Avactor last update is out

[Firedust]

I see! Thank you for the explanation. I just beat map 10. Very cool ship secret. However, may I suggest adding some monster block lines around the ships there? Some of the cacos I hit with a rocket flew really far away, and I had to wait ages for them to fly back so I could actually hit them :)

[Eradrop]

Very good idea, thanks for your advice

[Killer5]

Hello. During my time with this wad I ran into a lift that I had to noclip through in order to progress. Not sure if this is the same lift already mentioned. I have included a nomo demo to showcase it. Or maybe there is a switch I missed that returns the lift.

avactor_cl9_map06bug.zip

[Eradrop]

3 hours ago, Killer5 said:

During my time with this wad I ran into a lift that I had to noclip through in order to progress.

Yes, it's already been mentioned by grrfield, basicly you supposed to be locked in but I guess 64 length lift is not long enough to prevent your escaping.

Just to let you know, it's already been fixed for the updated version that will come soon. :)

[gaspe]

Just reached MAP10, MAP09 was a very long but worthy ride. The theme of this mapset reminds me a lot of BTSX E2 and mixed up with Eternal Doom III/IV for the "switch-y" action and the grandiose architecture. What were your inspirations for this wad if I can ask? :)

More specific comments and bugs:
MAP06: I really liked the theme of this level, and it explains why you meet mechanical enemies in these ancient places. Rather impressive work with the animated textures. The red key area has a nice menacing mood, it reminded me a bit of Sunder. This is not a bug but near the end you must pick a rad-suit so it also triggers a trap, I think that the trigger there could be rearranged without having a mandatory pick-up:

Spoiler

 

MAP07: I think this is my favourite map so far, MAP08 comes close to it. After you pick the red key you drop down in the lava river there could be 1 or even 2 more rad-suits, you have to make a long trip on the damaging lava. It's doable if you sacrifice some health but it's too much on the edge if you don't know the map. In the blue key area I found this hom, after the whole floor lowers down:

Spoiler

Also I endured the secret area with the crusher room in the last pyramid, but it's more a punishment than a reward D:

 

MAP08: Perhaps the most brutal maps of the set with some harsh situations, starting from the very beginning with all those statues in an open field, then the first cyberdemons were really a surprise. There was an odd stair with the lava floor:

Spoiler

The blue key part was the only part I truly disliked in the wad. I lost count of how many switches you have to press but 3 or 4 times are enough, you have fight so many times and the place is cramped and awkward to navigate. The effect with the chains and the stones were cool though. There a couple of place where the railing is missing and you can drop down in the pit:

Spoiler

Also after a while the chains near the key go down and they don't look very good:

Spoiler

 

MAP09: I liked how this one gives you a clear objective, it makes it also more distinct from the other maps. Didn't find anything wrong, except when I reached the exit 23 monsters were still missing:

Spoiler

 

[Eradrop]

3 hours ago, gaspe said:

This is not a bug but near the end you must pick a rad-suit so it also triggers a trap, I think that the trigger there could be rearranged without having a mandatory pick-up

Basically I agree with you, but that's the reason I put there two suits, so one of them will be wasted while fighting the trap and the other one will be for progressing.

It's important to be this way cus the player could see a little bit before a sign that said: "not without radiation suit". At a previous version of this map there was one radiation suit and one of my testers couldn't know how to keep going, no sign were there and it doesnt look like its the way to proceed. Let me think about it again :)

 

3 hours ago, gaspe said:

After you pick the red key you drop down in the lava river there could be 1 or even 2 more rad-suits, you have to make a long trip on the damaging lava. It's doable if you sacrifice some health but it's too much on the edge if you don't know the map

Yeah you probably right, but I put another radiation suit after you finishing the fight, I guess you have seen it. will test it area again.

