DOOM: Perdition

[Scorpius]

 

Well, I've been holding this off for too long now. But I feel confident enough to get this out there. I present to you, PERDITION, my first work for DOOM!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Perdition is a spiritual successor to Thy Flesh Consumed. At the end of your last crusade to Hell, the hideous wreck of the Spiderdemon leaves behind a gateway. Passing through it, you emerge in the green fields of Earth -- only to find that everything is not as it should be ...

 

The goal is to make these maps semi-authentic to the original EPI4 levels without losing its core identity as an infamous episode, particularly with the inconsistent difficulty curve. Most of the maps are designed in the style of classic megawads, such as Memento Mori, to revitalize the feel and look of the levels, as well as a reminder of the "good old days" that I prefer over hyper-detailed Boom levels. It is also designed to be much more difficult than Thy Flesh Consumed, especially on Ultra-Violence.

 

It has nine vanilla maps for the Ultimate DOOM - tested with Chocolate Doom, PRBoom+ and GZDoom - designed to support all three difficulties, pistol-starts, and even cooperative play! To go along with this, three, small deathmatch levels are included in this pack for those who wants to kill their fellow marines. These take place in E4M2, E4M6, and E4M8, respectively.

 

This will be released on December 18th, 2019!

 

EDIT - 10th of December

The first half of PERDITION is now available! I am looking for feedback and criticism. This will enormously help out while I complete the final level.

 

Download link: perdi_wip.zip

 

MAP PROGRESS:

        E4M1 - 100%    [DONE]

        E4M2 - 100%    [DONE]

        E4M3 - 100%    [DONE]

        E4M4 - 100%    [DONE]

        E4M5 - 100%    [DONE]

        E4M6 - 100%    [DONE]

        E4M7 - 25%      [ WIP ]

        E4M8 - 100%    [DONE]

        E4M9 - 100%    [DONE]

 

There are expected to be bugs, please let me know about them!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here are a couple of screenshots:

 

 

 

 

 

^{Screenshots taken on E4M2, E4M3, E4M8, & E4M9, respectively.}

Edited Tuesday at 10:46 PM by Scorpius

[Walter confetti]

Looks awesome! Where do you find that "nightmare" font that you used for the title?

[Scorpius]

40 minutes ago, Walter confetti said:

Where do you find that "nightmare" font that you used for the title?

I use Bitmap Font Writer for WILVs and EPI4, it can be found here: http://www.stefan-pettersson.nu/site/bmpfont/

I can't remember where I found the fonts but I can provide them if you want them: fonts.zip

 

Doom-Big-Red-BLOODY is the nightmare font, but I'm sure I didn't need to state that. :)

[Firedust]

Thy Flesh is my favourite Doom episode so naturally I'm very excited to give this a go.

[Egg Boy]

That second screenshot is wonderful! Can't wait to give this a try.

[Mostcus]

Looks very nice! Can't wait too.

[kknot5889]

A spiritual successor to my favorite episode of Doom? Count me in. Screenshots look amazing. 

[Scorpius]

December Mini-Update

 

Most of the maps are complete, just two more to go! I feel confident that I will get this done before Christmas, therefore I have set out a release date: December 18th. The wait is not long now! Anyways, here are some more screenshots, enjoy. :)

 

 

 

 

^{Screenshots taken on E4M1, E4M4, & E4M5, respectively.}

[P41R47]

Last screenshot remains me a lot of one of the levels in sigil.
I'm really looking forward for this.
Thy Flesh Consumed is my favorite episode in all Doom and something in that vein is a must.

[Scorpius]

44 minutes ago, P41R47 said:

Last screenshot remains me a lot of one of the levels in sigil.

 

Kind of a funny story about E4M5. I came up with the idea of a "void" type level before SIGIL was announced. I just had no idea how to make it work, until I played SIGIL. I then used it for inspiration, not necessarily for the visuals, but for the general layout and gameplay. It is also my favourite level from SIGIL.

[Marlamir]

Damn this looks really well, looking forward to it 

[Magicana]

Those screenshots look amazing. Particularly the second one in the OP. Strong E4M1 vibes from the first screenshot in the update post as well (But different shapes).

