Bloodstain finally out!

[Dgemie]

Gez said:

MAP20 is from Dimensions of Time, which in turn credits it simply to "AOL" (since it's not from Commander Keen, Rise of the Triad, or TNT: Evilution).

I think it's from GoldenEye 007.

[Larzuk]

Dgemie said:

I think it's from GoldenEye 007.

Yeah, this song was used in the map Caverns.

[Gez]

Larzuk said:

Yeah, this song was used in the map Caverns.

Found it as water-caverns.mid on a site called khinsiders.

[Terminus]

Been playing this gem for the past few days and I'm having a blast.
I found the aforementioned Map20 HOMs near the yellow key, as well as this bleeding sector in map22, played with GZDoom.
This is where I stopped for now, I can only say that ammo shortage often comes from missing vital weapons or taking the wrong path but if you get it right or go back to find the correct route early enough before things get nasty, the maps flow very well.
Gotta say this is one of the more remarkable megawads I've played lately, hope to see some more stuff from you :D

[Andy Johnsen]

Pipicz - I just completed a two-player COOP session over a privat server running Bloodstain.

I must admit to being skeptical initially since I recalled your Plutonia 2 efforts as visually pleasing but a bit of a mess layout and gameplay wise.

Safe to say you have made huge progress since those were made, because this is absolutely wonderful. I've been longing for a megawad that manage to combine awesome, immersive aesthetics with solid gameplay that does not go completely overboard with the overdone slaughter styled gameplay.

Except for the last five maps or so, Bloodstain is just solid, hard, fine-tuned gameplay set to beautiful and functional surroundings - you've made a classic here. The variety between maps and themes is great, and although I probably favored some of the green cavern maps and the hellish fortresses, very few maps at all come off as bland fillers. There's a few coop blocking issues and other nitpicks in some of the maps - those wouldn't take much work to fix.

This megawad deserves a lot of hype, highly recommended. I hope to do a more in depth review of it at a later point :) Thank you for the entertainment!

[Fonze]

I got the chance to play this beauty of a mapset last night and from what I played this thing does indeed deserve a lot of hype. Idk why you didnt include more screenshots in the OP, cause this thing was absolutely gorgeous. MAP30 had me just about drooling over the fantastic detailing and for an IoS battle, I found it to be a lot of fun and a nice, fresh take on the norm. MAP07 did have a strange SM placement, but it's not like the iWads didn't do stuff similarly and since I didn't have time to play every level I can't really fault this map set for that.

Great job, once again man; I look forward to your next work!

[Dime]

With that review Fonze, downloading ASAP!

[Pipicz]

Thanks for the positive feedback, I'm glad you enjoyed it, guys! :-)

Andy - Regarding those coop-related bugs, I'm aware of a few significant ones (such as map25 final arena entrance), but there certainly would be some lesser ones that aren't quite observable without proper coop testing (and, tbh, no real coop testing has been performed from my part). As mentioned in the txt, Bloodstain is primarily for SP play, but I'm glad you've tried the coop run too. :-)
I'm definitely going to fix the major ones in the future version; however, as for the minor ones, I don't think I'll be able to catch everything. Of course, if you have any particular bugs in mind, please let me know and I'll try to fix them. Or if you'd be OK with that, I could join for a coop run some day in the future. Proper first-hand experience would definitely be worth it :-)

[joe-ilya]

First two episodes reminded me of a wad called "coffee break" the final episode felt as the "sunlust" megawad.

One thing I didn't favor was MAP31, it's just a huge maze within another slightly smaller maze and if you want to get through the secret exit you have to get through the maze again, it was just dragging on and on.

[roadworx]

this seriously deserves waaay more attention than it's getting

[Touchdown]

Pretty cool set, the gameplay in the first two episodes was really nice and the visuals are great. I particularly like all the tricks with pseudo 3D stuff that you do quite a lot throughout the maps. Gameplay is solid but lots of encounters have monster blocking lines which can render them really easy if you just get out and pump rockets into a doorway.

