Akeldama - Now on Idgames!

[leodoom85]

I might record the wad at some point. Consider me interested for some vanilla compat set gameplay...

[Firedust]

Big congrats for the release!

 

It's amazing how you guys managed to release such a high-quality mapset in barely over a year!

[Valboom]

Congratulations for the release,i love this Megawad,thanks!

[Da Werecat]

I played four maps and I'm genuinely pleased with the soundtrack. I expected something more cartoony, as it often is in Doom megawads.

 

If this doesn't become ultra hard later, I'll probably finish it. Didn't expect it either, as it's been a while since I was interested in a "nostalgic" set of 32 maps.

[leodoom85]

 

Hey, you guys can check my playlist. I promise that I'll do all maps. Be certain of that.....

Also, wanted to put this thumbnail for the playlist but YT doesn't let me do it...

 

 

Spoiler

 

[universal-quantifier]

Played through the first couple of maps and this seems excellent so far. Congrats for completing the project!

[Doomkid]

On 6/1/2020 at 8:42 PM, valkiriforce said:

Akeldama is now live on Idgames!

Hell yes!

[eharper256]

Congrats on completing this; got up to map 12 so far; and has the rare distinction of being fun for me to play as more of a casual player on HNTR!

So great job on the difficulty balancing, whoever was responsible for that; I end up getting very frustrated in several modern wads when they always cater for the high end of the skill spectrum exclusively.

[leodoom85]

Obvious skip on map 11..............a normal run does the thing like a casual thing :D

One thing that kinda bothered me was how the map was made in terms of area usage. At the start, I thought that would have more traps with monster closets due of how empty the areas were presented and stuff like that but ended up with a loooooooong map with some backtracking and hard fights. I think the premise of the map itself was not what I was expecting to be honest, if I have to put it in a way....or, if you put it in another way, it's a really deceptive map that can fool you and stab you when less expected...

 

EDIT: Recorded maps 6 to 11....need to wrap this up soon to upload more videos :D
 

Edited June 5, 2020 by leodoom85 : EDIT GALORE!!!

[eharper256]

One note: Map 16 I appeared to be unable to progress without noclip; the switch in the green slime room after the crusher seems to be unable to be pulled as there's a blocking line preventing access to it. As I couldn't find another way forwards, I noclipped to the circular room with the revenants to continue which seemed to be okay (although the fact that room has blue lava is a sudden change of rules in that regard). Maybe I was just missing what I was supposed to do though, not sure.

[valkiriforce]

I do know there is an impassable line before that switch on map 15, though it shouldn't prevent the player from being able to interact with it. What sourceport are you playing it in?

[eharper256]

GZDoom 4.3.3 (latest)

[Horus]

13 minutes ago, eharper256 said:

GZDoom 4.3.3 (latest)

actually, GZDoom 4.4 was released today

[pcorf]

What I really like about Akeldama is the original soundtrack. My personal favorite songs are in these maps: MAP03, MAP06, MAP12, MAP17, MAP19, MAP21 and MAP32. The best map, umm it is a tough choice. I really loved MAP06, MAP15, MAP17, MAP26, they were all cool maps. Of course I won't include any mention about my map or songs.

Edited June 30, 2020 by pcorf

[valkiriforce]

19 hours ago, eharper256 said:

GZDoom 4.3.3 (latest)

 

Could be a compatibility issue - I'm uncertain. It works fine when I play the same map in GZDoom though I have it under strict vanilla settings. I wouldn't think there would be any issues though regardless of compatibility.

[Amph]

19 hours ago, Horus said:

actually, GZDoom 4.4 was released today

 

anything notable that make it worth to change to 4.4? 

[Andromeda]

6 hours ago, Amph said:

anything notable that make it worth to change to 4.4? 

Here's the changelog.

[Cacolemon]

Hey! I need help with one of the secrets in Map 06...

Spoiler

There is a secret room between a waterfall and a baphomet wall on the other side. Can't go through the waterfall, can't get to the baphomet wall (already tried shooting it).

Does somebody have a hint for me? Do I need to find a switch or a teleporter?

 

Thanks!

btw great WAD! Pretty challenging already in the early maps, but I like it.

[valkiriforce]

1 hour ago, Cacolemon said:

Hey! I need help with one of the secrets in Map 06...

  Reveal hidden contents

There is a secret room between a waterfall and a baphomet wall on the other side. Can't go through the waterfall, can't get to the baphomet wall (already tried shooting it).

Does somebody have a hint for me? Do I need to find a switch or a teleporter?

 

Thanks!

btw great WAD! Pretty challenging already in the early maps, but I like it.

 

Map 06 secret:

Spoiler

There's a solid metal wall to the side of some metal pipes on one of the two ledge areas by the toxic waste holding imps behind doors. It's a hidden switch there that lowers the platform to the baphomet face which opens up to a secret area.

