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Remilia Scarlet

[Release] Kill, a 25 year old megawad for Doom 1 (v1.2.1)

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23 minutes ago, Argenteo said:

I wall grabbed that red keycard in the room with the imp pillars and then feel weird the progression.
I fell over the yellow key. (wall grab accidentally).
There's some invisible blocking geometry there in that corridor.
The portal ending looks strange.

Also got stuck in that closet with the rocket launcher.
I played in EE.

Thank you for this!  I appreciate it.  I've gone through and fixed all of these.  I was a little hesitant to change the red key in E1M4, but I suppose it is way overly cryptic that you're supposed to try to jump (you get teleported, or you should, anyway).  So I've made it a bit clearer.  This is one change I likely would have made years ago anyway, so I'm fine with it.

v1.1 will be out in a day or two.  Just waiting to see if there's anything else I missed.  So far it'll fix the above issues, a confusing softlock in E1M2, some missing map titles for E2 and E3, and the BFG not shooting the intended sprite (it's a "Super Flamer" in Kill - don't ask, I don't even know anymore).

I'm glad to see that people are enjoying it!  :D

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1 hour ago, Remilia Scarlet said:

lol, if I'm not mistaken, this is about one year older than Mordeth.  So if I can get this out after 25 years, hopefully Mordeth will follow :-P

 

Yes, Mordeth was 1997.

 

Honestly for as old as it is, the shots look halfway decent. Can see the beginnings of your later attention to detail starting to take root. Nice work.

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Episode 2 is incredible. The levels are tense, contemporary, and entertaining.

 

I want to gush about ... *hits head and passes out from the excitement*

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18 hours ago, Remilia Scarlet said:

And so, after about 25 years of development, Kill is finally ready for release.

instant Mordeth award, i believe. ;-)

 

p.s.: sure, i should read the whole topic before posting. it is impossible to not mention Mordeth here.

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v1.1 is now out!  See the OP for the download links and a list of changes.

 

Overall I plan to make very, very few changes to this because I want to maintain its historicity.  So for each potential change, I imagine that it's 23 years earlier and I'm getting ready for a release.  Knowing my approach to mapping and style back then, would I have still made the change?  If I would, then I go ahead and change it.  If not, it's an unintended feature.  And definitely nothing major, like "oh this map has had its progression changed", because that would change the character of it all.  So just small minor fixes here and there.

 

ruxbhy.gif

 

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Damn! You posted the new version just 30 minutes after I went through all the levels! Talk about timing LMAO. After skimming your changelog, off the top of my head after having beaten your set it's nice to see that you fixed the softlock on E1M2. Maybe you could've kept it as a softlock if you made it obvious that it was a trap, just to not deviate as far from your original design intentions as it's really important to you (and the spirit of the project). Also the addition of level names were nice too. I hope one of the final updates will be to add level names as patches for their intermission screens.

 

There were some glitches I didn't see your changelog mention fixing. In E3M4 by the yellow door, the door was a HOM revealing one of the bruiser brothers. In E2M7 in the hell area to the far northwest there was one pillar that didn't match the others. There may have been more minor glitches I've run into and maybe small suggestions that I can't quite remember, but the upcoming video will have it and maybe someone else can mention it as well. That's about all the concerns I have about your update!

 

As for my experience, I played this through PrBoom+ 2.6.1um. I do have a video of my blind playthrough uploading as we speak, but I forgot to properly configure my video settings so it's a hefty file that'll take a bit to upload. I probably won't be able to edit this post until tomorrow. However I do hope the upcoming video will give you an idea of how your maps are played even if it is out of date. The video will also contain some attempts of my first impressions on your set.

 

It's really cool to see how you pulled off your levels so well from the 90's and it was easy to tell when you decided to finally finish the project! There were lots of experimental gimmicks, some for its time and some even timeless that I'll specifically point out during the video. All of the levels have a really pleasing, nostalgic vibe to them and it's really impressive. This is wonderful history right here. If I had any problems with your set, it would honestly be the SLIGHT increase of health you've given your enemies lol. It was so subtle I legitimately thought the blockmap hated my guts that session, but at the same time it really changes up the dynamic as imps and demons will take a couple more shotgun blasts (I had a pinky take four directs! FOUR!). I'm not a fan of small tweaks to enemies as it felt a bit unfair and I would keep forgetting that they're tankier and my uncontrollable muscle memory would get me killed. But I still don't want you to remove/adjust it especially since this wad is part of your history. I still can't stop laughing at myself for being so incompetent against an imp who only got a 10 health increase, but to me while I was playing that difference was HUGE.

