[DONE!] Doom: The Lost Episode

[Phobus]

If anything, the wad changed my opinion of groups within internet communities a little, not the other way around.

The fourth quote could indeed have been phrased a little better, though how is beyond me... It certainly wasn't my intention to say that EVERYBODY who disliked my opinion was part of a special group or anything, but I guess that's largely how that reads.

And on your final point, I guess that's just a matter of how you read it. I was trying to say that the wad evidences that group mentality doesn't help when testing, but the main point I was making was that I didn't like the wad much at all. Hence me calling it a chocolate box filled largely with crap. It looked good before I opened it, and there were some nice parts in there, but I didn't like most of it.

I think XutaWoo probably has it better than me here, as his opinion is that the maps used as a base are awful (a point I do also make). Thing is, I don't know how much of it is down to what was there originally, and what was done afterwards, hence my review just going through objectively and picking things apart as I see them.

[Wills]

Let's just drop this, I'm tired of arguing. As they say, debating on the internet is like the Special Olympics.

[Enjay]

Late entry to the special olympics...

[retard]I don't really have a problem with online "cliques" as they have (mainly) been described. In real life people have friends and groups who they get on better with than they do with other people. They share in jokes, have similar tastes, go to the pub together etc etc etc. It's only natural to expect something similar online.

However, when such a group of friends becomes one that exists to try have some kind of influence and may even get that influence (however valuable that may be) that it can start to become problematic. Or when people say things to defend other members of the group, regardless of whether they need to or whether they actually believe what they are saying, or perhaps band together to pick on others etc etc To me, that's more of a clique. A group of friends is just a group of friends.

I have to say, I don't see anything particularly sinister in this "clique".



As for a group of friends who have similar likes in a WAD meaning their testing may make it no more valuable than testing oneself, I'm not convinced. Certainly, a group of like minded individuals may tend to push a WAD in the same direction. If someone else from outwith that group got involved, they may be able to influence it in different directions, but that isn't necessarily a good thing. What the like minded group will (presumably) do is make a WAD that they are happy with. That doesn't mean that other people will be happy with it but, to me, that just means the WAD wasn't for them. Taking onboard the opinions of non-like minded people may widen the appeal of the WAD or, alternatively, it may make a WAD that has features that most of the development team were not entirely happy with, or perhaps it may make it have features that feel "tacked on" or perhaps have things implemented that the dev team weren't fully behind. You could end up with a "too many cooks" situation.

To me, a group of like minded people working on and testing a WAD can be a valuable situation. Such a group are more likely to have a commonality of vision about the project and, perhaps, make it have a more unified approach. The value of more people, even like minded people, rather than just one tester is more eyes to spot obvious problems. I don't necessarily mean problems with style choices, but actual errors in the map. More people wandering through the corridors simply means more opportunities to spot a misaligned texture, or get themselves stuck because they go into a room and don't leave before the door closes with no way out when the person who made the level had always just ran in and out before the door shut and never noticed the problem etc etc. [/retard]



Stuff that is actually to do with the maps...

So, um yeah, lost episode. I've now played it and... It was quite good fun. I thought it stuck to its original idea pretty well: to take little-experienced levels and put them into Doom as an episode of maps that had somehow fallen into the void (which, in some way, they have). I thought that the idea was quite well carried through to the overall theming of the level set: the void space sky and intermap in particular.

The levels generally had a simplicity of architecture that was appropriate for Doom levels, perhaps, at the "Thy Flesh Consumed" stage of development. However, there were quite a few places where textures didn't fit onto walls very well and there were certainly quite a lot of places where flats on the 64x64 grid were cut across by sector lines in not very pretty ways. How much of that is down to the original layout of the levels, I don't know.

One thing that... I dunno, nagged at me I guess, was that there was so much use of Doom2 resources. I have always thought that a weakness of "Thy Flesh" was the lack of new resources and thought that a monster or two from Doom2 would have been an easy way for id to provide a bit of extra value in their add-on episode (eg a boss fight on E4M8 with a horde of mancubuses (not seen up to that point) would have worked well IMO). However, walking down corridors in these levels, that were totally clad in very recognisable Doom2 textures and getting attacked left, right and centre by mancubuses, revenants and pain elementals did make it feel like I was playing a Doom2 add on and, to me, took away some of the character of Doom. I think it just bothered me on an almost subconscious level that I knew I had loaded up doom.wad but the level felt like doom2.wad. Probably silly, I know, but it was there.