Glad to hear you're enjoying it!

[GarrettChan]

Just finished the whole WAD today with UV Continuous, total IGT 11:18:18 (lots of saves ;P).

 

The mapset is a journey, a rather exhausting journey, I would say. Nonetheless, thanks a lot for making this project happen, and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

 

Design:

 

The architecture of the maps is just gorgeous. My favorite is Map30 as you traverse through multiple towers, which gives me a similar feeling of Disjunction Map11, one of my all time favorite, although Map30 has a more classic feeling. Overall, I really like the diversity of the maps. Some of the maps' design is a little bit annoying to me, notably Map19 (small sections of the map open up from time to time and there are suddenly a few monsters here and there), but that's just a personal preference, not spreading any hate to the mappers.

 

I would say if you're not a fan of long maps, probably you will feel very exhausting by playing this. However, if the player likes long maps like a journey, this is one of the most fantastic MegaWADs out there.

 

Music:

 

The musics are absolutely beautiful. My favorite is Map21, and I didn't find any bad music in the whole set. Even though I felt tired from time to time by playing the maps as mentioned above, the musics can motivate me to play a little bit more :P

 

Difficulty:

 

I feel it's somewhere around Ancient Aliens and Alien Vendetta. I personally rate this something like 2.1/5.

(Reference point: Doom = 0.1; Plutonia = 1; Ancient Aliens = 2; Alien Vendetta = 2.2; Disjunction = 3)

[valkiriforce]

I've been meaning to do this some months ago but never got around to it - I wanted to talk about the history of this project and where it began.

 

-

 

The idea for this project actually goes all the way back to my second megawad Reverie - originally I had hoped to make that a community megawad focused on vanilla Doom 2 gameplay similar to a lot of old 90's classic megawads. Over time though I wasn't sure just yet how to communicate that need for specific gameplay elements you just don't see that much anymore, so my ideas continued as I worked on it alone to the point that it eventually became what it was and I knew I wasn't quite cut out yet for managing a community project if I didn't have a clear goal in mind. Early in that project I did come up with a list of things that needed to be met in the maps, but I felt it was probably too controlling for other people and I ended up abandoning it in favor of going for what felt right at the time. Ultimately the desire for a vanilla megawad from the community was abandoned altogether and I was pretty much finished with Doom mapping with two megawads and lots of map contributions to other projects.

 

Many years later in early 2016, John Romero created his first Doom map in over 20 years, and just like that my interest for Doom immediately skyrocketed again after laying dormant for a long time. There were a few small map things I had done in my post-activity, including a number of speedmaps which became Vispire, though I hadn't yet completed it. I decided to work on some more speedmaps to "warm-up" for my activity in level design. It was after releasing said project that I started to think again about a vanilla megawad created by members of the community in a similar vein to the classics (Memento Mori, Requiem, etc.). I wasn't sure just yet how I wanted to do this, so I figured it would be a good time to try and manage smaller projects to get an idea of how it could be done. I tried working directly with 40oz on what would become Absolute Dishonor, as we both had been inactive for some time and wanting to create levels for Doom again. It was great for the both of us because we had direct contact with each other and would often entertain ideas and potential names for the project. With the two of us working on four maps each it really didn't seem too demanding of a project, so it was a manageable length despite taking half a year before it would release. I was really intimate with the mapping process at the time in stark contrast to my constant input I had in my early days, so it felt like a very different but pleasant experience allowing that time to sink in more ideas and dynamics in the gameplay, in fact quite often I felt I had made some of the maps a little larger than intended as a result, but it also felt different than anything I had done before despite being vanilla.

 

Shortly after this I tried managing another small project - this time as an open project for the community from the get-go instead of being under secret development. It was going to be the same length (8 maps) only this time it was going to be done by multiple other map authors who showed interest in the project. Oddly enough this took much longer as a result, and it was about finished before the end of 2016 except it was missing one map author who disappeared. After this someone else showed interest in the empty slot, but also dropped out from activity. Eventually the original author showed up again and created a map for the empty slot, and TNT: Resistance was finally released in the following December of 2017.

 

So with these two projects in mind, it was a learning experience with both secret and open development to see which one I would prefer when managing a large project. It was pretty clear the first one was much better with having direct contact with map authors and bouncing ideas off of each other.

 

-

 

Akeldama started on November 15th, 2017 with the new shelter textures I was making and testing out at the time with the first map's starting area. I figured the first map might be a good map to begin as a collaboration for the project to help advertise it to future contributors, so I contacted my friend waverider to see if he was interested. I created the first half of the map and left it open for him to finish the map however he pleased. He sent it back to me later with his second half finished - it had arachnotrons, hell knights and cacodemons, and it also gave the player the super shotgun and rocket launcher. That was when I thought oh yeah, I should probably set the pace for this megawad to introduce monsters and weapons. That was when I came up with the list of monsters and weapons to be introduced at certain maps to help pace out the megawad's introduction to prevent too many maps from having the same gameplay. I tried to pace it out in my own maps with what monsters would appear and which ones wouldn't, though I admit it was difficult when the ideas would naturally include many of the Doom 2 monsters, as is often the case with many people.

