Frailty, My first wad.

[TheLoneliness]

Over the last 11 months or so I had a journey with building doom levels and these 8 maps are the result.
Now these maps have stayed mostly as I first made them, other than bugfixes and similiar, so there's a big difference between the first and the last map, but I like that, as I can then share my journey, as I learned how to map. It's a slaughterwad.

There's 8 maps in total (Map 1-8)

Iwad is Doom 2 and it's made in boom format (Complevel 9) and tested in Prboom+ and Zandronum.
There are currently difficulty settings, but it's mostly just Coop>UV>Not UV and the most of the changes are just that there's less viles, barons and cybers.

It's made with both soloplay and coop in mind, but some of the fights can be a bit grindy solo :)

Here's the wad:

 

Unless something major needs fixing, this would be the final version.


While I will  (hopefully) not change this wad, I'm still looking for any constructive criticism, tips and what not, so I now what to change, do better or try out the next time I'll be making a wad. :)

Edit: My personal favorite maps in this would be 8, 7 and 2 in that order.

Here's some screenshots:

Edit: fixed the issue that you couldn't open the wad in GZDoom. (no idea if it breaks in it as it isn't tested, but now at least it can be opened/played).
upgraded to OTEX 1.1.

Edit2: realized that I had not updated the wad in this post, I should probably do that..

 

Edited September 20, 2023 by TheLoneliness : (1)fixes (2)needed more attachment space

[TheOrganGrinder]

So, I generally don't "do" slaughtermaps and I suspect this isn't going to click for me at all, but any posting of a "my first wad" is a joyous occasion and I hope you get some interest and feedback from players for whom this is more their cup of tea.  :)

[TheLoneliness]

5 minutes ago, TheOrganGrinder said:

So, I generally don't "do" slaughtermaps and I suspect this isn't going to click for me at all, but any posting of a "my first wad" is a joyous occasion and I hope you get some interest and feedback from players for whom this is more their cup of tea.  :)

I completly understand :)

[Arbys550]

I skimmed through the wad. Most of the maps to be honest were just too hard for me to have fun in. I guess I'd be able to do them if I saved a bunch but I don't really like saving in the middle of a fight. It also seemed like I was often under-equipped for the task at hand, whether that be not having a good enough weapon or having too little ammo. Most of the reasons I had for quitting a map and moving to the next one were either because I ran out of ammo or I was required to do something super grindy like SSG 40 revenants.

 

As for the fights I was able to do, I think one of the big things that rubbed me the wrong way were that fights seemed to just throw everything and the kitchen sink at you, which didn't allow for much strategy or planning. I felt like every time I survived was because I got lucky, not because of any skill or good strategy. I think slaughter fights are a lot more interesting when you have homogenous groups of enemies appearing out of separate, distinct areas of the arena. I think that approach lends itself to more interesting fights. Another way to make fights more interesting in my opinion is to eliminate symmetry in the shape of the arena. Some symmetry is okay, but fights that are just a circle usually tend to be boring, unless accompanied by fun monster placement.

 

The visuals I thought were pretty good. It seems like you spent a lot of time on this, so I hope more people get to play it. I'm curious about what the big slaughter players would think of it. I think I liked map03 the most out of everything. I got about 2,000 kills into that one. I also liked map08 somewhat, I got around 600 kills deep (I stopped at the big hitscanner room).

[TheLoneliness]

6 minutes ago, Arbys550 said:

I skimmed through the wad. Most of the maps to be honest were just too hard for me to have fun in. I guess I'd be able to do them if I saved a bunch but I don't really like saving in the middle of a fight. It also seemed like I was often under-equipped for the task at hand, whether that be not having a good enough weapon or having too little ammo. Most of the reasons I had for quitting a map and moving to the next one were either because I ran out of ammo or I was required to do something super grindy like SSG 40 revenants.

 

As for the fights I was able to do, I think one of the big things that rubbed me the wrong way were that fights seemed to just throw everything and the kitchen sink at you, which didn't allow for much strategy or planning. I felt like every time I survived was because I got lucky, not because of any skill or good strategy. I think slaughter fights are a lot more interesting when you have homogenous groups of enemies appearing out of separate, distinct areas of the arena. I think that approach lends itself to more interesting fights. Another way to make fights more interesting in my opinion is to eliminate symmetry in the shape of the arena. Some symmetry is okay, but fights that are just a circle usually tend to be boring, unless accompanied by fun monster placement.

 

The visuals I thought were pretty good. It seems like you spent a lot of time on this, so I hope more people get to play it. I'm curious about what the big slaughter players would think of it. I think I liked map03 the most out of everything. I got about 2,000 kills into that one. I also liked map08 somewhat, I got around 600 kills deep (I stopped at the big hitscanner room).

Thanks for both taking time to to some of it, but also for writing down your thoughts about!

While all fights have been tested to be possible to do without saving mid, some of them do require a lot of tries/luck and I have made them all easier than their initial form, it is still very much the case in some areas. The biggest reason why I didn't want to overhaul the entire fights on some of the earlier maps, was simply to keep it 'authentic' to my journey/progress of learning to map.

Regarding ammo problems, as mentioned fights have been tested, but here I'm partly to blame, as I usually play a lot with infighting in mind, so I usually spend less ammo than others :)
I'm aware that esp. some of the earlier maps, have these fights where I essentially just threw most things in large numbers at the player and the main reason it stayed like that in this 'final' version, is simply as mentioned above, for the authencity.

Again, thanks for your input, it will certainly help me in my future endeavors! :)

[Arbys550]

1 minute ago, TheLoneliness said:

Regarding ammo problems, as mentioned fights have been tested, but here I'm partly to blame, as I usually play a lot with infighting in mind, so I usually spend less ammo than others :)

 

Okay, that makes sense then, cause I hate waiting for monsters to infight. Probably why I kept running out of ammo.

[Deadwing]

Congratz for the release!

Unfortunately, I'm not a slaugther player either to give proper feedback >.<

[Bryan T]

Script error, "Frailty.wad:MAPINFO" line 2:
{: Unknown top level keyword
 

Getting this error when trying to load with gzdoom 4.3.3

[TheLoneliness]

21 hours ago, Bryan T said:

Script error, "Frailty.wad:MAPINFO" line 2:
{: Unknown top level keyword
 

Getting this error when trying to load with gzdoom 4.3.3

interesting, I'll take a look at that.

Have done no testing in GZDoom so not surprised that it might not work there.

[Red Recluse]

Frailty2x1635.zip

[IcarusOfDaggers]

I will attempt to reccord this, browsing through the maps with IDClev, I can already tell this is a big boy, and one of the more difficult ones. I'll get back to you in a few days....or weeks xd.