I guess my summing up is that this is a project built on an idea, a good one, where Xaser felt there was a gap in the PC Dooming WAD experience and he sought to plug it using a plausible and cohesive motif. As such, he took a series of relatively unknown levels and stitched them together with a unifying theme (essentially, that of the levels being "lost"), modifying the levels to a point where he felt they worked well enough for a modern audience and fitted in with his theme too. I think he pulled it off pretty well. It is a simplistic level set. It is quite "old school" yet curiously new as well. It has some flaws and some things that I would have done differently but it also has some very nice touches and some interesting ideas. All in all, it was a worthwhile experiment, and an interesting departure for someone with Xaser's modding style to date and, bottom line, I had fun playing it so that's all I need to get from it. I hope Xaser and his team also had fun making it.

And I thought the endpic from "Infernal Sky" was a nice touch but, IIRC, that could have been left in its own palette and even Zdoom would have shown it correctly, rather than forcing it into the Doom palette. IMO, it would have looked better that way.

Oh, and I liked the Swiss cheese/Child's play equipment walls.

[Xaser]

I do believe there's no benefit to further argument. It looks like everyone involved is at least speaking out with their true opinions and has their own justifiable reasons for every word they've said. At this point we'd just be hurting each others' characters.

The only point I want to clear up though is that the one IRC group I commonly hang out with, the closest that can come to a "clique," is Esselfortium's IRC channel. Essel's already stated his contrary opinion (and thank you for being very truthful about it) and many other members remain quite indifferent (i.e. "I don't care) about the wad. No conspiracies here, I'm afraid. ;P

Anyhow, that's all I have to say. I did have fun making the thing, so at least I succeeded in that. Now I'd best be off to restoring another certain wad...


Oh, and

Oh, and I liked the Swiss cheese/Child's play equipment walls.

I'm not alone!

[nightwishfan1]

Wad fails to load on 2.3 and 2.3.1 of Zdoom. Not sure if it's a Zdoom issue or wad related, but I figured I'd let you know since I just tried it with both versions respectively. Will also report it in the closed feature bug forum if it's an issue with Zdoom.

[Project Shadowcat]

As told by TheDarkArchon, this WAD is meant to be run with The Ultimate Doom.

[Remmirath]

Yeah, PDF, you're right. But it should still run, because the wad has a MAPINFO lump that defines a new episode, so that should technically work even with Doom2.wad set as the IWAD.

[poop87]

Hey guys...

I've made a wad with all the Alpha textures...if you're interested...
I dunno if this has already been made in the past, but...

The link:

http://rapidshare.com/files/101953799/alphatex.wad.html

Hey could you upload another link, the one you posted doesn't work.

[Xaser]

Okay, this is the second time you've done this. Firstly, there's a thread for that sort of thing, and secondly, if you're really adamant about a response, try a PM instead of an OT thread bump.


For the sake of starting some actual discussion and hopefully save a lock, I've actually been considering going back and revising some of the maps. I've been doing quite a lot of vanilla Doom mapping now, and I feel like I might be able to make things a bit less weird and a little more actually-classic now that I somewhat know what I'm doing.

[Ethril]

Okay, this is the second time you've done this.

WAY more than the second time. I'm not sure if he's even made any posts that AREN'T necrobumps.

[Xaser]

It's the second in this particular thread regarding the exact same wad. At least he's explicitly being made aware of the proper thread's existence, so for better or worse, there's no 'excuse' for it to happen again, I'd say.

[NeuralStunner]

At least he's explicitly being made aware of the proper thread's existence, so for better or worse, there's no 'excuse' for it to happen again, I'd say.

He has before, in fact several of his posts are there. So there already isn't any excuse.

This sounds pretty cool. Though it made me realize I've never actually played UDoom "cover to cover".

[FDARI]

Difficult in a completely different way. I never really played through Thy Flesh Consumed. I got fed up with the first levels. Teleport here, ambush there... I think this is not quite as difficult as that, although the invisible dispatchers of damage did their dirty deeds with some success.

I can even navigate the map.

But I get pissed off when I have to cross that room again, drawing unseen fire from possibly two sides, possibly needing to approach one of them in order to find a secret. I haven't read too closely, as I like to explore... But is it necessary to find some unseen mechanism or secret to get through the levels?

Basically, this mod fuels my inferiority complex, but maybe I can beat a level or so.

EDIT: Maybe I don't have it in me to solve this kind of puzzle. I do hope there is a puzzle here, otherwise I am too stupid.

[Blue Shadow]

I've actually been considering going back and revising some of the maps. I've been doing quite a lot of vanilla Doom mapping now, and I feel like I might be able to make things a bit less weird and a little more actually-classic now that I somewhat know what I'm doing.

I've never played this before, should I do so, or is it worth waiting for a new version?

[Ethril]

I've never played this before, should I do so, or is it worth waiting for a new version?

Go ahead and play it now... The quality's a bit of a mixed bag, though; Some levels are excellent, while some are merely decent. A few of them feel like they're awful at first but really aren't that bad.
I realize this is incredibly vague, but it's been a while since I actually played this and the above line is pretty much what I remember my opinion being.