Operation Hydra - Released!

[Obsidian]

Operation Hydra is a ZDoom wad I have been working on for about 6 months: it's been difficult, but I think it's finally paid off. Bear in mind that Hydra is heavily inspired by Ultimate Simplicity and some of Torm's work, so hopefully you dig that sort of style. :P If this wad proves successful enough I might document the adventures of the other two marines, so stay tuned. PM me about any queries you might have about the wad.

Download here.

Enjoy!


-Obsidian

UPDATE: Updated link. Will update IdGames entry when servers aren't in maintainence.

[Memfis]

Cute, reminds me of times when Austerity was my favorite wad. Ended up switching to its map01 music, just didn't feel right without it. :)
My favorite part were of course these stained-glass-like ceiling lamps (top right screenshot), a very smart idea in my opinion. The transition after the 2nd key felt a bit awkward, can't make it go smoother? And I think the map would really benefit from at least one or two bigger areas but I guess you haven't learned how to make them yet. :)
Thanks for taking me back to the past for 10 minutes.

[plums]

That was pretty good. Ammo on UV was low enough that I never felt exactly comfortable, but high enough that I didn't have to punch out anything. It seemed a little short; given that you said you'd spent 6 months on it and the textfile said "3 levels" MAP03 was a bit of a letdown. But I'm slow as molasses about making things so I understand.

If I wanted to criticize anything, it would be that the monster placement seemed a bit haphazard at times (though I'm having trouble elaborating on why it felt that way), and the little spider monsters didn't look so hot. Also the silent teleporters in the lift areas were a bit jerky. But that's fairly minor stuff.



Enjoyable overall. More would be welcome.

[Magnusblitz]

Pretty good. Like plums, ammo was tight but I never ran out (I was down to only bullets at the end of the mastermind fight though). The first lift was really jerky for me, the second one didn't have a problem though. Probably not much you can do about it though. Not sure what the point of the rapid-fire zombies were... they didn't really add much in difficulty. And that FF7 music always makes me feel like I need to blast through the level super quickly, heh.

Couple things:
- This side of the base has a SKY texture for some reason (the other side has the METAL1 one)
- At the very least, the rock textures in the second level really need to be vertically aligned. I'd suggest just picking a new rock texture as well, since the one you have doesn't horizontally tile well at all.

[Demonologist]

I've always been a fan of Simplicity/Austerity and consider them one of the best ZDoom maps around, so I'm always interested in other works following their path. In this case I can't say your wad resembles their aesthetics much after all, feels different, but still - it's pretty neat on its own, if only too short. So please make more!

[Obsidian]

@Magnusblitz Thanks for noticing the bugs: I thought I had 'em all. :P Personally I kind of liked the rock texture, but if you've got one you think would work better by all means let me know.

@Everyone else Thanks for the feedback. =D I'll see if I can get a few more opinions before I upload to IdGames.

[Tormentor667]

Very cool work :) Saying that I don't like it would be definitely ironical but I think you did a good job. Though the third map was disapointing...

[Obsidian]

Tormentor667 said:

Very cool work :) Saying that I don't like it would be definitely ironical but I think you did a good job. Though the third map was disapointing...

Heheh, I bet you weren't expecting it though. :P

[ShadesMaster]

Yes, all in all a good, small mapset!

I like the attention to little details and such - personally I wish there were less 90 degree walls and more odd angles such as DooM E1 had, but great work! The boss at the end was tough!

[Obsidian]

BOO!


Updated the OP with a new download link: obviously the cat's out of the bag and now everyone knows this is for vanilla. Doomkid92 noticed that Hydra doesn't quite work in version 1.666, so I renamed all the sprites in DeHackEd: I forgot that you had to do that. //_-

[MegaTurtleRex]

I tried running this in Chocolate Doom but I get:

W_CacheLumpNum: 3214029 >= numlumps

Any ideas of what's wrong?

[Gez]

MegaTurtleRex said:

I tried running this in Chocolate Doom but I get:

W_CacheLumpNum: 3214029 >= numlumps

Any ideas of what's wrong?

Wiki says: "This error may especially occur when adding flats to a DOOM PWAD incorrectly, as it causes the game to construct invalid negative lump numbers (in other words, F_START is after F_END)."

[Obsidian]

Will fix when I get to my laptop.

Head---|
       |
      \|/
     Desk

EDIT: Link updated.

[MegaTurtleRex]

oh, I hope you don't ruin your desk, coz I get a new error now

R_InstallSpriteLump: Bad frame characters in lump 2920

Only on Chocolate Doom though... but I like Chocolate Doom :(

[esselfortium]

Try using -merge instead of -file to load the wad. This will make Chocolate Doom emulate the use of an IWAD merging utility like DEUSF.

[Obsidian]

-merge hydra.wad
-deh hydradeh.deh

Make sure you have that and you should be fine.

[MegaTurtleRex]

hmm now I am getting "R_InitSprites: No Patches found for REVE frame C"

thanks for the help guys but it's obviously something fubar on my end, I'll just ZDoom it :)

[Obsidian]

I swear I tested it in Chocolate Doom before I uploaded this one!

[Megamur]

ShadesMaster said:

personally I wish there were less 90 degree walls and more odd angles such as DooM E1 had

That was an issue with Simplicity as well (and a bunch of other modern maps, frankly). Simplicity was also overly symmetrical, to the point that you could actually predict monster locations, because they'd be mirrored exactly on the opposite side of the room. Hopefully these maps are a little more "free and loose."