BLACKOUT, my second WAD!

[vdm1337]

Hey, hey!
I'm back with a new WAD!
It's been a while since SILENTAGE, but I'm back!
And this time it isn't just one level!
I learned how to use switches!
My architecture is better!

 

I started working on this right after SILENTAGE.WAD, so it took ~a month to build
I may update this with multiple releases, like updating the difficulty settings, improving the levels, etc, etc.
Speaking of, the difficulty settings are.. kinda non-existent. Aside from a few enemies added on Hard, you get roughly the same experience playing on Medium or Easy.
But, enough blabbering. Here are some stats!
(Tools used: Doom Builder 2 for mapping, SLADE 3 for importing music)

 

MAP01 - Entryway
It's a basic techbase. Sometimes a stimpack gets stuck on top of a computer when a monster closet opens.
Kill count:
Easy - 22
Medium - 23
Hard - 29
Secrets: 1

 

MAP02 - Underhalls
Again, pretty basic. Sewer level with a bunch of enemies, yadda, yadda.
Kill count:
Easy - 65
Medium - 68
Hard - 70
Secrets: 2

 

MAP03 - The Gantlet
Techbase with a brief section where you go to hell.
Kill count:
Easy - 90
Medium - 92
Hard - 99
Secrets: 1

 

MAP04 - The Focus
Another techbase, you go into some sort of dungeon in the end because I needed some differentiation.
Kill count:
Easy/Medium/Hard - 85
Secrets: 4

 

MAP05 - The Waste Tunnels
Hey! Another techbase! You go outside for a bit, there's a berserk secret, you go in a teleporter to hell at the end.
Kill count:
Easy - 89
Medium - 89
Hard - 91
Secrets: 2

 

MAP06 - The Crusher
Hell. Cacodemons, Mancubi, and a bunch of dead folks.
Kill count:
Easy - 72
Medium - 79
Hard - 83
Secrets: 3

 

MAP07 - Dead Simple
It's a Dead Simple clone (duh) with a bit of my own spice to it.
Enemy numbers: The same as vanilla Dead Simple.
Secrets: 2

 

Known bugs:
Dead Simple has a texture bug at the back end, I don't know how to fix it, though.
Report more if you find them!

 

Music: (FYI, it's level, artist, song title, album.)
MAP01: Dial-up for Murder - Asteroid (MIDI Dreams)
MAP02: Dial-up for Murder - Desert Lake Ceremony (MIDI Nightmares)
MAP03: Dial-up for Murder - Panic! At The Drive-Thru (MIDI Dreams)
MAP04: Nine Inch Nails - Gave Up (Broken)
MAP05: Dial-up for Murder - Soap Cult (MIDI Nightmares)
MAP06: Nine Inch Nails - The Perfect Drug (Lost Highway Soundtrack)
MAP07: Nine Inch Nails - Reptile (The Downward Spiral)

TITLE: Dial-up for Murder - _ ____ _ ___ ____ __ (MIDI Dreams)
INTERMISSION: Nine Inch Nails - The Becoming (The Downward Spiral)
DEAD SIMPLE INTERMISSION: Nine Inch Nails - Burn (Natural Born Killers Soundtrack)

 

Here's some screenshots (one from each level!);

Overall, I think if you enjoyed my last one you'll enjoy this one more.
The only thing I'm not particularly happy with is I think that some of the music doesn't fit particularly well, but you can judge that.

Tested on:
PrBoom
GZDoom
Crispy Doom
GZDoom is the one I recommend, but I'm not gonna judge you if you use anything else.
Anyway, have some fun! Get playing! Rip and tear! (or whatever)

BLACKOUT.zip

[Crock Wilson]

I just played through the first three maps and I noticed a few errors in map 3. I'm playing through Crispy btw, so these issues may not be present in gzdoom. 

1. You start inside of a lamp and you can't get out without noclip.

2. The teleporters are not tagged and you can't get to the area with the red key. 

3. The blue door is not correctly tagged and you can't open it.

4. There is no texture on the lower part of these walls. Sreenshot:

Spoiler

I'll play through the rest later and I'll let you know what I think. It's been pretty fun so far.

[DavidN]

Definitely not a bad second WAD! Here's a video of my playthrough.

 

 

You've got some great interesting ideas in here - to improve it, I would recommend trying to make rooms more interesting in general, as you have a lot of places where a player is repeatedly opening up new parts of corridor with a pile of monsters in the middle. Give them places to hide and let monsters bother the player from a distance as well as up close - you've got some nice examples of this scattered throughout the WAD like the imp towers along the walkway over the lava, and the computer rooms with the multiple walkways and layers. It's good that you don't let the player just backtrack through areas they've already visited - there's always a new monster or something in their way. To avoid any backtracking, you could also make the routes through the level wind around back to where the player needs to be after picking up a key, for example - and adding places off to the sides of the main route will keep the map interesting and not just a series of linearly connected rooms.

 

As said above, the teleporters are definitely untagged! The way you have it set up, all teleport lines and destinations are tagged 0, which means the player has a 50/50 chance of being teleported to the correct destination or just back where they started. To fix this, go into the properties for the teleport lines and the teleport destinations and set their tags to match - that way, one teleporter will always have one destination. It's possible that this just worked as you were testing it by coincidence :) The missing textures in the screenshot might be an oddity due to both sides of the walkway belonging to the same sector (you can fix this by using Make Sectors mode, shortcut M, in UDB and clicking on one of them to reset the front/back sector numbers). Watch out for monsters partially inside walls and other objects, as well - there were quite a few monsters who were stuck. You can check this in the Map Analysis mode (F4 in UDB).

Edited April 25, 2021 by DavidN