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Deadwing

Reclipse Episode V released! [Version 5.1 released]

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Eclipse was my first major mapset that I released on public. It hasn't got many great reviews (http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/d-f/eclpseii), but I still love it even today. I tried to play it these days, and while the square visuals still has some charm (at least for me lol), the gameplay aged quite badly: Most levels are overpopulated, dragging the experience with weak setpieces (where the player can overcome the threat staying behind cover) and progression was mostly too linear.

So I decided mess with some of these levels (the first six) and see what results I would get, which I named Eclipse Revisited.

Goals:

-> Boom compatible levels, instead of zdoom.
-> Classic gameplay, action focused mapset.
-> Focus on more interesting enemy placements, reducing the monster overpopulation from the original Eclipse while increasing the overall challenge.
-> Improve pacing: I've removed some doors, changed key/locked doors layouts and some sections were added/changed to make navigation more interesting.
-> Linearity reduced a bit (some levels won't be much possible, though).
-> Retained overall visual style.
-> Each episode should take around 1 hour or 1,5 hour. It will be 6 episodes completing 32 full levels.

I'd love some demos to see how people react to some sections :D

Download Link: http://www.mediafire.com/download/dr4x0hrtpocgylo/reclipse-ep5.1.rar
Screenshots:









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'Took me 35 minutes to beat every levels in first try. I felt like I was playing episode 1 of Ultimate Doom with chaingunners and hell knight until I finally got a SSG in MAP06.

Overall, the gameplay was not bad. If your goal was to create maps with classic doom style, you've done a nice job. :)

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antares031 said:

'Took me 35 minutes to beat every levels in first try. I felt like I was playing episode 1 of Ultimate Doom with chaingunners and hell knight until I finally got a SSG in MAP06.

Overall, the gameplay was not bad. If your goal was to create maps with classic doom style, you've done a nice job. :)


That's cool! And yeah, the idea was to make it feel more like the original dooms, though I'm not sure if I was able to do it :P I tried to improve the gameplay from the original levels, I'm not sure if it feels good and balanced though.

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Hey, I remember Eclipse! Played a few levels somewhere in 2011, then it turned out that they were tested in ZDoom and some stuff didn't work correctly in PrBoom-Plus so I stopped. I don't remember them well enough to compare with the new version, but I remember liking your simplistic style that somehow worked pretty nicely and seems like this edition retained it successfully. Fun stuff, here are the demos of my playthrough.

I noticed some bad work with sound, for instance why do you put block sound lines on monster closets like the blue key trap on Map06? The enemies are supposed to attack, not just stand there waiting for the player to appear in front of their face. Similarly, in some areas it is very easy to abuse the "deaf" flag the monsters have and pick them off one by one (think the outdoor area of Map05, for instance). So I'd say you need to pay more attention to these things because they can affect the gameplay a lot.

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On a whim I decided to play this set and record a continuous demo, here you go:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/vs90a4fu3wlbmrm/revclips-mouldy.lmp

Nice set of maps, very old-school and a bit square-mazey in places, and fairly easy going, but enjoyable enough. Good for a quick blast, like the guy above said its very much like original doom.

I particularly appreciated the gimmick of putting health potions on the lifts in that tunnel maze, so I could see where I hadn't been yet.

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Just finished to play the whole thing. I liked it, it was really fun. It was also interesting on feeling like an E1 replacement but with chaingunners and hell knights. On MAP02 all that plain green makes feel the map a bit lacking visually compared to the other ones, which those have some more variety in the rooms while still remaining very simple.

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If you're looking for areas of improvement, I'd say be more stingy with health (at least on UV). You could remove a lot of stimpacks and medkits without even making the maps that much easier -- simply because, apart from some of the traps and a few mean hitscanner placements, it's hard to take damage in most places. A lot of the fun with easy combat against fodder is knowing that health is scarce, and that if you screw up and get blasted a couple of times, you're going to have to be very alert until you scavenge enough potions and stimpacks or stumble across that rare medkit, and that taking too much incidental damage might make the one or two challenging encounters per level quite hard to survive. When you know you are allowed to play very badly (but well enough to survive every encounter) because you can backtrack to an untouched stash of medkits, it's sort of like playing with cheat codes.