 

Thank you for uploading this! It was quite the experience to play through them and it was neat downloading a time capsule and seeing it slowly change to become more modern as you improved in mapping! Since I've never played your maps this is going to be neat personally for me as well since I'm gonna be checking out your newer maps.

 

Do you have any cool trivia to share about what it was like building the map back then, and if there was any special or stubborn rooms you really struggled to pull off in KillEd in particular?

 

Edit: Also forgot to mention I dun goofed and pistol started at some point in E3, but through the use of Godmode for 1 section (E3M4 lift, across the yellow door, I REALLY wish there were monster blocking lines for the cacos), I made it :D

 

Edit2: Video! Timestamps are in the description.

 

Edited by UndeadRyker : video!

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Just played the first episode...

There is something really special in this WAD, I don't know if this is some sort of false nostalgia from a time where I wasn't born or something, but this is quite strong...

 

I am 21 years old and I discovered Doom 5 or maybe 6 years ago when I was randomly searching for a "good FPS" (it's actually what I Googled), a link sent me to an old release of Brutal Doom (funny, because I was first thinking "Brutal Doom" was the original game title as I never heard of "Doom" before), then I fastly became a huge fan of the Vanilla version because it felt that the balancing was more elaborate and it remembered me Duke Nukem, a game that I actually played when I was around 7 years old.

Now I'm here, enjoying all of this incredible content the Doom community is creating... But this WAD... 25 years old... I just can't believe this game is that old and still that good over the years.

Thank you for sharing this, because it has a much deeper meaning than a simple video game, that of a life...

 

Btw, what is the E1M1 music replacement ? I stayed in the level for half an hour just to listen to it xD

 

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48 minutes ago, UndeadRyker said:

There were some glitches I didn't see your changelog mention fixing. In E3M4 by the yellow door, the door was a HOM revealing one of the bruiser brothers. In E2M7 in the hell area to the far northwest there was one pillar that didn't match the others. There may have been more minor glitches I've run into and maybe small suggestions that I can't quite remember, but the upcoming video will have it and maybe someone else can mention it as well. That's about all the concerns I have about your update!

Looks like there'll be a v1.2.  Thank you!  I'll see what's going on here and apply some fixes.  I'll likely sit on v1.2 a few days longer so that reports can come in.  I'll also look at the cacos in E3M4 and see if that's a mistake or on purpose.  I'm kind of a jerk sometimes in my levels, but I used to be even moreso back then, so it's likely on purpose.  But I'll check it out and see if it warrants changing ^_^

 

49 minutes ago, UndeadRyker said:

Do you have any cool trivia to share about what it was like building the map back then, and if there was any special or stubborn rooms you really struggled to pull off in KillEd in particular?

God it's been so long since I've made most of these... levels back then took me a LOT longer than they do now.  Part of it was just being a teenager - school, dates, and kicking back to play games with friends whenever I could.  But the editors were also more limited, and so things just took longer.  I think episode 1 took me about 1 to 1.5 years to finish in total.  That's just going by when I know I started it (1995/1996) and the release date of a PS1 game called Codename: Tenka (more on that in a second).  I of course got faster as I got more skilled, and by E3 I was pumping out maybe a map every 1-2 months, depending on inspiration.

 

Let's see... In the early days, the whole "flats always align to the 64x64 grid" thing pissed me right off.  That's why there's some misaligned flats in places, especially with teleporters.  I understood how the flat alignment worked, but I would build rooms without taking it into account, go to add a teleporter, and be like "well shit" because it wouldn't fit with the 64x64 grid.  Sometimes I could adjust the room, but not always.  Aligning walls was also a PITA because there was no 3d visual mode in the editor.

 

Another thing: level editing back then tended to make you really good and fast at counting by 8.  Or at least I did since I usually did sector heights in multiples of 8.

 

There wasn't too much different about KillEd from what I remember.  Mainly string changes so that items matched what they were in-game, but also a few commands were changed.  I couldn't tell you much more because I haven't looked at that source code in close to 20 years (I'm not even sure where it is lol).

 

Uhh... miscellaneous bits of trivia on individual maps:

Spoiler

There's one room in E1M7 (the one with the slime and the pillar with "Poison" on it) that was directly influenced by an old PS1 game called Codename: Tenka.  It's a semi-copy of a room out of that game (I have no idea what level anymore), adjusted to fit in with my Doom level.

 

E1M3 was a pain in the ass to build.  I really liked the starting area, but I had absolutely no idea where to go with it after that.  So that one took me quite a while to build.  The maze area in it is also of note.  You start out standing above it on purpose so that you can reveal a good amount of it on the automap, that way it's easier to navigate once you jump down into it.  The former humans on top are meant to keep you up there longer, and also just to provide some fun by mowing down a horde with a chaingun.

