Your thoughts on TNT Evilution

[Lila Feuer]

10 hours ago, Combinebobnt said:

it's old

Know what else is old? Doom.

[seed]

17 minutes ago, cyan0s1s said:

Know what else is old? Doom.

Know what else is gold? Doom.

 

xd.

[superchargecacodemons800]

@rehelekretep Well, I like maps more when there are secrets and puzzles because they add to the interest lol

[superchargecacodemons800]

On 12/31/2017 at 1:04 PM, cyan0s1s said:

Know what else is old? Doom.

Know what else is sold? Doom.

[GarrettChan]

On 2017/12/31 at 4:52 AM, rehelekretep said:

and some of the progression is a bit confusing.

It's funny that I like Map20 the most and I'm fine with Map21 even I don't like confusing progression either. Compared to others, the maps are definitely confusing to other official WADs. Just being curious to ask, which map(s) do you find confusing?

[Hellser]

Relating to the original question; I found TNT to be quite fun. Though the maps made by Drake O'Brien is a total pain (MAP20/21/27). The first few levels for TNT is memorable for me - having played them quite a bit when I was younger. Challenge wise, it feels about on par with a slightly harder Doom II level.

For the question from GarrettChan, MAP20/21/27. :P

[rehelekretep]

7 hours ago, GarrettChan said:

It's funny that I like Map20 the most and I'm fine with Map21 even I don't like confusing progression either. Compared to others, the maps are definitely confusing to other official WADs. Just being curious to ask, which map(s) do you find confusing?

god i cant remember off the top of my head unfortunately :(

[GarrettChan]

1 minute ago, rehelekretep said:

god i cant remember off the top of my head unfortunately :(

Just idclev them quickly :D

 

@HellserYep, I know his maps are just like this. Funny enough, I don't really hate these maps, but it's very understandable hating these three maps.

[rehelekretep]

for you, anything :p

04 if youre not going for the super quick exit

05 with all the funny corridors and doors

15 (secrets)

16 (all the verticality and funny lifts)

21 (so complex for my small brain :'( )

22 (just... why are you hidden!)

25

27

29

 

not as many as i remember, but enough to be quite irritating when youre just running around aimlessly.

still like it more than the other iwads though!

 

[Denim Destroyer]

It took me some time to get through TNT, my first attempt was in the second half of 2015 but I never sat down and went through the whole thing until March of last year. I would usually stop at or around map08 because at the time I found that map to be a chore to get through due to the end arena, however, once I got my some experience under my belt I managed to breeze through the rest of TNT. Well, it was not too difficult for me but there were still a couple instances where I managed to get held up yet was able prevail in the hope of finishing Final Doom. If this wasn't an IWAD I probably would of dropped it early on and looked the other way. I don't hate TNT but I just believe Plutonia is better since that has better level design in my opinion.

[Lila Feuer]

I actually really like MAP20, but MAP21 is awful.

[Taw Tu'lki]

TNT Evilution is my favourite game from "Final Doom". In my childhood I loved it more than original Doom and Doom 2. 

Because it has good design of textures and some sprites. And some levels like a real places like a Warehouse (MAP19 with truck), Pyramids (MAP31) and many others.

[Matthias]

Currently I am playing TNT because I haven't played it for couple of years and I kinda forgot how it even looks.

 

I am in the map 15 now and some maps seem to be rather low quality. It would take around 2 hours to make them in Doom Builder 2 nowdays I guess.

 

Some places are rather boring and I have to force myself to play them a little bit.

 

On the other hand it has also some interesting places and some good ideas. Not suffering to play, but sometimes it's really strange iwad.

[Snikle]

I don't understand the hate for Into Beast's Belly. It's probably my favorite TNT MIDI.

[Poncho]

TNT is utter tosh.

[seed]

8 hours ago, Snikle said:

I don't understand the hate for Into Beast's Belly. It's probably my favorite TNT MIDI.

I think its main problem is the volume rather than the midi itself. When I played Scythe I clearly remember it being the loudest track of all, I had to lower the volume because the music almost started covering various noises. It became a distraction.