Memfis's "Kuchitsu" is an example of a good wad* where the combat is basically a cakewalk, save for a few nasty traps on first playthrough and the first two fights of map05, but a lot of the tension (and thus fun) comes from knowing that accumulated small mistakes will make things unnecessarily hard. It gets your blood pumping. The alternative, of course, is to be a lot meaner with the key encounters. That's sort of the Skillsawian approach where the player has to hang on to their hat and survive the tougher set pieces, but as long as they do, they can comb through their butt for some untouched medkits and be replenished anew.


*He'll say that my argument is invalid because I consider "Kuchitsu" good. :p

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As a lover of (what is now called) minimalist design, this looks right up my alley! The screens alone have me sold. :)

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Memfis said:

Hey, I remember Eclipse! Played a few levels somewhere in 2011, then it turned out that they were tested in ZDoom and some stuff didn't work correctly in PrBoom-Plus so I stopped. I don't remember them well enough to compare with the new version, but I remember liking your simplistic style that somehow worked pretty nicely and seems like this edition retained it successfully. Fun stuff, here are the demos of my playthrough.

I noticed some bad work with sound, for instance why do you put block sound lines on monster closets like the blue key trap on Map06? The enemies are supposed to attack, not just stand there waiting for the player to appear in front of their face. Similarly, in some areas it is very easy to abuse the "deaf" flag the monsters have and pick them off one by one (think the outdoor area of Map05, for instance). So I'd say you need to pay more attention to these things because they can affect the gameplay a lot.


Thanks Memfis!

Yeah, making the original version zdoom-only was quite a mistake :P Visually there were minor changes from the original. Gameplay flow and monster positioning had some big changes, which imo was really bad and overpopulated. The originals also were 100% linear. In this version, it was fun to see you and mouldy taking different routes and decisions (which also were both different from the routes I've chosen)

About the deaf/block song thing, you're right, from the demos I could see you were able to spot several foes inactive, due to bad positioning or sound blocking. I'll fix that. This wad is actually the first one that I'm giving special attention to deaf/sound block, because since I'm using the original monsters (and weaker ones), I've to be creative to not make things easy, boring and tedious. Still, for the trap on open space in map 05, I wanted to make some monsters deaf and others active, so some of them could surprise the player after he killed the wake up ones. The Chaingunner was really badly positioned though, he was supposed to be well "hidden" :P

Thanks for the demos :)

mouldy said:

On a whim I decided to play this set and record a continuous demo, here you go:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/vs90a4fu3wlbmrm/revclips-mouldy.lmp

Nice set of maps, very old-school and a bit square-mazey in places, and fairly easy going, but enjoyable enough. Good for a quick blast, like the guy above said its very much like original doom.

I particularly appreciated the gimmick of putting health potions on the lifts in that tunnel maze, so I could see where I hadn't been yet.


Cool! It was awesome to see you playing it! You have a different approach compared to Memfis (he's more agressive where you were more cautious)

gaspe said:

Just finished to play the whole thing. I liked it, it was really fun. It was also interesting on feeling like an E1 replacement but with chaingunners and hell knights. On MAP02 all that plain green makes feel the map a bit lacking visually compared to the other ones, which those have some more variety in the rooms while still remaining very simple.


Thanks! I haven't changed the visuals, but I think I'll make some texture changes on level 2 and see what I can get haha

rdwpa said:

If you're looking for areas of improvement, I'd say be more stingy with health (at least on UV). You could remove a lot of stimpacks and medkits without even making the maps that much easier -- simply because, apart from some of the traps and a few mean hitscanner placements, it's hard to take damage in most places. A lot of the fun with easy combat against fodder is knowing that health is scarce, and that if you screw up and get blasted a couple of times, you're going to have to be very alert until you scavenge enough potions and stimpacks or stumble across that rare medkit, and that taking too much incidental damage might make the one or two challenging encounters per level quite hard to survive. When you know you are allowed to play very badly (but well enough to survive every encounter) because you can backtrack to an untouched stash of medkits, it's sort of like playing with cheat codes.

