of Gzdoom and Doom2.wad to play the wad, if you still have troubles after that you can post the message so we can know the problem.

I put the .pk3 file in my DooM II folder and I added the "-file darkmoon v0.1.pk3" command to my DooM II shortcut. However, I still cannot get it to work: regular DooM II launches instead.

EDIT: I think I figured it out. I removed the space between "darkmoon" and "v0.1.pk3" and the mod seems to be loading properly.

Johny, if you're using Windows it is easier to just drag and drop the wad file onto the port. But you realized the fix there with the command line; no spaces allowed in file names.

To DMPhobos and Z0k:

For starters, some of the stuff I said before was a bit nit-picky because I knew y'all wanted as much feedback as possible.

With that in mind, a lot of things I mentioned are unnecessary, as they would involve too much work for such small effects. Like the headshot thing.

I'm glad to hear that youd like to put in a crouching frame for the imp's lunge, but sprite-work is tough. I wish I could help there but I can't. Even without the crouch before the lunge, the imp's new AI is nice.

Good to know that they are both needed. I typed that sentence before actually playing the second map, but after that I figured it out. Expect my further tests to be riddled with "I got up here"-'s and such.


About map length; I alluded to this before but never came out and directly said it (I think), but I actually played MAP01 the night I noticed this, despite saying it was too late for me. I just had to take a look. I forget the number of enemies on MAP01, but I played all the way through it (and died a couple times) then figured out the exit situation. Upon finishing the level for real (I saved to test the two exits) I entered MAP02. MAP02 had well over 100 monsters, which is why I said "screw it, I've been up too long anyway" there and didn't explore that map. The next day is when I played MAP01 again (twice) and MAP02. None of that's important except for the fact that I didn't even think about the actual time-length on the maps. I tend to look at monster counts to judge a man's length. That being said, while MAP02 also had a large map, you're right in that it was still a fairly quick-moving map. I tend to prefer shorter maps more and more as I have less time to play them (it makes it easier to decide that I have time to play it at the outset), but at the same time I do enjoy big maps as well. I guess it comes down to how much time I feel I have; when I am really in the mood to play Doom I like to play big maps with lots of exploration and content while when I'm just out on a smoke break or have little excuse to play Doom rather than map/write I prefer them shorter.

For starters, some of the stuff I said before was a bit nit-picky because I knew y'all wanted as much feedback as possible.

No problem, glad to hear some sugestions, as for the second map, guess i got a little carried away because at first the map seemed to short, and i added some areas for exploration.

I don't know if I'd say carried away; idk map length is a grey area for I think most of us. Also that exploration is something I love to see and MAP02 is much quicker than it first appears (and I think that's where the "perceived time for completion" comes into play). I think it went quickly in retrospect, just as Z0k had said; especially given the abundance of ammo.

I'm really looking forward to what comes next from this project!

Disclaimer - I made an account just to comment on this map because I am so looking forward to it:

First, I love the overall feel of the map. The previous screenshots from both DMPhobos and ZOk made me excited.

Architecturally - feels great. Great direction. I personally like the textures used as it is refreshingly above the old Doom textures. Personally, I am tired of the brown and the green marbles. I only think the tech textures faired better over time, but even that is pushing it.

Monotone gray adds to the atmosphere. I think it can really improve in terms of lighting and accenting. What I mean is to add more details back to the background including colored lighting, accessories (look at both Brutal Doom Starter Pack tech levels and Aliens Doom Mod) to help spruce it up. There is a lot of open space and to me, that is boring after every other map that gives the players wide berth to circle strafe big monsters.

Lighting - you can add more atmosphere just by adjusting the lighting without mods.

Checkout this fantastic Doom 3 remake from Deimos Anomaly here:

http://www.moddb.com/games/doom/addons/e1m1-remake-doom-3-style

The lighting is just incredible looking with GZdoom.

Same for the texture work. I feel your mod and the above map could be brothers and extension to each other. Playing with lighting and light effects would make it much more atmospheric.

Monsters - Not enough of them. I admit I break your game design using Project Brutality mod because I enjoy the game more with hardcore monsters on Skill 5-6.

With all the room on the map, you can up the monster count by at least 1.5-2x.

Better yet, if you create a patch to allow weapon and monster mods to adjust the monster count, difficulty, and amount. Playing it as-is is fairly tame to me.

Weapons - I like what you are doing here but... the weapons feels tame compared to other mods. I admit I am biased again towards more hardcore mods such as BD, Russian Overkill, Project MSX and Project Brutality.

