Abandon [final]

On 8/15/2019 at 1:54 AM, elend said:

Oh god, this looks crazy awesome. Too bad I will probably have to cheat, but I have to see the architecture at least.

It does look really awesome. I'll probably IDDQD it too though...

Interesting that the few slaughtermaps I have tried (and failed...) often seem to have awesome architecture.

Highly recommend you try it without cheats first, the balancing here is well thought out. I haven't beaten all the levels, mind.

Difficulty settings will be eventually added in, yes :)

It plays nicely

What texture packs are used in this wad? (the first post doesn't contain the list) Just asking

Absolutely stunning visuals on display – scared out of my skin to play it though as I just got done getting crushed by TNT on Hurt Me Plenty. With saves.

Congratulations on winning a Cacoward! 

Many congratulations on the cacoward, very well deserved!

Congrats on the Cacoward!! I'm thoroughly enjoying the level design so far with this one.

UV with saves, pistol start

Port: GLBoom+ 2.5.1.5 -complevel 9

Total IGT: 12:05:48

Personal Difficulty Evaluation: 4.5 (4 = Stardate 20X6, 4.5 = Stardate 20X7)

Personal Rating: 9.0 (out of 10)

A pretty fun and challenging mapset. One minor complaint is that in various maps, there's no blocklines around platform fights and monsters can fall off and screw up max kills. Other than this, there's no actual problem from my side.

Architectures look good. Probably the first instinct is Sunder style, but right now there are many mappers capable doing the stuff, so it's not Sunder style anymore. It's just one type of good architectures commonly used in slaughter maps, I guess.

Most of the gameplay involves in slaughter fights, and they are pretty much all well designed. Except some easier maps in the sets, basically each map offers different type of battle experience. There are a few fights that I didn't figure out what should I do, but that's on my side. Platforming does play a big role in the gameplay, so if you hated platforming, probably this WAD is not for you.

BTW, congrats on the Cacoward, definitely worthwhile.

Awesome experience, even though it's only a beta for now. Can't wait to perish while trying to beat the whole thing.

Hear, hear for your Cacoward as well.

Either dropbox is down or the link is broken. 

4 hours ago, Destructo said:

Either dropbox is down or the link is broken. 

Hmm, it's working for me at the moment.

Thanks for the grats everyone! Several days ago, I wrote up some of my Abandon story and a reaction to the award, but I spent too much time and effort on it and became embarrassed. Maybe later, lol.

Been pecking away at the beta2 RC1 changelist here and there. I'm a little past half done with the work that my maps need, and I've seen some evidence of work by the others as well. Maybe this year? :D

I will see when this wad will be finished. I'm all about quality so take your time. I would rather have it delayed and in high quality than rushed and sloppy.

It took me about 6 months, but I finally beat every level on ultra violence and no cheats. I must have died a couple thousand times. This was the toughest wad I have ever played, but also one of the most rewarding. The level design is excellent, the visuals are excellent, the ammo was barely enough, and the challenges are unique. There are plenty of rooms throughout the levels that still haunt me. Map 10 and 17 were my favorites. Map 6 and 9 were the most difficult for me. With lots of practice, you could beat the levels with health and ammo to spare. 10/10

Finally got around to finishing this WAD, excellent work! Definitely one of my new favorites. I think map13 was the highlight for me. Also it seemed weird that the difficulty sort of tapered off after map10. It seemed to get easier until map17, which was pretty hard for me.

As far as bugs, I didn't find anything but one part of map16 was odd. In the first building you drop down in on the blue skull key path, there are oddly placed monster block lines that stop almost all the hell knights from swarming you. I don't know if that was on purpose, but it just seemed like an odd design choice.

Wonderful wad =)  map5 is my favorite so far, the atmosphere is wonderful; but i've enjoyed all the maps i played so far (most of the wad).

In map 15 I also found an odd linedef?  After you enter the blue key area and pass an interesting platforming fight, you take a lift down to a room with cacos and revs; if you stay on the platform and fire at them, they don't wake up (except those you damage).

In the end of map 10, well, the infinite height of lost souls takes on a whole new meaning.

Hey guys, just a bit of feedback from our side.

I play all the wads in coop-survival mode, usually 2 lifes or less (with my clan: DD- DOOMDADDIES, old clan from Skulltag-times).

This maps look so damn good but we really had problems and could not continue playing it. 

Map 1 - works perfectly fine! 

Map 2- not even 1(!!) teleport to be found in the lava? Seriously?? For people playing with save/load option or just coop with infinity spawns - okay, no problem. But why would I spend so many hours building this beautiful architecture and put not even 1 teleport into an area, where -of course- one will fall into the lava? That was so disappointing that we had to skip this map. A pity!  

