DTWID: Project is done, check the release thread

[MegaDoomer]

This is a decent first alpha build overall but even without playing I have some notes. I didn't play the levels, unless I note otherwise, so I probably won't notice things like out of style, but I've taken a quick skim at them all. I'll go by level (an unmentioned level means I couldn't see anything to note against it):

E1 (full episode):
I'd really, really suggest fitting stewboy's map in. I played it and it was awesome.

E1M1:
Too big for a first level.

E1M3:
Already in the archive as nukedump.zip. Since there were so many E1 maps made for this, I don't see reason for using one released separately.

E1M4-E1M7:
Either no skill setting implementation (M5, M7) or only very light skill setting implementation (M4, M6). This is critical IMO as ID always did full implementation of difficulty settings.

E2M1:
No skill settings.

E2M3:
Too small and too little skill setting implementation.

E2M6, E2M7:
No skill settings.

E3M2:
Seems too simplistic and polygonal.

E3M4, E3M5:
Quite light on skill setting implementation. Also I played E3M5 already and it had one point (near the start) in which you had to open an untextured door (as if it was a secret) to proceed. I might include 40oz's E3 map instead of this.

E3M7:
This is a level I played already; would recommend a few more rad suits in the blood maze area (with yellow key switch). I ran out of suits on my play and had to cheat.

E3M9:
No skill settings.

BTW here are the maps in this alpha that I've already played, just for reference: E1M5, E1M7, E2M2, E2M9, E2M6, E2M8, E3M3-E3M5, and E3M7. These are the ones I'd most likely notice things on that aren't just basic (things like out of style, etc.).

Of course any one else's comments prior to mine are worth considering.

Well as a final statement I think a lot of the maps in this alpha are or look to be very good; I hope the best and for upcoming alphas to only be better! :)

[Mr. Freeze]

Just finished episode 2. Not too many issues at all, except for the following (relatively minor):

E1M1: Too convoluted. Needs to have a few hallways snipped.

E1M2: Too busy. Size is fine, but the large monstercount takes away from the original's ambiance and makes the music sound misplaced.

E2M8: Radically different texture theme isn't as interesting as the original's. Plasma rifle feels out of place.

E2M9: The MUS in this track is incorrect.

Other than that, fantastic work guys!

[valkiriforce]

It's cool to see this is coming together soon as well.

[Xaser]

Mr. Freeze said:

E2M9: The MUS in this track is incorrect.

It shouldn't be. Are you loading the music wad before the main wad? DTWID_X.wad has replaced music lumps for E2M9 and E3M9 because the originals didn't fit at all with those particular maps, so you might be hearing D_VICTOR instead of the new music if they were loaded out of sequence.

[Marnetmar]

Now that I think about it, the intermission screen music seemed a bit boring.

EDIT:

Rough layout of a concept E3 map, the idea is that it's an E3 map designed by John Romero.

[NaturalTvventy]

heh, apparently a beta got released. Sounds like e1m8 needs work. once things start getting close to the end, if someone could let me know if it makes the grade, and I'll clean it up. Thanks for doin' this Xas, and for including three of my maps! Alas, I played all these maps as they were being released, so I don't have much energy to play through them all again. But I bummed around it a bit, and it's really come out well guys. Props to all. This thing's pretty epic. Proud to be a part of this project.

NT

Edit: Oh yea, and thanks to Xas again for cleaning up my e2 and ax'in the alpha textures. That must'a taken some work.

[Reisal]

Quite possibly a funky node building, rebuild the nodes and see if that happens again. I never had the issue arise in OpenGL mode because frankly I don't bother testing in software.

What nodebuilder was the entire set of maps rebuilt with?

[40oz]

Just played through Knee Deep in The Dead, just wanted to post some thoughts before I forget. It's nowhere near perfect, but it's not without some serious potential. I really loved it so far. My biggest gripes so far are that the earlier maps, (particularly M1, M2, and M4) while pretty good, felt really congested. Lots of really tight hallways and dinky rooms, i found myself bumping into lots of stuff and made what would ordinarily be easy fights kinda difficult. I think that's the biggest problem with the episode thus far.

