Colortech: The Demo

[Lazorical]

Hello, lazor here. I wanted to give a bit of a demo to one of my 5-level (for now) wads.

 

Colortech: The Demo

 

It's a 5 small level wad, in a sorta neon theme, trying to balance it challenge wise. Suggestions are very appreciated!

Difficulty edits are mostly the same- But i'd say it's medium.

 

Tested and works for gzdoom. No other ports have been tested.

Freelook, jumping/crouching required.

Hardware rendering (i think)

 

Has to be loaded with doom 2. Maps 1 to 5 are edited right now.

 

No new enemies or weapons, but there are a few textures.

Screenies down below

Spoiler

colortech.rar

[SOSU]

OK here is my review of this demo :)
The Bad:
1.There's too much health and ammo.

Remove a bit of health and ammo in places like the starting room of Map01.
2.Most of the combat is just fighting through doors.
Try to make the player go into a the room first before the fighting starts.
3.Most of the combat is just a shooting gallery.
Make monsters come from multiple directions like you did in the staircase room in the red map.
4.Most rooms are too small.
Just make stuff a little bit bigger :)

5.the rooms are too square.
All the rooms are just squares,try and put more abstract shapes as rooms.
The Good:
1.It looks nice.
I like the tron look :)
2.The darkness makes it more interesting.
The black lines on the ground having their light levels at zero makes the combat and movement more interesting since it's always a guessing game about the location of monsters.

[Lorenz0]

So I played it, and wasn't that impressed. I really like the visual gimmick, but that's about it. The encounters were often really tedious, especially in cases where you open a door, and have to shoot through numerous enemies to even get to the room you opened. That actually describes most fights in this wad, and that's not a good thing. Just standing in front of a door and shooting feels really grindy and unsatisfying.

 

Encounters like these are just a boring mess:

A good idea would be just to create bigger rooms, and make the enemies appear once you're inside them, not right when you open the door.

One more thing I liked was that some areas were more unique than just a square room with monsters. Like the place with circular stairs, or the ledge with imps, where the radsuit was (but idk why it was there, since you don't need it).

 

The very first room in the set has incorrect ceiling textures here:

This switch shouldn't be repeatable:

 

So to sum up, this just feels like a very amateurish map, that at least looks interesting.

 

[Lazorical]

Yes hello, thanks for the comments and all that- This was sorta my first attempt on making actual levels with a style i liked. I guess i'll have to redo the maps, make them a bit bigger, and change the fights up a bit. I really suck with monster/health/ammo placement, but it'll hopefully improve over time. :P

 

The whole problem i had with making all of it is, well, yeah, it's too small. I had barely any space to put monsters or fights in, but that's mostly because i focused on the really small details, the lines, all that. It made everything look bigger than it actually is.

 

Thanks for the feedback however, i'll try to improve the maps- And take the advice for later ones.

[wolfmcbeard]

The fights are my only gripe really but as you said, space was limited, I enjoy this though, purple and red especially.

[Scypek2]

The darkness and dark colors look like they'd be unpleasant to the eyes, especially the third screenshot looks bad with the dark red or black. You could use some actual black/colorful textures instead of dark/colored sectors to achieve a similar visual that's easy on the eyes. Actual dark areas in the level could be a fun gameplay challenge, but it would probably get annoying if the whole level's like that.

[Juza]

It started hurting my eyes after map02. I don't think this is a good style to stick to. Not really impressive.

Most of the problems have been addressed here. I think you focused too much on visual rather than gameplay. The levels are really small and I usually beat them in one or two minutes.

Edit: Just beat it. It wasn't really challenging. You provided a massive amount of resources even for relatively small fights. And also, I beat it without jumping or crouching.

Edited January 4, 2019 by Juza

[KVELLER]

I ended up punching the last few imps in the last level (I was pistol-starting and I missed the secret).