Discovered AlphaBetaGamer's video on Discord, hot damn I can tell a lot of passion went into this project! It's nice!
I haven't played it myself so I'm going off of ABG's video for the most part (but I think I just might, 'cuz it looks so damn good). Not to mention, I can absolutely relate to the project's origins... the same way you wanted an Indy-styled Doom project and made it yourself when you could find no other, I myself wanted a mod that could faithfully bring about the DOOM (2016) experience to the classic Doom levels (and thus Embers Of Armageddon was born when I could find no other who shared my vision).
ANYWAY, onto the pre-game review...
I love the attention to detail present in each level, with reskinned enemies and weapons appearing for better level immersion to better play into the situation and setting at hand. I also loved how well you utilized PSprites (first person sprites) to assist with the storytelling (especially that time when the adventurer gets butted with a rifle... most ingenious, by the way!). While I'm not a fan of pistol-starting new levels, here it at least felt more organic (yes I can tell even from merely watching a video), and thus it was nice.
I do find it odd that the Megasphere is still there and gives Mega Armor. I say you ought to consider coming up with your own Mega Armor and have your Megasphere give that.
I feel like the pistols could fire a little faster. As it stands right now, they fire just as fast as the Doom 2 pistol (which I personally felt was a tad slow). Then again... they did seem to one-shot a lot of the grunts,
soooooo...
Tossing torches is an interesting idea, I like it.
Still trying to wrap my head around how the player can store up to 10 lit torches in his inventory tho.
Love how there are dudes who wield Panzerschrecks.
I say they ought to move a bit faster, have less health, and maybe have a few more of 'em ('cuz they looked fun to deal with, but maybe this sentiment will change once I actually play the mod).
I find it a bit odd that large cobwebs existed in Atlantis.
Maybe they were spun by sea-spiders?
We gotta talk about that Incandescent Ranseur. Thing's jank AF. I can tell it's using a looping sound because it's firing faster than it's playing the firing sound. You really want the sounds to match the rate of fire. Now, I'm pretty sure you came across an issue with the sound being too short when firing it too fast, but fortunately, since you're using GZDoom, there's this nifty flag for A_StartSound called "CHANF_OVERLAP", which allows multiple sounds to play within the same sound channel (even itself). Also, in SNDINFO make sure to set the sound limit for that sound to a high enough number (or 0 for no limit) so it doesn't suddenly get cut off.
Concerning the Incandescent Ranseur's spread-fire mode... it's a neat idea, but poorly executed. Why spend 5 mana firing five projectiles in a wide (albeit fixed) spread when I can fire plenty more projectiles in the same amount of time with the projectile stream at 1 mana per shot? When it comes to weapon design, there ought to be advantages and disadvantages for each firing mode so that one doesn't render the other obsolete. In this case, one easy fix would be to have the spread-fire mode fire faster and/or fire more projectiles (at the cost of 1 more mana per fired projectile) so that the damage output for this fire mode outclasses the projectile stream...
with the caveat that you have to actually be close enough to someone to guarantee none of it goes to waste, and of course it's not as fast as the other firing mode. There are other more creative ways to handle it too if you so desired, but that I'll leave up to your discretion.
The music was solid... combined with the gunplay I saw thus far (especially in the Museum level), it honestly felt a bit like
John Wick meets Indiana Jones and I FREAKIN' LOVED IT.
.....................
... screw it, I gotta play the damn thing myself now. Super stoked!
I will likely have more to say when I'm done. Until then!