I think that would explain people's lack of interest in E1M1. It's got some pretty cool views, chock full of secrets, very nonlinear, and it's small. I just found it to be a little too mazey and complicated for a starting map. It follows all the rules but I think a simplified remake of that map is in order.

E1M2 was pretty cool but i was really frustrated when I found the exit room but only killed less than half of the monsters on the map. There should be a way to lengthen that map a little. I think E1M2 is also way too early for floor candles and torches. If those were pools of blood and floor lamps, that would be more appropriate Also an additional way to get at those monsters that were in that part of the map where you have to fall in the nukage river would be cool. I think if that one-sided door could be opened from the outside too it would be golden.

E1M4 felt kinda frantic to me. A lot of the texturing (but not all of it) seemed a little weird and didn't make much sense. Also the starting room surrounds you with monsters which is a little reckless for an E1 map, and there's a lot of cramped rooms and hallways which make the map a little irritating.

From E1M5 on I felt right at home. High fives to everyone who made those maps. I think the only things I could suggest are to add a couple extra health bonuses and armor bonuses for authenticity.

I think E1M8 looks pretty awesome but the Tricks and Traps style crumbling floors are a real slap in the face. Also I felt really panicky when I had to deal with those hell barons before i had picked up any weapons, I'd suggest lesser skill levels provide you with weapons before encountering them (unless you did that already, I haven't tried the lesser skill levels yet)

I'm sure these maps, with some work, could easily replace the maps in my iwad with no problem. Maybe after some playthroughs ill do some nightmare runs. :) On to the shores of hell!

[Moustachio]

I suggest for Hellbent to add the current maplist to the first post, and update it as it changes.

EDIT: Here's the latest revision of my E1 map. The map is now on the E1M5 slot and takes place in mid-E1:

http://matt534dog.webs.com/matt534dogE1M5.wad

[Kracov]

xaser: So far I've only tried out E1M1, and it's rather messy/complex. Try stretching out the hallways or structures so that it flows better and is less maze-like. I know it's alpha, but this is just in case you aren't aware of certain issues with the levels.

[40oz]

finished playing through the whole thing up until E3M7, can't figure out how to get the yellow key. E3 could use some tweaks, maybe in level order, but I really think E2 needs the most work.

[Memfis]

Episode 2 FDAs with -fast: http://www.doomworld.com/vb/post/993996

[Antroid]

Only played through ep1 so far, generally i like it, but i must say i can't remember which map was which having just beat it. Feels like not a single map has any individual features that can set it apart. I can remember only several places in the whole episode. And the music didn't sound very doomy or just plain good, i thought. e1m7's in particular felt like music from heretic.
But i'm looking forward to playing ep2 and ep3 since ep1s tend to be that boring usually.

[Hellbent]

Well, all this alpha business has inspired me to continue work on my e1m* that I started months and months ago. :) Hopefully I'll make enough progress on it to today to have something to show by this evening.

[Marnetmar]

Kracov said:

xaser: So far I've only tried out E1M1, and it's rather messy/complex. Try stretching out the hallways or structures so that it flows better and is less maze-like. I know it's alpha, but this is just in case you aren't aware of certain issues with the levels.

I think stretching out the hallways would only worsen the problem. I'm actually the one that designed the level, Xaser just did some retexturing.

I'm designing a completely new E1M1 and I'm nicknaming it Dumbo...You'll see why shortly.

[The_MártonJános]

Some comments:

E1M3 has liquid flat in the same height as the flats surrounding it. It's not "Id" at all, but if there were solutions like this, that was all E3 and no more.

E1M6 and E2M4 both have ridiculously long colortracks of locked doors, E1M6 on the blue, E2M4 on one of the red doors.

E2M1, E2M9, E3M5 and E3M6 have high amount of obvious homages. E2M1 on almost the whole, even the concept of the madatory blue and the secret red key. E3M5 is particularly "homageing off" almost the entire E3 - Daimon ought to be a huge E3 fanatic. Same for E2M9 in terms of E2, but I don't count it as severely, because secret levels are an other deal. E3M6 hides its ones more, but the most obvious is still visible: itself, like E2M1.

