A Doomers Requiem

[Crudux Cruo]

Well, this is certainly interesting if anything.

on a artistic standpoint: colorful. i love the first level with the colors changing in sequence. also noticed the weeping eye behind the throne. Your use of symbolism is for the most part subtle, but its use is somewhat limited. A good looking set of levels, and what sprites and textures you did blend seamlessly

on gameplay and replayability: well i think it goes without saying that this is a edutainment art game, so the combat is secondary. though it flows well and the sounds are good (i heard oblivion hit sounds), its really straightforward making for dull and uninteresting battles, 2 of which i can recall. this is not really a mod about gameplay, so don't bother for that.

on philosophy and ethics: this is a inspiring and well thought out way to present the gospel through what may be considered a very unlikely medium. one would have to argue if that may be an ethical concern using said medium. either way, for those looking for a key to what this is about, its certainly religious and its all over; the whole focus of the mod is spiritual life and warfare. It certainly isn't a sermon but there is enough to connect the dots.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. i wont ever play it again, simply because once you look through it once there is no need to go back again, but its interesting to say the least. I looked at it with the mindset of looking at art and hearing a story, rather than the traditional demon stomp that is doom.

[Sgt. Shivers]

Played through this yesterday. Very nice!

[Forlorn Creator]

Well, this is certainly interesting if anything.

on a artistic standpoint: colorful. i love the first level with the colors changing in sequence. also noticed the weeping eye behind the throne. Your use of symbolism is for the most part subtle, but its use is somewhat limited. A good looking set of levels, and what sprites and textures you did blend seamlessly

on gameplay and replayability: well i think it goes without saying that this is a edutainment art game, so the combat is secondary. though it flows well and the sounds are good (i heard oblivion hit sounds), its really straightforward making for dull and uninteresting battles, 2 of which i can recall. this is not really a mod about gameplay, so don't bother for that.

on philosophy and ethics: this is a inspiring and well thought out way to present the gospel through what may be considered a very unlikely medium. one would have to argue if that may be an ethical concern using said medium. either way, for those looking for a key to what this is about, its certainly religious and its all over; the whole focus of the mod is spiritual life and warfare. It certainly isn't a sermon but there is enough to connect the dots.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. i wont ever play it again, simply because once you look through it once there is no need to go back again, but its interesting to say the least. I looked at it with the mindset of looking at art and hearing a story, rather than the traditional demon stomp that is doom.

Thanks a lot for the feedback man, what part of the battles seemed dull? I figured they would be fairly exciting and invigorating due to the music and sound selection I made.

Did you think the boss fight was not fun?

The symbolism I use is subtle yes, but if you look carefully at the texture, color, architecture, etc it can be seen just about anywhere.

I have been waiting for someone to comment on the light show that I built into the walls!!! Do you have any idea how long that took to make??? It was insane! The code is so primitive yet it works flawlessly, yeah, that is something I've never seen anywhere else in a Doom mod.
--

Your right, it is an unlikely medium for presentation of this topic, but I think that makes it all the more valid and purposeful, since my hope is that people will be at the very least exposed to this ideology; Christianity.

Played through this yesterday. Very nice!

Thank you for playing, please tell others about this if you feel led too.

[Cryomundus]

Playing this right now, and I've got one problem: The "intermission/interlude" screens are really, really large. And changing the resolution doesn't seem to help. Not entirely sure why this is doing this.

Not running any mods, but I am running GZDoom 1.8.6. Not entirely sure what I should be running this in, btw.

[Matt]

Finally got around to playing this. Definitely an interesting and novel take!

Just some thoughts:

+ First encounter is YHWH. You're a braver modder than me, dude.
+ Really digging the aesthetic. We need a lot more of this, religious or not, and less "gritty" stuff that doesn't work well with Doom's pixelation anyway.
+ EDIT: Seriously, I should stress this. Also you manage to nail that otherworldly-spooky feel just right.
- Might want to run a spellcheck on some of the dialogue. I also see a "could of" (which I mention since spell check will not catch that).
- Consider getting rid of the player's crosshair.
- First level, I just ran (cheated, flew) around aimlessly until the level suddenly stopped. I didn't see anything like a ruby at all.
- Second, uh, I left the fly cheat on by mistake... and, uh, I was really glad I did
- Maybe you could do Doom-style intermission text screens instead of the ACS stuff you're using now? Might make it cleaner without the status bar (and being able to move on once the player has finished reading the text) Alternately, maybe you could time this so that it changes with the music?
? Final boss almost suggests the trick is to let him kill you. :V
+ I like how "the flesh" looks even more ghostly and unreal than the "spirit" of the player.
- That does, given the fact that all you do is fight and kill the flesh without any kind of apparent redemption, kinda make it easy to interpret as a "cast aside the body and transcend the material" Gnostic heresy. Kinda.
? At the end of it I'm not really clear why the author believes Jesus is the way and not the Jesus-less God of Islam or Judaism or Sikhi. Perhaps that difference may be reflected in the gameplay somehow? (This may be related to the above ? point.)
- End cast still has monsters why????
+ I notice God's throne looks the same as the throne of one's heart but with different colours. I really like how that works into the whole "in His image" thing. (Could possibly do more purple in God's throne, possibly, for the royal symbolism)


EDIT: As a further comment, I was not happy about the gameplay in the least. Flesh was a moderately interesting boss while the ammo lasted, but between the nigh-impossible jumping puzzles and having to melee fast-moving critters (including 3 flyers in tight quarters) with very fast projectile attacks it was very, very aggravating. For something like this it might be better to take a "Dear Esther" exploratory interface with more stuff to look at, fewer interface-grabbing cutscenes and simpler fights (since the purpose is to convey a message which is quite pointedly not conveyed if you don't manage to actually get through the various challenges - this seems to be an evangelizing work rather than a catechism so it's not like the player is expecting to fight gruesomely difficult Nintendo-hard stuff as a lesson in humility and faith versus failure or whatnot)

[Forlorn Creator]

Playing this right now, and I've got one problem: The "intermission/interlude" screens are really, really large. And changing the resolution doesn't seem to help. Not entirely sure why this is doing this.

Not running any mods, but I am running GZDoom 1.8.6. Not entirely sure what I should be running this in, btw.

Might have something to do with your GLnode texture settings? I am not quite sure, no one else has seemed to have this problem. Let me know, and pm me if you need more help.

[Forlorn Creator]

Finally got around to playing this. Definitely an interesting and novel take!

Just some thoughts:

+ First encounter is YHWH. You're a braver modder than me, dude.
+ Really digging the aesthetic. We need a lot more of this, religious or not, and less "gritty" stuff that doesn't work well with Doom's pixelation anyway.
+ EDIT: Seriously, I should stress this. Also you manage to nail that otherworldly-spooky feel just right.
- Might want to run a spellcheck on some of the dialogue. I also see a "could of" (which I mention since spell check will not catch that).
- Consider getting rid of the player's crosshair.
- First level, I just ran (cheated, flew) around aimlessly until the level suddenly stopped. I didn't see anything like a ruby at all.
- Second, uh, I left the fly cheat on by mistake... and, uh, I was really glad I did
- Maybe you could do Doom-style intermission text screens instead of the ACS stuff you're using now? Might make it cleaner without the status bar (and being able to move on once the player has finished reading the text) Alternately, maybe you could time this so that it changes with the music?
? Final boss almost suggests the trick is to let him kill you. :V
+ I like how "the flesh" looks even more ghostly and unreal than the "spirit" of the player.
- That does, given the fact that all you do is fight and kill the flesh without any kind of apparent redemption, kinda make it easy to interpret as a "cast aside the body and transcend the material" Gnostic heresy. Kinda.
? At the end of it I'm not really clear why the author believes Jesus is the way and not the Jesus-less God of Islam or Judaism or Sikhi. Perhaps that difference may be reflected in the gameplay somehow? (This may be related to the above ? point.)
- End cast still has monsters why????
+ I notice God's throne looks the same as the throne of one's heart but with different colours. I really like how that works into the whole "in His image" thing. (Could possibly do more purple in God's throne, possibly, for the royal symbolism)


EDIT: As a further comment, I was not happy about the gameplay in the least. Flesh was a moderately interesting boss while the ammo lasted, but between the nigh-impossible jumping puzzles and having to melee fast-moving critters (including 3 flyers in tight quarters) with very fast projectile attacks it was very, very aggravating. For something like this it might be better to take a "Dear Esther" exploratory interface with more stuff to look at, fewer interface-grabbing cutscenes and simpler fights (since the purpose is to convey a message which is quite pointedly not conveyed if you don't manage to actually get through the various challenges - this seems to be an evangelizing work rather than a catechism so it's not like the player is expecting to fight gruesomely difficult Nintendo-hard stuff as a lesson in humility and faith versus failure or whatnot)

I really, really appreciate your criticisms. I am not just saying this to appear humble, I really do appreciate it.