 

3 hours ago, gaspe said:

The blue key part was the only part I truly disliked in the wad. I lost count of how many switches you have to press but 3 or 4 times are enough, you have fight so many times and the place is cramped and awkward to navigate. The effect with the chains and the stones were cool though. There a couple of place where the railing is missing and you can drop down in the pit:

Many people told me that before and and I guess you convinced me, I was so tough about this area to be like that. I was a big fan of "God of War" and this area was inspired from "God of War 3 - The Caverns". :)

 

3 hours ago, gaspe said:

Didn't find anything wrong, except when I reached the exit 23 monsters were still missing

Like I said before, not all the monsters are necessary to be killed, there're many ojects that protected by monsters even though they dont should be, (in standart mind), I just think it will catch the player in supprise if he picking clip and suddenly 3 revenats jumpting on him, just exmaple.

Specific to the screenshot that you post, the 3 monster at the top + the squre with the 16 monsters are opening when you picket a green armor on a side way, and the two pairs protecting blue armor, that very close to be a secret but it doesn't. :)

 

3 hours ago, gaspe said:

What were your inspirations for this wad if I can ask? :)

I must say there are many inspirations sources that come together in the wad. First of all, the main inspiration was my previous project "Hide & Seak", but in addion I can say I got inspired from Plutonia 2, Mayan mishap by tango, God of war, lol.... :) Serious sam, wow, so many ideas came to my mind from serious sam series, specially serious sam 2 that was my favorite. Hexen and Heretic can be here with respect, of course. Also Back to saturn x part 2, "Tower in the fountain of sparks".

Map 08, I can say the begging part was inspired from AV map 20, and all the idea of being inside a huge pyramid also thanks to this map.

The idea of statue enemy also was based on the statue machine from serious sam 2, but instead of rockets, it shoots chaingun. 

Edited August 27, 2018 by Eradrop

[Firedust]

I like the long switch sequence in map 8. I vote for keeping it.

[WH-Wilou84]

I've played through the whole thing, and it's been an awesome experience all along. I didn't care much for the boss map, because I've never been a fan of

Spoiler

Icon of Sin battles

, but the first 10 maps belong to the list of the most awe-inspiring and enjoyable maps I've played this year. Avactor is a must-play if you like adventure and exploration, but combat is great too with plenty of memorable and inspiring encounters.

Maybe there's a bit too many crushers, either in secrets or in mandatory progression. It goes well with the overall Indiana Jones / Tomb Raider theme, hehe, but some of them are just pure evil.
For this reason, I fear the moment this wad gets picked for the Ironman league. :p

[Eradrop]

Thank you for the kind words :)

I never thought about the last map as an icon of sin fight, its true that the enemies come in the same way like all ios maps... but I understand your feeling, im not a fan of boss levels too :)

[Phobus]

It's taken me an inordinately long time, but I've gotten round to playing this and have now beaten all of it (props to Aisleen (previously Not Catpho, IIRC) for linking this on Doomer Boards).

 

It's an incredible piece of work. 12 levels that feel like a megaWAD of content. I slogged through on UV and found myself repeatedly being awestruck by the scale and fidelity of what I was seeing. I also found myself frequently being caught out by death traps (both in architecture and thing placement) which I initially was quite accepting of due to the Mayan theme and my save/loading, but eventually got tired of. MAP11 is, frankly, ridiculous and almost doesn't deserve to be treated seriously, but otherwise you've made a very high-quality mapset that toes the line between fun and frustrating, with lots of interesting little details to keep a player intrigued. I feel like the maps did feature breather sections, but they were few and far between and I often was most relaxed when backtracking to gather up resources before pushing on with the next objective. MAP09 took me around 2 hours, it was so big, but the central conceit was cool. MAP10 genuinely felt like a relative relief at just over a third of the monster count, but still took me over an hour.

 

If I had to complain about something other than fatigue and MAP11, the Revenant shots... they just seemed to not be going as fast as I thought and they felt off in some way. Even late into the mapset I was still having them loop around me and catch me in the back when I was convinced I'd normally have dodged them. Maybe it's the scale of the sprites, or the maps, or maybe they move a little differently from the stock ones, but I definitely was sick of them pretty early in.

