[Release] The Refinery

[Tormentor667]

After a development time of almost two years, it is finally done. The Refinery has reopened, relive the classic experience, the fast-paced action with a essence of Doom 3's creepy experience - the best of both sides. So what is it?

A reinterpretation or remake of Doom's original E2M3, heavily inspired by KDiZD. The whole map has been enlarged, restructured, new areas have been added, old ones enhanced and the whole thing has been turned into something more real and creepy. Expect something totally different in a place that you already know to a very good extend.

Download the pk3 right now, get your doom.wad warmed up (not Doom 2 compatible) and start off your GZDoom for a experience that pushes the GZDoom engine to its limits!






Please read the text file for further credits, information and stuff that needs to be read! By the way, playing it twice in a row reveals some secrets and differences for those who love more action and harder difficuly, you will also get a reward for playing it twice ;)

[printz]

And the community rejoiced.

[Memfis]

The first room already lags quite a lot for me. (Pentium Dual-Core E5300 2.60GHz, 2 GB RAM, GeForce GTX 550 Ti) Any ideas why? It doesn't look that complicated.

[printz]

This suffers from what many GZDoom maps do: Doom 3 darkness, no flashlight at me. It has a much more horror aspect than either E2M3 or KDiZD. Some of the shotgun soldiers are quite, if not alarmingly dangerous.

[killer2]

I've played a couple of rooms. It looks very cool, but I'll play it later at night. The outside room makes me not see anything at this hour.

If I may have a small demand, could you make a version that uses Perkristian's smooth weapon animations? It would mean a lot to me.

[Tormentor667]

killer2 said:

If I may have a small demand, could you make a version that uses Perkristian's smooth weapon animations? It would mean a lot to me.

No, not planned, sorry.

[killer2]

All right then. You could try to do this for future maps though. I don't think it suits your advanced maps to have the crude normal weapon animations.

[SFoZ911]

Looks Delicious, i'll give it a run.

[Vermil]

With the first variant of the map, I felt neither the ambience/atmosphere, music or game play went together.

It's not something that's easy to explain; while each was mostly competent by themselves (a couple of issues in each IMO), they felt like they were aiming for different things and ruined each other.

I'll see what the second variant is like later.

[killer2]

Is jumping allowed? Because I've been able to jump to two areas that apparently shouldn't have been accessible by jumping.

[Death Egg]

Vermil said:

With the first variant of the map, I felt neither the ambience/atmosphere, music or game play went together.

It's not something that's easy to explain; while each was mostly competent by themselves (a couple of issues in each IMO), they felt like they were aiming for different things and ruined each other.

I'll see what the second variant is like later.

While enjoyed the map quite a bit, I'll have to agree, there was something off about how everything meshed together. Not enough to ruin the experience, but still a bit noticeable. I think a better track could've been chosen/composed, personally, something more subtle.

[Tormentor667]

killer2 said:

Is jumping allowed? Because I've been able to jump to two areas that apparently shouldn't have been accessible by jumping.

Yes it is, and now you wasn't ;)

[Gez]

Maybe he was. You can go through the grated windows around the room with the nukage and the green armor.

[DooM_RO]

Fantastic map, it's a great combination of Doom 3 and Doom 1. I loved it to bits.

[killer2]

Gez said:

Maybe he was. You can go through the grated windows around the room with the nukage and the green armor.

Yeah, that's one of the places indeed. The second one is near the broken bridge. There's a place with a repeater zombie in it that can be jumped to which should only be accessible from a keyed door. This way, you can essentially skip a portion of the map.

I managed to finish the map on the first run, but I'm still trying on the second (damned vores). The gameplay is pretty good, but nothing exceptional. The enemy colors are a bit repetitive (different shades of brown, gray and dark red mostly).
I liked the Soulsphere secret (which is, for some reason, not tagged as a secret), but the others felt lacking in content (armor bonuses? 3 rockets? a pistol ammo box?). The one in the lava is especially counter-intuitive, since you lose at least 30 hp for a box of rockets.
The idea of a second playthrough in the same map is new and interesting, albeit you could have at least added new secrets.

As far as music goes, I really liked the track, but as some people said it doesn't really benefit the map. I think a remix of E1M2 or E1M3 would have been better. Lastly, i'd like to add that this map remembered me a lot more of E1M2 and E1M3 than of E2M3 (the only thing I managed to recognize from there was the lava area with the cacos).

Lastly, I'd like to ask where can I find the cool music remix that was used, and perhaps more by the same author.

[boris]

Nice map, very atmospheric. The end is rather anticlimactic, though. I guess that's ok since it was supposed to be a map in an episode.

