Episode 1 Replacement *RELEASED!*

[Foodles]

Hello,
recently I have been working on a full episode 1 replacement for ultimate Doom which has now been released onto idgames archive. However I decided to post on Doomworld to try and get some feedback and criticism about the levels in order for me to become a better mapper. Remember this is not a remake of E1 but I have tried to recreate the feel of the original maps. It should work on all and any source port as it was designed to run on vanilla Doom but I have only tested on prboom+ and zdoom. If you find any bugs please tell me, although any found should be fairly minor such as texture misallingments as it has been throughly playtested.

Here is the link:
http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=16048

[DeathevokatioN]

Ahhhhh!!!! Awesome, I'll play it during this week and let you know.

[Bobsklim IV]

great wad, haven't seen an E1 replacement like this before I enjoyed playing it.

[Hellbent]

pretty good.. too many square rooms--overall the maps are a bit sprawling compared to the originals which are compact--some of the rooms and slime pools were a bit too sprawling. There were moments of cool architecture and atmosphere and creativity, but then the levels would be bogged down by too many rooms.. The final confrontation was a little underwhelming for my feeling.

[Philnemba]

Its nice to see that some people still prefer to make episode replacements for Ultimate Doom around here so I'm going to play this tonight and will give you some feedback tomorrow.

[Karnage]

I love E1 replacements, I'll give it a whirl right now actually, here goes!

[Philnemba]

Played through the whole thing on UV last night and its really good. Although it was very easy there was certain traps and surprises that did caught me off on certain maps but nothing 99.9% of people here can't handle. The only tiny little thing that bother me was that there's a rocket box on the lift before the 4 barons but there's no rocket launcher in that map at all(unless your not doing a pistol start). Still Plays very well like all the other classic e1 replacements(I can go far to say that its just as good as some of the old ones like Dawn of the Dead or Fava Beans)and I highly recommended anybody playing this.

[D_GARG]

i tested it, good monster placement but it was too predicteble, and you really didnt have to fight to get new weapons, i liked that you could get suprised by sniping imps and shotgunners :D.

the structures were ok, but often i get the feeling of that the maps dont really have character, you amy find some things that you remeber from the originals but its the same floors and other textures with the same light levels, dont really get the feel of the originals, but still, this can be improved :)

[Steve D]

I really enjoyed this mapset. I love the E1 feel better than any other, and I thought you captured it very well. I liked the big rooms and the sprawling maps. Texture choice was excellent, too. The overall design was very clean.

I do have some quibbles -- there was not enough outside action. Also, it was shockingly easy, much easier than the famously easy Fava Beans, especially the first 2 levels. I'm not that great a player, but I played through on UV and it seemed to me there was enough health and ammo to kill 800 monsters per level, but with only about 200 - 300 monsters present in the hardest maps. Just to liven things up, I started taking hits deliberately and began to miss on purpose.

The most dangerous enemies were the swarms of demons encountered from time to time. I think I got killed once prior to Phobos Anomaly, and that was because of demons. Perhaps I'm a masochist, but I usually like to get killed, or almost killed, about 3 times per level, as opposed to once in 8 levels. That said, I still enjoyed the gameplay. The pressure was relatively constant and there were some fairly intense moments here and there. There were plenty of traps for a little shock value, and the secrets were often a real pain to find, in a good way. I think I managed 100% secrets twice, but usually got 50 to 66%.

Worth noting is that there wasn't anything silly or unfair in these levels, just good solid clean design. If you ever need another beta-tester, drop me a line.

[phi108]

Good job. Fun maps, great speedy gameplay.

[Super Jamie]

Dude, this was pretty damn good!

You've definitely got classic styling down well, not too much detail and not too little. The levels meander around very well and your use of both small and large spaces is great. You repopulate visited areas well and your secrets are not glaringly obvious but findable if one looks for them which is a good balance. At times I got a little lost, especially when I had to backtrack to a key door or when a key was a little hard to find but overall not too bad.

