Double Impact release thread!

Memfis said:

Yeah. I think the worst example is this room from E1M6: http://img545.imageshack.us/i/hgjgfkgfk.jpg/

Yep, that almost drove me nuts, and gave me a little of the Doom Motion Sickness. It was a good fight in there, though.

I had a great time playing through this. I just thought that it got a bit boring at the later levels, but maybe I just needed a break.

Great design and good gameplay. The design was true to the original doom but with the right amount of tweaking that made the levels not too detailed, but just right without going bananas on the detail.

My only complaint is that E1 replacements get hard for only 1 reason, the SSG is missing. 9 maps with only SG is enough for me.

Thank you so much for this WAD!

I'm not a big Doom 1 PWAD fan, and I'd lie if I said the hype didn't make me come in there with a slightly jaded look, but well, if you talk big, you've got to back it up, and regardless of that I genuinely feel it is average.

Seeing as there's hundreds of other E1 replacements out there, and more importantly, actual good E1 replacements, I didn't play this one for more than twenty minutes. Checked out M1, M2, M8 and M9. Noclipped a bit through the other ones.

Very large open maps, *too* large, *too* open IMHO, lacking a sense of direction, progression or pacing, with fights being generic, shoot small monsters pick ammo grab healthpack kind of stuff. It almost felt like playing a DM set that was filled with monsters. Even the cybie chase and switchhunt at the start of M8 left a "been there done that" feeling.

With that point of view, I can't help but wonder why so many other people seem to think this is legendary worthy material. Would this have such a reception if it wasn't for the hype and the name of two well-known doomers? As always, inevitable complaints about that kind of question will pop up, but I think after one topic before release, one topic after release, one announcement on the front page and sentences such as "An Exciting Innovative Style of Mapping! Cooperative Tag-Team Construction Resulting In Dynamic Feel!" ending up in me almost falling asleep on the keyboard trying to play it (and please don't play the irony card), I think I'm entitled to voice that question outloud.

To eventually save people some time : that's just the opinion of one random guy on the internet, take it for what it's worth. I have no interest in explaining why I feel how I feel further, as a matter of fact I already spent more time typing this than playing the wad.

Played through the first three levels so far. Setting this aside to tackle E1M9 later. Since the monster counts are so high, difficulty feels more weighted toward attrition than the "Whoops, dead" difficulty of the Doom II WADs I've been playing, which is a welcome change. I liked the tunnel segment in E1M2 but what I've loved so far are the "secret" wings of E1M3 and the secrets in general. The fact that you guys set aside such a vast portion of the map to lead up to the secret level is cool, I mean I'm sure it's been done before, but I hardly ever see it done myself, so I find it nice when it happens.

Phml said:

I'm not a big Doom 1 PWAD fan,
...
Seeing as there's hundreds of other E1 replacements out there, and more importantly, actual good E1 replacements

now i'm intrigued. what e1 pwads did you have in mind? i wanna understand your logic and your post is just a vague bloated rant without examples.

Phml said:

I didn't play this one for more than twenty minutes

Phml said:

I already spent more time typing this than playing the wad.

I'm sure that you gave each map at least a basic run through and enjoyed them the way they were intended. As you'll see from our textfile, we definitely recommend that the wad set be run through as quickly as possible with noclip on to avoid falling asleep at your keyboard.

I'd comment more on the rest of your post but it's pretty clear that you barely even played our wad and just came in here to rip on us, namely for some sentences at the beginning of the thread. The only thing I learned from your post was that you have a poor sense of humor and might be jealous of us because we are "big" names!

As for everyone else, thank you for your constructive comments and thank you for playing Double Impact!

Heh, I like how a good bunch of Phml posts manages to make up these kinds of ... friendly discussions :)))

It's Doom community on a good day!

I like these levels because they're fun, not because of who made them. If you approach these levels thinking that they have to be absolutely legendary because of who made them and the fact that they've had a whopping three threads dedicated to them then you're setting the bar too high.

2 teleporters were broken (M3 line 4047, M7 line 5189).

UDoom maps with 300+ monsters are just too boring.

Belial said:

2 teleporters were broken (M3 line 4047, M7 line 5189).

Those are multiplayer teleporters.

SteveD said:

To be concise, I'm not into playing Keepaway with keys as a way of making a level more difficult.

We never intentionally hid keys, except for the secret ones of course!

Phml said:

and sentences such as "An Exciting Innovative Style of Mapping! Cooperative Tag-Team Construction Resulting In Dynamic Feel!"

lol


Thanks for the feedback guys!

Ralphis is a big name?!

:P

Downloaded BTW - hoping to get time to play sooner or later.

Phobus said:

Ralphis is a big name?!

:P

Every time I get the "Your Skill Is Not Enough" medal in Skulltag he rears his ugly head!?

Phobus said:

Ralphis is a big name?!

