Thy Wrath Unleashed - My 3-Level Doom 2 WAD from 1997... REVISITED!

[MatthewPhillips]

Over the last few weeks I've been working on revisiting the first ever (and so far, only) set of levels I ever created for Doom 2 back in late 1997 / early 1998.
 

The set was called “Thy Wrath Unleashed” (inspired by my old online nickname “wrath”). 

I'd thought the levels were lost when I tracked down fellow forum user Steve D back in 2013, who had thankfully mentioned my levels in a post, and still had the original files!

FFWD to now (Jan-Feb 2020) and I finally found some time to give them a proper update.
 

I've had a blast updating these levels again after 20+ years. I've tweaked some more item placement and textures, added more skylights and lighting effects (so happy with it), and secrets, and I could honestly put another 20+ HOURS into them...

I'd love feedback from this Community (please, playtest them yourself) but keep in mind I'd really like to keep them intact as-is structure-wise, but wouldn't mind tweaking their gameplay (item placement, lighting, textures) if someone sees major issues.

There is one bug on Level 3 near the very end and it's been so long since I created it I am honestly not 100% sure what my intention was with this area.  You get to a star-shaped area and drop into a pit and you hit a trigger and some buttons appear and also the floor rises up. And I think hitting one (or two?) of those buttons is supposed to open a hidden wall with another trigger, but sometimes it goes wonky. Not sure why. Sometimes you get stuck. Sometimes the hidden door never opens.

Other than that, I've playtested the crap out of these (way back in 1997/1998) and for the past few weeks and tweaked a lot of stuff. 

I've attached my levels to this message, and then I will upload some screenshots. Inside the zip file are my original WAD and the updated WAD.

Please play the updated "2020" as that is the only one I will be maintaining going forward.

"Thy Wrath Unleashed" is 3 levels.

First level is a doozy! And it has a maze! HA! I actually timed myself playing the entire level and it took ~15 minutes to finish level 15, knowing exactly where to go. (The maze really isn't that bad).

Let me know what you think!
 

 

 

Edited February 24, 2020 by MatthewPhillips : Removed old files.

[MatthewPhillips]

Screenshots (removed)

Edited March 20, 2020 by MatthewPhillips : Removed screenshots since updating a lot of the game's look

[tamara mochaccina]

That looks pretty nice, truly Doom 2-like. Playing it and recording it soon-ish, really wanna test this out!

[kknot5889]

Here's my playthrough of Map 1 with commentary:

 

 

I'll be doing the next two maps shortly. Hope this helps. Thanks for sharing and congrats on the release!

[Juza]

Surely has many flaws, but still pretty fun. 

 

Here are my FDAs. Quit at map03 due to being lost. The pauses happen because some parts of my body were itching. Played with -longtics if that matters.

wrath_demos.zip

[Doomkid]

I like these sorts of abstract designs, really reminds me of those late nights browsing /idgames and playing all kinds of random old wads from 1994-1998 and finding ones that are actually enjoyable!

 

The only part I really disliked was the wooden maze on map01. I think it's safe to say most Doom fans are sick to death of Wolf3D like mazes. The other parts of map01 were much better, the starting area reeled me in and made me want to keep playing. On map02, a few (very small) parts of the wooden bridge seemed to have the damaging floor effect, specifically an intersection near the start area.

 

I loved the hell theming in these maps, they'd make great Episode 3 starters in a larger wad.

 

There seemed o be a mix of Doom2 and Doom1 textures used, leading to some missing texture errors. Playing with DOOM1-2.WAD fixes this issue since it imports the Doom1 exclusive textures into Doom2.

 

Good work, hope to see more from you in the future!

[MatthewPhillips]

FIRST OFF, thanks everyone who has played so far! I wasn't expecting to wake up this morning and see that a bunch of people not only played it, but recorded themselves, and offered some great comments!

Juza: I downloaded your .zip file but I am not sure what those files were that were inside.

Missing Textures / misaligned: I think that's from my inexperience. I am using Ultimate Doom Builder and when I load in my WAD, it asks for "Resources" so I chose the FOLDER where my "zdoom" is and that seemed to work. But I am guessing that's what is also making the textures not show up. It's giving me textures to use that the Doom 2 WAD doesn't have. So to fix this I assume that when choose "Resources" I should ONLY pick the "Doom 2" WAD and not an entire folder?

I think it would take me hours to change and align all of the textures in the "maze" part, but if there is a quicker way to do it please let me know. Otherwise I will probably leave that kind of stuff as-is, warts and all.

MOUSELOOK /JUMP: I didn't realize that people play with MOUSELOOK on and JUMP on. Ha! That was definitely not a thing when I made these in 1997.

