Atomic [Limit Removing] - Development thread

[cannonball]

 

This is a work in progress wad that essentially acts as a sequel to "Return to Hadron" that may eventually become something more substantial. However for now there is a single episode (Map01-11) of maps that are mostly on the small/medium size. Starting out short and punchy but with some larger levels later on. The difficulty is probably sitting between early Plutonia/AV difficulty.  (Hence the title, which was the best I could come up with, but heck a cacodemon atom).

 

IWAD - Doom 2

Port - Limit removing (Complevel 2)

Difficulty settings for all 11 levels - No Co-op settings at the moment.

Textures - Plutonia + a few others, compiled by James Paddock.

 

Anyway, I hope there is some enjoyment to be had here.

Maplist;

 

Map01 - Dock N' Load

Map02 - Sphere of Effluence

Map03 - Pervious

Map04 - Enchantment

Map05 - Centralised Violence

Map06 - Lost Intel

 

Map07 - Veiled Reality

Map08 - Agitation

Map09 - Outlander

Map10 - Underearth

Map11 - Epithany

 

Episode 2 (In development)

 

Map12 - Second Contact

Map13 - The Wall (Not in the download)

Map14 - Crimson Mass (Not in the download)

 

Download - https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/pc7x01y6d80tedr7y4ub3/atomic28124.wad?rlkey=awqhla8tdp2jluunlmzj49wku&dl=0

 

Midis;

Read Me text - Clay - James Paddock (Revolution! Midi pack)
Title music - 10 minutes to 5am - James Paddock
Intermission - The No rest for the living MIDI pack intermission by Megasphere
Map01 - Freighthoppers - James Paddock (Revolution! Midi pack)
Map02 - The Ratway - Stewboy
Map03 - Shotgun Shawarma - @RogueAkai & @Sumo (AV Midi Pack)
Map04 - Sanctuary - AD_79
Map05 - Gateway - Stewboy
Map06 - The Berggren-Malde Complex - @northivanastan & @DCG Retrowave (AV Midi pack)
Map07 - World Underground - Primeval
Map08 - Drips - Stewboy
Map09 - Hell Jungle - Stewboy
Map10 - Thanatos (Tristan Clark for Rebirth Midi pack)
Map11 - There lies the sky - Stewboy
Map12 - 2012 (ZDCMP2 Remix) - James Paddock

Map13 - Hate Machine - James Paddock

Map14 - Plummeting - Bucket

 

Pictures below - Some of these should be familiar from the picture threads.

 

   

   

 

Previous versions

 

https://www.mediafire.com/file/j22c4eubu6mlubt/atomicE1.zip/file

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pzcj6pnfpc7na6f/atomicE1.2.zip?dl=0

Edited February 26 by cannonball

[Omniarch]

New cannonball maps!? HELL YES! This year just keeps getting better and better!

 

Seriously, is this community trying to kill me via Doom overdose?

 

Hyperbole aside, congrats on the new release! I'll be sure to provide feedback as soon as possible. Eeesh, my backlog really is something else at this point...

[pavera]

I've played the first three levels so far, and I gotta say that these maps rule. Layouts like these are right up my alley: open, damaging floor everywhere, great use of vertical space, just really solidly constructed all around. Hard too, I might have to play through this without pistol starts at first. I love it! Thanks for making it.

[Biodegradable]

Congratulations on your release, Cannonball! This looks very cool. I look forward to you tearing out my spine and beating me with it. ;^P

[roadworx]

oh boy, it's yet another release by cannonball that's nearly flawless, what a surprise. ugh, he's so predictable ^/s

 

 

 

srsly tho this is super good, i'd love to see it become something a bit bigger. my only criticism is that it's absolutely not early plutonia/alien vendetta levels of difficulty, this kicked my ass lol

[cannonball]

2 hours ago, roadworx said:

oh boy, it's yet another release by cannonball that's nearly flawless, what a surprise. ugh, he's so predictable ^/s

 

 

 

srsly tho this is super good, i'd love to see it become something a bit bigger. my only criticism is that it's absolutely not early plutonia/alien vendetta levels of difficulty, this kicked my ass lol

The intention was to get to the 11 map mark (I had another map half finished), but with the completion of UDINO near and the unexpected involvement in another project then this will be on hiatus for a while.