[Xeriphas1994]

I'm annotating an automap screenshot of MAP03 right now. Gonna finish it this time. Really. :> (Sadly the ending was spoiled by a George Bell demopack.)

 

Some aspects haven't aged well -- monotonous texturing, square rooms, switch hunts being the tubular new meme (I hear Eternal has even more). But IMO the main point is

 

On 12/27/2017 at 2:46 PM, Uni said:

For me, TNT Evilution felt a lot more like an adventure, with its varied locales and themes. Its grand scale still takes my breath away

 

There are so many places I would never forget ever since I first saw them like the final area in Metal, the dark atmosphere in Open Season and the Crater itself in Crater but to this day, Mount Pain or to be more specific the mountain itself

 

TNT balances this aspect with combat; it's not just one or the other. Modders, vanilla or otherwise, have struggled with such balance over the years (BECAUSE IT'S HARD, no disrespect to them; Romero doesn't succeed every time either). But here it seems to work, giving a tangible feeling of progress that adds to the player's immersion.

[superchargecacodemons800]

What is my favorite map out of all of TNT?

Spoiler

My favorite map of TNT is Dead Zone. It is by far the most fun and well-designed map in all of TNT Evilution.

 

[rehelekretep]

13 hours ago, Poncho said:

TNT is utter tosh.

you wash your mouth out >.<

[Matthias]

Ok, now I am in the map 22

 

And I really think the TNT overuses hitscanners as Plutonia does. Chaingunners are almost everywhere.

 

BTW map 20 and 21 are really strange in every aspect.

[seed]

Just now, Matthias said:

Ok, now I am in the map 22

 

And I really think the TNT overuses hitscanners as Plutonia does. Chaingunners are almost everywhere.

There's loads of them in some maps from TNT as well, first one that comes to mind if Stronghold but damn if that map isn't fun.

 

Their placement isn't as good as it is in Plutonia, so they tend to not be such a big threat like they can be there. Or so was my experience, I found them much deadlier in Plutonia.

[pulkmees]

I agree Dead Zone is pretty damn good.

[DeadAstronaut]

Since I've recently been playing through Final Doom and am almost done with TNT, I wanted to offer my thoughts here. This is just my opinion, so please take it with a grain of salt.

 

TNT has a number of great maps early on. Some of the best maps in it IMO are better than the best maps of Doom II. But to counter that, you also have some very bad maps which are awful. There's a lot of good ideas in there and some of then translate to wonderful levels while some ideas are bad and lead to awful levels, so it tends to go both ways. 

 

The first half of TNT is pretty enjoyable with the exception of Metal.

 

Power Control, Hangar, Open Season, Stronghold, Redemption, Nukage Processing and Crater are great maps with cool ideas and are fun to play through.

 

Wormhole is an interesting map that I see a lot of people tend to love or hate. I don't hate it, but I feel it's easy for players to overlook the exploration and miss out on the cool gimmick that it has. It's so easy to skip this map and just head for the exit in the first minute without exploring the halls and finding the 'worm hole' of the level. Cool level though, I like the idea it had there. 

 

I like Human BBQ, and if it weren't for the blue key door not being tagged, this would be a great level. The super shotgun puzzle with the hell knights and barons is a cool piece that I really liked from that map. The trap with the demons coming from behind is another cool aspect and great usage of demons for a trap mixed with the pain elemental. 

 

Pointing out Stronghold, this map is a good example of how TNT uses hitscanners. I used to dislike this map but grew to really love it due to how the level opens up and it's fun for close quarters combat. This is a really challenging level from pistol start. 

 

Dead Zone is hands down my favorite map in TNT. I love how it's like a slaughter map but with required exploration and funny enough, the best level is the one with the secret exit. I love this map for how non-linear it is and you can tackle it from different strategies and doing pistol start. Very fun map, one of my favorites of all the officially released games. 

 

A lot of the maps in TNT are non-linear and can be approached and played in different ways. I especially like Nukage Processing for this reason - you have the secret door at the level's start and you can pretty much create tons of monster infighting in that wide open space and even wake up the cyberdemon from there. That's a fun level I like to go back to and replay. 

