Doom Zero (Demo)

Fun mapset! Reminds me a lot of Episode 1 from The Ultimate Doom. I played the first 2 levels but when I have the time I will definitely play the rest.

Cool maps :)

Ok, it's hard enough to make good-looking maps these days with just basic textures. Then restrict to DOS DooM and you are almost shooting yourself on the foot. This is really good though. You manage to squeeze nice details even with these constrictions. There were some nice texturing details too such as using that startan to blend the gray and brown walls in the first map. The gameplay was also well designed. I liked all the running puzzles. And especially the choose your own adv... key puzzles. Like on the first map and especially on the sixth map! When can we expect the final release? :)

Here's an FDA on HMP/continuous: fda-doomzero-hmp.zip

It was all classic Doom to me, so please make the megawad happen if you can. As for feedback, my run was pure careless wandering, no intentions to do 100% everything so the demo is not tremendously long, I did wasted time trying to reach a secret that I somehow broke, so just a few things I would change from my point of view: 

- Some minor texture polishing. 

- Make the berserk/armor secret in map 01 not an actual secret, since it's not really hidden. 

- Perhaps add a (secret maybe) radiation suit in map 05, since it's possible at first not to understand the way and loose a lot of health in the lava pool. 

- Replace the megaspheres in map 06 for soulspheres, it's easy to door-camp the fights, even though it's not so fun that way. 

Umm, that's everything I can think of now, like I said I wasn't paying attention to details in my run. Gameplay so far was really nice, liked the puzzles, the key placement and specially map 06. Yep, all fun!

EDIT: Forgot to add, demo was recorded with Crispy Doom... also, only played the first map before recording. 

I only had the time to play the first level, but I thought it was very good and I really have nothing bad to say about it. If I were to get really nitpicky, I could always argue that "Doom Zero" is a bit misleading, as the title implies this is some kind of prequel to the original Doom, but that is pretty much it. Keep up the good work!

On a semi-related topic, though, just what is Red Pass Games?

12 hours ago, galileo31dos01 said:

Here's an FDA on HMP/continuous: fda-doomzero-hmp.zip

 

It was all classic Doom to me, so please make the megawad happen if you can. As for feedback, my run was pure careless wandering, no intentions to do 100% everything so the demo is not tremendously long, I did wasted time trying to reach a secret that I somehow broke, so just a few things I would change from my point of view: 

 

- Some minor texture polishing. 

- Make the berserk/armor secret in map 01 not an actual secret, since it's not really hidden. 

- Perhaps add a (secret maybe) radiation suit in map 05, since it's possible at first not to understand the way and loose a lot of health in the lava pool. 

- Replace the megaspheres in map 06 for soulspheres, it's easy to door-camp the fights, even though it's not so fun that way. 

 

Umm, that's everything I can think of now, like I said I wasn't paying attention to details in my run. Gameplay so far was really nice, liked the puzzles, the key placement and specially map 06. Yep, all fun!

 

EDIT: Forgot to add, demo was recorded with Crispy Doom... also, only played the first map before recording. 

Thanks galileo. The FDA is much appreciated but also enjoyable to watch because you're the first person that I've watched play through this and I've learned quite a lot from it. There will be some things I will change including your list of suggestions.

- the minor texture is fixed :P (I didn't see at first there was another texture I could've used that matched the switch texture)

- Nah, I'm gonna keep it as an easy secret

- The floor is lava. That's the name of the game. Hence why there are many health pickups

- Good idea.

Again thanks for the FDA...even though I had to install Crispy Doom for the first time, learn how to launch pwads and demos, and find the right version of Doom 2, but in the end it worked :P

10 hours ago, JohnnyTheWolf said:

I only had the time to play the first level, but I thought it was very good and I really have nothing bad to say about it. If I were to get really nitpicky, I could always argue that "Doom Zero" is a bit misleading, as the title implies this is some kind of prequel to the original Doom, but that is pretty much it. Keep up the good work!

 

On a semi-related topic, though, just what is Red Pass Games?

Doom Zero is about as meaningful as you want it to be. Like how Street Fighter Zero doesn't take place prior to Street Fighter 1. Besides, how can one make a prequel to Doom if hell only breaks loose in Doom1? So, RedPass is a pseudo company I made for people to recognize who made the mod. I use it for all of my mods such as this one for Amnesia the Dark Descent:  http://www.moddb.com/mods/key-to-freedom

As a fan of "retro" style maps, I was excited about Doom The Way id Did. Needless to say, I am even more excited about this one. What I like most is that you don't attempt to mimic the original levels, but try to find your own style, a juicy mix of Doom 1 and 2. The "multiple choice" paths also spice things up and increase replayability.