I tend to agree with that last bit, it is difficult to relate the difficulty in a specific way. Maybe I should have said hard but not a “Ribbiks after a bad day at the office” hard.

[Shepardus]

Awesome, more maps from cannonball! I've only played a bit so far but am looking forward to the rest!

 

Possible bug report: Sector 139 in MAP02 is marked as damaging floor but it doesn't seem like it should be:

Spoiler

 

[Valboom]

I've played two maps so far, great gameplay. Thanks!

[Doomkid]

Pretty difficult for me, but really fun and attractive maps here as well.. Loved the Mucus Flow-ish visuals of 04, and just found it to be generally really nice to look at. Nicely done! Looking forward to a finalized version some time in the future.

[Firedust]

Always happy to have more Cannonball maps! Although I thought you were working on more maps for another Doom II wad you made a couple years back (sorry, I cannot remember the name).

[Steve D]

Lessee . . .

 

Pistol-start against a swarm of enemies, including mid-tiers? Check.

 

Headless-chicken gameplay until you get some actual weapons? Check.

 

Player-hostile barrel placement? Check.

 

An overall sense of snarling, merciless cruelty? Check.

 

Yep, it's a cannonball mapset. ;)

 

Map01 - Portway -- I died about 6 - 8 times, but my only real complaint is that it's smooth sailing once you get the SSG. Prior to that, this was a run 'n gun slugfest where I was usually getting bullied by the bad guys. I took the shotgun/chaingun leg, so I'll replay it and try the SSG leg first. I think the map might feel a bit less front-loaded if I do, because once I got the boomstick this battle was all over, and the exit combat was anticlimactic. I honestly did not want that much easing off. Also worth noting is that the exit is not clearly marked. 

 

So let me play the SSG leg.

 

Okay, this was actually much harder, even after I grabbed the secret Blue Armor. That's one helluva trap for the SSG! Of course, I made it harder for myself by going after the RL, too, but I hadn't killed the sniping Chaingunners across the way at this point, so that proved to be a good way of shedding HP. ;D  It doesn't help that you only get 4 rockets, but you do get a chance to chokepoint a bunch of monsters at the radsuit platform.

 

Overall, a fun, fast-paced, good-looking map that could use a bit more carnage at the end.

 

[loveless]

this now marks two days in a row of solid content.

[loveless]

this ledge in map 2 is a pain sector.

[Vile]

Played through it earlier and quite enjoyed it, nice work!

 

Expanding on what Shepardus and loveless said above, the sector below in the slime was not a pain sector, iirc.

Edited June 18, 2021 by Vile

[sapphics]

awesome set so far! had alot of fun with the first two maps. can't wait to finish the rest.

 

on the intermission screen after map 02, effluence is misspelled good sir! :)

[loveless]

map 4 has a HOM here 

[SLOTH MARINE (CB)]

very plutiona-ish 

 

pretty cool

 

nice job :)

[cannonball]

3 hours ago, Steve D said:

Lessee . . .

 

Pistol-start against a swarm of enemies, including mid-tiers? Check.

 

Headless-chicken gameplay until you get some actual weapons? Check.

 

Player-hostile barrel placement? Check.

 

An overall sense of snarling, merciless cruelty? Check.

 

Yep, it's a cannonball mapset. ;)

 

Map01 - Portway -- I died about 6 - 8 times, but my only real complaint is that it's smooth sailing once you get the SSG. Prior to that, this was a run 'n gun slugfest where I was usually getting bullied by the bad guys. I took the shotgun/chaingun leg, so I'll replay it and try the SSG leg first. I think the map might feel a bit less front-loaded if I do, because once I got the boomstick this battle was all over, and the exit combat was anticlimactic. I honestly did not want that much easing off. Also worth noting is that the exit is not clearly marked. 

 

So let me play the SSG leg.

