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40oz

Freedoom first impression

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Okay everyone pay attention because my opinion ALWAYS MATTERS. haha.

Whatever. I just think these things might want to be considered. I'm gonna do my best to help this thing out a bit. But these are my thoughts about this IWAD.

MAPS
The maps are sick. I love em. Their kinda plain but if they were overdetailed they wouldnt look like an IWAD. The maps are actually really cleverly designed. What I didnt like were the first few maps. Map01 was okay, but since i thought it was a playoff of doom 2, i played it carelessly assuming it would be as easy. I ended the first map with 35% health the first time. But big deal right? there will be health in the next map. WRONG. Map02 has got shotgun guys every other room. No body armor in sight. All you get is the occasional stimpack or health bonuses every other room. The map was a little two much of a quest too, the map was hard to figure out at first, and it was a total keyhunt. Map03 was even worse, with the shotgun guys that can shoot you from windows, and that huge teleport ambush of imps demons and shotgun guys after hitting that switch was near impossible. And there were waaaay too many revenants for the third level, as well as the early introduction to the archvile. Far too difficult for Map03. The rest of the maps were okay. The nukage in the waste tunnels was a drag. The crusher seemed a tad underdetailed in some areas. Cant complain much about the rest of the maps.

SOUNDS
Some sounds are missing obviously, I'll try and get some sounds for the monsters. The pistol sound was really nice, it makes me wanna use the chaingun and pistol more. The shotgun sound sounds kinda weak, especially the cocking sound. The weapon pickup sounds a little weak too. I'll come up with something for that.

SPRITES
Too be honest, many sprites dont really reflect much about the kinda health it gets. For example, the snake imps dont really look much like the strength of regular imps. They look more reminiscent to the strength of archviles because their so buff and tall. The imps should be resized to be the size of zombies. The wormy thing for the demon is small and puny, it looks like it could be disposed of in a single shotgun shot. It should look more like a short but buff monster. The zombies animations are reeeally good, the way they walk really looks like zombies, better than doom 1 and 2 even. Chaingun guy needs a bit of work though. I can contribute for this stuff. Weapons and decorations look okay. I definitely wanna submit some better looking fireballs though.

MUSIC
Good. Sounds like the original ones but tweaked alot. I like.

I cant fix the maps because their not mine, but I can help make sprites. So I'll do what i can.

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Freedoom lives on.
If I had any kind of artistic talent at all, I'd contribute as well.

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leileilol said:

You don't "get". You make it yourself.


Well, no, you could scout out resources to use as long as they were licensed appropriately.

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JohnnyRancid said:

I ended the first map with 35% health the first time. But big deal right? there will be health in the next map. WRONG. Map02 has got shotgun guys every other room. No body armor in sight. All you get is the occasional stimpack or health bonuses every other room. The map was a little two much of a quest too, the map was hard to figure out at first, and it was a total keyhunt.

IIRC I actually playtested map02 quite a lot. It should be possible to beat the map when starting with a pistol, but if you start with low health it could indeed be a problem.
You also have to keep in mind that the maps weren't (yet) playtested as a whole.

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boris said:

IIRC I actually playtested map02 quite a lot. It should be possible to beat the map when starting with a pistol, but if you start with low health it could indeed be a problem.
You also have to keep in mind that the maps weren't (yet) playtested as a whole.


It's a pretty tough map ;) I think I've moved it to a slightly later slot in SVN, but I can't remember.

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Oh yeah it was certainly beatable to an extent. But just compare how easy, short and simple Underhalls was compared to this one. It took me a while to find out how the map is shaped, (it became stupidly obvious after figuring it out) And you need all 3 keys not to mention switches in between. It really isnt all the hard, but it would make a way better stand alone map than a map02. Map03 was really the craziest one though. It was there that I was worried that the rest of the wad would be hell revealed 2.