Well, it's bigger than Phml, but smaller than, say, Esselfortium or BurningCadavre.

I'm only half the name BurningCadavre is

SteveD: Agreed apart from the negative critisiscm,

This wad is objectively amazing and really friggin' hard,
much better than KDIZD etc, not that it was trying to do the same thing.

The last level was so hard i had to save about a zillion times

I hate detailing as it doesn't look good next to pixelated sprites, but this had really subtle detailing that was obviously worked hard on but didn't distract you from the awesome gameplay.

5/5 dudes!

Played through E1M9 and E1M4-6. E1M9 really does good on the corrupted techbase style, though with the organics it's got more of a Doom 3 corrupted techbase feel than E2's "wacky textures" corruption. Standout moment, in what will probably be a recurring theme, the lowering walkway that descends into Hell. It was initially a very daunting map just from the number of monsters, but it plus the secrets was a good play.

E1M4 lays on the pressure, plenty of hitscan snipers chipping away at you. Also lots of barrel splashing going on here, very nice of you to lay out all those explosives. The outdoor yard is a prime example. Also like the blue key fight, where decisive movement awards you with a rare chance to use your rockets without killing yourself. E1M5, not too much to say. I thought the texturing felt a little scattershot at first but then the individual wings had their own particular character. Also screw that yellow key trap. Short crushers always feel like a swipe at the player, the epitome of Doom as Dragon's Lair.

E1M6, very nice but about on par with E1M9 in terms of difficulty/length. I like the wing layout, especially with the basement/sewers leading north/south, and all the secrets you guys have where you can neuter a trap before running into it feel extremely rewarding. Favorite moment by far is the big trap behind the red key door. Very memorable and very lethal the first time I bumped into it, second run was much more manageable. It's a bit rougher on pistol start than the others but I made it through without even finding the plasma rifle so no harm, no foul.

I played halfway through E1M7 but the level is almost physically exhausting to play without saves due to the lack of health vs. the monster count, the biggest of the maps so far. After dying in a bad tunnel clusterfuck (with Barons, you know the one) I'm taking a break. It's been good so far, though. I especially like the outdoor area and the corrupted base trap (where I ate a bad rocket, though I managed to pull on and die later in the aforementioned pincer attack).

Belial said:

UDoom maps with 300+ monsters are just too boring.

I think it depends more on how the spaces are constructed and how the combat flows. If things keep moving fast, there's less chance of tedium and fatigue. And if you keep hitting the player from multiple directions, there's less chance of boring them.

Going back many, many years, I did an E1M3 level called Elfstomp! that has 428 monsters on UV, 363 on HMP and 296 on Easy. I'm guessing you wouldn't like that one, but I still get a kick out of it. ;)

RottKing said:

We never intentionally hid keys, except for the secret ones of course!

Well, there's the rub. If I see a key door, I expect to find the key for it. Making a key door a pathway to secret areas, and hiding the key for it in another secret area, is a gameplay decision I find very controversial, and in fact, strongly disagree with, especially when the best part of a level (E1M3) is thus hidden. It may be that id themselves did this, but I still don't like it.

That said, I love these levels, and plan to go through them again sometime at a lower skill setting for a more Fava-like experience. ;D

Phml said:

I can't help but wonder why so many other people seem to think this is legendary worthy material. Would this have such a reception if it wasn't for the hype and the name of two well-known doomers?

You mean you've only just noticed this happens? Especially after seeing both extremes of it last year? (the mass demonising of Stronghold and the mass worshipping of No Rest for the Living)

There's no point getting hyped (positive or negative) over a wad, it'll only distort your opinion of it one way or the other. (although you didn't actually play the wad, which doesn't help the argument).

(the ironic thing ofc is that I actually like this wad, more so than many E1's I've seen over the years. And it's certainly less generic than most E1's too)

Doomworld seems a bit grouchier than usual lately.

Not to fuel the flames, but I still don't really see how a project anouncement thread + release thread + news thread = overhyped. Hell, the original thread was only ever bumped 2 or 3 times, each bump was made when they had something to show, and the final time it got bumped was to ask for beta testers, any decent episode that's had alot of time and effort put into it should at the very least be newsworthy IMO.

And what's this rubbish about bestiary rules for E1 replacements? The all time best E1 replacements for me were the ones where the authors added their own feel to the mix, and focused on the general atmosphere rather than some stupid checklist for monster counts, bestiary, room shapes, etc... like Dawn of the Dead, the experience I had with that episode felt alot more like I was reliving E1 over again for the first time than most maps that are aimed at being "done by the book" carbon copies of E1. ;)

SteveD said:

Well, there's the rub. If I see a key door, I expect to find the key for it. Making a key door a pathway to secret areas, and hiding the key for it in another secret area, is a gameplay decision I find very controversial, and in fact, strongly disagree with, especially when the best part of a level (E1M3) is thus hidden. It may be that id themselves did this, but I still don't like it.