[Scorpius]

December 4th Update

 

E4M6 is now complete! Just one more to go.

 

Here is a lovely screenshot of E4M6:

 

 

In other news, I've now been using Chocolate Doom to test Perdition to better suit the engine limitation of Doom and have already fixed several bugs. A couple of HOMs in E4M3 and E4M9 wiped away, and a visplane overflow in E4M3 removed. There are still very slight HOMs in E4M3 and a visplane overflow occurring on E4M5, neither of which I will remove at expense of scenery. I've now starting working on E4M7 again, after losing faith on the original E4M7 map. I will provide any other updates in the future!

[Scorpius]

I made the first of the three deathmatch levels yesterday for E4M2. I decided to record myself making the map for 3 hours, sped it up to last 10 minutes. If you are interested, here is that timelapse video: 

 

 

 

[kknot5889]

Thanks for the updates! Super pumped about this.

[Egg Boy]

On 12/4/2019 at 4:01 PM, Scorpius said:

December 4th Update

 

E4M6 is now complete! Just one more to go.

 

Here is a lovely screenshot of E4M6:

 

 

In other news, I've now been using Chocolate Doom to test Perdition to better suit the engine limitation of Doom and have already fixed several bugs. A couple of HOMs in E4M3 and E4M9 wiped away, and a visplane overflow in E4M3 removed. There are still very slight HOMs in E4M3 and a visplane overflow occurring on E4M5, neither of which I will remove at expense of scenery. I've now starting working on E4M7 again, after losing faith on the original E4M7 map. I will provide any other updates in the future!

If you're having trouble with HOMs and visplane overflows, you can just test in crispy doom and make this a limit-removing project.

[Scorpius]

2 hours ago, Egg Boy said:

If you're having trouble with HOMs and visplane overflows, you can just test in crispy doom and make this a limit-removing project.

 

Thanks for the suggestion and advice, I was completely unaware of crispy doom prior, don't ask me how or why. When I started this project, it was intended to be limit-removing. All maps, with the exception of E4M1, would have decent amount of detail. One day I thought to try and play it in Vanilla (chocolate doom) to see if it was remotely playable, and I was rather surprised at how brilliantly it held up. I decided to turn this project into vanilla thereafter and no major problems were encountered during playtesting, except for the visplane overflow in E4M5. This only occurs if the player runs out of the map through lava - which is marked by floating skull rocks - and looks back at the buildings. And I used to have problems with HOMs in E4M3, E4M6 & E4M9 but I have since then fixed all that I can find.

[bobsnowmexican]

now if only this had a buckethead soundtrack... lol looks really cool it looks like a brighter sigil which i like excited to try it 

[Scorpius]

Happy Birthday, DOOM!

 

DOOM, the holy mother of grandeur, is now 26 years old! And the 2019 Cacowards are here, god damn.

 

To celebrate this occasion, I have planned ahead and decided to release the first half of Perdition! This includes E4M1-E4M4 & E4M9, and I am looking to receive any feedback, criticism, suggestions, and advice. I am both nervous and excited to finally unveil half of my half-a-year's worth of work. Still got some work to do and I will keep you all updated. So for the time being, I really hope you enjoy playing! The download link is on the original post. :D

[Egg Boy]

Just played through the first 4 maps, and I must say, this is quite good. The first map seemed like a simple edit of e4m1, and while it was a nice homage, it did not prepare me for the quality of the rest of the maps. These first 4 maps can be quite oppressive, cramped spaces brimming with Cacodemons, Barons, and even a few Cyberdemons. Sort of like if Thy Flesh Consumed had actually kept up its mean streak past e4m2. Coincidentally, the second map was my favorite, feeling like "The Living End" meets "Perfect Hatred." Perfectly Romero, mean and kinetic, much like his later works in Doom 2 and Sigil. Meanwhile, e4m4 feels like a sandy peterson sandbox with many optional areas, each structure tightly packed with its own gimmick and demons to battle. I'm really quite impressed, for a first outing, this is incredibly fun, and I can only hope, the rest of the set follows suit. That being said, I do have a gripe with the earlier maps, there seems to be a bit too many monster blocking lines, this can be especially troublesome with barons blocking doorways with which I have to sink my constantly diminishing shotgun ammunition, shotgunning barons is not particularly entertaining, and I wish the player had more options to avoid, and evade these mandatory doors with health. Other than that, stellar stuff, keep it up! I look forward to the second half.