Memfis's "Kuchitsu" is an example of a good wad* where the combat is basically a cakewalk, save for a few nasty traps on first playthrough and the first two fights of map05, but a lot of the tension (and thus fun) comes from knowing that accumulated small mistakes will make things unnecessarily hard. It gets your blood pumping. The alternative, of course, is to be a lot meaner with the key encounters. That's sort of the Skillsawian approach where the player has to hang on to their hat and survive the tougher set pieces, but as long as they do, they can comb through their butt for some untouched medkits and be replenished anew.


*He'll say that my argument is invalid because I consider "Kuchitsu" good. :p


Oh yeah, I know what you're talking about haha I'll reduce the health a bit, but not much tbh, since some locations it's a bit hard to preserve your health, at least for me haha. The wad is also going to have all 18 levels from the originals, so things will certainly get harder later hehe

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I had fun with these! The square rooms get kind of monotonous, but the layouts are really fun and creative. I'd be interested to see what new maps you could make now that you'd learned a bit from your old stuff.

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Doomkid said:

As a lover of (what is now called) minimalist design, this looks right up my alley! The screens alone have me sold. :)


Cool, hope you like it :)

Gifty said:

I had fun with these! The square rooms get kind of monotonous, but the layouts are really fun and creative. I'd be interested to see what new maps you could make now that you'd learned a bit from your old stuff.


I'm actually developing a wad ( https://www.doomworld.com/vb/wads-mods/72046-nevasca-version-0-8-released-level-7-done/ ), where I need to finish the last level, but I'll take some time until I get a good idea for it. The gameplay is completely different from eclipse though, being less linear, more set-piece oriented and harder monsters with faster projectiles. It is also zdoom only. :P
I think I'll try to make another classic wad after I'm finished with both eclipse and nevasca, something with more jungle/temple theme with the classic doom feeling.

Anyway, glad you liked :P

joe-ilya said:

Streaming your maps(and some others afterwards)
http://www.twitch.tv/joe_ilya


That was awesome, joe! It's cool to see how differently you, memfis and mouldy have different playstyles and took different routes to finish each level!

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FDAs for all 6 maps (sorry for the waiting at the start of MAP01, I was setting up headphones). The first three levels were vaguely familiar to me, as I've played Eclipse a long time ago (admittedly, I've lost interest to play more than the first few levels back then).

The classic aesthetic and gameplay were good for most of the part, and I've enjoyed them. The rest of my post will be dedicated to complaints and nitpicks, but nevertheless, my overall feeling from the wad stays positive.

Here is a summary of the wad's weak points, as I perceived them:

-Some wall details let the player walk into them, for example MAP01 computer panel on the right from the start position. I'd make them impassable.
-Some items stand on top of raised pedestals, but the floor texture on these pedestals is the same as surrounding floor texture. Seems mildly "unnatural", I'd change it.
-On a similar note, sometimes (notably in maps 2 and 3) floor texture changes where floor height doesn't, which I also consider "unnatural" in this kind of maps.
-Too many Pinky Demons. They're not really threatening, and so I'd reduce their amount to absolute minimum (0-3 per level) and/or give them a setup to make them actually potentially threatening, rather than just bothersome to take down.
-The switch in the nukage maze in MAP05 can be pressed through bars. I also suspect that the raised switch near start area in MAP02 can be pressed from the ground, because Z height is not taken into account when checking press use, and maximum press use distance is 64.
-Please don't put monsters into pits that the player needs to jump into (like in MAP03), because infititely tall actors in Boom make it annoying to achieve.
-I'm under an impression that the Soulsphere secret in MAP04 (and the whole area nearby) is no longer reachable after the player raises the water level. Please avoid such design that permanently locks the player off some parts of a map.
-The less narrow corridors, the better. The less mazes, the better.

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mrthejoshmon said:

I have always loved oldschool levels and these are right up my alley, I'm gonna get to playing them soon.


Thanks! :D

scifista42 said:

FDAs for all 6 maps (sorry for the waiting at the start of MAP01, I was setting up headphones). The first three levels were vaguely familiar to me, as I've played Eclipse a long time ago (admittedly, I've lost interest to play more than the first few levels back then).

The classic aesthetic and gameplay were good for most of the part, and I've enjoyed them. The rest of my post will be dedicated to complaints and nitpicks, but nevertheless, my overall feeling from the wad stays positive.

