ZDoom

First off, it's good to see you back.

Second, I played through and it was fun. I liked the standardisation of the boss arenas and the way that the bosses appeared. I think this could be going somewhere. The cutscenes and conversations were, IMO, far too long and detract from any replayability the WAD may have.

Oh, and to answer the question you posed elsewhere - ie what do people remember you as - You always remind me of the first secret in the ZDoom Community Map.

Nope, that's just evil. Although that may be in the spirit of WOW!... I don't know, I'm newish here.

Enjay wrote:First off, it's good to see you back.

Second, I played through and it was fun. I liked the standardisation of the boss arenas and the way that the bosses appeared. I think this could be going somewhere. The cutscenes and conversations were, IMO, far too long and detract from any replayability the WAD may have.

Oh, and to answer the question you posed elsewhere - ie what do people remember you as - You always remind me of the first secret in the ZDoom Community Map.

Well bloody hell, now that you've played posted an opinion I'm beginning to think this thread was totally unnecessary... (that thread was an experiment in exactly how much of this wad's success would depend on having nothing to do with wow.wad >_>)

Regarding the cutscenes; I learned my lesson from some wads I never finished and at least added a function so you can go through them in less then ten seconds... Beyond that, there's not too much I can do. :\

I'm happy to know that a forum veteran's happy to see me back XD

Consider that two who are glad, FYI.

I haven't had time to play through this just yet, but I more than intend to.

The behavior of the cyberdemon on the illusio pit could be done giving the cyberdemon the hate factor configurated in way to attack himself. As he doesn't have a melee attack he'd be shooting rockets ar random directions, and walking in the map without any pattern but randomness.

Welcome back Giest!

I played through the beta version and I must say these levels were quite fun to play, and looked nice as well. They get progressively better looking, too. I never really had any problems with ammo, but I did play conservatively, so the ammo balance might be just right (I played on HMP - I assume there's more monsters on UV). I liked how there was a boss at the end of each level. A Duke-monster or two caught me off-guard on a couple of occasions (you know those brown bastards that run around fast). I died once to the boss of the 3rd level, but I figured out his attacks well enough to beat him on the second attempt. My favourite boss fight was actually the first one, with the shadow thing in the dark room, making the fight a bit more tricky and nerve-wrecking. The bosses in general are sort of kill and varied enough, and the level 3 boss is awesomely huge with a lot of appropriate attacks, and requiring you to "figure them out" I felt I got a bit stuck in the walls from time to time in that level 3 boss room, though. There seemed to be an overabundance of Medikits in some areas, particularly in the second level - there seemed to be quite a few Medikits in the nukage there. The Duke 3D monsters felt somewhat out of place.

The cutscenes I found terribly silly, and while they were somewhat funny, I felt it sort of took away from the atmosphere. I think it would also be great to have them completely skippable. One method that could be used is perhaps to use delays for the conversation rather than having them switch on hitting the USE key. And then instead hitting the USE key sets everything in place and skips the cutscene altogether. I haven't really played the original wow.wad, but I'm assuming the cutscenes are silly due to that. Personally I think the WAD as a whole would rise if you reinvented the cutscenes to something more serious.

I remember playing through some of your really early work a long way back while I was working on Titan and releasing the beginning levels individually for feedback, and sort of thought of us as "n00b mapping buddies" back then. You've sure improved on your mapping skills since (but you're not the only one! ).

Since there were only 3 levels, I decided to play them all through in one go while recording a demo, and hoping they were short enough for me to finish before I needed a break. I managed to complete it, although I guess the demo stops when I get killed by the last boss - far as I know it doesn't continue recording after you load a saved game? Though if it does, you get to see the boss kill as well.

Here's the demo, recorded on GZDoom 1.1.4:
http://rapidshare.com/files/141265352/ixepic01.zip.html

EDIT: When I played through the demo it seemed to desync at the beginning of map 2.

(And now that I'm back from my weekend at the beach...)

Good to see you again, Ix.

Yeah, my mapping skill evolution has been slow and strange. The first third of my canceled GiestDoom project was made at an awkward time when I wasn't sure what made a Doom level 'good', so my strategy was to cram in linedefs thoughtlessly. Then I made Doom: Awesome, Episode 1 (you can find it on /idgames), an intentionally underdetailed wad where I experimented with architecture and just being simplistic... then when I decided to make this, my thought was; why not use the same design principals as Doom: Awesome, but use less obnoxious monster placement and add more detail? Then I finally made some maps that I consider good. Only took me about seven canceled projects. >_<

The cutscenes are a result of my anarchic style of story-writing... and they're intentionally somewhat silly, because there's only so seriously that a remake of wow.wad can be taken. I was trying to avoid pretentiousness. I've received mixed reactions about them; a couple people have thought they were brilliant, others thought they were too long, and still others (seems to be you included) thought they were silly. I won't be changing them, though... the thing about your idea is that it would make watching them the first time too obnoxious, and would take away the ability for the player to watch them at his or her own pace. I'm sort of between a rock and a hard place.

It also seems that I've underestimated the player's ability to arbitrarily guess that jumping into nukage is a good idea... I shall compensate for it. >_<

It also seems that I've underestimated the player's ability to arbitrarily guess that jumping into nukage is a good idea... I shall compensate for it. >_<

Well, not sure if everyone thinks like me. But when I see a radiation suit I figure it's placed there because there's some sort of point in going into the nukage I don't mind some reward for figuring that out at all, I just felt it was a little over the top.

So far it's an awesome wad, nice story, and a wicked-catchy tune for map02!

Heheh, thanks. The song is from MAP05 of Xaser's Zen Dynamics, so I can't take credit for it. XD