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TobyM

Visions of Eternity - an episode for Ultimate Doom

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Edit: The episode has been released! Grab it from here: http://kotogoto.com/games_doom.php

There is also a supplement PDF booklet available with the "story", information and trivia about the development of the episode (warning: contains the map layouts and thus, spoilers).

- - - - - - - - - -

Visions of Eternity is an episode for the Ultimate Doom (via Zdoom) in spirit of the original Doom episodes. It starts off as an episode 1 themed episode, but later the style moves more towards an episode 2 and 3 style.

The idea for this episode dates back 15 years or so, so the title actually fits the project. ;-) Fear not though: All maps have been reworked this year and three completely new maps have been created. The episode also contains a map that I originally created for an abandoned community project (The 9th Gate). Special attention was put into enemy balance and (mainly in the newer maps) open levels that allow for multiple ways through the maps.

To be released very soon! And by "very soon" I mean within one week or so.

Here's a ton of screenshots to get you excited (or not):












More screenshots here: http://kotogoto.com/games_doom.php

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I like what I see on the screenshots, looking forward to play it. I also checked your "Deimos Control Center" map (was the highest downloadable map on your page :)) and found it very pleasing to play. Your style has a certain charm, you keep things simple where nothing more is actually needed (no excessive wall detailing), and that's good. Moving around the map and exploring it was satisfying, and "homages" (tributes to original IWAD maps) were kept mainly to texturing and not particular design patterns - which is also good, it proves you're imaginative and players don't like to see the exact same rooms over and over again. Looking at the screenshots on your page, it seems all your maps tend to keep this effectively-simple style, which is sympathetic to me. Keep up the good work!

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scifista42 said:

I like what I see on the screenshots, looking forward to play it. I also checked your "Deimos Control Center" map (was the highest downloadable map on your page :)) and found it very pleasing to play. Your style has a certain charm, you keep things simple where nothing more is actually needed (no excessive wall detailing), and that's good. Moving around the map and exploring it was satisfying, and "homages" (tributes to original IWAD maps) were kept mainly to texturing and not particular design patterns - which is also good, it proves you're imaginative and players don't like to see the exact same rooms over and over again. Looking at the screenshots on your page, it seems all your maps tend to keep this effectively-simple style, which is sympathetic to me. Keep up the good work!


Thanks a lot for the kind feedback! Deimos Control Center is an older map, but I still like it a lot (though I think it's too easy). :-) For my latest release, check out "Hatomo Battles the Yomi Demons" for Doom II, an episode I made together with Pablo Dictter.

I generally admire the style of the original Doom levels and thus my mapping is heavily inspired by those. I do add details, but I usually don't go over the top with that. :-)

Hope you'll like Visions of Eternity! :-)

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nice to see this thing finally coming out. its been too long you lazy faka. hehehe.

edit - having tested these maps, i find these to be really fun ones and nicely designed too. cant wait to see what everyone thinks of these once its released.

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Despite being sick of the standard thematic progression of techbase>corrupt base>hell, this does look pretty cool.

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TobyM said:

For my latest release, check out "Hatomo Battles the Yomi Demons" for Doom II, an episode I made together with Pablo Dictter.

Oh, so it was you who created that? An excellent wad I must say that alone has persuaded me to play this episode, I did think that this was going to be an Eternity project due to the name, but oh well. The screenshots look great as well.

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Oh, I remember Hatomo Battles the Yomi Demons. Neat little mapset with a very subtle narrative quirk to it. Guess that's advertisement enough to get me to play this, but here's hoping that the episode moves away from E1 into E2/E3 sooner rather than later.

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Hatomo Battles the Yomi Demons (which I just played), right from the first playable map, has some of the nicest texture usages I've ever seen that also maintain the "classic" look and feel at the same time. The game flowed and played very satisfyingly, impressive work, great! No, now I can't be more enthused to see your new stuff. :)

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Thanks a lot, everybody! Glad to hear you liked Yomi, too. :-)

Guess that's advertisement enough to get me to play this, but here's hoping that the episode moves away from E1 into E2/E3 sooner rather than later.

There will be five E1 style levels, after that the episode moves toward an E2 and sometimes slightly E3 type of theme, with one level (the former 9th Gate level) in a slightly different style (but still fitting in).

I'm very, very interested in seeing this. Hurry up!!!! ;D

I do. :-D I just spent some two hours or so walking through the maps, fixing little things here and there and doing some retexturing. The final touches! So yeah, stay tuned, it will be released in a couple of days.

I did think that this was going to be an Eternity project due to the name, but oh well.