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In SVN we've dropped underhalls and replaced it with E1M1. I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned this on the forums but I subbed some of the good doom1 maps into the doom2 mapset. It seemed a shame to not give some of the better freedoom1 maps the exposure that the freedoom2 wad gets, and for some of the prime doom2 slots to be taken up with under par levels (and map01 was in my opinion far too similar to the doom2 map01).

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Jon said:

In SVN we've dropped underhalls and replaced it with E1M1. I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned this on the forums but I subbed some of the good doom1 maps into the doom2 mapset. It seemed a shame to not give some of the better freedoom1 maps the exposure that the freedoom2 wad gets, and for some of the prime doom2 slots to be taken up with under par levels (and map01 was in my opinion far too similar to the doom2 map01).

Good idea. I had a look at the repository today, and apparently you made the changes 8 months ago :) Moving my Map02 to Map08 is fine with me, but now it needs new monster and item placement :)

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Jon said:

Well, no, you could scout out resources to use as long as they were licensed appropriately.


How do i go about finding unlicensed soundfx? How can i tell if a sound is licensed or not? Would using licensed soundfx and altering their speed, pitch, volume, and or mixing them with other sounds (i.e. mixing a gun sound and a cocking sound to make a shotgun) make them unlicensed?

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JohnnyRancid said:

Would using licensed soundfx and altering their speed, pitch, volume, and or mixing them with other sounds (i.e. mixing a gun sound and a cocking sound to make a shotgun) make them unlicensed?

No, that would be a "derivative work" and the original license would still apply.

I really have no idea how high quality soundfx are made.

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Ajapted said:

I really have no idea how high quality soundfx are made.


Trial and error. And a whole lotta experimentation. With microphones.

I avoid stock audio at all costs.

JohnnyRancid said:

How can i tell if a sound is licensed or not?



Just because a sound doesn't provide a LICENSE file doesn't mean it's not licensed, so don't even think about going on a findsounds.com "hey look i found some free sounds" crusade and then contributing those non-Free sounds. It's already bad enough that so many Free projects use these copyrighted non-Free assets.

Also again, you don't "find" - you make, 100% yourself, from scratch.

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[i]leileilol said:
so don't even think about going on a findsounds.com "hey look i found some free sounds" crusade and then contributing those non-Free sounds. It's already bad enough that so many Free projects use these copyrighted non-Free assets.


I think you're watching me hahaha.

Alright I'll do my best to make some sounds from scratch though. I dont have a studio but I'll definitely stay away from mouthed soundfx. I'll try and make my sounds from objects around the house.

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sometimes mouthed sound fx can be good if you do some processing. Most of OA's weapons were mouthed.

I'm still working on my new contributions, i'll post when there is a big lot of them. Stay tuned....

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leileilol said:

sometimes mouthed sound fx can be good if you do some processing. Most of OA's weapons were mouthed.

I'm still working on my new contributions, i'll post when there is a big lot of them. Stay tuned....


Agreed, I'v done some very good weapon discharge sounds by mouth... hell without much tweeking at all. I do own alot of firearms however so I know what they should sound like.
Especialy for monsters, you can create some very hellish/creepy SFX with your voice.

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leileilol said:
Just because a sound doesn't provide a LICENSE file doesn't mean it's not licensed,

To clarify, unless it's somehow public domain, it has to be licensed in some permitting way for you to be able to use it. The question is whether it's copyrighted, and if so, only some licenses (issued by the authors or true "owners" of the sounds) may grant you use permissions.

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myk said:

To clarify, unless it's somehow public domain, it has to be licensed in some permitting way for you to be able to use it. The question is whether it's copyrighted, and if so, only some licenses (issued by the authors or true "owners" of the sounds) may grant you use permissions.


Most "free sounds" sites neglect to provide licensing info and the sounds are usually pulled from copyrighted libraries, media or programs.

There's no such thing as a truly Free sounds site, anyway

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Agreed, I'v done some very good weapon discharge sounds by mouth... hell without much tweeking at all. I do own alot of firearms however so I know what they should sound like.


Eh? why not buy a cheap sound recorder to take to the range and record the real firing sounds?

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