I know it is not finished but I feel by improving the map set, it could be a wonderful coop mission with 4-6 players. Feels like what Doom 3 on the Doom engine could have been.

thanks for the feedback:

for the moment we are only release the map as far we finish them, mostly because we want to hear the feedback about if they are okay in terms of exploration or lenght of the map (darkmoon previous map used to last like 30-40 mins and we found that kinda tedious).

about lighting its something we left behind because we werent sure if to use sector light only or dinamyc lights, after doing some small testings that gzdoom dont lags a lot with dinamyc lights we going to edit map01 and 02 to use dinamyc lights only.

Map01 and map02 use what i like to call "Tier1" monsters. you know easy to kill, zombies, gunners, shotgunners one lesser imp and normal imp here, some demons around. we have still to make the map to show the next tier of monsters, and its something i want to keep as "surprise" until we reach that part of the project, but i like spoil everything, so pretty much we going to add "random" variants of monsters at some point of the map, this mean: if map05 have a hell knight around dunno the center of the map and months later you play again the wad probably you will find a "stronger" version of the kell knights than the one you fight in your first run and they have new attacks than their normal variant dont have, in other words: harder version of them that can spawn randomly (there i ruined the surprise haha). but trust me they arent the entire bestiary reworked by phobos so the harder maps still have to come (mostly because we discuss when each type of demon would make their first entrance and when they will become common enemies).

We want to avoid Brutal doom at any cost, sorry if you dont like to hear that, because the mod have it own monsters decorate that phobos worked (modify also from other mod and probably its still working because i havent seen the arachnotron doing what i suggest to him :P) same with the weapons in my humble opinion the weapons works better than the previous version we used to work (i used to remember empty two entire clips of the SMG just to kill a pinky demon and sometimes they killed me before i could kill them). but probably what it still missing (and i agree) to the weapon its some neat effects to make them feel more "impressive" you know like those flashing burst shots coming from hitscan weapons, or the machinegun letting some smoke go out from the cannon you know fancy stuff. probably phobos can add them :P

We used to have a friend helping us with new textures (if you played the wad you noticed the new D3 style boxes and the new D3 Style Door those were made by Urric for our project) but lately urric its kinda busy with other things so most of his recent stuff i have in my PC. and so far without urric we cant have new set of textures that could fill that space in our project, so we have to use other textures from other resource wads.

i agree we probably need more decoration in the wad, :P they will be added as we work with the maps, (i still feel we need those sitting dead corpses in the map).

coop testing well we used to play our wads in cooperative, so maybe when we finish the 11 maps (10 maps 1 secret) we going to add the cooperative things so "the more, the merrier"

thanks for your feedback! we still look for more:


i still working on this area but i like how its going so far and more with dinamyc lights. however im a slow mapper and i dunno when i would have this ready

That shot looks awesome Z0k! I can't wait to play it!

About the weapons, I agree to some small point that the shotgun felt underwhelming to use, though its effect seemed powerful. Perhaps a bit more kickback just in the animation of the gun firing would help with that? I'm not sure, but I think it would.

Fonze said:

About the weapons, I agree to some small point that the shotgun felt underwhelming to use, though its effect seemed powerful. Perhaps a bit more kickback just in the animation of the gun firing would help with that? I'm not sure, but I think it would.

Indeed, i'll see what can i do to change this

Screenshot looks amazing... Cannot wait for you guys to polish it up more.

Just a quick update, we added some new maps!, remember that the maps have multiple exits, so be sure to check both of em!
Be sure to check em out, specially the massive storage area map. As for the next update, im gonna revision the weapons and some of the monsters, to add more impact the weapons and add some flashier effects.

Also, stay tuned for the next set of maps!

Darkmoon... yeah, I remember seeing pics of this mod yeeeears ago, I was excited to play it but the old site of the mod (was it a blogspot site? can't remember) never updated, glad to see it's still going :) <3

I think long big-ass maps with lots of exploration are pretty cool.

Is this compatible with the latest stable GZdoom release?

Ledillman said:

Darkmoon... yeah, I remember seeing pics of this mod yeeeears ago, I was excited to play it but the old site of the mod (was it a blogspot site? can't remember) never updated, glad to see it's still going :) <3

Glad someone remembers that from the "Good old day's", hope you enjoy what we are making now for darkmoon ;)

Royal_Sir said:

Is this compatible with the latest stable GZdoom release?

Yes it is, we recomend the last GZDoom release for darkmoon

Things i would like to get as feedback:

monster placement: map03 i tried to work again with my thing placement.

Sector light or Dinamyc Light: the map03 uses a bit more dinamyc light and some sector brigthness from GLDEFS. and less sectir lights, only on certain areas. reason we want to go use only Dinamyc Lights, the problem its i dont know how these will affect the FPS in the game since sometimes a lot of DL can low your FPS.

Feedback its always appreciated because we work around this