Sorry for the confusion. That word seems to be overused in Doom world. ;-) I chose the title for the episode when I first started it, which was a really long time ago. :-)

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Update:
The episode has been released! Grab it from here: http://kotogoto.com/games_doom.php

Will also upload to /newstuff once that's back up and running.

There is also a supplement PDF booklet available on my website with the "story", information and trivia about the development of the episode (warning: contains the map layouts and thus, spoilers).

Have fun and let me know what you think!

:-)

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I have got up to map E5M4 and enjoying every bit of it so far. I am thinking about recording a play through of it right now. I won't upload anything if you rather me wait for some possible bug fixes or something.

I also found an issue with E5M3. Sectors 68 and 103 currently labeled as secrets but they are unobtainable.

Is mouse look intended for this wad?

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Quite a good mapset, although not as good as for example your yomi.wad. Honestly I expected I'll be more awe-inspired. While the maps were very sophisticated, I think you underestimated your competition of other Doom modders of this time. Many of your design/gameplay choices were quite average and dull, while you used them repeatedly with almost the same setup every time, to the point the game became too prolonged at times. Modern mappers know of fancy and easy ways how to make gameplay flow satisfyingly - large open areas, compact layout easy to navigate around, monster encounters that are elaborated and interesting, twists every now and then, etc.

In Visions of Eternity, I liked: The first few maps, which were interesting. Texture usages, some of which were very interesting (COMP flats on ceilings aren't seen often). Varied environments, although the 'techbase' theme could be given less emphasize later on. Light work, and mostly a good use of lighting sector effects.

There were things I didn't like: The later maps, in which the boresome length, repetitiveness and lack of ideas really showed. Narrow cramped corridors, low ceilings, low height variation. Repeated sergeant+imp closets behind a door while backtracking. Occasional demon-meat shooting gallery that slowed down the game a bit. Secrets too hard to find, their lines were flagged secret. General overabundance of shotgun ammo and lack of rockets and cells. That there was no boss fight, but a weaker map instead which suddenly returned back to E2 style for unknown reasons. (The weak about the map was again the crampedness, repetitiveness, too big length.)

Summary and final verdict: First maps were enjoyable. Later ones (as they turned E2-like style) started to be repetitive, more cramped and too long to keep the fun aspect. I enjoyed these less, but still I say this was quite a good mapset as a whole. I'm glad I could play it, thanks for the experience. :)

Last thing I'd like to tell you: It's a shame you're such a ZDoom lover. The maps seem they could be even vanilla compatible, at least almost. There's a lot of people in this community who prefer non-ZDoom ports, for example PrBoom-plus. And the reason is demo recording, for which ZDoom has a bad support. Be prepared that you may get some criticism about making the mapset ZDoom only just because lower compatibility is so close.

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Thanks for releasing this, Toby! I can only play 2 maps a day, and I’m playing continuously on UV, keyboard-only, GZDoom, with frequent save/reload because I suck. ;D

I’ll get the big negative out of the way first. I absolutely cannot stand all the impassable lines which exist for no apparent reason except to make areas look cooler than they would if you used bars or dwarf walls as barriers. This irritated the hell out of me in E5M1 but drove me batshit bonkers crazy angry in E5M2. It seems so artificial and phony and ruins the believability of the setting. Aren’t there force-field textures you can use if you want that effect? If you’re sticking to the Doom stock textures, you should give up these impassable lines blocking areas we should, by rights, be able to enter.

E5M1 was a nicely-constructed but overly easy map with almost 100% shooting-gallery combat. I still managed to get myself killed when attempting to conserve my shotgun ammo by switching to pistol to kill an Imp, and simultaneously dodging it, going behind a computer in Sector 326, only to realize with horror that a Sergeant was hiding there. Ah, hubris gets me again! :D My health wasn’t great at that point, and between the Sarge and the imps, I didn’t last long as I fumbled for my shotgun. Other than that it was pretty easy, but I spent a long time searching for secrets, of which I found 2, including the Chaingun, the latter a bit late in the map to be the terror-weapon I wanted. My final stats were Kills – 100%, Items – 89%, Secrets – 50%, Time - 15:33, End Health – 103, Armor – 6, Death Count – 1. Yeah, I failed to find the Green Armor path. I liked the nonlinearity here, too.

E5M2 is a whole different animal! I really liked this map for the most part. I got killed right at the start the first time because the trap just flooded monsters, with new sets being revealed by every dodge I attempted, so that I was forced into the nukage maze, where I soon met my fate via Imp fireball at low health. It turned out that there were several ways to fight this area, and I died at least one more time testing the defenses. Natch, the impassable lines at the red key area really bothered me.