 

Very well done, in all.

[Demonologist]

Finally managed to wrap this one up, better late than never. I'll be honest - when I started playing this mapset I wasn't expecting too much, but the more I progressed - the more excited I was becoming about it, as it kept hitting all the right notes as far as big adventurous maps go, and when I say big - I definitely mean it, map09 was especially mind-boggling in that regard, as it's just massive, like, really, that particular map is Vela Pax levels of huge, can easily take up to 2 hours to beat during a blind playthrough. Other maps aren't exactly small, either, 30-50 minutes seemed to be the standard completion time for each one of those for me. And the most exciting thing is that they never felt boring, given the style of gameplay and their sheer length, as you managed to arrange a really smooth and steady transition between "frivolous" incidental skirmishes that said style of maps is mostly associated with, frequent smaller ambushes and bigger setpieces that come along with more hard-hitting brawls that can get quite hairy and threatening, then again, another parallel with Vela Pax can be drawn here as it also tends to be rather harsh and downright slaughtery at times (looking at you, Apollyon), only in here I felt that the overal curve is even smoother. The player is always forced to be on their toes, and overall the action is rather intense and fast-paced throughout, with possible pacebreakers being within acceptable limits, without dragging for too long and without being overdone. This is the approach I greatly admire, if anything - it's a great demonstration that non-challenge-oriented exploratory atmospheric maps can be fast and punchy as opposed to boring "museum maps" where monster placement feels like an afterthought.

 

Lovely aesthetics, too, I'd say it largely feels like "Brotherhood of Ruin meets Mayan Mishap, with a hint of Epic 2 thrown in", the maps are picturesque, highly detailed and are just pleasant to look at, I also loved all those sail ships, very cool and fresh. The monsters' reskins blend in rather organically, and the dehacked enemies, while probably not being anything special (aside from that flying mastermind/octobrain armed with a fucking bfg man, now that's really scary), don't feel entirely out of place, either, adding some more spice when combined with the stock bestiary (stationary turrets ahoy). Also ouch, those super speedy caco projectiles!

 

My only real gripe would be the liberal use of crushers, especially slow ones, and sometimes in a very crass/dickish manner that's very much a guaranteed death when going in blind. I guess that was to be expected given the "mesoamerican" setting, still, wasn't too fond of those regardless as its among my major pet peeves, no matter what.

 

In the end, it's a really damn impressive piece of work in spite of its nuances that can - and should, really - be forgiven, as everything else is so damn cool. I've been loosely following your works throughout the years and always thought to myself that there's a great potential yet to be fully disclosed one day; the first real glimpse would probably be your submissions to TNT Revilution, but this right here is the real deal. I mean, the real deal, a very impressive self-realisation of a promising mapper, this is some damn fine artistry combined with skillful level design and very good sense of gameplay, and the result is a blast. Thanks a ton for making and sharing this, I can only hope it'll get the recognition it deserves. Cheers!

[Marlamir]

I need to take a play tomorrow. this looks really good.

[Catpho]

Hey @Eradrop, @Ryath wrote this review for Avactor!

[scwiba]

19 minutes ago, Catpho said:

Hey @Eradrop, @Ryath wrote this review for Avactor!

Oh no, I've been discovered!

 

Yeah, so... I won't reiterate all the stuff I said in that review, but this is an amazing WAD. Cacoward material if I've ever seen any.