 

E1M4 is the very first time I ever encountered the visplane error, specifically in the chess board area.

 

E1M9 is the VERY first level I built from scratch ever.  It was originally for Doom 2, and absolutely none of the sectors were properly closed.  This was something that was very easy to do back in the DEU days.  It's 100% flat precisely because I didn't know to properly close sectors.  I did close them for Kill so that the HOM wouldn't be ugly as sin, though.  The project it was for was called Trouble in Shaft 9 and was going to take place in a UAC mine shaft.  It never got past that one level.

 

E1M9 is also the start of my habit of using gimmick/unserious levels for my secret levels.  I figure they're secret, they should be fun and maybe incite a giggle or two.  Like the secret level in Wolfenstein 3D episode 3 :-P

 

E2M1 is supposed to take place in a UAC base on Planet-X, specifically in the Medical Bay.  The opening area was purposely designed to force you to move out and find a weapon ASAP.  However, I soon realized that once you went down the laundry chute (yeah, it's a laundry chute), there was a chance the player could have missed the chaingun.  So I added a second down there.

 

The opening to E2M6 is my favorite in the game.  The music combined with the all-silver look was just SO COOL to me back then.  This is one map I'm likely to eventually update and rebuild for a future project.

 

E2M9... I really like Kraftwerk, and listened to them constantly back then.  It's just a gimmick level.  Originally the level was going to be very different, where it was like the player had been miniaturized and put inside a pool filtration system.  But I had problems figuring out how I would actually make a convincing (for the time) level that looked like the inside of a pool pump and filter.  All of this stemmed from the fact that my first job (which I loved) was at a swimming pool supply store, and I had a pool as a kid.

E3M1 is my second favorite opening scene in the game, again because of the visuals + music.  Sadly the map's progression suffered because I had no idea what I wanted to do after the opening.  That first dark hallway with the baron trap was meant to be scary, and may have been my first attempt to create a horror scene.

I have memories of talking to Essel over AOL IM while building E3M5.

E3M7 was where I originally stopped working on Kill and put it on the backburner.  The original design had a huge outdoor castle planned, but I never could get it to look how I wanted.  In hindsight, the frustration of building that castle is probably why Kill ended up sitting on my hard drive for so long.  For the final release, I axed the castle (it was crap anyway), rearranged some rooms, and filled in the blanks.  That's probably why it feels different from the rest - it's the only semi-modern map of mine that's in Kill.  As it happens, I actually prefer to pistol start E3M7...

E3M8... Kill was originally going to have four episodes, just like Ultimate Doom.  Sometime during episode 3 (back when I was still actively developing it), I built a boss level for E4M8, but then decided just to keep it to three episodes soon after.  For the final release in 2021, I decided to repurpose E4M8 as E3M8 since it was already finished, and was still technically part of Kill.

 

49 minutes ago, Briøche said:

Btw, what is the E1M1 music replacement ? I stayed in the level for half an hour just to listen to it xD 

I'm not 100% sure, but I believe it's called Harpmosphere if the metadata in it is correct.  Back in the day I had downloaded a midi pack simply called "goodmidi.zip", probably off of AOL or something.  It had a bunch of high quality MIDI files, one of which was called "FUTURE.MID", which is this song.
 

28 minutes ago, princetontiger said:

Is there a secret exit in ep2? I don't think there is since the e2m9 map is just a stage.

No, there isn't.  You have to warp to E2M9 to find it.  See above for the story behind that level.

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I get strong nostalgic vibes from playing this.  I think the best way of describing it is that these feel like exactly the kind of maps that I had wanted to create in the late 90s, but I never mastered any of the level editors well enough to be able to pull it off.  I had a few goes with WadEd, but it kept crashing too much.

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18 hours ago, Remilia Scarlet said:

lol, if I'm not mistaken, this is about one year older than Mordeth.  So if I can get this out after 25 years, hopefully Mordeth will follow :-P

Imagine that in 2022, Mordeth just kinda comes out entirely finished

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Finish the second episode also pistol start without problems. Much more complicated than the first chapter. The midi selection is awesome. I still like the first one more, it has more doomcute things. :)

 

Some notes: 

Spoiler

EoSyU1Bm.pngKdGQv76m.pngNgNET08m.png

yrInmwxm.pngjTDcxGMm.png

 

In a secret where you push a switch (also there's some shotgun shells), the floor rises and locks you in. I noticed some poor shotgunners die also. :)
In that sewer, e2m6, there's no damage on it. (Intended???)

Before the last battle the portals look funny.

Played on Eternity Engine

 

We are the machines!

