Hadron - The remake of cbspeed.wad

[cannonball]

A while back the doomworld megawad club decided to play some of my stuff in the form of Concerned and Thy flesh turned into a draft excluder. Considering the first episode of concerned actually originates from 2012 I thought I would for fun remake this episode with the increased mapping experience I had. Unfortunately it took longer than expected and in typical fashion I couldn't finish this during the clubs playthrough of my wads. But better late than never I guess.

So most of the maps have been redesigned based off the old map layouts though in some instances I simply scrapped the map entirely and built a new one from scratch. Some of the music is the same as cbspeed.wad, but there have been some changes here and there as other tracks fitted the mood for the new maps.
The story for this is simple, you are a second marine who visits the site in Switzerland a few days after the previous protagonist had entered and unsuccessfully saved the world. Your job is simple, to shut down the portal within the facility, trouble is the area has gone downhill with the pleasant hills, mountains and lakes now flooded with toxic waste and debris.

Download - Limit removing (complevel 3)
http://www.mediafire.com/download/txx64bw0galdg5k/Hadronbeta.zip

Youtube gameplay videos can be found here
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCTDAFuhpg3OyoK4J3oHwFaPOE7BjZcYP

Maplist
E1M1 - The Breach
E1M2 - Nukage disaster
E1M3 - Toxic treatment
E1M4 - Withered Gardens
E1M5 - The IMP Crowd
E1M6 - Gateway lab
E1M7 - CB Reactor INC
E1M8 - Collider control
E1M9 - Prototype

Enjoy, I will likely upload this to IDgames at the end of the week, so if anyone can find any major bugs then please report them.
Oh and I promise to make a decent contribution next time :)

[mouldy]

Man, I started blasting through this on continuous thinking it would be a quick game before bedtime. Then e1m6 happened... I don't think I had a single death up to that point, but that map sure made up for it. Insane jump in difficulty there :)

These maps are well fun, shit flying everywhere and always somewhere to run, until you unleash the caco swarms on the later maps of course. I'd say its a big improvement on the original maps, but they feel so different in gameplay that its like playing a whole different wad really, much more open and chaotic.

In case you wanted it here's the recording I made of my run, though its probably about 2 hours long and will get pretty dull when I start getting my arse kicked around the 6th map.
http://www.mediafire.com/download/jpya8ms0jy78bv0/hadron-mouldy.lmp

Oh yeah, I couldn't exit the final map, I killed all the barons but couldn't find a red key anywhere...

[General Rainbow Bacon]

Did anyone else read this thread title as "Hardon"? But seriously, cool maps dude.

[kmxexii]

this looks k-rad

[cannonball]

mouldy said:

Oh yeah, I couldn't exit the final map, I killed all the barons but couldn't find a red key anywhere...

I should have tested the trickery I placed at the end of the map, turns out it didn't work outside of complevel 3 so I jigged it around to work now.
http://www.mediafire.com/download/dspi4k58q9mxvyp/Hadronbeta2.zip
There was also some blocking lines in E1M7 which I have removed as they were unintentional.

[Demon of the Well]

Just finished playing this. Here's a pack of skill 4 first-run demos, don't know if they can rightly be called "FDAs" since I've played the original CBSpeed stuff. I think I died once (and hard) in E1M3, managed to get through the others, albeit with a close call or two.

Fun stuff, I was most struck with the redesign of E1M3, although I still didn't feel the big sifting tanks were used enough for combat. E1M5 and E1M6 went over very well, too, I would say E1M5 is probably my favorite in this pack. Was a bit surprised that of all the maps E1M2 was the one you scrapped/redesigned entirely, but it's a good replacement.

Oddly enough, even though you simplified and de-mazeifed the design in E1M7, I still managed to get a bit lost in it for a time, looking for a tucked away switch to open access to the red key encounter. Not sure how I feel about that, it's practically more hidden than some of the actual secrets, not something I expect in a Cannonball map. Guess that doesn't make it 'wrong', though. I will come out and say that I missed the absence of the big nukage/pillars area from the original E1M7; the two lock-in fights and the mess of monsters around the pillars were perhaps the original episode's greatest action highlight, and the outdoor red key area in the new one doesn't really compare, greater aesthetic nicety aside. Might also consider making that cyberdemon out there not deaf.

Oh, yes, and E1M8 definitely needs more rockets.

[Ezepov]

Nice wad

[cannonball]

Cheers for the feedback everyone, consider this to be the final version (bar any critical things I might have somehow managed to break).
http://www.mediafire.com/download/ctk75j6osa17lho/Hadron.zip

So changes
A small extra area added on E1M2.
E1M3 -The first secret extended to include a beserk pack and an alternative route up to the top tier. The sequence to get the secret blue key has been changed to make it less obscure but the route is a little different now. Also the room which contains the switch to lower the yellow key has been redesigned (hopefully DOTW will like it).
E1M5 - No gameplay changes made but an extra secret added
E1M7 - Fences around the reactor core have been removed, also some doors have been altered to essentially allow monsters to come and go as they pleased. An extra secret has also been added.
E1M8 - More rockets added and the secret has been bulked up somewhat. Also I have made co-op a little more interesting.

I will upload this to IDgames later.

[Caleb13]

I must say I enjoyed playing through this mapset, even though I've usually found Doom 1 gameplay rather dull compared to Doom 2. But this one proved me wrong, I had to keep myself on my toes most of the time (I played on UV with 100% kills). I didn't die, but that was mostly luck, as I had 2 or 3 very close calls in E1M6 and E1M7. Ammo was rather plentiful, I never had to use fists or chinsaw after E1M2. However, there are some bugs I noticed in Zdoom 2.8:

E1M1: This one could use a bit more ammo. I didn't find any secrets and I had to kill a few monsters with fists. My health once dropped to about 20% because of it, too.