[Eradrop]

On 10/5/2018 at 9:11 PM, Demonologist said:

Finally managed to wrap this one up, better late than never. I'll be honest - when I started playing this mapset I wasn't expecting too much, but the more I progressed - the more excited I was becoming about it, as it kept hitting all the right notes as far as big adventurous maps go, and when I say big - I definitely mean it, map09 was especially mind-boggling in that regard, as it's just massive, like, really, that particular map is Vela Pax levels of huge, can easily take up to 2 hours to beat during a blind playthrough. Other maps aren't exactly small, either, 30-50 minutes seemed to be the standard completion time for each one of those for me. And the most exciting thing is that they never felt boring, given the style of gameplay and their sheer length, as you managed to arrange a really smooth and steady transition between "frivolous" incidental skirmishes that said style of maps is mostly associated with, frequent smaller ambushes and bigger setpieces that come along with more hard-hitting brawls that can get quite hairy and threatening, then again, another parallel with Vela Pax can be drawn here as it also tends to be rather harsh and downright slaughtery at times (looking at you, Apollyon), only in here I felt that the overal curve is even smoother. The player is always forced to be on their toes, and overall the action is rather intense and fast-paced throughout, with possible pacebreakers being within acceptable limits, without dragging for too long and without being overdone. This is the approach I greatly admire, if anything - it's a great demonstration that non-challenge-oriented exploratory atmospheric maps can be fast and punchy as opposed to boring "museum maps" where monster placement feels like an afterthought.

 

Lovely aesthetics, too, I'd say it largely feels like "Brotherhood of Ruin meets Mayan Mishap, with a hint of Epic 2 thrown in", the maps are picturesque, highly detailed and are just pleasant to look at, I also loved all those sail ships, very cool and fresh. The monsters' reskins blend in rather organically, and the dehacked enemies, while probably not being anything special (aside from that flying mastermind/octobrain armed with a fucking bfg man, now that's really scary), don't feel entirely out of place, either, adding some more spice when combined with the stock bestiary (stationary turrets ahoy). Also ouch, those super speedy caco projectiles!

 

My only real gripe would be the liberal use of crushers, especially slow ones, and sometimes in a very crass/dickish manner that's very much a guaranteed death when going in blind. I guess that was to be expected given the "mesoamerican" setting, still, wasn't too fond of those regardless as its among my major pet peeves, no matter what.

 

In the end, it's a really damn impressive piece of work in spite of its nuances that can - and should, really - be forgiven, as everything else is so damn cool. I've been loosely following your works throughout the years and always thought to myself that there's a great potential yet to be fully disclosed one day; the first real glimpse would probably be your submissions to TNT Revilution, but this right here is the real deal. I mean, the real deal, a very impressive self-realisation of a promising mapper, this is some damn fine artistry combined with skillful level design and very good sense of gameplay, and the result is a blast. Thanks a ton for making and sharing this, I can only hope it'll get the recognition it deserves. Cheers!

Thanks for the kind words :) nice to hear you enjoyed it.

Just to throw you a fact... at the first weeks of this wad it was small fast vanilla jungle maps inspired by my tnt and nova maps. But very quickly it changed to be big maps.

The first map for example, was made by adding 3 small maps into a big one, and after adding them together I kept the scales for the rest of the maps.

 

18 hours ago, Catpho said:

Hey @Eradrop, @Ryath wrote this review for Avactor!

Thank you Ryath and Catpho, I wouldn't see this unless you mentioned it here :)

 

In the last weeks I was away, some business life. I still owe you an update, (Archvile's skin is nearly done), and some general issues I found and people mentioned here.

Hope to release it untill end of month :)

 

Edited October 6, 2018 by Eradrop

[Marlamir]

Man i love your level design. Nice detailing and Visual language l, im not getting lost in such a big level. This is cacoward for sure

[Eradrop]

8 hours ago, Marlamir said:

Man i love your level design. Nice detailing and Visual language l, im not getting lost in such a big level. This is cacoward for sure

Thank you very much, very nice to hear :)

[Urthar]

I've only just got around to playing this, but so far this feels like quality stuff, very impressive.

[Samurai Horn]

Finally finished it 100%.

This wad has so much secrets but I swear I found them all without any help.

Tell me, will Avactor get a multiplayers update? Really want to play it with some friends.

[TheOrganGrinder]

I just heard about this now and have been playing through it in between sessions of working on my NaNoWADMo project.  I'm loving the themes and atmosphere, the revamped sprites, the gameplay and layouts... there's a lot to like here and I've only scratched the surface really.