FYI I am keeping notes on what everyone says, and once people have had a chance to play through all 3 levels, I'll see what I can fix.

RE: The "looks Sigil-y" comment from kknot5889 in his video playthrough: it's exactly what I said to myself a few months ago! 

I made Thy Wrath Unleashed way back in 1997 (!) and Sigil came out in 2019.

I played Sigil recently and that's what inspired me to go back to Thy Wrath Unleashed and update it. I hadn't played a new set of Doom levels in decades, I've been totally out of the loop. Sigil inspired me to revisit my levels.

I fixed a lot of item placement, etc. but the basic structure has stayed the same since 1997. I changed a couple of textures and added some "secrets" in that area, but otherwise that's how it looked and played in 1997.

I'm obviously no John Romero, and this was my first-ever set of levels, so the comparison is really nice! Thank you!
 

[kknot5889]

As far as the misaligned textures, just use autoalign. Hover your mouse over the starting box texture on a wall and click x (at least that's how it's bound for me. You may have to check your bindings. You want to bind both the x and y axis with one button). That will align all of the same textures that are touching each other. Then you just have to do it to each wall where ever there is a break. Pretty easy stuff!

[kknot5889]

Here's map 2 with commentary:

 

 

[kknot5889]

And here is map 3 with commentary:

 

 

Overall a decent little wad, especially being made in 1997. Map 2 was definitely the best and map 3 was not very good, honestly. I go over it in the video. Neat layout, good looking areas, terrible balancing and encounters. Nothing that can't be improved, but there's definitely a good bit of work to be done there.

 

Now that you're back in the world of mapping are you planning on starting a new-from-scratch wad? You've definitely got good ideas and I'd love to see what you could come up with using a modern map editor.

 

Thanks for the upload! Had a good time playing your maps. Hope the videos help in some small way.

[MatthewPhillips]

Thanks for reviewing the last 2 maps, Kenneth!

I wrote down your comments about those too.

TBH I am not sure if I would have enough free time to ever create new maps. I'd LOVE to, but I just have too many hobbies already.

I might see about trying to balance Level 3 with better combat scenarios and item placement, and making it so players can't just run through everything to the end.

After watching you battle through the big "star pit" area, I definitely want to rethink the monster placement and weapon placement in that whole area. Instead of keeping the player hanging around killing waves of enemies.

You did miss a big secret near the end of Level 3 (that wall you thought MIGHT be a secret.... IS! It just opens up later, and gives you something very handy for fighting the big baddies).


 

Edited February 13, 2020 by MatthewPhillips

[MatthewPhillips]

Made all of kknot5889's suggested edits to Level 1, and quite a few of my own, and changed all of the textures in the maze.

Edited March 20, 2020 by MatthewPhillips : Removed link to WAD as it was an old version.

[MatthewPhillips]

v7 UPDATE: February 20-21, 2020
 

-- Changed all the wall textures in the pits to grates
-- Added more Lost Souls, items
-- Aligned more textures
-- Made all of suggested changes to Level 1 from kknot5889 (DoomWorld forums) 
-- Replaced missing tech textures (only using the Doom2.WAD as a resource now going forward, so this should fix the missing texture issues)
-- Swapped waterfall texture
-- Replaced some chaingunners with shotgunners on Hurt Me Plenty skill
-- Maze switch now not a secret
-- Added some lost souls in the Arachnotron arena to spice it up 
-- Changed all of the lava textures on the outer rim of the main area (before you get to hell) to nukage
-- Raised the height of the maze ceiling by double
-- Changed ceiling in the maze to sky to make it feel less claustrophobic

[MatthewPhillips]

Incidentally, I ALSO finally got around to finishing John Romero's SIGIL. 
Woah.

What did everyone think of it?

Map 7 might be one of my favourite Doom levels of all-time. The final level seemed rather easy compared to the rest though!

I also didn't find

Spoiler

the "secret" level (yet). 

 

[Caleb13]

Well, this is rather sloppy work even by 1997 standards:

 

MAP01: lots of missing textures, see the list below.

 

MAP02: some of the wooden catwalks are damaging.

 

MAP03: again some non-lava floors are damaging. The final area is just poorly designed. If you use the switches in the caco pit in the wrong order, you can't open the cyber paths. There is HOM near the exit teleporter. And 100% kills is impossible because you can use only one of the lava paths after the fatsos.