 

I started running into another problem early on, which understandably I knew I would probably hit sooner or later - I really don't have that many connections in the Doom community. There's a handful of people I've spoken with directly that I could ask about this project, though it's possible not everyone would be interested. I figured at some point I would have to make it a project in public development, but I had to have some level of quality established in the project. I wanted to at least make a single map for each of the three episodes, and I did contact a few other mappers I've either spoken with before or have shown interest in my previous work. It was over the course of 2018 that it maintained that secrecy and focus on building maps and getting a few other authors involved, though I was also partially taken by activity in a few other contributions at the time. It at least allowed other people time to make their maps while I was working on something else.

 

Another point of inspiration for this project has to do with the idea of "missed opportunities" or in the case of a comment I saw from joepallai, one of his maps which he withheld from being included in Alien Vendetta, which later became MAP23 of Plutonia 2. I sort of had the same thought process of how there were older projects I wished I could have been a part of back then, and now I had the opportunity to give other people that chance to be a part of something great. However, considering my previous experience with open development with TNT: Resistance, I was not fond of the idea of map authors taking slots and disappearing for a long time, which delayed a simple 8-map project for an entire year. I took inspiration from the MAYhem projects which I had contributed to earlier in 2018 with the orange and purple versions, which saw that people had a month to get their contributions in before the deadline. It would ensure that even if map authors dropped out, I could still take the time in the following months while the other episodes were being worked on that I could find a way to fill in those empty slots should any of them be abandoned at any time. I figured if I just managed it with each episode having it's own deadline, it would work nicely because then I could release each successive episode to help gauge interest besides the already available maps. So I decided that having two months for each episode would be more than enough time if people could get such huge maps into the MAYhem projects, and it would only take half a year before most of the megawad would be completed, with the following months focusing on the soundtrack and constantly playtesting the maps.

 

-

 

Finally in early 2019 I opened this thread with the announcement of this project and set the guidelines for how contributors could get involved both with the resource pack and the slots where people could use certain monsters and weapons - despite MAP01 already having some mid-tiers.

 

Concerning the quality of map contributions, there were at least a few maps that didn't make it into this project - the first would actually be a map I sent to Doomworld Mega Project 2018 - The Absolution (limit-removing map). Early on I did have the idea for episode 1 to be themed around a dark panorama with the moon, but I thought it was too similar to Requiem's episode 1, so I ended up using that dark sky for episode 3. The idea for this map was for it to occupy the MAP05 slot as a dark city with a techbase in the center, but I later abandoned that idea since it was going in a different direction with the snowy mountain backdrop.

 

I was also inspired from Mechadon's management of Doom 64 for Doom 2, when he made a lot of fixes/changes throughout the various map contributions, so I thought if we did get any maps that weren't quite up to par with the maps already in the project, maybe it could be salvaged into a better experience. Later on I did get a couple of other map contributions which I had to respectfully decline, as it was too difficult to find a way to manage restructuring the maps into something that would fit the established themes so far. There were other maps that were posted that I really enjoyed working on, namely complexDoomer's MAP12, as well as DJVCardMaster's MAP08 and Pegleg's MAP19. MAP12 was especially interesting since I ended up splitting the map into two sections since it was connected by a single hallway, and I restructured it to be centered around a techbase in the middle of a city (similar to the abandoned MAP05). One of the early maps was a repurposed map from ZaBigBoss out of his mapset Back To Thunder Road, which ended up as MAP03 in the megawad (as the textfile allows for reuse). At first it was intended as an idea for a smaller map early in episode 1 that would help the levels to flow more quickly from one to another, and in some way it felt kind of traditional considering both Memento Mori and Requiem featured maps that were already released. Though despite this I was thinking it could likely be replaced with a new and original contribution, at which point we first received Doomkid's MAP03 at the time. The map was fine the way it was - although I felt it was a little too packed for action so early in the megawad, as I had hoped to pace things more quickly early on. It was difficult figuring out what to do between the original MAP03 and Doomkid's map, but eventually I settled on remixing his map for the 32 slot and adding a few new areas, even if it seemed like I was taking the traditional "challenging" MAP32 way out. I still enjoyed it and I pretty much broke my own rules with vanilla compatibility considering the abundance of monsters would often disappear in vanilla ports.