Here is a summary of the wad's weak points, as I perceived them:

-Some wall details let the player walk into them, for example MAP01 computer panel on the right from the start position. I'd make them impassable.
-Some items stand on top of raised pedestals, but the floor texture on these pedestals is the same as surrounding floor texture. Seems mildly "unnatural", I'd change it.
-On a similar note, sometimes (notably in maps 2 and 3) floor texture changes where floor height doesn't, which I also consider "unnatural" in this kind of maps.
-Too many Pinky Demons. They're not really threatening, and so I'd reduce their amount to absolute minimum (0-3 per level) and/or give them a setup to make them actually potentially threatening, rather than just bothersome to take down.
-The switch in the nukage maze in MAP05 can be pressed through bars. I also suspect that the raised switch near start area in MAP02 can be pressed from the ground, because Z height is not taken into account when checking press use, and maximum press use distance is 64.
-Please don't put monsters into pits that the player needs to jump into (like in MAP03), because infititely tall actors in Boom make it annoying to achieve.
-I'm under an impression that the Soulsphere secret in MAP04 (and the whole area nearby) is no longer reachable after the player raises the water level. Please avoid such design that permanently locks the player off some parts of a map.
-The less narrow corridors, the better. The less mazes, the better.


Thanks scifista! I'm surprise to see that you've played these with keyboard! It's certainly much harder that way than with mouse+keyboard. Also, you have a quite economic playstyle, not letting one bullet go wasted :P

About the issues:

- The aesthetics ones will certainly make it more consistent.
- I've alreadly changed the switch location on map05 in the next version, since everyone who playtested this pressed it from the other side lol
- I've also changed the monsters placement on map03 and 06 in the place where you lower the water/acid pool, so you can safely go without getting blocked by the demons >.>
- I'll reduce the quantity of Pinky demons, only staying the ones that have some design function (like block player's passage or push him to a certain location), even though I've probably killed 70% of the pink demons from the original eclipse hahaha
- So no missables stuff? I'll see what I can do about that. I think I'll change map05 luck-based secret too.
- Do you think it had too many mazes and narrow corridors in the maps? I know MAP03 has one large section of it, but it isn't really big deal... I guess.

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Some questions:

- In Boom, can I choose which sky will have each level?
- Can I choose which levels will have the intermission screen? (like the one before map 07 in original Doom 2)

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Deadwing said:

Some questions:

- In Boom, can I choose which sky will have each level?
- Can I choose which levels will have the intermission screen? (like the one before map 07 in original Doom 2)


For the first question: yes. You can use the transfer sky action (271), which also allow you to have different skies in the same level.
For the second one, no.

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gaspe said:

For the first question: yes. You can use the transfer sky action (271), which also allow you to have different skies in the same level.
For the second one, no.


I see, do you know where I can read something more about it? (transfer sky action)

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Here - don't worry that it's on Eternity wiki and labeled as a MBF feature, the linedef type works in PrBoom-plus -complevel 9.

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scifista42 said:

Here - don't worry that it's on Eternity wiki and labeled as a MBF feature, the linedef type works in PrBoom-plus -complevel 9.


Thanks! I'll take a look on that :)

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Episode 2 is done!

This episode features 5 levels remastered from the original eclipse (which probably no one played them lol).

I've made some quite big changes with these ones: New passages to reduce linearity, lots of rooms reworked and new mosters placement. Most of these levels were also waaay too overpopulated. Level 10 had like 160 foes and now has 100 (with new rooms to explore). In comparison with the first 6 levels, gameplay-wise and visually they're quite different. EP1 is more related to DOOM-E1 maps, while EP2 maps is closer to early DOOM2 levels. Difficult is considerable higher, but I wanted to avoid unbearable traps and way too many mid-tier monsters (especially Hell Knights). Each level probably have around 10-20 mid tier foes. Anyway, these levels are more setpieces oriented (especially 7), where 1 to 6 were more tight action focused.

I hope you guys like it, I've tested them in prdoom-plus (2.5.x) and worked fine. I would love some FDA's/streams if possible haha :D Tell me if you found any bugs or gameplay inconsistency, or even if you found these shit stuff.

Download link: http://www.mediafire.com/download/xrzcxpo7jxveca7/revclips-ep2.zip

Changes:

-> 5 new levels: MAP07 to MAP11.
-> Overall changes for older levels: Wall decorations were marked as impassible, also changed floor/ceiling texture.
-> Reduced Pink Demons in all levels, they're only present in places I think they felt useful design wise. With exception of map 7, quantity is around 3~8 per level.
-> Fixed unactive monsters.

