heretic New dome of d'sparil (all map in 1)

[pionetr123]

http://www.mediafire.com/file/44k9i8pnizg8rm3/newdomeof+.wad

[Average]

Always nice to see some Heretic love. :)

[Ichor]

I started playing the map, and it's good so far. There is one problem though: the lightning. Not only is it too bright and jarring, but it doesn't make any sense here. The original episode 3 was at the bottom of an ocean, in a domed city.

[Fonze]

Tell me this isn't literally all the maps from E3 of Heretic bunched into one map... That ain't love, it's a disrespectful disservice.

[Graf Zahl]

That's precisely what it is. There may be a few changes here and there, but the layout in an editor looks almost unchanged.

[Xyzzу]

Is this not like Doom 2 Memorial?

[Ichor]

I haven't played through all of the map yet (I just had to remove that thunder effect though), but it looks like Foetid Manse is in there too.

[pionetr123]

New effect, Secret item, d sparil

[Ichor]

I've found a couple of new weapons so far. Both of them seem to be interesting and kind of fun to use, especially once I came across a chi gem. One thing I don't understand though, is why you increased the pickup amounts for the large items (energy orb, quiver of arrows, etc.).

 

Also, I saw what I'm guessing is a kind of dark mana for another weapon, but it just says 'You got a pickup'.

[Ichor]

Ok, after playing through the entire map, here's what I discovered:

• That thunder effect is annoying. I got rid of it shortly after I started. I can only imagine going through the entire map with that going.
• And I thought Cacophony was huge. Over 3 hours there.
• All of the new weapons were decent, except for the necronomicon, which was a bit awkward to use. The quake doesn't do much, and it even damages you. The summoning is the best one to use.
• The D'Sparil fight was just downright obnoxious.
• The maps don't flow one into another. At first it seems to do that, but it's kind of like a hub with map 3 (confluence) being more or less the central map. And you enter some maps from a place that's different from the entrance. Not a bad thing. It gives a bit of unexpectedness to the whole thing.
• This demonstrates why Heretic removes all but one of your artifacts after each map. By about halfway, I was full of most everything except the mystic urns and chaos devices.
• And speaking of the mystic urn, that thing is like a megasphere in a jar, on steroids. One of those will last a very long time, meaning you will be leaving health lying around everywhere.
• The larger weapon pickups really didn't need to have their amounts increased, except maybe the energy orb, but I'd go with 50 instead of 100.
• All of those ammo stashes in various places (like behind the disciples when you first start) are kind of overdoing it. Even without them, I haven't run low on ammo (except maybe for the new weapons) the entire time.
• The D'Sparil fight was absolutely horrible, and not in a good way.
• Some of the switches open up doors that the average player (i.e. those who haven't played the map before and don't know what to expect) will have no idea where they are. A few times, I had to use a map editor just to see what a certain switch did or what opened a door that normally opened in the original Heretic.
• Speaking of that, I couldn't figure out how to get to the interior of the Foetid Manse portion of the map. In the original, it was a door that needed a yellow key which you could have found nearby. I had to use wings of wrath to get over the wall. If that was your plan, then what if the player used it already? How would he have gotten in?
• Another annoying place is in the chasm portion, right before you get the blue key. That ledge lowers and you're stuck in slime. I could have flown out, except for one tiny detail: I had no wings. I seem to remember picking a couple up before that spot, but they all disappeared.
• Same thing happened to my invincibility rings right before D'Sparil, who was a nightmare to fight, by the way. They just vanished, and I had 5 or so before then.
• The biggest problem this map has is that while there are new weapons (and I think enemies. I didn't see any, but the decorate had mentions of a vampire and hellsmith), and the maps do flow as if it was one gigantic map, the maps themselves are just a collection of every map in episode 3, with map e5m7 thrown in, and relatively minimal editing throughout. Even the teleporter flats are misaligned in many places. I don't think this will pass muster over at /idgames. It might be rejected outright because they don't accept these kind of maps.
• And in case I forgot to mention it, I hated the D'Sparil fight. It started out normal enough, but it got ugly real quickly. Then it got aggravating. And that was before he started knocking you around in the air and flash-blinding you every ten seconds or so. Near the end, I just used god mode and freeze, and even then he took seemingly forever to die. I could have used the massacre cheat by then, but I didn't know what else was next, like that vampire or the hellsmith, but nothing. Because all monsters die when D'Sparil dies, it's possible that they died as well. I didn't see any new enemies spawn in throughout the whole map. I noticed the enemy count (1578) and it didn't change throughout the map, except at D'Sparil.

All in all, not a bad time-waster if you have the patience, but it's only good once. And once you get to D'Sparil, just use 'massacre' and be done with him. Otherwise, be prepared for a lot of raging.

[pionetr123]

https://youtu.be/_SNBi8hbyk0