 

MAP01 - Entryway

Line 0 has no first side.
Line 1 has no first side.
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Line 95 has no first side.
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Unknown middle texture 'TEKWALL3' on first side of linedef 974
Unknown middle texture 'TEKWALL3' on first side of linedef 975
Unknown middle texture 'TEKWALL3' on first side of linedef 976
Unknown middle texture 'TEKWALL3' on first side of linedef 977
Unknown middle texture 'TEKWALL3' on first side of linedef 978
Unknown middle texture 'TEKWALL3' on first side of linedef 980
Unknown middle texture 'TEKWALL3' on first side of linedef 982
Unknown middle texture 'TEKWALL3' on first side of linedef 983
Unknown middle texture 'TEKWALL3' on first side of linedef 985
Unknown middle texture 'TEKWALL3' on first side of linedef 992
Unknown middle texture 'TEKWALL3' on first side of linedef 993
Unknown middle texture 'TEKWALL3' on first side of linedef 995
Unknown middle texture 'TEKWALL2' on first side of linedef 1706
Unknown top texture 'TEKWALL2' on first side of linedef 1706
Unknown top texture 'TEKWALL2' on first side of linedef 1715
Unknown top texture 'TEKWALL2' on first side of linedef 1722
Unknown middle texture 'TEKWALL3' on first side of linedef 1910
Unknown middle texture 'TEKWALL3' on first side of linedef 1911
Unknown middle texture 'TEKWALL3' on first side of linedef 1913
Unknown middle texture 'TEKWALL3' on first side of linedef 1915
Unknown middle texture 'TEKWALL3' on first side of linedef 1916
Unknown middle texture 'TEKWALL3' on first side of linedef 1920
Unknown middle texture 'TEKWALL3' on first side of linedef 1922
]nextmap

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

MAP02 - Underhalls

Line 1109 has no first side.
]nextmap

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

MAP03 - The Gantlet

Line 15 has no first side.
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[MatthewPhillips]

Hi Caleb13,

 

The missing textures and damaging wood floors was fixed in v7. Just realized that I forgot to delete my original link to the old version at the top of this thread.

 

FYI these maps were made with Hellmaker on a Mac back in 1997 and I don’t think it had the error-checking tools that show you “line XXX is missing side XXX” back then. AFAIK none of those errors actually affect the gameplay but I will look into them.

 

Good call on the Level 3 issue with not being able to get 100% monster kills. I am going to completely rework items and monster placement on that level, and also fix the buttons in the star pit issue, I just haven’t figured out how to do that yet.

 

I don’t think it’s sloppy work but thanks for the feedback.

 

 

[Caleb13]

I see. The missing textures were a bad impression, nevertheless. Yes, the linedefs without the first sidedef shouldn't be a problem. Please concetrate on the incorrectly damaging sectors - you employ high damage type in many areas and it's quite annoying.

[Suitepee]

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/557825388

 

I play this at 8:20 into this livestream.

[MatthewPhillips]

20 hours ago, Suitepee said:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/557825388

 

I play this at 8:20 into this livestream.

Hey man, thanks for playing! Checking out that bit of your stream now.

(FYI at 14:32 into his video the playing starts).

I've since fixed the missing texture issue, but it seems people are still using the old file.

Also wanted to say thanks for everyone who watched John's live stream!

For steveD who made the comment in the stream "it's mostly the same as it was in '97". I left the structure of the maps 99% the same, but changed textures and item and monster placement, etc.

Still a work in progress. :)

And please keep in mind these were my first-ever DOOM levels, so I was learning and building as I went. Things you expect now, like "no ammo in front of a switch" and "you have to be able to get 100%" never even occurred to me back then.

Edited February 26, 2020 by MatthewPhillips

[MatthewPhillips]

 

Answered my own question.

Edited March 16, 2020 by MatthewPhillips : Answered my own question.

[MatthewPhillips]

FYI I've added more secrets, level balancing, and I think I've addressed most of everyone's comments with Levels 1 and 2 of Thy Wrath Unleashed.

Still working on completely redoing Level 3's monsters and gameplay. 
 

Edited March 20, 2020 by MatthewPhillips

[MatthewPhillips]

Wanted to let everyone know that I've spent most of my day "fixing" the over 2,700 errors that Ultimate Doom Builder's Map Analyis Mode has found. (Most of them were "unused texture" errors).

Keep in mind I don't think this type of error-checking feature wasn't around when I originally made these maps with the MacDoom "Kali" editor.

99% of these errors weren't visible unless you opened the maps in an editor, but I fixed them all.

Thanks to the DoomWorld crew for bringing this feature to my attention. Done!

Also spent the last few weeks working on the gameplay loops for Levels 1 and 2 and adding tonnes of stuff (secrets, enemies, and items and tweaking the lighting in every area). Can't wait for people to check these out again.