Now I will address:

- I know some of the spelling is bad, I am going to fix this in the next update when I get a chance.
- Yeah why not, that's easy enough to do.
- Don't cheat!!!
- I experimented with several different ways on how to create cut scenes that would depict the emotions I wanted to present, ACS worked the best. Killing the text with input was either not possible or beyond my capability. The timed reading suffices as it is a compromise.
- I can see why you would think that, but keep in mind that without the Sword of the Spirit, and Gods Wrath against the body (the punishment of death) you would lose every time. Watcher also says "God help me with this one last time."
- The purpose was not really to present an argument per se, but rather show what is possible with God (versus without: ie- see Adversaries keep; Watcher went there because he became hasty and decided to live without Gods will), and indeed all things are possible with him!
- There is almost no way to change this that I am aware of, and if you or anyone else knows please tell me because I didn't like the fact that I couldn't change them either.
- Your criticism over the Dark Bishop fight is reasonable. While I realize that it was difficult to fight the bishops with just a melee weapon, I helped to negate this affect by putting them in an enclosed area. Flesh can be easily beaten with just the sword. Bishops do very menial amounts of damage, and with quick reflexes, I thought it was a fun fight, but it seems others don't like this so I may edit it.
- It should be hard; life is not a cake walk.
- Purple does not represent royalty in this mod. It represents the mingling and mixing of Red and Blue, which represent two diametrically opposed entities as is seen in the Watcher vs Flesh encounter.

Thanks so much for playing and taking the time to write about it! God bless.

[Josh771]

Just wanted to comment on notes about difficulty: as an avid Dark Souls fan myself, I like the intensity of the combat. The level of challenge was just right, I didn't just stomp all over the enemies, but they didn't stomp all over me either. Seeing all the requests for lessened difficulty/aggravation, perhaps you could simply add some difficulty settings that reduce monster health or something. Just a thought; my two cents.

[idGamer]

Honestly, I didn't think the bishop fight was that difficult. Since the player has so much health, you can simply tank your way through 1 or 2 of the bishops, and with a little careful dodging, I was able to beat it first try with about 225 health left.

[Forlorn Creator]

Ok guys, good to hear.

Yes, a Dark Souls player should find this to be a respectable challenge. I am glad to see that others found this to be a decent and (unique?) combat encounter.

The armor that you have in this mod is very very powerful, it reduces 77% of the damage, and it originally only reduced 53%!!
That was quite a challenge even for its creator.

[Forlorn Creator]

A review for my wad was written by Zorah at Doom Station, here is the link:

http://www.doomwadstation.net/2014/adr/

Op updated as well.

[Patriot1776]

Haven't been in here in ages, and I must be having a problem: are you supposed to have the sword at the start of the Adversaries' Keep, or are you supposed to find it somewhere before you go in where the peach tree is? Because right now, I'm getting butchered by the Dark Bishops due to not having any weapon of any kind. I'm assuming I'm missing something or not loading it with a certain file or something...

[Hetdegon]

It's so prettyyyy----!

The only thing, the flame effects on the intro seem to cause a massive drop in FPS, are they spawning infinitely? Out of there everything ran smoothly.

[Forlorn Creator]

Haven't been in here in ages, and I must be having a problem: are you supposed to have the sword at the start of the Adversaries' Keep, or are you supposed to find it somewhere before you go in where the peach tree is? Because right now, I'm getting butchered by the Dark Bishops due to not having any weapon of any kind. I'm assuming I'm missing something or not loading it with a certain file or something...

You are supposed to draw the sword after the cut scene win the tree area.

Are you running GZDoom 1.8.2.0 or higher? Issues like what your describing are usually due to incorrect versions.

[Forlorn Creator]

It's so prettyyyy----!

The only thing, the flame effects on the intro seem to cause a massive drop in FPS, are they spawning infinitely? Out of there everything ran smoothly.

No, they don't spawn infinitely.