[Tormentor667]

Thanks for the feedback to everyone of you, so which music would you suggest then? (I'd prefer tracks from http://www.perkristian.net/game_music.shtml btw :))

[DooM_RO]

So is this going to be in TSOZD? When I got it, I thought this was some sort of demo. Speaking of which, how is progress on the mod? The thread hasn't seen any activity for about 1 year.

[printz]

DooM_RO said:

So is this going to be in TSOZD? When I got it, I thought this was some sort of demo. Speaking of which, how is progress on the mod? The thread hasn't seen any activity for about 1 year.

I understand that Tormentor667 had to quit TSoZD, probably due to differences. So in the end, you'll have two Z2M3 variants to compare :)

[Tormentor667]

@DooM_Ro - No, this map won't be part of TSoZD

[Dutch Doomer]

Great visuals, good music. Always nice to see what you can achieve with zdoom mapping. Didn't made a serious attempt at completing the map without cheating because I dislike zdoom maps. Its the first zdoom map I played in months, good to know my love for classic doom is as strong as ever.

[Tormentor667]

Thanks a lot dutch, glad that you liked it :)

[printz]

dutch devil said:

Great visuals, good music. Always nice to see what you can achieve with zdoom mapping.

Yeah, people should be doing more ZDoom maps :)

[esselfortium]

Copy Information : You may use material from this project for your own
projects as long as you credit the respective creators

You may upload this file somewhere else as long as
this file stays included as it is

You are encouraged to base projects on this resources,
setting and scripts

Tormentor, I definitely did not agree to this when I reluctantly allowed you to use your traceovers and other near-identical replicas of unreleased TSoZD resources in this wad.

[negke]

Phew, just finished it.
It looks great. The attention to detail is fantastic, many little things that add up. I didn't remember the original level, and only noclipped through after playing this remake. And well, not much to work with really, but I did recognize the similarities, so good job on filling the (huge) blanks. I thought the lighting felt just a tad too dark and flat in many areas, but it was okay overall. The screenshots on the website are pretty much pitch black, though (no tft screen).

Gameplay, on the other hand, was what seems to be typical torment667 - very hard and unforgiving for the most part, bordering on frustration. I "only" played on Normal skill and died quite often - even though I did expect it to be at leaast as tough as KDIZD. Problem is that most of the Realm667 monsters are simply overpowered and generally not very fun to fight, especially when used in hordes. The vores and the new chaingunners in particular are just terrible. Also, I don't like ambushes that can only be survived (at least without taking heavy damage) with prior knowledge. Admittedly, I met several of the monsters for the first time, which further complicated the situation.

I got lost for little while at one point, because I missed the switch after the boiler room; it could have been marked better. Although, a bit silly of me, too.
Performance wasn't so nice, quite choppy fps all the way through. But I get that in most large GZDoom levels.

In case you're interested in watching my noobness, I recorded a demo of my first playthrough (GZDoom 1.6). Not actually sure if it worked with all the saving and restarting, though.

[printz]

neg!ke said:

Gameplay, on the other hand, was what seems to be typical torment667 - very hard and unforgiving for the most part, bordering on frustration.

Makes sense, his nickname is Tormentor after all.

[jerrysheppy]

neg!ke said:

I "only" played on Normal skill and died quite often - even though I did expect it to be at leaast as tough as KDIZD.

How did you choose a skill setting in the first place? Or do you mean you only played it the first time too?

I agree--this map was lovely to look at, not as much fun as it could have been to actually play. Most of the demonic enemies and the weaker humans were fun to fight, but the harder humans (asg guy, rocket guy, exploding bullets? guy) punched so far above their weight class and were so unforgiving in ambushes that I had to savescum my way through a lot of portions of the map.

The NewGame+ mode was a neat idea but I just IDDQDed my way through it to see what was different because it looked like unfun shit to actually play.

I'm really looking forward to TSOZD now and I hope stupid drama doesn't derail/delay the project.

[Gez]

The NewGame+ run is actually more fun, because you get bigger guns sooner (and you can actually get the plasma rifle and BFG; though personally I saved my cells until the last stretch where I BFGed down some vores and a massive horde of shadows).

The zombies are overpowered -- quad shotgun, auto shotgun, minigun, repeater, railgun, and rocket launcher! Plus the Z-secs with their player-strength chaingun and shotgun. They're small targets, which do not contrast strongly with the geometry, which snipe at great distances, attack often, deal a lot of damage, and are hard to distinguish from the comparatively harmless pistol and shotgun guys. The result is a level design that encourages save-scumming.

[printz]

Don't tell me that the Skulltag SSG zombies weren't included.

[Marnetmar]

jerrysheppy said:

I'm really looking forward to TSOZD now and I hope stupid drama doesn't derail/delay the project.

Torm isn't working on TSOZD.