[Scorpius]

18 hours ago, Egg Boy said:

Just played through the first 4 maps, and I must say, this is quite good. I'm really quite impressed, for a first outing, this is incredibly fun, and I can only hope, the rest of the set follows suit. Other than that, stellar stuff, keep it up! I look forward to the second half.

Thank you, it feels great to know that my work isn't total rubbish.

 

18 hours ago, Egg Boy said:

The first map seemed like a simple edit of e4m1, and while it was a nice homage, it did not prepare me for the quality of the rest of the maps.

I fully acknowledge that E4M1 is too alike the original. Kinda worried that people would say it was like a "simple edit". I wanted the first map as simplistic and authentic to Hell Beneath as possible, hence little detail. I was aiming to provide something recognizable before throwing the player into the bigger, tougher maps.

 

18 hours ago, Egg Boy said:

These first 4 maps can be quite oppressive, cramped spaces brimming with Cacodemons, Barons, and even a few Cyberdemons. Sort of like if Thy Flesh Consumed had actually kept up its mean streak past e4m2.

I could not have put it better myself. This was exactly what I wanted from the beginning. All the Thy Flesh maps after E4M2, with the exception of E4M6, is stupidly easy, I definitely could not have that here...

 

18 hours ago, Egg Boy said:

That being said, I do have a gripe with the earlier maps, there seems to be a bit too many monster blocking lines, this can be especially troublesome with barons blocking doorways with which I have to sink my constantly diminishing shotgun ammunition, shotgunning barons is not particularly entertaining, and I wish the player had more options to avoid, and evade these mandatory doors with health.

I am assuming you are talking about E4M2 and E4M3 (if not, let me know). I am just going to point out that I rarely use monster block lines, with the small exception of E4M3. I use these block lines to stop monsters from walking on the bridges that raise and lower, thus preventing them from breaking. I have removed most of the block lines, more specifically the ones that prove to be problematic for players. In terms of ammunition, I will try to implement more health and ammo to ensure players don't run out of ammo so fast.

 

Thanks again for the feedback, I am always trying to improve upon myself and make it better than ever.

Edited Wednesday at 07:09 PM by Scorpius

[JBerg]

Looks very cool

[bobsnowmexican]

the mod so far aesthetic wise looks incredible i played the first level, hard as fuck but i would play it over hell beneath any day so far looks cool man

[kknot5889]

Here's map 1 with commentary:

 

 

Great opener and awesome homage to e4m1. Really enjoyed it. 

[kknot5889]

And here is map 2:

 

 

[Scorpius]

Thanks for playing and making these videos, really cool to see other people's strategies for these maps! It's very helpful hearing the feedback and criticism. In regards to some of the minor issues, I have set the doors tracks to lower unpegged, didn't realize the difference with them on and off until now. I have fixed the demons in that instant trap to actually walk out the room, that Baron can now walk down out of the viney room, and the Pinky stuck on that narrow walkway. I'm being more careful with texture alignment, something I never really bothered with prior. I know people don't like those instant traps so I pulled it back into the far end of that room so hopefully players don't run into them at full speed, losing tons of health (and even death) in the process.

[kknot5889]

13 hours ago, Scorpius said:

Thanks for playing and making these videos, really cool to see other people's strategies for these maps! It's very helpful hearing the feedback and criticism. In regards to some of the minor issues, I have set the doors tracks to lower unpegged, didn't realize the difference with them on and off until now. I have fixed the demons in that instant trap to actually walk out the room, that Baron can now walk down out of the viney room, and the Pinky stuck on that narrow walkway. I'm being more careful with texture alignment, something I never really bothered with prior. I know people don't like those instant traps so I pulled it back into the far end of that room so hopefully players don't run into them at full speed, losing tons of health (and even death) in the process.

 

Awesome! I hope to play the rest of the maps this weekend. I'll send videos when I've finished.