I also saw that musictracks were used intentionally as the rules of homoeopathy. The tracks were all sinisterly similar to the original ones. Also, they remained to be exactly on the same maps as UD (Seen the E2M3 one pretty much!!), except for the E1M6-E3M6 pairing. I suppose it was an intentional feature, but still made me a bit conscious about "homageing".

Marnetmar said:

I'm designing a completely new E1M1 and I'm nicknaming it Dumbo...You'll see why shortly.

The same reason E3M2 was probably nicknamed as "Palm"?

[Marnetmar]

Cell said:

The same reason E3M2 was probably nicknamed as "Palm"?

Yep.



Funny thing is, it was completely unintentional until I got to this point.

[esselfortium]

E1M3 is extremely homagey: even if it were in a different mapslot, it'd still look and feel like a differently-scaled rearrangement of a bunch of scenes from E1M3.

What's with the use of LITE5 as step textures in some of the early maps? I can't remember seeing this in E1, and more importantly it just looks plain ugly.

I really like some aspects of E2M1 (the one-way fireplace/teleporter is crazy cool!), but agree that its inspiration is probably still too obvious. I wonder how it would be received if it were retextured to replace most or all of the STONE2, and possibly even moved to a different slot (E3M9 maybe?).

The direct homaging in a lot of the music tracks also seemed odd to me, as it accentuated rather than masked things that may have seemed like homages in the maps themselves.

The main issue I noticed with E1M1 was that it didn't really seem simple, open, or impressive enough to be a first map, particularly keeping in mind how important it was that id Software use the first few seconds of gameplay to succinctly demonstrate what set this game apart from everything that had come before it.

[C30N9]

Is there enough unhomeagy maps in the submission list?

[Marnetmar]

esselfortium said:

The main issue I noticed with E1M1 was that it didn't really seem simple, open, or impressive enough to be a first map, particularly keeping in mind how important it was that id Software use the first few seconds of gameplay to succinctly demonstrate what set this game apart from everything that had come before it.

What do you think of this?

[esselfortium]

Not very much, to be honest. No windows into other areas or outdoor parts to set the location, no significant and obvious height variation within the scene, and the odd-shaped tekwall sky window just looks weird.

[Ghastly]

Oh, an alpha (well, technically a beta. Alphas are developer-only, betas are released to non-developers).

I'll play through it and give a critique on the gameplay and especially secrets. Probably only a few maps at a time.

[Antroid]

First death on e2m4, that map is awesome. But playing keyboard only with no mouse has it's drawbacks - i was positively murdered by that one baron that caught me off-guard. Well, actually, almost murdered: i had several hp left and some hitscanner finished me off. I haven't got the sheer will to start this map from the beginning right now so i'm taking a break, but i'm really looking forward to solving the secret of the hidden blue doors.
e2m3 and e2m4 were awesome (e2m4 - so far) but didn't really feel id-like at all. You know what though? I don't really care, because the simplistic style is still there and that's all i really cared for in this.
edit: actually, e2m2 and e2m1 were great too. E2 seems a lot more interesting than e1, though maybe i should try e1 again sometime and actually look for secrets (i did find e1m9 though).
But still, getting to play this beta was a treat: this is the single project i care for on doomworld (maybe unloved 2 also) and i didn't play almost any of the standalone released maps.

[Du Mhan Yhu]

Having fun with this so far, made it to E2M3. Awesome job guys!

[Marnetmar]

esselfortium said:

Not very much, to be honest. No windows into other areas or outdoor parts to set the location, no significant and obvious height variation within the scene, and the odd-shaped tekwall sky window just looks weird.

I actually agree, I was a bit iffy on it myself. What about this?

[C30N9]

OMG DETAILED DELETE DELETE0

It is good, but I think there is something wrong.

[Marnetmar]

C30N9 said:

OMG DETAILED DELETE DELETE0

It is good, but I think there is something wrong.

Perhaps it's the skylight, maybe I should replace F_SKY1 with a brick texture and knock the brightness down a bit?

[C30N9]

Maybe. But I'm not wise.

[Marnetmar]

I realized the brick ceiling wouldn't work so I did this instead:



Does that look any better?

[esselfortium]

It doesn't really look anything like an E1 map, or really like an IWAD map in general.