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After taking twice as long to finish as I had anticipated, I throw myself to the wolves with my first true Doom 2 WAD

Threshold Of Pain attempts to recreate the look and atmosphere of PSX Doom while retaining the core gameplay of the PC versions, with a few ZDoom/GZDoom enhancements. It is my first attempt at a releasable wad, so I'm not fussed about creating maps with loads of detailing, rather creating a decent old-school blast that (hopefully) doesn't get boring or unbalanced. There will be some eye-candy, though.

I got the idea when I was playing the PSX TC. Like many others, my first experience with Doom was on the PSX, but whilst, in some respects, it was better (atmosphere, music, SFX) there were many elements missing from the PC. It was also much, much easier and lacked a proper end boss battle. I started messing around with DB and DECORATE stuff to see if I could redress the balance. When I got so far in, I thought, why not make an episode to go along with it?

Features include:
9-10 new levels
Tons of coloured lighting, but nothig too garish
PSX audio
The PSX fire sky, given a bit of a ZDoom makeover
A couple of new weapons and powerups
New monsters - the nightmare class monsters from PSX Doom and Doom64, a handful from the Bestiary and ZDMP, plus a new final boss
A few other PSX/N64-style tweaks.

THE STORY

After saving humanity from the threat of extinction more times than you could remember and establishing yourself as the only one to call upon when the UAC screwed things up again, it was only a matter of time before things got personal.

The UAC's newest and best-equipped facility, stationed in a secluded mountain range on Triton, Neptune's primary satellite, had only gone operational six months ago. The new UAC bigwigs had declared that all security issues had been addressed so that the dimensional portal research could be recommenced, and that nothing would go wrong this time. The facility was only accessible from the air and was heavily guarded by marines with the heaviest artillery the UAC could provide, so they could at least give the impression that they had it all under control.

Last night all transmissions from Triton ceased.

The breifing was all too familiar to you now. The final few broadcasts were of the sounds you'd become accustomed to; screams, growls, tearing of flesh, gunfire, more screams, and so on.

Only this time, there was something else. Just before the end of the last broadcast, there was a voice. It did not sound human, but you could hear it clearly.

It was calling your name.

Seems like they want you dead. As if you didn't know that already. And you're not the type to back down from a challenge ...

Marine Command has sent you up there to clear out the facility. You're being dropped into the surrounding mountains to secure the perimeter and get inside. Once inside ... you know the rest .

Temporary link while DRD is down:
http://files.drdteam.org/index.php/file ... cl-top.zip
Lite version:
http://files.drdteam.org/index.php/file ... oplite.zip

Hope you enjoy playing this as much as I did making it. Have fun!

Screenies:

Spoiler:

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Texture errors already fixed

Here is a video of the original mini project that started the ball rolling:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTSgVF9PPXs
Apologies for the lack of sound. It's because I'm a n00b and forgot to enable it in Camstudio.
Another vid: MAP01 UV playthrough. Still no sound, turns out there's an issue with CamStudio where it won't encode properly with sound enabled.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R0DHA8zzLc

This sounds very cool, just be careful with the coloured lighting, it can look really thugly if it is not subtle.

Absolutely. It's a fault I've seen in a few PSX-inspired WADs, where colorrooms have been thrown in willy-nilly. I'll do my best to stay as true to the PSX as possible.

New vid added to first post. Bit more in-depth this time. New screens on the way soon.

All feedback welcome, even if it's positive

I reeeally like the first bit with the rocks. Very E4M6.

New shots added to first post (they're the big ones)

scalliano wrote:

I like the night sky. Probably the best one I've ever seen.
Is that really a sector-skybox with sector color?

I was about to ask the same thing as well. How did you achieve that subtle night hue? I can never get it right.

Nash wrote:I was about to ask the same thing as well. How did you achieve that subtle night hue? I can never get it right.

I guess that it's normally dark blue, I don't know if there's some additional RGB value in Red and Green, but I'd say it's much of dark blue, like #000044 or something.
That's what I think.
EDIT: But the sprites other than the HUD weapon are normal, not blue. I smell GL lights. <- I must be colorblind kinda or something. Stupid, I am.

Yes, it is a sector skybox. The entire sky is greyscale, I've just given it the blue hue with Sector_SetColor (R=128, G=128, B=255) and an overall sector light level of 160.

definitively looking forward to this.

Demo now available! Check the first post. Let me know what you think, any n00b mistakes, balance issues, etc.

Ok, I played the first two maps this morning, I noticed a number of issues:

1. Make sure to upper/lower unpeg textures above and below indentations in the walls, such as computer consoles etc.

2. The levels felt a little dull due to their corridor-after-corrdidor layout, adding windows, ledges above areas etc. to make it feel less linear and boxy.

3. The chainsaw zombies need a limit on their idle chainsaw sound, as the looping sound skips when there are a few about at once.

4. There was a window on the first level that I could shoot through like a standard midtexture which was a bit odd, make it block everything, or even better, make it smashable.

Hope this feedback helps

Also, I noticed something odd, it is probably to do with my version of GZDoom rather than the wad itself, but the level music only played through once then stopped.

Cheers for the feedback - regarding the audio, only the unique music is included in the wad to save space. If you download the music pack for the PSX TC:

http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=16480

...it should solve that. It's all in the readme.

The chainsaw zombies were a bit of a pain in the arse, I had to flag then as dormant until you go for the blue key to get them to shut up. As for the audio gap, beats me. They're unmodified from the Bestiary download.

EDIT: forgot I'm using PSX audio - I'll look into that

And now for what I expected to be a big bone of contention - the window textures. PSX Doom had this same issue. The only reason I didn't use the "block everything" flag was because it completely prevents monsters from being alerted to your presence, even if they're staring straight at you. It's weird, I know, but my skills aren't quite there yet. This is in the readme too under "Known Issues". If I can suss out how to get around it, it will be sorted.

Some more shots from MAP05:

Spoiler:

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After a lot of testing and some (surprisingly minor) monster rejigging I've decided to go with the flow (here and on Doomworld) and block off the translucent windows. Turns out all I needed to do was remove the "Deaf" flag from the offending enemies to get then to wake. Foiled by my own newbishness once again, dammit!

As it stands MAP06 is now in progress and I've also completed the first of 2 secret levels