 

I like the background aesthetics with the night levels that show the stars and space imagery. This is a neat little bit of aesthetic that I like from TNT since it gives you the feeling of really being on some moon base all alone with no comrades left to help you. TNT did a great job for the most part with tech base aesthetics. Some of the levels have a great general look to them, and I like how they tried to design little chairs and office parts like what is seen in Central Processing. 

 

The music is great for the most part. The only criticism I've had of TNT's music is how loud most of it is. It's like the game is turned up on steroids. There's a number of tracks I really enjoy. The song that plays on Open Season is my favorite, and it's something of an atmospheric number that makes that specific level stand out a bit. Love the song that plays in Central Processing too, that's my second favorite. There's only one song in TNT that I can't stand, and that is the song from Metal, Mount Pain and Last Call. It's not a bad song, but after hearing it over and over and over again in those levels, it becomes annoying. 

 

I feel like the wad all together begins to go downhill starting at map 16: Deepest Reaches. It's one of the levels I hate, but I can see why some people would enjoy it. TNT can appeal to players who enjoy exploration and long levels that force the player to explore. The problem I have with Deepest Reaches and most of the maps after it is how tedious they can be and it takes 20-30 minutes to complete most of those levels. Deepest Reaches in particular has a lot of backtracking that I don't enjoy, and it has the slow moving elevators you have to wait around for. 

 

After map 16, there's only a handful of maps that are really worthy of mentioning that standout. One of them is map 17 Processing Area. That map has great gameplay and is another non-linear map that can be approached with multiple strategies. It also has very good monster placement that makes everything outside a threat. I also really like map 20 Central Processing, even though it's a long one that takes half an hour to complete. 

 

Other stand out maps after that are; map 21 and map 28. I've been told before that map 28 Heck is considered one of the best hell levels of the 90's and I can definitely agree. It's a Casali made level and definitely feels like something from Plutonia. The use of revenant traps and the archvilles is classic Plutonia style. Really enjoy this level, the Casalis are masters at traps. 

 

TNT has a few themes that are absolutely annoying to gameplay and these are - 

 

- Huge wide open areas littered with hitscanners. This is the main problem with Metal and why it's such a god awful map. The map is mostly giant rooms with no cover whatsoever and tons of hitscan enemies. The last room in that map is ridiculous and this is a theme that is repeated in a lot of the bad maps from TNT. You're either in a huge room with no cover, or a wide open outdoor area with tons of enemies (usually hitscanners like in Metal and Mount Pain). 

 

- Cavern sections. TNT absolutely loves cave exploration. You see it in maps 16, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27 and 29. This is objective and I can see the appeal of cavernous maps to some players, but to me personally, these specific levels are tedious to get through. I don't so much hate the cave idea, it's just that they all look the same (except for Mount Pain's underground tunnels). The levels with them end up looking like sequels to Deepest Reaches, and some of them have the tedious back tracking you have to do with keys. 

 

- Slow moving elevators. Easily the most annoying thing in TNT all together. It starts with Metal where you have to wait for the switches and then it happens time and time again. 

 

- Huge maps that take 20-30 minutes to complete. This is another thing that depends on gameplay taste of the player. This style of gameplay may appeal to one player while someone else may hate it. There's only one of these long maps that I really enjoy, and that's map 20 Central Processing. Some of these maps are way too big, the biggest example is map 21 Administration Center. The second half of that map is so massive, and yet takes less time to complete. Despite how much I hate map 21, it does have decent monster placement and is challenging with close quarter combat in the first half. 

 

Mount Pain is the one map that takes these 4 themes and blends them together into a tormenting experience. It has the long poisonous cavern area that is designed in a way that would probably work nicely in Wolfenstien but is horrible in Doom. After that, you have the big wide open areas with hitscan enemies. The outdoor part of this map is the absolute worst, since you have chaingunners down below and on the pillars, usually so far away that you can't reach them and have to run to them. On top of that, you have lost souls pouring in from all directions. When people say this is one of the worst map in TNT, they're not over-exaggerating. It takes half an hour to properly go through and then you even have a slow moving elevator at the end. Even worse is that there is so little health in this level and chances are, you'll be desperately looking for a medikit at the end. 

