[IDGAMES RELEASE] Alienated - 10 levels for GZDoom

[Lorenz0]

Alienated is a 10-level wad made for GZDoom and Zandronum. It features levels of varying size and difficulty, all made with the Ancient Aliens texture pack. There are 9 regular levels and one secret map, accessible from map06.

 

The wad is meant to be played with dynamic lights turned on. Freelook is recommended, but not required. No jumping or crouching. Do not use vanilla or software in the sector light mode settings, as these options can mess with certain tricks used in map08 and ruin the experience for you.

 

DOWNLOAD: https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/a-c/alienated

 

SCREENSHOTS:

- map09 ''Ascension''

- map05 ''Acid Flow''

- map03 ''Seatooth''

- map06 ''Clash'' (made in collaboration with UgiBugi)

 

The project is fully co-op compatible.

Special thanks to:

UgiBugi, Malefication, Hak3180, Immorpher - for playtesting

Elend - for creating the M_DOOM image

Edited December 4, 2019 by Lorenz0

[Tango]

this looks amazing :D

[Bridgeburner56]

Been watching the development of this with keen interest. Can't wait to play it. Sexy looking mapset 

[Sapfiar]

Looks ammmazing!! Can't wait  to two days to play it, the first screenshot is stunning:)

[elend]

I already played this a bit and did like it very much. Great architecture, with some really imposing structures. Enjoyed the encounters, too. Gotta give this a proper playthrough now.

[Gaia74]

Looks amazing! Great job lorenz0!

[Immorpher]

YES!

[Turin Turambar]

I played the first two maps and this is pretty good!

[Paul814]

Will definitely check this out sometime soon!

[Malefication]

It was a pleasure playtesting all these maps over the last several months. They all have really impressive visual design and great architecture. Good encounters with a solid mix between smaller and some really large fights. Not full on slaughter, though (thankfully, for me). Some levels even have some really unique areas/encounters (at least to my experience) that are a treat to play! I'm looking forward to playing the completely finished version, and possibly run it co-op as well.

[greenslimeriver]

This was awesome! Right up my alley and exactly what I was looking for. Thanks a lot!

[wolfmcbeard]

This is amazing, I love how it looks especially.

[guydude]

This is exactly the sort of thing I'm always looking for. Shooting lots of demons in amazing looking environments that actually make great use of gzdoom features without frivolous gameplay changes.

[olio]

This looks fantastic. I downloaded the wad and will give it a playthrough later. Had a quick peak at the first level and everything is gorgeous.

[Lorenz0]

The second release is finally here! The download link has been updated. Here's the changelog:

 

Jumping disabled in the whole wad.

MAP01:

Slightly more ammo and hp at the beginning.

Fixed a softlock.

MAP02:

Overall difficulty slightly lowered on everything except UV.

MAP03:

Slightly less rockets in the green room.

Made the path to the exit a bit more visible.

MAP04:

General bug-fixing and difficulty balancing.

MAP05:

Blue key fight made easier on lower difficulties.

MAP09:

The swarm corridor fight made easier on lower difficulties.

 

- and a few other small tweaks not worth mentioning. There are still some known issues, like being allowed to skip most of the final map through rocket jumping in one area, but I decided not to do anything about that, since creating more walls around that area would make it look far worse, so I'm just gonna trust the player.

 

Hopefully no more major issues are found, and this will become the final version. Time will tell. For now, enjoy the wad :)

 

 

[Turin Turambar]

Time to play it until the end!

[RonnieJamesDiner]

Played this in GZDoom on UV, which took about 3.5 hours.

 

This was just an absolute delight to play, and there's a lot of content here. If you haven't played this yet, just stop reading and go play it... it's awesome. 

 

Visually, the maps are gorgeous, with a rather praiseworthy attention to lighting & effects, and an excellent use of 3D sectors. I often found myself stopping to just admire the vistas, or the creative architecture which never seemed to sacrifice gameplay for aesthetics. It seemed like you pulled inspiration from a lot of different places, but found a way to tie it all together with your own unique style. I loved it.

 

The gameplay was definitely the star of the show for me, which is all I can ask for in a Doom wad. My first death wasn't actually until map 06, and yet I never felt like I wasn't being challenged or having a great time -- that is to say, the levels felt incredibly polished, from the small skirmishes to the large frenetic battles. Health, ammo, and maneuverable space all seemed near perfect (other than I felt a little starved for health on map 06, and really starved for ammo on map 09 -- though I never found many secrets, which may have solved those problems).

 

There were the odd, ruthless encounters which spanked me pretty hard and started to feel a bit burdensome (the triple Arch-Vile gangbang at the end of map 08 comes to mind) but overall, the huge variety of encounters throughout the mapset was really brilliant. There was very, very little repetition in the way you structured ambushes and layouts for combat (though, perhaps I just didn't pick up on it), but it made for an incredibly satisfying journey without getting stagnant despite the +500 enemy count in several of the maps. For the most part I loved your use of Cyberdemons and Arch-Viles, and actually really admired your use of low-tier enemies, especially in the later levels. The little light-platform gimmick in map 08 was particularly memorable, and sort of had me wishing there were more scenarios like this throughout the mapset. I missed the secret exit to Torrid Temple (and just console'd my way to it after finishing the 9 maps), but I would have loved to see it in the main set. It was really fun, and the quarry battle was actually one of my favorite setpiece encounters in the whole wad!