[Eradrop]

Update for Avactor

Link:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/cn840vel0bkdr9s/Avactor.wad/file

Just found some time to Update my Project:

What's new?

* Probably all the bugs people have found here + bugs I've found my self.

* Some minor changes with enemies, supplies and decoration emplacements.

* Some of the midis were broken in some runners. (ZDoom and PRBoom fixing the midis so I couldn't know it when I published in the first time). so now it's playing perfectly.

* And our last friend who didn't have a new skin. Now the Archvile is part of the family.

 

 

I really want to thank the community for giving a Cacoward for this Project. I must say it was a big supprise for me and gave me lot's of motivation to keep working on this wad and generaly on doom stuff.

Thank you all !

 

It's still not on Idgames, I want to keep running on the maplist to prevent any tiny issue before uploading to Idgames.

Probably in the next few weeks I'll release another update with the complete version and "Read me" file

Edited December 13, 2018 by Eradrop

[Firedust]

Congratulations on your Cacoward! Really well deserved. Can't wait for your next stuff, if you ever decide to make more Doom maps :)

[Eradrop]

On 11/10/2018 at 10:51 AM, Samurai Horn said:

Tell me, will Avactor get a multiplayers update? Really want to play it with some friends.

It can be a good idea but I dont know if it wil happen, since its really demand too much work and I dont have a coop team to test it when needed.

 

1 hour ago, Firedust said:

Congratulations on your Cacoward! Really well deserved. Can't wait for your next stuff, if you ever decide to make more Doom maps :)

Thank you very much for your kind words.

[Deadwing]

Congratz for the Cacoward! That arch-ville skin looks sick!

[gaspe]

Congratulations for the Cacoward! And I'm so late to comment on the rest of the maps :S

On MAP10 I really liked the optional fight you can have on the boats you see in the distance, and the pyramid in the cave you climb from different directions was neat.

For the boss level, MAP11, initially I thought you used "Dancing Mad" as music. It's rather easy outside the set-pieces at the keys because the main area is big so you don't have troubles to dodge and run past the monsters, then idk how harsh you want the map to be but the circular order of progression in the pyramids doesn't make you make so much back and forth and expose yourself to the mess of monsters.

MAP12 was a sweet finale. I guess there's a typo in the last intermission message as it says "invation".

This is my favourite wad from this year.

[Eradrop]

thank you gaspe for sharing what you thinking.

And yeah, i just realized i had a mistake in the last intermission message, thank you for floating this up.

[Beezle]

Haha that first trap area that leads to the Rocket Launcher, I must've loaded at least 30 quick saves figuring it out. Really love the jungle/ Mayan theme of this and the custom enemies are really cool. This is an amazing mapset, challenging, intersting, and very well designed. Avactor really deserved the Cacoward it got this year, awesome job EraDrop.

[galileo31dos01]

For some reason, the last update crashes everytime after choosing a skill level, sending this: "R_TextureNumForName: SKY3 not found". I am using GLBoom+ 2.5.1.4., software mode, complevel 9. This didn't happen in the previous release. I don't know if I am missing something else to load along the wad.

 

Also, from watching @guitardz stream I noticed that when he picked up a map it showed the text "Computer Area Map", but the item isn't a computer here so it could say "Map Scroll" or something else :P

[VanaheimRanger]

2 hours ago, galileo31dos01 said:

Also, from watching @guitardz stream I noticed that when he picked up a map it showed the text "Computer Area Map", but the item isn't a computer here so it could say "Map Scroll" or something else :P

I was playing in Eternity Engine and also noticed some missing textures.  The EXIT sign in MAP01 and some bars in MAP02.  I checked the exit sign in MAP 01 in GZDoom and it is fine.  No idea what the issue is with it in Eternity unless Eternity wasn't loading textures from Doom2.wad

[Eradrop]

Ill check after this issue as fast as possible and promise to release an update that's fixing it.

Thank you for bumbing this up