 

There's one more theme I haven't mentioned and that is the "realism" that TNT tries to achieve. They do a good job in some levels. The office section in map 21 is well designed and looks real. I also like how Hangar appears like a real military base with some doorway to hell down below with the soulsphere. This design backfires a bit in Steel Mill where the crushing ceiling part can be tedious with timing and Shipping/Respawning which is one of the most hated maps in the game. 

 

Of all the bad maps, I say Habitat is the absolute worst. Not only is it the worst map in TNT, but it's the worst map in all the officially released games. As much as I hate Mount Pain and Metal, those are at least playable to a degree and have some kind of themes. I have no idea what Habitat is or what it's trying to be. It's hands down the most ugliest map in any official Doom release. It's textures are so random and at most, there are a few neat details in that map which are cool, but that's basically all the map is - neat little details. The pipe section and underground section look nice, but are painful to play through. I have nothing positive to say about Habitat. 

 

The last bit to go through is the endgame level and the secret levels. I do not like Map 30 at all. The torch puzzle part is a cool idea but poorly executed. This map also is gigantic and has wide open rooms with nothing in them but a few fights. The cyberdemon fight could've been done better if he was placed down the stairs. Since he's up the stairs and never comes down, you can just peek-a-boo doubleshot him to death with the BFG. The hall with the caged enemies on the left and right sides is something that looks cool in aesthetics but I don't see where it makes the monsters threatening. 

 

Pharaoh and Caribbean are great secret levels designed by the Casali brothers. I like Pharaoh for it's Egyptian theme and how it turns into a fun slaughtermap. The cyberdemon fight on the invisible platform is a cool little detail I always remember. Caribbean is a lot of fun too with some tricky traps and I generally love the end fight with the cyberdemon infighting all the monsters. The secret levels are a joy to play in this wad. 

 

 

Overall, I'd give TNT maybe a 5.5 out of 10. The first half of the game is amazing except for Metal, and then the second half tends to just tumble downhill real fast. All in all, I am glad it's there in Final Doom since it usually is the first non-id made wad that players play before venturing off to custom wads. 

[joshthenesnerd]

i remember more of TNT's maps from my first playthrough, than i do plutonia's maps from my first playthrough. pretty much all i remember of plutonia is map01 and map32. i need to replay plutonia just because i've forgotten pretty much everything but 2 levels. while TNT has so many memorable levels. map01. human barbecue. both of its secret levels. map04 wormhole is one of my favourite maps of all time (i made a little reference to it in e1m8 of my mapset.) the torch maze in map 30 was really creative and i love it. i have no doubt that plutonia is one of the best of the original iwads, but TNT is more memorable.

[Quagsire]

Not amazing but episode 2 was to die for

[amackert]

All right, this is going to be long-winded and my perspective on this is also a little skewed. I just finished Plutonia for the first time last week. Didn't feel anything stood out to me and it was a chore to go through (don't freak out yet, I'm going to do some more runs of it to see if my new familiarity with it leads to greater enjoyment of it).

 

I did finish TNT back in 2001 or so and remembered enjoying it.. but that was a long time ago. Rather than taking a break after Plutonia last week, and with this thread in mind, I immediately fired up TNT and played through the whole thing over a two day stretch.

 

In the beginning I was enjoying myself a lot more than with Plutonia, and people watching me stream it noted it was more enjoyable to watch than Plutonia. There was a greater variety of colors being used, the levels flowed pretty smoothly, the new music was appealing, I appreciated the good mixture of big and small environments/rooms, and in the moment I was just generally having more "fun" playing it.