I admit that after the first two levels, I thought this could have been a pwad for Doom 1, didn't see the requirement to run it with Doom 2. Only after I found the super shotgun and some chaingunners, it suddenly all made a whole lot more sense! ^^ I'd still like to see this getting divided into episodes which can be selected via menu like in Doom 1, it would somewhat fit the project, but it's rather a detail to consider later. Hope you will later also customize map names, edit the episode ending texts and maybe use customized music so it feels even more detached from the original, making it look like a "lost" addon id could have released back in 1994/95.

You are definitely on the right track here, and I absolutely support that more of this awesomeness is made!

5 hours ago, DASI-I said:

Doom Zero is about as meaningful as you want it to be. Like how Street Fighter Zero doesn't take place prior to Street Fighter 1. Besides, how can one make a prequel to Doom if hell only breaks loose in Doom1?

You would be surprised actually! Their names escape me unfortunately, but I know of at least two of them; one where you play as a demonic commander spearheading the invasion and another one where you play as a government infiltrator fighting their way past UAC defenses to uncover their experiments.

10 hours ago, NightFright said:

Hope you will later also customize map names, edit the episode ending texts and maybe use customized music so it feels even more detached from the original

One obstacle I've run into: I'm not very tech-savvy. Trying to add a custom map name and editing ending texts is beyond me. I've looked at tutorials on how to do it but I can't get it to work. Sure, I could just toss a MAPINFO into the WAD but then only certain source ports would be able to read it, not vanilla Doom.

Music is something I can do. But I'm not much of a composer, so I'm thinking of doing remixes, like what I did with map01

I am having trouble figuring out two secrets in MAP05, specifically the Rocket Launcher and the Blue Armor on the perpendicular ledges in the lava-filled courtyard. I am tempted to either use GZDoom's Jump ability or do a rocket jump to get to them, but I understand this is very much cheating given the project's aims.

The same goes for MAP03 and the Blue Armor secret.

EDIT: Spotted a small issue in MAP06. I picked a Skull Key but did not use it to open its respective door, as I killed the monsters while camping from the safety of the first Skullkey room. As a result, the Skull Key I had was still available in the room that you can access after killing the Spider Mastermind. In other words, I ended up picking it up twice.

Anyway, I have beaten the demo and my opinion has not changed since my previous comment. Those six levels are incredibly well made and they feel like they would not have been out of place in an official mapset. 

Heck, I would even go as far as to say they are much better than the first six levels of Doom II!

5 hours ago, JohnnyTheWolf said:

I am having trouble figuring out two secrets in MAP05, specifically the Rocket Launcher and the Blue Armor on the perpendicular ledges in the lava-filled courtyard. I am tempted to either use GZDoom's Jump ability or do a rocket jump to get to them, but I understand this is very much cheating given the project's aims.

 

The same goes for MAP03 and the Blue Armor secret.

 

EDIT: Spotted a small issue in MAP06. I picked a Skull Key but did not use it to open its respective door, as I killed the monsters while camping from the safety of the first Skullkey room. As a result, the Skull Key I had was still available in the room that you can access after killing the Spider Mastermind. In other words, I ended up picking it up twice.

The secrets in Doom Zero can be pretty cryptic, but then again, they're secrets. I try to do a variety of secrets rather than always resorting to the usual "push wall to open". Try to think outside the box and eventually you'll get it. To get the rocket launcher and blue armor you have to be really quick to get there after you push the button that raises the platform in the lava. The floor of the rocket launcher and blue armor raises as well. The blue armor in map03 uses a mechanic where the game's doors or floors cannot change direction until they stop. ie if a floor is busy lowering, you cant trigger it to go up only until the floor stops lowering. You have to run over the "raise up" trigger while it's still lowering. pay attention to where the triggers for that secret is located. The same principle can be applied to the invisible powerup in map04 but requires more speed on the players part.

The so called issue in map06 is normal. if you don't use the key to go through one of 3 locked doors in the first area then the game won't know which key you picked up. So it will just give you all 3 keys instead of just the 2 that you don't have in order to finish the map. So my question is: how did you kill all the monsters with out the aid of the items behind those locked doors in the first area? Perhaps camping in that key room makes the game too easy. That is why I have gone buck and changed map06 sygnificantly to fix these issues because you're not the first person to do this. Man, game testing is important. I really appreciate the feedback.

To everyone here:

Thank you all for the positive feedback. Glad that many of you are enjoying it.