 

Okay, this was actually much harder, even after I grabbed the secret Blue Armor. That's one helluva trap for the SSG! Of course, I made it harder for myself by going after the RL, too, but I hadn't killed the sniping Chaingunners across the way at this point, so that proved to be a good way of shedding HP. ;D  It doesn't help that you only get 4 rockets, but you do get a chance to chokepoint a bunch of monsters at the radsuit platform.

 

Overall, a fun, fast-paced, good-looking map that could use a bit more carnage at the end.

 

 

I always appreciate the construction of a new pelt mountain. Hopefully this grows at a rapid pace in the upcoming maps. 

 

Thanks for the feedback so far everyone, regarding map02 - Well I usually make one clanger and this might be it (I will probably get proved wrong on this). I am not sure how I managed the random pain sector generator in that one. I will wait for further feedback before releasing a fix for this (Hopefully they will all be fixed in one go).

[loveless]

map 6 has a teleport line in front of the exit that doesn't seem to do anything other than put the player back in front of the exit path.

[Arrowhead]

Great to see new Cannonball content!! Loved your 'Speedy Episode' and the 'Return to Hadron' series, too. This looks like it will be a blast!

 

Congrats on the release! :)

[Pirx]

excellent plutonic episode... and omg that atomcaco  :D

[Pirx]

9 hours ago, Steve D said:

Lessee . . .

 

Pistol-start against a swarm of enemies, including mid-tiers? Check.

 

Headless-chicken gameplay until you get some actual weapons? Check.

 

Player-hostile barrel placement? Check.

 

An overall sense of snarling, merciless cruelty? Check.

 

Yep, it's a cannonball mapset. ;)

 

 

 

 

yeah, one has to play these aggressively. defending some corner won't get one far.

[Tarnsman]

Very cool stuff. Enjoyed this a lot.

 

Good effective usage of smaller monster counts while still being threatening.

Love me some dickish damaging floors.

Wormhole stuff in the last few maps gets a big thumbs up as well.

[Steve D]

14 hours ago, cannonball said:

I always appreciate the construction of a new pelt mountain. Hopefully this grows at a rapid pace in the upcoming maps. 

 

Here, let me hand you the Pelt Everest you earned in this map. :P

 

Map02 -- Sphere of Effluence

 

I got myself in serious trouble by trying to force my way up the stairs guarded by a Chaingunner/Shotgunner crossfire -- which incidentally guarded a very dickishly placed Medikit I really needed! >:( -- and backed on one side by a Manc and the other by an HK plus another Sergeant, and with roaming Imps and Lost Souls trolling me. I surrendered an epic skyscraper of pelts before I gave up and found another, much easier path at the end of the tunnel that takes you into this fight through the back way, and also gives you a Rocket Launcher. At this point, the map became reasonably easy. Given that, I'd actually prefer more health and ammo at the Chaingunner/Shotgunner Stairway of Death so I could force it, and make the easy path a little tougher so I don't feel like a dumbass jagoff piece of shit for not finding it earlier. ;D

 

I started pretty well, going the SSG route, but failed to find the secret Zerk at that point (the only secret I found). I suffered a statistically significant but acceptable number of deaths as I probed this nonlinear labyrinth, until I ran out of ammo and health on the aforementioned Chaingunner/Shotgunner Stairway of Death. Somewhat excessive use of darkness, IMO, made the pathing needlessly obscure, especially the Red Key path. The damaging floors were a constant source of worry, but IMO you provided sufficient radsuits to deal with them. I think the health/ammo starvation was a bit extreme at first, but then, that's what these maps are all about. The overall construction is great with tons of fiendishly-designed crossfires. Extra points for using the God-tier Agony Rhapsody as BGM. 