 

As far as the episode themes go, I've always loved Memento Mori's day-into-night cycle of skyboxes, with the episode 1 sky being daylight, episode 2 sunset and episode 3 at night, so I wanted to do something similar to that. The snowy mountain sky was likely to inspire "snowy" maps, so I wasn't worried about there being a mix-up in themes, in fact I actually enjoy when there's plenty of different themes even within the same episode, despite how subjective it can be from other players. Episode 2 was likely to get some "hellish" themes with its red sky, although I really enjoyed the techbase settings intermingled with them as well - it felt like a true Memento Mori-like experience in that regard. Episode 3's theme is interesting because I felt it was probably the most open-ended with the night sky panorama with the fiery landscape. I think we mostly got castle/wood fortress themes going on in that one, though I slipped some tech into my maps as well.

 

The other hope I had for creating this thread was so that any future generation Doom content creators might have a good reference for how managing projects like this could be handled - we don't have threads for old megawads that can be found, and a lot of projects can go through that secret development phase. I knew of course as we reached certain obstacles that it would be a learning experience, but I was prepared to figure them out as we went along and learn from it. Despite wanting to enforce the deadline (which for the most part I think went smoothly) I did extend a grace period for Breezeep's contribution since I know he really wanted to be a part of this project, and that kind of echoes the goal for this project in the first place. So it's good to have those rules in place to establish a project, but those rules can be bent from time to time where needed.

 

It's been a long journey - from Absolute Dishonor testing secret development, to TNT: Resistance testing public development, to eventually settling somewhere between the two for Akeldama's road to completion - I had a lot of fun challenging myself with working out the details and helping to make that ideal vision for the project clear for other mappers involved. If I could have done anything differently, I might have focused on making smaller maps and maybe I would have made fewer maps so more people could have contributed, though maybe it could be argued it helped bring some level of consistency to the project similar to other authors who have multiple maps in a bigger project. Either way, I'm quite pleased with how it came out, and unfortunately due to repeatedly playing the mapset over its development, haven't been in the mood to revisit it too soon, but I definitely look forward to getting back into it after my little break with playing other games and wads. I hope to see and hear from more people about their experience with Akeldama.

[Suitepee]

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/676923209 = maps 1-8.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/677835937 = maps 9-15.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/678801093 = maps 31,32 and 16-24.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/679718400 = maps 25-30.

 

Overall a decent enough megawad. Would have liked to have seen a few more shorter maps throughout. Was nice to see a map 30 that DIDN'T involve an Icon of Sin fight for a change; in my opinion, something we need to see far more of in the Doom community when it comes to concluding megawads.

[DFF]

@valkiriforce If you are thinking about making a update to fix some of those VPO problems, another small fix that would be appreciated if the corners of the arachnotron pillars in map31 (sectors 271 and 272) were brought out 8 units (so the sides are all 160 units, square, and texture offsets on all 4 sides should be X:-16, y:0). It seems despite aracs being 128 units, they get stuck when teleporting into the 144 sq unit space if not hit, expanding them to 160 sq units seems to fix this.

[Varis Alpha]

if an update were to be issued, i would like to do some fixes to my tracks Fallen Empire (map 14) and Death (map 21). i found out i accidentally left duplicate notes in those tracks, which makes those tracks unexpectedly louder in some parts than intended. it's not a huge issue if it doesn't get fixed, but i'd like to fix those issues if i could.

[Chainie]

Map 14 update:
+Added proper background for the balcony near the beginning
+Added latest version of midi
+Door from the BK room now works properly.

akmap14F.zip

[GarrettChan]

Welp... on the other hand, I certainly don't hope for a fix that will make all the demos desync...

 

I guess next time if there's a project, make sure everything is fixed before going to idgames.

[Chainie]

It's up to Valkiriforce to update wad or not. 

[GarrettChan]

I'm not saying he should/shouldn't update the WAD, but the fact that updating a WAD in this point would cause a lot of annoyance. TBH, I guess nobody cares too much about demos or whatnot.

[tmorrow]

There's no right answer here. It's up to the Valkiriforce/team to decide whether or not to update and players to decide whether to redo any demo's that might desync if an update eventuates. The positive is that it is unlikely that many maps will be affected, so not many demos would become void.

 

In order to discover the bugs, you need the diversity of testing that comes naturally from a "final idgames release" when everyone downloads and plays it (most of them for the first time) and on vast number of systems and srcports. You just won't get this breadth of testing from the small fraction of testers that are prepared to give the betas and release candidates a thorough work out, hard as they may try. You can almost bet on a final release uncovering a handful of bugs, especially for a megawad chock full of large maps like Akeldama. For anyone that makes demos, I would suggest not work too hard on churning out highly optimized demos of any new release until several months later. Only spend as much time on early demos as you are prepared to lose. As time passes, the likelihood of post release patch goes down considerably.

 

[valkiriforce]

Sorry, but I'm not accepting any more updates for this project - it's a finished megawad, and the only update I was entertaining was the mislabeled linedef action on MAP14 which could cause a VPO in Chocolate Doom.