As usual, everything turns to crap in episode three. The amount of unfair traps / ambushes is ridiculous. Monsters pop up out of thin air all the time, ammo is very tight (and I've been playing continuously), hitscanners snipe you everywhere. Some of the Hell maps look really good but that's it. The last three or four maps were so frustrating that I was just savescumming every step of the way (and gave up on map30 completely).

[Pipicz]

Huh, I'm getting kind of dismayed by so many complaints about the 3rd episode's difficulty... Damn, after playing Sunlust I felt that the difficulty in my wad is quite low and was afraid that the current community would find it too easy :-D

[Pipicz]

And needless to say that the difficulty settings are there to allow the difficulty decrease when needed. The last few maps are hard at UV, no doubt about that, but at HNTR and even HMP the ammo problems should be gone and the difficulty lowered considerably.

[Andy Johnsen]

I'll try to get back to you with some more bug reports Pipicz, it would be a shame to not make the wad 100% coop compatible since it already plays great on the setting - and such a meagwad deserves to be played now and again on multiplayer :)

I would have toned down the gameplay in the 2nd half of the last episode personally, map30 in particular just became near impossible when we didn't know our way around it. I do not think Sunlust slaughter styled gameplay is the way to go personally, it has become a trend the later years to stuff the maps with tons of monsters to appeal to a certain style of play, and frankly I think its killing replay value big time.

That is why your mapset was so refreshing to me, it managed to avoid the temptation of playing into the slaughter hype until nearly the very end. In fact, until it ramped up to the extreme near the last part of the third ep, I think I only had deaths in four or five maps when playing successively - thanks to taking it slow and trying hard to stay alive, and this is what feels rewarding, when you're given a fair shot, and it comes down to skill and survival instincts.

Respawning (or saving or loading in the case of singleplayer) becomes extremely tiresome when its due to unfair monster placements or insane overkill.

Sidetracking here tho, this is a topic for a thread of its own I suppose. :)

[NuMetalManiak]

On MAP15, the teleport destinations 66 and 69 are flagged only on UV/NM, so players on lower difficulties won't teleport to the other sides. Not sure if that's intentional though.

[Ribbiks]

just popping in to voice the contrary opinion that I prefer the latter maps :p. Granted that opinion is informed by a casual HMP playthrough. Many E1/2 maps actually felt rather sloggy to me due to the high density of non-threatening mobs, and the abundance of open-door --> oh there's enemies facing me setups. But yeah, personal preference, etc. I'll reiterate that most maps look great though, so it was enjoyable regardless.

Andy Johnsen said:

Sunlust slaughter styled gameplay

If I were to draw comparisons to other slaughter sets (which is not a descriptor that I personally think fits e3 Bloodstain) I'd say it's closer to HR, or perhaps joshy's SoD maps.

[Andy Johnsen]

Ribbiks said:

just popping in to voice the contrary opinion that I prefer the latter maps :p. Granted that opinion is informed by a casual HMP playthrough. Many E1/2 maps actually felt rather sloggy to me due to the high density of non-threatening mobs, and the abundance of open-door --> oh there's enemies facing me setups. But yeah, personal preference, etc. I'll reiterate that most maps look great though, so it was enjoyable regardless.


If I were to draw comparisons to other slaughter sets (which is not a descriptor that I personally think fits e3 Bloodstain) I'd say it's closer to HR, or perhaps joshy's SoD maps.

Preferences for sure, yes. I could not comment on HMP since I did the UV thing. I didn't find the third ep similar to Sunlust either, nor HR really, perhaps more like Scythe II.

Just to clarify, I think Sunlust is an absolutely fantastic set designwise, the gameplay is just not my thing from aprox. map15 onwards :) I find the line between playing with IDDQD and Sunlust ep3 on UV multiplayer to be blurry in terms of how much of a point there is to either - you basically have to respawn hundreds of times, run to pick up weapons and resume spamming the hordes. Watching sprites go through the die motion can be done both with IDDQD, save load or through respawning endlessly, but I find it grows stale quick in either case. There is no real challenge involved since you have to chew through it with respawns, unless you wanna go through careful planning of each map, rehearsals and so on - and even with that you severely limit the replay value; it's just too much.

