Phobos Echoes - MyFirst.wad

[Zemini]

Welcome to my first and only wad campiagn! It has taken me over 300 hours to build. I use custom monsters and some from Realm667. I am still learning how to make levels so don't expect professional quality since I haven't made maps before.

Do NOT use Brutal Doom with it because it breaks balance and monster behaviors. Sorry but I do not have the time to make it work.

Skills 1 - 3 are implemented. Skills 4/5 haven't been done yet but I hope to have that available when I finish it. Requires GZDoom for best results. Special thanks to scifista42 for helping me with editor questions.

Things to still do:
1. Skills 4/5 (Fast UV)
2. Cast Call
3. Further balance, detailing and decorations.
4. Additional Credits
5. Story text

There are 12 levels (13 for story telling purposes)

Download and info:
http://wadsinprogress.info/index.php?a=listwads&wad=1797

latest build 1.06 https://www.dropbox.com/s/j8ylj92g8whaafo/phobosechoes.zip?dl=0

[Count651]

Looks pretty cool judging by the screenshots. Gonna give it a try.

[Count651]

Made it to map 7. Pretty fun wad so far, pretty interesting variety in monsters and the later maps get pretty fast paced and somewhat challenging. Only things I didn't care for were the sewer level and some of the weapons. Mazey sewers are always a bit of a drag. Also some of the weapons felt a little weird, especially the heavy machinegun. The sound it makes is so underwhelming.

One little bug I ran into was that when I picked up the super shotgun I couldn't equip it and had to use console commands to equip it instead. This might have just been a problem with running your wad along with smoothdoom.

I'll definitely keep playing this till the end.

[Merry Widow]

This is nice looking and very fun to play.It runs pretty good on my laptop.Please keep mapping if you can.You are good at it.Best of luck! :)

[Zemini]

Thanks for playing. Yah the heavy machine gun hasn't really been tweaked very much yet. I need to get it more Ooomph if you know what I mean. If you ever played HL Opposing Forces, that is the kind of Machine Gun I am trying to replicate. The Realm667 weapons are kinda lacking graphically too. If only I were an artist.

I made some changes to the game which fixed balance. Ice Cavern (abyss section) had to be lightened up and toned down a tad. You can also find the BFG much earlier which helps too.

latest 1.06 https://www.dropbox.com/s/j8ylj92g8whaafo/phobosechoes.zip?dl=0

Count651 said:

Made it to map 7. Pretty fun wad so far, pretty interesting variety in monsters and the later maps get pretty fast paced and somewhat challenging. Only things I didn't care for were the sewer level and some of the weapons. Mazey sewers are always a bit of a drag. Also some of the weapons felt a little weird, especially the heavy machinegun. The sound it makes is so underwhelming.

One little bug I ran into was that when I picked up the super shotgun I couldn't equip it and had to use console commands to equip it instead. This might have just been a problem with running your wad along with smoothdoom.

I'll definitely keep playing this till the end.

Yah Brutal Doom also breaks the weapons too. NOt sure how to fix this but somehting overrides the keys. There are 7 ammo types. It should be...

1. Knife
2. MP5
3. Shotgun/SSG
4. M16
5. Machine Gun
6. Rocket Launcher
7. Plasma Rifle
8. BFG (has it's own ammo separate from plasma rifle)

[Count651]

Just finished the wad. My overall opinion of it was really good although there were a few problems. I really liked the final map and its intermission text, I thought it was pretty creative.

The red keys would not lower after hitting the switches on Resupply and Prototype Colony. I spent several minutes looking around for anything I could have missed but eventually gave up and assumed they were bugged and noclipped to reach them.

Another little problem I encountered was that the stalagmites that should be on the ceiling were on the floor instead. With all that aside I'd give the wad a 4 out of 5.

[MrSkeltal]

I've played through the first 6 levels so far and I like the level design, but I'm not sure about the rest:

- I don't think the standard Doom weapons should've been changed. What's the point of 3 different guns that fire quickly? The standard arsenal seems fine for this mod.
- Both the burst-fire rifle and the heavy machinegun sound pretty weak.
- Same as the guns, I don't think most of the new enemies really add anything to the mod. Using the standard Doom bestiary would've been fine.
- Too many encounters with weak monsters like the scientists or other zombified humans. More creative enemy placement would've been better.
- There's some areas where the enemies can't reach the player or do much to them, like this one with the Spectres. I think in the level before that one right before the exit a bunch of Pain Elementals spawn in a large open area, but by the time that happens you can freely ignore them and run to the level exit.

[Zemini]

Thanks for playing. I hope you didn't play it on HMP since I played it and failed on my own map. Just too many monsters.

The stalactites were left without a +NoGravity flag. Oops sorry. I also brighend up that sector but it seems you were able to find your way around there.

As for the Red Key, it seems that sector got raised by accident. There is no switch to move it down. ON resupply the switch is hidden on the book case where the red light is.

As for the custom weapons. I agree that the realm667 weapons are kind of generic. I might remove them since they seem out of place especially the Heavy Machine Gun. I do like having different ammo types though. But since weapon balance creation is out of my capabilities Ill probably just go with the defaults.

Monsters; most people seem to like the variation since Doom 2 had only 17 of them. The vitality health pickups around the map increase you max HP, so with that I felt that the original monsters were a little too easy for someone averaging 200 hp most of the time. The stronger variants are a little faster, hit harder and have some special talents. Work in progress!