 

That said, to echo other posts in this thread, the whole thing went downhill pretty quickly starting around the halfway point. One thing I noticed by then was--with a few exceptions aside--I felt like I was doing much of the same thing on each map. There was always a glut of zombie soldiers, shotgunners and chaingunners, and the levels were getting repetitious as a result. In the last ten maps in particular, the designs themselves began changing as well, with levels turning into massive slogs with hundreds of enemies, with loads of long, winding corridors that felt like they were there as padding. The new/original music started going away more often than not as well which took away from the experience, and that seemed lazy to me. There were several design implementations that felt pointless as well, like keys I could acquire but weren't actually necessary to access the exit. The difficulty was all over the place as well, with one map featuring slaughter-like fights in a map with hundreds of enemies, to the next one being a tiny romp with just under 70 enemies total (and not even a challenging 70 enemies, like you'd get with Plutonia). The map design and difficulty is wildly inconsistent and I think that's one of its biggest issues with the second half of the wad.

 

I ended TNT with a big "meh" as the final map glitched out on me. The circular stairwell leading up to the red key failed to go all the way up, making me unable to grab it. Then, at the Icon of Sin, the stairs to the Barons refused to go all the way up, making it so I couldn't defeat the boss without cheating. It was sort of a fitting end for how I was feeling about the wad by that point in the playthrough.

 

Despite my lack of interest in it, overall I'd argue Plutonia is the better half of Final Doom. TNT has some bright moments, but it's too inconsistent overall (or too consistent in the wrong ways) to be wholly recommendable. Plutonia at least has the challenge factor going for it, which is an area I found TNT to be lacking.

[The_SloVinator]

TNT Evilution did seem to be quite inconsistent with quality of the map design but the point where it goes downhill & deep, I might add, is after map 20.

Huge empty maps, cryptic puzzles, ugly texture usage & overall, really tedium experience.

Fuck map 27.

 

The new tracks are good, except for Death's Bells & Into the Beast's Belly. Well, they are good tracks but a bit too loud for my taste.

 

The rest of the levels are quite decent. Nothing really special. It seems it's less difficult than Plutonia & a bit harder than Doom 2. However, I have to say that TNT really brings that adventurous feeling to it. That & it has new music, as I mentioned.

Playing it for the first time around 2005/06 really caught me off guard with those two strong points.

 

So, both Plutonia & TNT have their good points & some bad points.

 

So, overall, it's alright.

[amackert]

11 hours ago, The_SloVinator said:

TNT Evilution did seem to be quite inconsistent with quality of the map design but the point where it goes downhill & deep, I might add, is after map 20. Huge empty maps, cryptic puzzles, ugly texture usage & overall, really tedium experience.

 

This was generally my experience too. Map 20 and on in particular was when I was like, "OK, this wad is getting dumb".

[Cipher]

TNT's my least favorite of the official iwads, which isn't to say it doesn't have its good moments. I find its first episode pretty strong.

 

In general, the feeling I get is that a lot of its maps were designed around environment/setting first, and enemy placement second. This leads to a lot of erratic difficulty within single levels--as in, they'll be largely sleepy, but eventually you'll get picked off due to wandering hitscanners (who never, ever go away; there are so many haphazardly placed hitscanners in TNT, even across different designers, which is amazing), or rare beginner's traps stuck some way into mostly unchallenging levels, which is ... ugh. It really just feels like wasting your time. Succumbing to a trap in a tightly designed, difficult level is one thing, since you know you can work on improving your consistency in earlier parts. Getting hit by a trap near the end of a longer level with more haphazard enemy placement is really just a grind. Nearly all the Episode 3 levels are waaaay too big for their own good.

 

The best of TNT feels like a better Doom II. But the levels I come away remembering are the ones that did me dirty. Half of the game is quite fun, and the other half isn't something I ever care to replay. I feel bad dragging the designers of the better parts through the dirt with that overall assessment of the game, but it's hard to respond to anything but the full experience here, as it's presented. And the highs of its earlier levels for me do not reach the equivalent lows of its later ones.

 

Bangin' soundtrack though.

Edited May 12, 2018 by Cipher

[Equinox24]

I don't like it at all. Maps can get really long, Bland maps. It's just not that fun.