MAP01:

- Changed a Imp to a former human, to make progress less dragging.

MAP02:

- I've made small retexturing to make the level more interesting.

MAP03:

- Some monsters were repositioned in the beggining to reduce pressure in the first room.

MAP04:

- Removed Soulsphere secret: Couldn't find an ellegant solutions to not make it missable.

MAP05:

- Redesigned monsters positioning in the outdoor battle to make it more interesting.

MAP06:

- Under-water "maze" will look less "mazey" now.







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I am loving the classic look you've got there, fella. Just out of interest, where are those rock textures from?

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Springy said:

I am loving the classic look you've got there, fella. Just out of interest, where are those rock textures from?


Thanks! THey're from original Unreal. I took them from Neodoom's wad.

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This got me excited, I was looking forward to playing more maps. Here are my FDAs for maps 07 and 08.

07 was cool: I immediately noticed that the levels are becoming more challenging, which is a welcome change in my eyes. Some entertaining fights here and there. Unfortunately something weird happened and I got stuck in a teleporter, so you might want to take a look at that.

08 was even better, I really enjoyed its nonlinear aspect and the slight ammo starvation, it was fun trying to survive and to figure out a good approach to the map. I also noticed a rather obvious speedrunning shortcut: I like it but perhaps it is too easy to perform. You'll see what I mean. More demos coming tomorrow I guess.

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This sounds cool, I like it when mappers go back and tune-up their old maps.

For the record I get this error in map one UACStarport of ep2.wad in GZdoom, latest dev build 1307. "Unknown top texture 'INROCk02' on first side of linedef 104" (and also linedef 187)

And in map two I get a bunch of 'INROCK02' errors like that in console, also for middle and bottom textures. Map 3 also has those errors. Maps 4 and 5 have no errors. Map 6 has the INROCK02 error again on linefef 1000. No errors on Map 7. Maps 8 and 9 do have the errors again. Then 10 and 11 don't have errors.

You might have known about that already, but posting just in case. Haven't played these yet, just changemapped through them real quick. And looks like those errors were in the ep1 version too for the record.

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I played Ep.2 and it's now more challenging than previous one, thanks to the fatsos and arachnotrons. Level design is not boring, and it shows nice visual with vanilla doom style. Sadly, I also got stuck in MAP07 after I used teleporter. And before I used it, I noticed some HOMs at the ceiling. My opinion is, maybe it's related to tag 666 or 667( although there's no sectors with tag 666 or 667 in the map). Since it's a fatal flaw for map, I hope you fix this one in the next release.

Other than that, it was fun to play. :)

FDA Link: http://www.mediafire.com/download/78mhq29491p8i56/revc2_map07_antr.zip

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Fdas for all E2.

The levels are more difficult than the previous. I really liked the absence of revenants/archviles combined with a nice use of mancubi, arachnotrons and pain elementals. It created an interesting gameplay.
-MAP07: I think that all the demons don't pose a great threat.
-MAP09: pretty though the hitscanner hell at the start :P, I was so immersed in the map that I didn't noticed when I picked up the yellow key and I missed the optional areas. At the dark "maze" I got really low on ammo.
-MAP10: This is my favourite, excellent level. Looks like the sectors 285-286 are missing the tag for the sky-transfer.
-MAP11: On GLBoom there's an HOM in the first closet where you find the weapons: sector 16 is unclosed.

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Ok, this wad is getting seriously awesome. This is like the coolest current project right now: just pure DOOM exactly as I like it. Here are my FDAs for maps09-11.

Btw I just realized that I played everything with wrong compatibility level (Doom 2 instead of Boom) so maybe that's why the Map07 teleporter was bugged for me.

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Here is another continuous demo starting from map07
http://www.mediafire.com/download/qtyyi2xhb2qqxt9/revclips2-mouldy.lmp

This is turning into quite a cool project, it has that old school charm along with unpredictable non-linear layouts that give it a sense of nostalgia and fun. I like how doom 2 is starting to creep in and the difficulty is rising. I died on a couple of maps and didn't finish map11, gave it a good go though.

Good stuff.

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