That said, I love these levels, and plan to go through them again sometime at a lower skill setting for a more Fava-like experience. ;D

Regarding this, I love secret keys. While I enjoy clearing Doom levels as a puzzle-solving exercise with routes and engagements and the like, I also love stuff like large secret portions of levels which to me hearkens back to the gameplay I grew up on and the sense of exploration I get when playing platformers and RPGs for the first time. I know it's not thought of as an aspect of Doom, more in line with say Strife or Hexen, but I smile when I see it regardless.

I must admit that this wad is pretty enjoyable, a nice refreshment from the usual stuff.
Even though on my srs play through I'm only about half done, I must admit I like the maps so far.


Also a small bug on e1m3 on the red key room (UV);
There is a lost soul and a caco stuck on each other (bad placing?)
(screenie)

kmxexii said:

Regarding this, I love secret keys. While I enjoy clearing Doom levels as a puzzle-solving exercise with routes and engagements and the like, I also love stuff like large secret portions of levels which to me hearkens back to the gameplay I grew up on and the sense of exploration I get when playing platformers and RPGs for the first time. I know it's not thought of as an aspect of Doom, more in line with say Strife or Hexen, but I smile when I see it regardless.

This is a real "different strokes" kind of thread. ;D We know one guy doesn't like Doom1 in general, another doesn't like Doom1 levels with more than 300 monsters, then you have me, and I prefer Doom1 to Doom2, and I love hitscanners where some people hate them, and so on.

I like big secret areas, too. E1M3 of Knee Deep is among my faves in that regard because the secret areas were quite large and they looped around in clever ways, and were also disguised in clever ways, but not impossible to find or figure out. E1M7 is another great level for cool secrets.

I still don't like having the key hunt be the hardest thing in a level, especially when it prevents you from proceeding and finishing, as in E1M7 of Double Impact. Let the secrets be for goodies or rewards for careful exploration, not a necessity to leave. And if the path to the blue key in E1M7 was not a secret, it was very, very obtuse and I just missed it. I clipped my way to it, and there is some very advanced construction that I'll have to study in Doom Builder to see how they did it, but even though I did the clip I never figured out how to get there without clipping. :D That'll be a future project of mine.

So we kind of agree and disagree. No biggie. :)

SteveD said:

And if the path to the blue key in E1M7 was not a secret, it was very, very obtuse and I just missed it.

It's not a secret at all! Actually, it is quite necessary to get this key. Once you get the yellow key, you need to go into the yellow door area, which can be accessed by going up the steps in the lava room. After going through the yellow door, you'll come across a switch outside that will lower the acid around the entire map.

Lowering the acid opens up a few different secrets and paths around the map that could not be accessed before, but most importantly it lowers the acid around the blue key tower. You can get into this area by going into the dropped acid right around the beginning of the map (or by trick jumping down into the pit).

Thanks, Ralphis! I'll give this a try. Of course, now I have to figure out how to find the Yellow key! ;D

I finished this up yesterday and I really enjoyed it. Loved the architecture and the oldschool design. At times I thought the layouts were a little hard to read (usually I'd forget where a locked door was or something) but it was pretty easy to figure out where I needed to go next with some quick searching. I certainly didn't think it was too easy by any means either. I played it on UV with saves. Without saves though...no way :P. It was hard but not frustrating, which I liked.

Anyways, I played this in Eternity and I ran into a weird problem in the last map (E1M8, I believe). I hit all four switches which were supposed to kill the barons and then open up a door. But for some reason the monster special didn't activate and I had to no-clip through the door to finish. Not sure if it's a bug with Eternity or if I blundered up a compatibility option; I haven't looked into it. But I thought it might be worth mentioning.

KwadDamyj said:

Doomworld seems a bit grouchier than usual lately.

I hope it is usually slightly more positive than this, there's alot of harshness, i'm no hippy but i do believe if you've nothing nice to say don't say anything,

all i have is positive things to say for the mappers/artists who develop new WADs for our playing enjoyement, no matter what,

although joke Wads are a bit annoying,

anyway, this WAD is really really good full stop and they've dedicated a hell of a lot of hard work and time to give us doomers something really fun to play.

Mechadon said:

Anyways, I played this in Eternity and I ran into a weird problem in the last map (E1M8, I believe). I hit all four switches which were supposed to kill the barons and then open up a door. But for some reason the monster special didn't activate and I had to no-clip through the door to finish. Not sure if it's a bug with Eternity or if I blundered up a compatibility option; I haven't looked into it. But I thought it might be worth mentioning.

this happened to me during playtesting. it was actually the first time i managed to press all the switches, so i got confused as hell. i played in prboom+ and i couldn't replicate it again ever since despite VERY intensive repeating. rottking was already aware of the issue, but... someone with deeper knowledge of the engine would have to analyze the problem. i guess it adds to the trollish nature of the whole map, heh.