I think slaughter styled gameplay ramped up beyond the fine balance of fun and madness at some point - stuff like Sunder, HR II, several of the later Scythe II maps and Sunlusts 2nd half are just slightly to way beyond that fine line. I think the formula the Casalis reached with Go-2-It, is where slaughter styled gameplay should max out for it to be fun. Beyond that it's a really narrow audience of competitive players who enjoy going through rehearsals and route planning - and not really suited for optimal broad appeal.

I think this is where Pipicz managed to recapture some sanity with his unexpected gem. All opinions of course, diversity in what people appreciate gameplay wise is part of the fun :)

[Touchdown]

Well, my main problem is the general design of encounters. E3 is full of places where you're in a tiny corridor, walls disappear (sometimes literally) and you're immediately swarmed by really dangerous stuff like the new Barons. You pretty much have to know about it in advance.

And also the popular feature that I absolutely despise, enemies on instant floors. I hate it to no end when mappers use it in plain sight. In both cases yeah, I can play on lower difficulties (in fact I intended to switch to HMP in E3 but forgot to) but it's not gonna fix the problem because this is how it's designed.

Then again, that's something I dislike about many sets. And since people keep doing it, I guess I've got an unpopular opinion.

[Tango]

Ribbiks said:

Many E1/2 maps actually felt rather sloggy to me due to the high density of non-threatening mobs, and the abundance of open-door --> oh there's enemies facing me setups. But yeah, personal preference, etc. I'll reiterate that most maps look great though, so it was enjoyable regardless.

I've been making my way through the maps and have been having a great time, but I would echo Ribbiks here though... there seems to be a decent helping of chokepoints and things. the visuals are really killer though, loving the way it looks so far :D

[Ashstrodamus]

The 1st 9 levels completed on UV-Max pistol starts. Damn it's fun!

[Ashstrodamus]

Map 13- I assume that the beserker pack in the cave area opens up the walls with pinky demons inside. I hear the noise like the walls are lowering but they do not, therefore, I can't get 100% kills. Playing on Prboom+ 2.5.1.4 cl2

[lazygecko]

I think there might be a bug in this tower room here on map27? I fell through the floor into an invisible room outside of the map bounds, where some monsters were stuck as well.

[Ashstrodamus]

GeckoYamori said:

I think there might be a bug in this tower room here on map27? I fell through the floor into an invisible room outside of the map bounds, where some monsters were stuck as well.

I'm currently on map 15 and once again, I hear sound effects of something happening with switches, but see nothing changing. The map 13 has made me question if 15 is buggy. Skulltag didn't have infinite tallness or near any of the bugs Prboom+ has and used to be my go-to source port, but I had to go Prboom+ for recording UV-Max demos. I wish the author would come on in here and address this stuff, because Bloodstain is really awesome so far. I might switch to Skulltag to finish out this wad. If Alien Vendetta and Scythe 2 had a kid, it would be Bloodstain....but that is going off of only playing up to map 15.

[Finakala]

Just started this today, up to map 13 so far, trying for UV-MAX. It's really rather good, gameplay is great, it's tough but not too tough for where I'm at in the WAD, difficulty curve is neat too. I'm liking the new Barons, makes them just that little bit different to the Knights other than simply having more HP. Only died a few times so far, to the Archie on Map 04 (I didn't notice the ledge behind the red key, tried retreating and got exploded) Map 07 (Revenant rocket in the final room) and Map 12 a couple times (Swarm of Revenants that spawn where the Chaingunners were plus a couple times against the Cyber/twin Archie fight you teleport into). Looking forward to the rest of the mapset now, it's got a lot of promise. Looks gorgeous, too.

[Pipicz]

Ashstrodamus said:

I'm currently on map 15 and once again, I hear sound effects of something happening with switches, but see nothing changing. The map 13 has made me question if 15 is buggy.

The sound effects can be heard everywhere where various fake-3D stuff in the vanilla Doom is, such as bridges etc. At certain places where I wanted the player to finish a sort of button sequence (e.g. map27 ending) to open the door, these repetitive walk-over lines are necessary too - and walking over them usually causes the sound effect. Or have I misunderstood your question? :-)

Ashstrodamus said:

Skulltag didn't have infinite tallness or near any of the bugs Prboom+ has and used to be my go-to source port, but I had to go Prboom+ for recording UV-Max demos.