I concur with JohnnyTheWolf regarding Map06. While it was amusing to be greeted by a huge amount of monsters right at the start of the level, having to stay in that confined space of the first room with that one percent of health left isn't what I would consider an enjoyable opening for a level. Even if you want to add something "new" that wasn't done by id, you should always be on the move. Therefore, I am glad to read you are reviewing the map again.

General advice: Avoid labyrinths, forced camping, overdone backtracking and the good old "what did this switch do" guessing game - basically anything that may stall the player too much. Thankfully, you avoided most of these mistakes so far - just to make sure they won't happen later on. ^^

Nice.
Waiting for the full release.

1 hour ago, NightFright said:

I concur with JohnnyTheWolf regarding Map06. While it was amusing to be greeted by a huge amount of monsters right at the start of the level, having to stay in that confined space of the first room with that one percent of health left isn't what I would consider an enjoyable opening for a level. Even if you want to add something "new" that wasn't done by id, you should always be on the move. Therefore, I am glad to read you are reviewing the map again.

 

General advice: Avoid labyrinths, forced camping, overdone backtracking and the good old "what did this switch do" guessing game - basically anything that may stall the player too much. Thankfully, you avoided most of these mistakes so far - just to make sure they won't happen later on. ^^

Completely agree. I hate labyrinths and forced camping, and even though there are some backtracking, I always try to add new elements for when the player is forced to revisit areas. As for the "what did this switch do" problem, I don't know if you noticed but with the exception of switches that affect something right in front of it, I always use the face switches for communicating to the player that it always affects something that has the same face on it (ie door or bridge).

So the changes I made to map06 should fix the "camping in the key room" problem. Honestly, it just never occured to me that that was what a lot of people would end up doing. If you want to see what I changed to fix this problem, just go check out the updated download link in the first post ^_^

Well, I guess this solution for Map 6 works... I thought at first...

This way, the level works a lot better since you are forced to move out of the entrance chamber. And you still have a special situation in this level after all, in spite of this change. Approved!

Another solution: only reveal the monsters after you exit the key room and the door closes behind you.

Enjoying this so far. So glad I'm not the only one who appreciates the level design of Ultimate Doom the most :P

This looks very interesting, will be having a play through.

Sexy stuff you got going on here. Classic, yet new at the same time. Keep it up! :D

Also, if you need original music, I can always help ;)

Just spent an hour and a half blitzing through this (GZDoom/UV/continuous/keyboard). Very cool; I would definitely play an entire megawad of this style. A couple secrets in maps 4-5 had me stumped. The way the finale played out was pretty amusing; apparently I grabbed the wrong key (though at least I didn't grab the worst key.) Good stuff.

15 hours ago, PRIMEVAL said:

Also, if you need original music, I can always help ;)

Hmmm. I might take you up on that offer. When I finish this WAD (whenever that will be) I'll let you know. ;)

7 hours ago, Salt-Man Z said:

apparently I grabbed the wrong key (though at least I didn't grab the worst key.)

There's no such thing as a wrong key. Blue door is the easiest. Yellow door is the most fun. And Red door is the most rewarding.

2 hours ago, DASI-I said:

There's no such thing as a wrong key. Blue door is the easiest. Yellow door is the most fun. And Red door is the most rewarding.

No, I got that. I did yellow. Later when I went back, I had to laugh at what blue would have done.

Man, what a great set of maps. Classical, yet original, and flowing nicely without being needlessly linear. There was just a lot of clever design the whole way through.

I particularly liked part with the blood-falls, demons and cacos that teach the player that it's sometimes valuable to be cautious and plan ahead, and to have this concept taken to its extreme in the final map.

I hope you make more!

28 minutes ago, Flying01 said:

I particularly liked part with the blood-falls, demons and cacos that teach the player that it's sometimes valuable to be cautious and plan ahead, and to have this concept taken to its extreme in the final map.

:D

That is exactly what I try to do with these maps. Teach the player some new mechanics in a relatively safer environment before pushing it to the extreme.

Just finished playing through. Excellent map set, very good fun and some very interesting design ideas. I took the blue key in the last map, cursed slightly when I realised the 2 other options but carried on regardless.

Keep up the good work and I hope to see more, I like the simplicity visual approach however the maps are far from simple and that made for a great map set.

Well done! 

4 hours ago, Liberation said:

Just finished playing through. Excellent map set, very good fun and some very interesting design ideas. I took the blue key in the last map, cursed slightly when I realised the 2 other options but carried on regardless.

XD HAHAHAHA  Yeah. But if it makes you feel better, Every map can be done at 100%, even all item pickups.

Just a quick update. Just completed map15 and 31. So I'm at the halfway point :)

Nice, haven't seen this one before. I really like your title screen and want to give this a go!

Awesome! I loved the first six.