E1M7: The red key cyberdemon (thing 452) shouldn't be deaf. In fact, I completely missed him during normal play and I had to actively search for him in order to attain 100% kills.

E1M8: Critical bug: the red key dummy didn't work, I had to use IDKFA to exit the map. Edit: I tried using -complevel 3 with Zdoom to be sure, but that didn't help either.

E1M9: When you enter the main circular room, all 8 sargeants are stuck (sector 121 etc).

[cannonball]

Caleb13 said:

I must say I enjoyed playing through this mapset, even though I've usually found Doom 1 gameplay rather dull compared to Doom 2. But this one proved me wrong, I had to keep myself on my toes most of the time (I played on UV with 100% kills). I didn't die, but that was mostly luck, as I had 2 or 3 very close calls in E1M6 and E1M7. Ammo was rather plentiful, I never had to use fists or chinsaw after E1M2. However, there are some bugs I noticed in Zdoom 2.8:

E1M1: This one could use a bit more ammo. I didn't find any secrets and I had to kill a few monsters with fists. My health once dropped to about 20% because of it, too.

E1M7: The red key cyberdemon (thing 452) shouldn't be deaf. In fact, I completely missed him during normal play and I had to actively search for him in order to attain 100% kills.

E1M8: Critical bug: the red key dummy didn't work, I had to use IDKFA to exit the map. Edit: I tried using -complevel 3 with Zdoom to be sure, but that didn't help either.

E1M9: When you enter the main circular room, all 8 sargeants are stuck (sector 121 etc).

Cheers for the feedback, I have managed to fix all the issues bar the one on E1M9 as I never encountered the issue in pr-boom myself on either the default compatibility or complevel 3. Oh well it isn't a major issue if those sergeants are sitting ducks :P

[DeathMetalAccountant]

Cheers! It's been a while since I played the original so I'm afraid I can't comment much on specific improvements but I will say this one definitely plays at least as well and the visual are great. Also I'm playing it using Brutal Doom and somehow managed to get through the first four missions with minimal deaths and made it from start to finish on E1M4 without dying once. (Maybe because it's the level I remembered most from the original so I had a fairly good idea of what to expect and where to go). There were several areas - the yellow key switch room in E1M3 for example - where the horde combat began, proceeded, and ended exactly as it always should (with me yelling "oh shit!", firing 260 minigun rounds at everything that moves, and finding doomguy surrounded by dozens of dead bodies with 1% health, respectively.) E1M5, however, looks like it may be where BD compatibility goes to die and I will have to restart in Vanilla.

Overall awesome and definitely as good as (likely better than) the episode it replaces.

[kmxexii]

review is up. thanks for going back and taking another run at this.

[vadrig4r]

Playing through this now, have to say that's one of my favourite E1M1's I've ever played. Loved the style and the pace.

[scifista42]

I don't know how this got overlooked for the entire time this wad is released, but:

E1M9's red keycard is UV-only, making the map unbeatable on lower difficulties!

[baja blast rd.]

Cool mapset. Some of the design ideas remind me of Lunatic, despite there not being many overt similarities on a purely visual level.

[Jimmy]

I came here to report the same thing scifista mentioned above as I just ran into it.

I also found it possible to leap out of the rearmost window of the train in M3's secret exit area. This makes it impossible to progress legitimately because impassible lines are positioned between the tracks and platform, so you're stuck.

Apart from those two minor but annoying niggles, this mapset was highly enjoyable and definitely well-crafted. M6 and M7 were kind of dicks to me even on HMP is all. :P

[scifista42]

I honestly didn't like this wad's gameplay due to too high monster density, which led me to constantly have my finger on the fire button while running around in chaos and bumping into monsters and being randomly hit by hitscanners and occasionally projectiles, and I didn't enjoy that. On UV, this high monster density was present in all maps since E1M1-M2. On HMP since E1M3-M5. On HNTR since E1M5-M7, but early maps were too boring due to empty-ness instead. The E1M8 "boss fight" was pretty tedious on all difficulties too, all it was about was constantly finding good positions to fire rockets against a sea of Barons without blowing oneself up, which was uncomfortable + took a long time + it could be played safe once half of the Barons were dead (at the cost of even more prolonged time). Sorry.

[Suitepee]

I definitely need to play this sometime, as I enjoyed DraftEX and ConC.E.R.Ned since cannonball makes Ultimate Doom maps fun.

[cardboard42]

scifista42 said:

I don't know how this got overlooked for the entire time this wad is released, but:

E1M9's red keycard is UV-only, making the map unbeatable on lower difficulties!

Just ran into this too. Was trivial to fix myself but this should probably be updated at some point. People do play difficulties other than UV!

[Tango]

a link to the wad on the idgames archive, for anyone like myself who almost downloaded the old versions off of the mediafire links in this thread:

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom/Ports/g-i/hadron

[scifista42]

It's the /idgames version with the game breaking missing key bug.

[cannonball]

Oh deary me, well this is Casali level of stupidity. My bad, I can get a fixed version up before the New Year, though it will have to wait a few days until I return home though.
Sorry about that.

[cannonball]

Right I have fixed the two issues found (Red key on E1M9 and the blocking lines on E1M3). I have also found a bug on E1M2 whilst not gamebreaking had resulted in a stuck monster on HNTR and HMP.
Quick link
http://www.mediafire.com/download/w9ovdmqtil3fftv/Hadron%282%29.zip

Hopefully the update will be put on idgames very soon.

Cheers for the spot guys and gals.