Well, PrBoom-Plus is recommended (and it's the demo-recording staple anyway), but regarding demo recording, I just want to say that the version available isn't completely final one as it still contains some bugs (and people here are encountering some all the time and I'm trying my best to continuously fix them) and there are a few things that need to be added to the txt (e.g. I totally forgot to credit the authors of new monsters' sprites - sorry Espi, Ebola, Eriance, I'm just dumb :-(). I know that I shouldn't have uploaded it to idgames in that state, but please, forgive me my hot-headedness :-D
However, if you want to record demos, it's up to you. It is just possible that they won't be compatible with some future fixed version.

Ashstrodamus said:

I wish the author would come on in here and address this stuff, because Bloodstain is really awesome so far. I might switch to Skulltag to finish out this wad. If Alien Vendetta and Scythe 2 had a kid, it would be Bloodstain....but that is going off of only playing up to map 15.

Well, the choice of the port is yours, of course; btw I'm glad you like it - all of you guys :-)

[Ashstrodamus]

Finakala said:

Just started this today, up to map 13 so far, trying for UV-MAX. It's really rather good, gameplay is great, it's tough but not too tough for where I'm at in the WAD, difficulty curve is neat too. I'm liking the new Barons, makes them just that little bit different to the Knights other than simply having more HP. Only died a few times so far, to the Archie on Map 04 (I didn't notice the ledge behind the red key, tried retreating and got exploded) Map 07 (Revenant rocket in the final room) and Map 12 a couple times (Swarm of Revenants that spawn where the Chaingunners were plus a couple times against the Cyber/twin Archie fight you teleport into). Looking forward to the rest of the mapset now, it's got a lot of promise. Looks gorgeous, too.

The new barons aren't too hard until you get a few of them together. That crossfire is almost unavoidable in a pack.

[Finakala]

Playing in ZDoom, for what it's worth, no other mods.

Don't know if you've released a fixed version since I last posted, but played through map 22 earlier and the final fight has a couple of things that stood out. Firstly, if you drop off the bridge into the room really slowly you can land down there without triggering the Revenants. It makes the fight really easy as you can dismantle it entirely. More importantly though, it's possible to get exploded off the edge of that platform into the black area below by an Archvile blast and, as far as I can tell, there's no way out of there. This happened to me on my second attempt at that particular room and I had to reload.

Also the exploding barrel trap on the Yellow key seems a tad unfair since I didn't see any tells for it and it can easily outright kill you with no warning or time to react.

Map 25 also has a couple of issues, the main bridge area leading up to the double doors for the final arena, it's possible to run (or get Archvile launched) over the fences on the sides and into the blood pool down below, which seems inescapable and doesn't inflict damage. I don't really see any reason to not have those fence linedefs as impassable as nothing comes from outside them, the outer area is purely decorative.

Also there's no monster blocking lines in that area, so it's possible that monsters can be knocked back into the little blood pools either side of the 3D bridge. I ended up with a Cyberdemon and one of the Archviles that spawns on the pillars both down there.

[Count651]

Just finished this wad and I gotta say I was very impressed with the first 2 episodes. Everything was so fluid and solid and looked great aesthetically too. But then episode 3 happened and I gotta be honest, I hated it. Massive slaughter battles with 6 or more archviles that can easily trace a line of sight on you just isn't fun in my opinion. On top of that there were many traps where enemies literally teleported right in your face and killed you before you could even react. Maybe other people can tolerate it but I was literally going mad throughout the last several maps.

Everything before map 20 is absolutely great, but if you can't stand slaughter wads then you're better off stopping at map 20 cuz there's nothing ahead but pain and suffering.

[baja blast rd.]

What difficulty level were you playing on?

[EvilNed]

Hey,

I don't get much time for Doom these days.
I decided to play through the latest uploaded megawad, which happened to be this one. Really enjoying it so far. The maps are short and action packed, the way I like them.

I'm playing it with rsl's "That Amazing Space Amazon" mod.