And so on, and so on. The maps seem to run stable under Zandronum, even if hordes of monsters appear.

It's not that difficult, to change some simple details of a map to be coop-friendly.

Example: a trap: a wall closes and the player founds himself with a lot of monsters. In this case it's enough just to put 1 teleport outside that wall, allowing the other players to enter the room. Or myself, after I died. Now we had to cheat (wallclip) into that room. This experience was so disappointing that we did not continue to play this so gorgeous looking wad. 

Am I the only person with that opinion? I really would love to play those levels...

On 9/18/2019 at 8:37 AM, bemused said:

Whilst (some) effort has already been made to make maps compatible for coop play, zdaemon simply wont play most of them at all due to its linedef limitations, and zandronum will probably just crash or lag out when faced with this many monsters awake simultaneously. At the very least the maps will probably need some dedicated coop playtesting, tweaking and editing after the single player version is finished :)

I have to say, having looked around the start of the maps in Zandronum, only one of them gave me unplayable lag when looking in certain directions. The rest looked fine.

1 hour ago, Doomdaddie-BURZUM said:

And so on, and so on. The maps seem to run stable under Zandronum, even if hordes of monsters appear.

It's not that difficult, to change some simple details of a map to be coop-friendly.

Example: a trap: a wall closes and the player founds himself with a lot of monsters. In this case it's enough just to put 1 teleport outside that wall, allowing the other players to enter the room. Or myself, after I died. Now we had to cheat (wallclip) into that room. This experience was so disappointing that we did not continue to play this so gorgeous looking wad. 

 

Am I the only person with that opinion? I really would love to play those levels...

I have that opinion too, but you also have to remember that not everyone wants to design levels to be co-op compatible. Some people are only interested in the single player experience, and as they're the ones making the map, that's fine. (For example, I would love to see Sunder made to be co-op friendly, but it might not be something Insane Gaezbo wants to do) bemused did say here:

On 6/28/2020 at 1:38 AM, bemused said:

Proper co-op implementation will probably not exist til beta 3 at the earliest, but is definitely on the "to-do" list!

that they would properly look at co-op stuff at a later stage. I haven't played through this yet for that exact reason.

Co-op fixes are coming soon, hopefully. Most of the maps are already fixed up (difficulty settings added as well), just waiting on the last few maps.

The inescapable pits will probably all stay, though, sorry. :D

55 minutes ago, Benjogami said:

The inescapable pits will probably all stay, though, sorry. :D

I can see why people might want the teleporters for coop in particular, I must admit. It might be possible to hide a few behind seemingly normal bits of wall that only lower in coop -- I've managed to implement some coop-only scripting in the past using Player 2 voodoo dolls, although I honestly haven't had the opportunity to test it thoroughly and don't know if there are any unintended consequences.

1 hour ago, Benjogami said:

The inescapable pits will probably all stay, though, sorry. :D

If it's inescapable, but damaging so that you die, then it's annoying but tolerable. If it's truly inescapable, then it really does kill the fun of a map, and if you've gone to the effort of making the WAD co-op friendly, then this is something to consider as well.

There's something a lot more frustrating about this in co-op than in single player for some reason.

Hey guys, thx for your answers, very appreciated.

On 8/30/2021 at 5:41 PM, Benjogami said:

Co-op fixes are coming soon, hopefully. Most of the maps are already fixed up (difficulty settings added as well), just waiting on the last few maps.

 

The inescapable pits will probably all stay, though, sorry. :D

If we are talking about some small inescapable pits that can bee seen, okay. I personally play Doom to die because of the rocket of a cyberdemon and not melting in a small pot of lava.... hey, it's okay.

But if we take map 2 - gorgeous outside areas with tricky "jumpmaze-like" sections and not even one teleport in the lava!!!?? 

Same in Map 6, after your fall down behind the cyberdemons. Nothing.

I am of the opinion it will not piss any Singleplayer off, if you set a teleport in the lava area of that section.

Correct me, if I am wrong. If one falls down - lesson learned.

You can even place it far enough that it get's difficult to reach. But please place it somewhere....

This would be an huge advantage for the coop comunity!

Otherwise it's just frustrating and not interesting for people playing with a given number of lifes, let me tell you that. 

That's such a pitty!

Any idea how to beat the main room in Map 10? (The one with the sniping arachnotrons and flood of enemies) 

I've been trying for ages and can't seem to best it!