 

A special note for the music... brilliant. The song choices were perfect, 'nuff said.

 

Sometimes I felt like I was playing something that would've fit perfectly in Eviternity, other times I felt like I was playing something straight out of an Erik Alms set -- overall there was just a metric ton of fun, creativity, and polish to be found here.     

[Bryan T]

This is really solid. Not confusing and some good arena fights, just what the doctor ordered.

[Terminus]

I actually finished playing this wad about a month ago and only now just remembered to post about it, heh.

This is phenomenal! Such well-crafted layouts and shapes, while the gameplay is also so much fun. Maps were never confusing and I stopped a lot to just appreciate the architecture.

You've really created something fantastic here. Top tier material, I honestly can't wait for more if there's ever gonna be any. :)

 

Posted about your wad on my Twitter page for some signal boosting o/

 

[Lorenz0]

Thank you guys, I really appreciate those words. I'm glad I was able to create something that would be enjoyed to this extent by so many people :)

I hope to make even better projects in the future.

 

This might be a good time to advertise my past wads in case someone wants to see how my mapping was before I got gud with Alienated.

Scattered Ashes - Short but fun speedmapping efforts

NoMonochrome - My first big project, more slaughter heavy. (not that good, you've been warned).

[Pirx]

Damn. Missed it completely and wasn't able to play it with the club,  but you're right, the art in ancient aliens is gorgeous and I always wanted more in its style. Managed to play the first 3 maps for now, I'm reading through the comments and can see that it's an amazing episode, thanks. 

[Firedust]

Hai! I beat your mapset! It was very good. Your visualwork and monster placement is improving tremendously with each new project. And that's awesome!

 

The only thing I think you should consider is going a bit easier on the large open areas, because oftentimes killing everything there feels like a slog - shooting stuff while circlestrafing usually gets the job done, and you hardly take any damage while doing so. There are several ways to mitigate this - place snipers around the arena to make navigation trickier, increase the monster density or make the spaces a tad smaller.

 

Again, thank you for releasing this! Looking forward to what you conjure up next.

[AwakeOnPhobos]

Just realized I mentioned this project in the Cacowards thread, but forgot to post in here. Echoing what other people have already said, this is a beautiful mapset with fun, balanced gameplay and using the AA textures to create some very striking visuals. Definitely one of my favorite releases in 2019!

[Lorenz0]

Thanks :D

 

I'm currently working on the third (and hopefully the final) version of the wad, which will see a few gameplay changes and further bugfixing. It should be out in a couple weeks or maybe even sooner.

[Lorenz0]

Alright, RC3 version is up. Some of the most substantial changes include making the last area in map09 somewhat harder, deleting the rocket launcher fight in map07, removing a couple of softlocks, and overall quality tweaks throughout the whole wad. Unfortunately I forgot to write down a changelog this time, so I don't have a full list.

 

Anyway, I'd like to thank some folks from the DWMegawadClub for playing the wad and pointing out all of its issues which needed fixing. I was able to address only a few of them, but hopefully the finished product will make for a better experience than the previous versions anyway :>

If no major problems will come to light, this will end up on idgames soon-ish :>

[Demion]

Hi Lorenz0, i really like your wad, it looks great! Do you have any other wad made by yourself? I have a question regarding sector light settings. I can see you establish not to use software or vanilla sector light. Do you recommend dark, standard or bright? What setting did you have in mind while making this wad?

Keep on mapping in the free world!

[Lorenz0]

@Demion Thanks. I made a few other wads, they are linked in one of my comments above.

 

I usually use doom or bright, but most other settings should work as well. The no vanilla/software restriction was made only with map08 in mind, since a few areas from that level play out much worse with these light settings turned on. But overall I'd recommend doom or bright.

[CBM]

very nice, this year is certainly going to end with quite a few amazing looking levels...

 

I can perhaps make some interesting map layouts at times

(anyone that wish to do whatever they wish with my old 90s wads... quakeworld and prison.. are allowed to do so),

 

but I will never be able to reach this level of detail or beauty :)

[seed]

I've finally got to this wad, and I'm loving it so far. Fun, not too difficult on HMP, and makes very good use of AA's textures and some GZDoom fancy trickery.

 

Part 1 of my let's play here:

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

[seed]

Just finished it. Really liked it, not too difficult and not too easy either, very atmospheric, and pretty fun to go through. I'm actually going to mentionate this tbh, some of the best stuff I played this year.

 

Odd, however, that after MAP09 is finished, the player cannot proceed to MAP10. The console just reports a missing start. Video below:

 

Spoiler