Alright. People, I have a problem.
I've played through this entire thing the last days. As far as you can get, at least. And I realized something:
The textures are inconsistant. Some are too realistic, some are not. They are all just jumbled together.
The weapons feel kinda beefy, but they are, ultimately, not fun to use, at least 50% of them. The way they work is unsuitable for a game like this. Some are just so stupid. I went "quantity over quality".
Yes, you can upgrade them, enchant them and god knows what. But they don't optically change, except for when you magic-fy them. Upgrading feels unsatisfying, too. The altfires suck. I did not manage to come up with interesting ones for most weapons. The magic effects are just awkward, gameplaywise. They sound good, but don't feel like they add anything but annoyance to the gameplay.
The sounds of the weapons are inconsistant, as well as their graphics. Same for the monsters. A lot of them just look out of place, taken from some other game that has a completely different look. A lot of monsters are repetitive, there are far not enough of them to make the gameplay vary a lot because of them. Some maps have 3 different enemies at best. I can simply not come up with any monsters any more. I can't. And if I do, I have no graphics for it. Then, I use graphics from a game that has a completely different look than Doom, and then it's getting inconsistant and starts looking like crap.
A lot of the maps play badly. They are one of the following: "Peak out, shoot, get cover, repeat for five times and progress", "Too easy", "Impossible to beat".
As mentioned, many of them don't nearly have enough different enemies inside. Many monsters have repetitive attacks that sometimes don't even fit the map-design very well.
The bosses suck. They are anti-climactic and repetitive, and I seriously don't know how else to make them.
The quests are: Bring Item xxx to Dude xxx. The dialogues are awkward. I can't write a variety of characters.
Ponies. Why the fuck are they in there. They make no sense. All they do is making the game more cringey.
The menus are awkward to handle. Controlling them with a keyboard feels so weird. Especially when you use ZSDF-Dialogues in the same game.
And the list goes on.
You get the point: It Sucks. It's practically unfixably bad. Fixing all these issues would take longer then creating a new game from scratch.
Yes. It has all the functions and gameplay elements described in the startpost. And they work, kinda. But they all don't help to solve the issues above. They are just sprinkles on a big piece of dump.
So I officially decided to abandon this project.
I've been noticing this since the last month, but never actually realized it until a week ago: I'm not having fun working on it any more. I thought it would get better with the next chapter, but it only got more obvius.
The map you see up there: It was not fun do do. I did not enjoy it. As well as most of the other content done last month. Mostly, because I slowly realized for what it is: A patchwork of incoherrent resources, duct-taped together, not working together at all. Fundamental problems everywhere.
Besides, the mod's reputation is as low as you can go. Rightfully so: What can you expect from something like the first edition of this? It deserves that. No matter how good it will be, it won't get rid of that image. If the map in the posts above was for a normal Doom Map, I'd be proud of it. Now, I'm not. I can't.
I can't watch the playthroughs of the demo (yes, they exist) without cringing because the game just sucks so badly. It's so damn stupid and dumb. I can't believe I made this. Why I thought it would get better after 3 years of dumping inconsistant content into an even worse Grezzo2-clone, believing it would turn out nicely, I don't know.
I know there are many people that would love to see this thing getting finished, and that are probably very disappointed now.
For reference:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/26iuqnrlmkv63 ... y.zip?dl=0
Here. Have it. This is RD in it's current form. You'll notice tons of bugs in every map. Also, you'll have tons of texture- and sprite errors. There was still so much lewd stuff in there. Even when I was working on it, I could not find anything to replace it with. If that doesn't say everything, I don't know. I didn't even properly keep track of the sources I took stuff from. You'll see that in the credit-file. Another point to how badly organized this entire thing is.
If you play this now, you'll most likely see it as a joke. But I can not blame you. I spent 3 years developing it, but it just ended up as something that can not be given any dignity, at least not from my side.
I am so sorry for disappointing you on this. You wanted to see a project like the one in the startpost, but the truth is: I'm not the right one to make something like this. I thought I could, but if it turns out like this, I don't think I am the right one to make something this big.
Thank you for all your support throughout the years of this project. Thank you for your fulfilled resource-requests (Thanks to Zanieon for making a custom skybox), your feedback and your help in the "How do I do..."-Thread.
I'll go on with my life. Go write a book about fictional serial killers, maybe. Have that in my head for quite some time now.
I may do something Doom-Related somewhen, but not in the close future.