On 4/15/2021 at 7:03 PM, cb1 said:

It took me about 6 months, but I finally beat every level on ultra violence and no cheats. I must have died a couple thousand times. This was the toughest wad I have ever played, but also one of the most rewarding. The level design is excellent, the visuals are excellent, the ammo was barely enough, and the challenges are unique. There are plenty of rooms throughout the levels that still haunt me. Map 10 and 17 were my favorites. Map 6 and 9 were the most difficult for me. With lots of practice, you could beat the levels with health and ammo to spare. 10/10

How did you beat map 10? Any tips? I'm particularly struggling with the main room with the big fight!

Edit:
Okay, so I thought I'd offer some criticism regarding the difficulty of map 10. Firstly, up until map 10, every fight in Abandon has felt tough but fair. The kind of brilliantly designed slaughter that keeps you searching for a way to best a combat puzzle. Map 10 feels like it was designed with coop in mind and I think it could do with rebalancing for single player. 

Unless I'm missing something obvious, the only way I can see of beating the main area (both the first round with the arachnotrons, revenants, mancubi, pinkies, barons and archies; and the second round with the onslaught of lost souls) is through save scumming or cheesing it*.

The main issues, as I see it, are:

• sniping enemies that have the upper ground and are only targetable in one or two spots
• different levels to the geometry that make it impossible to dodge revenant missiles and projectiles. 
• too many archviles
• too many enemies in general / not enough space to move or areas that you can hide from archvile blasts.

Now, the above issues are not a problem on their own, but when mixed together they make the level feel unfair. In general, when I play large slaughter maps I will save at the beginning and end of fights. During this fight, however, I had to save virtually every move. It was like playing a turn based game. 

I think the following could improve the encounter:

• remove one of the two sniping arachnotron groups 
• reduce the number of archviles (particularly the ones at the back of the area who enter after everything else). 
• reduce the number of enemies by 200 in the main arena.
• Place cyberdemons in the main arena earlier so they can infight.
• issue more megaspheres / super charges in the main arena. 

Finally, one of the revenant pens seems to be broken as they don't teleport in (someone else mentioned this in another post).

Overall, the map is beautiful and has the potential to be one of the best slaughter maps I have ever played. As it is right now, it feels unfair to the point of not being fun.

* I cheesed it by archvile jumping to one of the platforms with the arachnotrons and then camping until the kill count went up through infighting. This took a long time and felt pretty cheap. 

The way I found to beat that fight in map10 was to stay in view of the tunnel as much as possible to maximize the cybers in the back infighting. You have to spam at the entrance to the hallway with bfg as much as you can so the cybers in the back can kill most of the AVs.

I do have some criticism for that fight, which is that there's really no way for the player to know that the arch viles and cybers in the back lower later in the fight, and that they're arranged in such a way that the cybers will hit the archviles and distract them at that time. A player that doesn't know this is most likely going to take refuge further outside and just keep getting overrun by AVs since the cybers won't hit them. I was only able to discover the lowering cyber and AV pillar when I randomly ran through the levels in god mode and noclip, before I reached map10 for real.

2 hours ago, Arbys550 said:

Spoiler

 

The way I found to beat that fight in map10 was to stay in view of the tunnel as much as possible to maximize the cybers in the back infighting. You have to spam at the entrance to the hallway with bfg as much as you can so the cybers in the back can kill most of the AVs.

 

I do have some criticism for that fight, which is that there's really no way for the player to know that the arch viles and cybers in the back lower later in the fight, and that they're arranged in such a way that the cybers will hit the archviles and distract them at that time. A player that doesn't know this is most likely going to take refuge further outside and just keep getting overrun by AVs since the cybers won't hit them. I was only able to discover the lowering cyber and AV pillar when I randomly ran through the levels in god mode and noclip, before I reached map10 for real.

 

 

Hey, thanks for the advice! I’ll give that a go next time I run through the level. 
 

Always a pleasure getting tips from a DOOM GOD! 

I'm happy walkthrough eight map from this wad.Agressive battles in zones monsters was not boring destroyed.It's really legion.                                           

Who else got here from this TAS video?

Have to say it's nice to see fine detailed slaughter maps. I am always interested in maps that have monster count of Holy Hell Revealed and detail level of Sunder. This wad is has maps that have elements from both.

The Gripping Hand slaughterfest map took legion lost souls hell knighs barons of hell revenants on platforms more fights.Nice design textures and skybox.       Resembles me a few levels from sunder wad.

Just wanna say this is the most epic journey I've ever had playing Doom so far. And I'm only on the 4th level at the moment. Absolute greatness awaits.