 

I shudder to think how many pelts you'll snatch in the next map. ;D

[P0NYSLAYSTATION]

Awesome mapset so far, I was going to upload a complete demo playthrough but I've hit a wall in map 4 so I'll upload the second half when I've made more progress. I'm really enjoying the circuit layouts with multiple options for getting the good weapons in most maps, I did find a couple of very minor missing textures though, which you can see in the demos

Edit: Oh yeah, and I accidentally left map 1 because I didn't see any exit signs, but I guess I should have realized from the starting teleport that the mapset was doing plutonia exits

atomic demos maps 1 to 4.zip
apologies for the stuttering in the first 2 files, I forgot to turn -longtics on

[GarrettChan]

UV pistol starts with saves

Port: DSDA-Doom v0.19.3 -complevel 2

Total IGT: 1:04:13

Personal Difficulty Evaluation: 1.7 (1 = Plutonia, 2.4 = Alien Vendetta) [I'll put in the exact middle because of what you said :P]

Personal Rating: 7.8 (out of 10)

 

A compact but super deadly mapset for sure. My favorite is Map06, but I'm not a fan of Map05 and Map08.

 

Almost all the maps have kind of hot starts that force you to run around in the middle of lots of enemies. I don't mind that, but some of the maps pushed this a bit too hard by not having enough resource to go around actually killing everything. Map05 utilize pain sectors to urge the player. That's also fine by me, but it seems the encounter is a bit too much IMO. Also, the end fight of Map07 has a Cyberdemon with lots of minions, but you're only given 1 Cell Pack and 3 Rocket Boxes. That's not really enough, so yeah, it had quite a lot of resource problems to me. Map08 is the toughest in this problem. I had no enough ammo for almost everything. Although I'm not the best in efficiency, but I'm pretty confident that I'm pretty good at it. Those are the main difficulty of the maps.

 

It's sort of sad that the maps will be way more fun when I know the map and doing a max run of it, but probably I won't really have a chance to revisit them.

Edited June 19, 2021 by GarrettChan

[GarrettChan]

Oh, forgot to put some actual things for Map06:

 

1. Probably close Sector 301 because right now you can fall through from the west side. I thought it's my problem falling down from the west but I actually saw somebody did that, so that's why I reported that.

 

2. The Baron ambush around Sector 75, I personally would say the Barons should be triggered when the play fires instead of flagging them with ambush.

[cannonball]

1 hour ago, GarrettChan said:

UV pistol starts with saves

Port: DSDA-Doom v0.19.3 -complevel 2

Total IGT: 1:04:13

Personal Difficulty Evaluation: 1.7 (1 = Plutonia, 2.4 = Alien Vendetta) [I'll put in the exact middle because of what you said :P]

Personal Rating: 7.8 (out of 10)

 

A compact but super deadly mapset for sure. My favorite is Map06, but I'm not a fan of Map05 and Map08.

 

Almost all the maps have kind of hot starts that force you to run around in the middle of lots of enemies. I don't mind that, but some of the maps pushed this a bit too hard by not having enough resource to go around actually killing everything. Map05 utilize pain sectors to urge the player. That's also fine by me, but it seems the encounter is a bit too much IMO. Also, the end fight of Map07 has a Cyberdemon with lots of minions, but you're only given 1 Cell Pack and 3 Rocket Boxes. That's not really enough, so yeah, it had quite a lot of resource problems to me. Map08 is the toughest in this problem. I had no enough ammo for almost everything. Although I'm not the best in efficiency, but I'm pretty confident that I'm pretty good at it. Those are the main difficulty of the maps.

 

It's sort of sad that the maps will be way more fun when I know the map and doing a max run of it, but probably I won't really have a chance to revisit them.

I must apologise regarding map05, there were a large number of last minute changes I made to it. This probably meant that I didn’t rebalance the map well enough. In accordance to these changes. This will be altered accordingly. 

[GarrettChan]

22 minutes ago, cannonball said:

I must apologise regarding map05, there were a large number of last minute changes I made to it. This probably meant that I didn’t rebalance the map well enough. In accordance to these changes. This will be altered accordingly. 

No worries. I still enjoy most of the maps and I don't mind cruel maps at all.

[P0NYSLAYSTATION]

On the topic of ammo scarcity, from the maps I've played so far I enjoyed how much I had to economize my use of each weapon throughout the whole of each level, I did think it was maybe a bit too scarce in some maps but at the same time, I'm probably not at the skill level this mapset targets, so a better player could probably have made much better use of what was available