Eventually, I went up and got the blue key – very nice fights in that area, one of the few so far where I had room to dodge and whirl – and then went into the nukage maze and got the rocket launcher after dying at least one more time in there. Indeed, most of my 10 deaths came in this maze.

My favorite room was the Metal1 room that you enter at sector 167. It was so cool-looking and dark, and the fights were pretty good, with nice detailing, too.

A very clever trap was the one in Sector 214/215 alongside the lift. It wasn’t lethal, but it really made me smile.

I also feel like a dumbass for not getting the Blue Armor. I found the switch but didn’t take the right path to get the goodies. And it was bad luck that prevented me from finding the Computer Map, since I pressed every wall there except the right one. ;D As for the Soulsphere, I never had a chance with that.

This map also had a somewhat Fava Beans feel, always a good thing in my book.

Overall, I really liked this map and thought it was expertly constructed with a good degree of interconnected non-linearity. It can be argued that it’s a bit heavy on corridor shooting, and the nukage maze is hateful, but it’s hateful in a way I kind of admire, because it will kill those like me who aren’t careful. The only thing I strongly object to is the impassable lines.

My final stats: Kills – 100%, Items – 87%, Secrets – 0%, Time – 19:46, End Health – 86%, Armor – 7%, Death Count – 10.

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One thing I forgot to mention earlier is that the music for the first 2 maps -- intermission tracks -- inspired me to turn the music off. :D Might be a good idea to re-think those choices.

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I enjoyed playing through this - thanks for making it.

I get what Scifista is saying about the imp/shotgun-dude closests and corridors but personally I didn't mind that. I was playing on HMP so perhaps those traps would be more tiresome on UV?

I liked how I was never really searching for keys or switches - the flow seemed natural so the action never flagged. I think I found 3 secrets in total so perhaps some of them might have been more obvious, but I didn't suffer for not finding them. This was also the first mapset in a long time that made me hoover up the health and armour bonuses - normally I ignore those :)

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Thanks everyone for your comments and criticism, even if it seems that some people had expectations that the episode does not (and does not intend to) fulfill.

I also found an issue with E5M3. Sectors 68 and 103 currently labeled as secrets but they are unobtainable.

Whoah, thanks a lot for pointing that out! What a stupid bug. X-) I fixed these sectors and uploaded the latest file to my website. Apart from this, I don't intend to do any more bugfixes, unless some really wicked bug comes up. So, if you want to do a demo, go ahead. I'll be glad to watch it.

Is mouse look intended for this wad?

Well, personally, I do use mouselook, but the maps should work well without I guess.

I absolutely cannot stand all the impassable lines which exist for no apparent reason except to make areas look cooler than they would if you used bars or dwarf walls as barriers. This irritated the hell out of me in E5M1 but drove me batshit bonkers crazy angry in E5M2. It seems so artificial and phony and ruins the believability of the setting. Aren’t there force-field textures you can use if you want that effect? If you’re sticking to the Doom stock textures, you should give up these impassable lines blocking areas we should, by rights, be able to enter.

I honestly have no idea what you mean by this. Can you elaborate a bit?

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TobyM said:

I honestly have no idea what you mean by this. Can you elaborate a bit?


Hi Toby, this is funny, actually. To make a long story short, I accidentally played the maps in GZDoom with the Doom 2 IWAD, so I didn't see the BRNBIGC textures. :D :D :D Ah, good one on me. When I loaded up the maps in Risen3D everything was perfect, because Risen3D's launcher automagically chooses the correct IWAD. So yeah, a great big "D'oh!" outta me. ;D

That settled, I have no reservations about saying I loved E5M2 and can't wait to play the rest!

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Oh, I see, haha. :-) This has happened to each of us at some point I guess. And I was wondering all the time what the hell you meant. :-) Thanks again for the detailed review and I hope you'll like the other maps.

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Guest DILDOMASTER666

After some minor modification, I went and played in Chocolate Doom. It's a really good mapset, I'm legitimately impressed not only by the gameplay and nice forethought and balance (reminds me just slightly of a Malcolm Sailor mapset), but also by the really light use of detail that just... Looks right. ChocoDoom never reported more than 130 or so segs and 64 visplanes in view, and yet it looks so nice and clean. I love your style.

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TobyM said:

That was fun to watch! You really know your way around the map. :-) Thanks a lot for recording and posting!


No problem. There will be a new map ready to watch each day until the episode is done.

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