Doom: Planet Wars

Hey guys! I am a Russian map maker. I have one work that is recently completed and pretty big, so i thought i would post it here to the public.
My WAD is located on:
http://wadsinprogress.info/?a=listwads&wad=183
Features:
Main: 21 SP Levels with a classic background story.
Very detailed lightning (shadows).
Lots of outdoor as well as indoor areas.
Was in the making 2002-2011.
12 of the levels are MP (with bots) compatible.
Download it and see for yourself! Read the instructions and such.

Your zipfile contains the Evilution IWAD. You're going to have to get rid of that.

I immediately noticed a couple of issues:

-I'd advise you to rename "INSTRUCTIONS.docx" to "INSTRUCTIONS.txt", since it's a plain text file anyway and doesn't warrant opening MS Office / OpenOffice to view. This isn't as big a problem as the other point...

-Including a 23 MB 'modified' TNT IWAD is not cool. If there is actually anything worth using in there, you should seperate it, and put it into the PWAD with your maps. At the very least, remove all the sounds and graphics that are exactly the same as those in TNT.WAD, as well as stuff like the colormap. A lot of it is actually duplicated between both included WADS, which is kind of irritating.


If you fix these problems (particularly the second one), I'd consider actually playing your maps.

Dat all caps description

Thanks for your speedy replies!
I will consider those things. In fact, i am starting to work on it through XWE at this second. I will post another thread once the WAD is updated and done with, removing the modified TNT (placing all the things from it into warfotrtnt.wad)
I had some doubts about this method, but hey i was 12 when i started making it. Just did not get around to moving stuff from one to another.
Thanks again, i will post an update hopefully within this month. Theres lots of stuff to move.

simple said:

Just did not get around to moving stuff from one to another.
Thanks again, i will post an update hopefully within this month. Theres lots of stuff to move.

Generally it's easier to just create any replacements in your pwad or a separate pwad. So if you want to replace a sound, you only need the lump for that one sound. Next time you start a project do this from the beginning and you will have a lot less clean up to do :P

Okay, to speed up the process, I am deleting everything that is not my original work/ duplicates from TNT.wad, then i will merge the rest with the other WAD. I might even get done by the end of the day! It's less work than i expected.
Update: It's done. Zipped size now ~10MB.
Download link:
http://www.mediafire.com/?n0b2jc9hm83859b
Link is going to be updated at WIP as well.
I tested it with DOOM2 IWAD, and it works just fine.

Okay, I played you wad as I felt a project that has taken that long to complete should not go unnoticed, no matter how good it is. And yeah I did expect it to be fairly bad, I have to confess. Just how good/bad is it then?

Well, there are lots of newbie elements here. First of all, you claim that difficulty of these maps is hard, but I found them only moderately so with the good amount of health lying around. Playing these maps from pistol start would be quite frustratingly difficult though, I imagine. Anyway, unfortunately most of the difficulty in these maps comes from annoying and unfair elements, such as pitch black areas, mazes with damaging floors or underwater mazes you have to navigate quickly not to start losing hp, and stealth monsters. As a hint, in general, using stealth monsters should be avoided. Also, with the maze parts and pitch black areas, the level progression is often far from clear, especially as sometimes there are switches and such hidden in them. I only got badly lost once in the whole wad though, but I imagine that was quite lucky.

Visually this is usually fairly solid, and above all, interesting work. There are some original architectural ideas and while the colored lighting might be overused, at least it's used logically.

All in all, there are some really bad maps and some better ones. Did I think it was worth playing through? Mostly, yes, though I have to admit sometimes just to find out what other silliness there would be in store still. This is well above a standard newbie release though, as there are original ideas and design here, and obviously quite a lot of effort has been put in doing it.

I'm glad to see that you removed the TNT IWAD. I played through the first 10 maps, and I agree with much of what DooMer 4ever posted above me. You have a lot of interesting ideas and originality, though it falls apart a bit in places. Of the things I liked most so far, MAP01 was a fun puzzle to solve, and MAP07 was an interesting throwback / blend of E1M8 and E2M1. MAP10 had a great outdoor atmosphere and was quite visually impressive in some areas. I also particularly liked some of the underwater areas in the early maps; I've been working on an underwater megawad myself for several years now though, so I'm probably biased toward anything of that sort.

I got lost in a few maps, but I cheated in order to see the rest of those maps quickly, rather than figuring out what I was supposed to do. Also, the pistol replacement made me want to shoot myself (the sound is annoying, it looks wimpy, the muzzle flash is ugly, and Doomguy's hand is at the wrong angle). Another criticism I would add is that a lot of the maps (at least the early ones I played) consist largely of long boring hallways that connect to single rooms. Not all the maps suffered from this though, and I suppose this can be as much a metter of taste as anything else.

Anyway, from what I saw, it was worth checking out, though players shouldn't have particularly high expectations, or they'll be disappointed. Nice job in general, it's clear that it took a lot of work.

Yeah there's some pretty cool ideas, the levels look really funky too like some mad man designed them.

Thanks for the constructive criticism guys! I see your points of view from what you are saying. To address some :
"Anyway, unfortunately most of the difficulty in these maps comes from annoying and unfair elements, such as pitch black areas, mazes with damaging floors or underwater mazes you have to navigate quickly not to start losing hp, and stealth monsters. "
Yes, haha I am guilty of using some of those elements. Keep in mind though that there is a safe way (without losing any health due to those hazards) through ALL the areas. It might not be obvious, but with IDDT it should be.
There is one area in the whole WAD where you forcibly lose 20~30 HP, and that is map06 I believe. (the one with abandoned spaceship). There isnt a maze with a damaging floor as far as i know? Please tell me where it is so i can remove it. If you are talking about the green slime underwater, then you didn't get the radiation suit, which is close by there. you get a soulsphere there as well so that should offset the initial damage you take.
Also, I do not recommend this played at ultra violence, some weapons may take too long to acquire.

Mithran Denizen, thanks for your comment as well! Its very nice to see appreciation for this work. The pistol is bad.. but i dont expect one will be using it a lot, except map01.
I have tried to keep variation throughout the WAD, without emphasis on any particular geometric styles.


This is my very first publically released WAD. I have modified and tried to make 3 wads before, but they are all crappy and consist of 1 or 2 low-detail levels.
In this WAD MAP18/19/20, they are the most recent. Everything else goes back before 2009.