I loved your monster placement. For me, the biggest challenge to a Doom 1 PWAD is making the limited Doom 1 monsters/weapons not feel limited. This is something you accomplished with flying colors AND did a whole Episode of AND you didn't even touch Cacodemons or Barons! I really enjoyed the way you used Sergeant snipers to take chunks off the player's health, and alot of your earlier Demon traps really kept me moving and not knowing what was going on until they were all dead - something very hard to accomplish as Demons are usually really unintelligent and predictable enemies. None of your traps felt unfair or cheap, this was good honest mapping.

I felt there was way too much ammo around, and the secret Soulspheres can be really overpowering against such weak enemies. One of the first two Soulspheres should have been a Backpack. That being said, I died on E1M4 and was thankful for the surplus of ammo around until I got back up to speed. Not taking secrets into account, your health/armor balance was pretty good and even a little challenging in parts, mostly due to the large gaps between Green Armor pickups, so good work there.

The biggest bummer was probably the lack of Rocket Launcher after the first one. There were only a few Rockets around but still, not much use without the weapon. Don't forget pistol starters when placing your weapons.

Overall this is great, I'm being picky here because you asked and because it's a good quality episode with only a few minor things wrong with it. If this is one of your first releases, you have something to be very proud of here. This gets a good solid 4/5 from me. I don't think there have been many worthwhile releases this year, but I'm definitely glad I spent the time playing this one!

Well done and thank you so much for your work.

[ptoing]

I played the first 5 levels +the secret level so far and I have to say this is good stuff.

2 Small nitpicks:
That gearshift looking floordetail in M2 was a bit annoying as far as running over it goes while fighting.
The room in M4 with the lowering middlebit and lots of blue carpet floor seems to have an open sector or something. There is a bit of floorbleed from some angles.

Other than that texture alignment could be better here and there and one thing I would suggest is giving monster closet opening linedefs as well as secret doors "secret" flags. That way people will not be able to see that there might be something opening later or actually seeing it is a secret on the map.

Keep up the good work :)

[40oz]

I've always wondered what it would be like to convince John Romero to make us some more Doom maps, and I think this is pretty much as close to it as I could get.

I love when good mappers come out of nowhere and make great stuff. Please tell me you plan to make more maps in the future :)

[ArmouredBlood]

Good maps, kinda hard to pistol start cause the ammo balance doesn't seem set up for it, but doable. Unfortunately it seems a door in the 3rd map is untagged, causing major problems in -complevel 2. It's the gray door to the left of the imps on crates and past the medkit and 2 stimpacks beside another door, think it's a yellow key.

[HackNeyed]

Good wad. I had fun, thanks!

[scalliano]

Just played through this, have to say it's a fun episode with a truly "classic" feel throughout. I particularly like the way you've paid homage to some of the key areas from EP1, such as the server banks in E1M7. Just a couple of niggles though - I blasted through it in one session without dying once. The red key door in E1M5 is only marked as such from one side and there's a door in E1M7 that can only be opened once from either side. Also, I found the secret level first time, something I NEVER manage. Those issues aside, I enjoyed it a lot. Nice to play a set of levels with no gimmicks or daft levels of detail. Good stuff, and keep it up!

[Foodles]

Thanks for all the feedback/comments, glad to see that most of you enjoyed it, the broken door in E1M3 is non essential (you can get round it other ways) and will work in ZDOOM, its broken because the linedef is set to SR Door open and not DR and the sector isnt tagged. The levels are easy but I didnt want to fall into the trap of monster spamming and I didnt want to break into cacodemons/lost souls/barons.

I am working on a new project atm but it will be a few months before it is finished, will post details nearer the time.

[dannebubinga]

Very nice set of maps! I really liked them. They had a very good Ultimate Doom feeling to them.

I would just like to see some more things like lights and corpses etc. Some rooms are very lighten up but don't have any lightsource. So... Some techno lamps etc would make the maps even more enjoyable.

Keep it up!

[Foodles]

dannebubinga said:

I would just like to see some more things like lights and corpses etc. Some rooms are very lighten up but don't have any lightsource. So... Some techno lamps etc would make the maps even more enjoyable.

unfortunatly there is only one type of "techy" light in ultimate doom, the floor lamp, and I didnt want to overuse it

[dannebubinga]

Foodles said:

unfortunatly there is only one type of "techy" light in ultimate doom, the floor lamp, and I didnt want to overuse it

Yeah that's right. Didn't think about that... But still, more things! :)