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3 minutes ago, Argenteo said:

In a secret where you push a switch (also there's some shotgun shells), the floor rises and locks you in. I noticed some poor shotgunners die also. :)
In that sewer, e2m6, there's no damage on it. (Intended???)

Before the last battle the portals look funny.

Played on Eternity Engine

Thank you again!  All fixed for v1.2, which will be out after another day or two.

 

I think that button was originally intended as a trap, where if you did press it, you got killed if you didn't leave quickly enough.  I remember thinking up questionable design decisions like that.

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i bet this is how you imagined the scene back than. now it finally looks right! ;-)

Spoiler

kex03w.jpg

 

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Just now, ketmar said:

i bet this is how you imagined the scene back than. now it finally looks right! ;-)

You have NO idea how happy I am to see stuff like that :D  I think I always had a penchant for moody atmospheric things in Doom, and these days I can do them.

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FJhBk3C.png

 

The lighting on e3 is amazing, clearly it was the best episode. On each map you descend more and more into hell. The starting rooms always gets you moving.
A lot of fun. I love the angel attack midi.

 

Some notes:

Spoiler

Xzye3n2m.pngpHtQJV6m.pngB0VENqdm.png

5t9Gj9am.pngtLjyVgUm.png

 

There's a secret exit but the secret map is empty :( .
Thanks for releasing these maps. I enjoyed them a lot. :)

 

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Ok, v1.2 is now up!  This is a final update to fix the remaining issues.  I don't expect to issue any more updates for this, so consider this done done ^_^  Any further changes are likely to go against what I would have done back in the day, either from them being outside my technical skills back then (like proper graphics for level names, nicer looking end portals, etc.), or against how I designed things back then.  The changelog and updated download links are in the original post of this thread.

 

Thanks for all the positive feedback!  I'm glad you all enjoyed it :D

 

2 hours ago, Argenteo said:

The lighting on e3 is amazing, clearly it was the best episode.

...

There's a secret exit but the secret map is empty :( .

Thanks!  Yeah I think E3 is when the importance of lighting really started to sink in with me and I started to pay attention to it even more.  Like, you can kinda see the start of it in some areas in E1 and E2 (likely inspired by Eternity, which I played a lot of back then), but E3 is more when it "clicked", so to speak.

 

And yeah, there's no secret level in E3.  I forget why I chose to do this, but it was part of the design.

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52 minutes ago, Remilia Scarlet said:

And yeah, there's no secret level in E3.  I forget why I chose to do this

it's a secret now.

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Been enjoying this wad a lot. 1990s stuff like this is very much my jam! However, I have discovered a bug that makes it impossible to complete E1M4. The teleporter at the end of this narrow walkway doesn't work, making it impossible to grab the red key and trapping you in this room. My testing shows this is a regression introduced by 1.1, as the original release works fine.



 

Screenshot_Doom_20211010_215019.png

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3 hours ago, Jewellds said:

Been enjoying this wad a lot. 1990s stuff like this is very much my jam! However, I have discovered a bug that makes it impossible to complete E1M4. The teleporter at the end of this narrow walkway doesn't work, making it impossible to grab the red key and trapping you in this room. My testing shows this is a regression introduced by 1.1, as the original release works fine.

Well crap... I definitely messed something up in trying to "fix" it lol.  Thanks, I'll get this fixed properly soon.

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hi, been playing in dsda-doom!  e1m4 softlocks.  red key can be easily bump-grabbed but the teleporter from that room, the one beyond the chasm platforming, does not work.  the door opposite the yellow key door does not work, too. 
 
i'll skip the map and continue on, not sure how useful my feedback would be since this is released.  will say, the weapon and sound changes have been pretty fun.

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2 hours ago, loveless said:

red key can be easily bump-grabbed but the teleporter from that room, the one beyond the chasm platforming, does not work. 

Which version of Kill are you using?  If it's 1.2, then i already know of the broken teleport and will release 1.2.1 today to fix it .

 

I didn't know about bump grabbing back then so I'm not considering that an issue. I wouldn't have known to fix it that long ago.

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57 minutes ago, Remilia Scarlet said:

Which version of Kill are you using?  If it's 1.2, then i already know of the broken teleport and will release 1.2.1 today to fix it .

 

I didn't know about bump grabbing back then so I'm not considering that an issue. I wouldn't have known to fix it that long ago.

yep, 1.2.

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Ok, I thought v1.2 was the last one, but I accidentally introduced a regression on E1M4 (as mentioned above by a few people).  Derp :-P  So v1.2.1, which fixes that regression, is now out.  Updated download links are on the the original post.

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Playing this now (v1.21) and in E1M4, it appears that if you attempt to take the red key route a second time, you get locked out of accessing the "baron pit reminiscent of The Chasm" and thus softlocked.

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