Good Doom/Heretic/Hexen WADs

[Lagi]

Behold! A Peak of Doom level design

How TF this could be a peak o level design?

This toilet is not enclosed at all! Whoever design this bathroom is a moron.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Been playing Eviternity and having a great time with a pal, anyone happen to know any other good co-op wads off the tops of their heads? I say "Good co-op wads" because the 5 map episodes in Eviternity work out pretty great. We can usually bang out an episode in a sitting and each episode is a pistol start so it's a really easy cutoff point.

 

[Luzur]

 

[Lyric Suite]

Guys, i'm trying to run Hexen 2 using the Hexen II: Hammer of Thyrion source port, and i'm having trouble running the music files. Using the option "all codecs", it always run the midi, never the external audio tracks. The shit am i doing wrong?

 

[Lagi]

The shit am i doing wrong?

Converting to Islam

... with cross in signature? Dude, put there something about virgins in afterlife.

edit: yes, i agree that was retarded. I had a weaker day.

 

[Sjukob]

Have you guys played Hellforged? What do you think about it? I personally couldn't get past the third map, I found the mod to be very boring and monotonous. It feels like all the effort was put into the assets and nobody cared that much about the gameplay.

 

[Lagi]

I complete it & I enjoy it.

From what i remember:
Quite difficult. The ammo is too scarce, if you dont find some secretes. All items are valuable. not sure about weapon balance, because I was using what I have. I remember constatly escaping from enemies. One level I could not clear some part of the map to search for secrets to increase supplies. So I complete this map only with sword (taking only fights that i can win), because I find regeneration sphere, and after each battle, I was going to make myself tea :D .

First maps are okish, but the further I go, the better the map become (bigger spaces, more epic, more details, architecture was more interesting). And stronger monster you face. Also there are new bosses, that looks great (and you can just escape the fight with them - that was brilliant touch).

 

[Sjukob]

I complete it & I enjoy it.

From what i remember:
Quite difficult. The ammo is too scarce, if you dont find some secretes. All items are valuable. not sure about weapon balance, because I was using what I have. I remember constatly escaping from enemies. One level I could not clear some part of the map to search for secrets to increase supplies. So I complete this map only with sword (taking only fights that i can win), because I find regeneration sphere, and after each battle, I was going to make myself tea :D .

First maps are okish, but the further I go, the better the map become (bigger spaces, more epic, more details, architecture was more interesting). And stronger monster you face. Also there are new bosses, that looks great (and you can just escape the fight with them - that was brilliant touch).

Well, it didn't go like that for me. I found that the mod doesn't try to pressure you: you don't have to fight big groups of enemies; you are not put into tight spaces, where your movement is limited; the encounter design itself is "meh" in general. The levels are pretty big and offer some freedom for you to explore, but due to the lackluster gameplay going through them feels like a slog, you can't even go fast, because it's not always clear where to go and you also risk missing important items. The weapons, the new enemies should've been introduced earlier, the difficulty should've been higher from the start, the mod is only 9 levels long, there is no time to drip feed the player. It's also unclear wether the levels were designed for pistol starts or not. You can find mushrooms in secret areas, those mushrooms are supposed to open another secret area that containts a secret weapon and a secret boss, but it's not implemented as of yet. Obviously you can't keep the mushrooms if you decide to pistol start, but the weapon and ammo placement suggests that the levels were actually designed with pistol starting in mind, so what is the actual correct way to play this mod?

I don't know if it gets better as you progress, may be I'll have the patience to return to it some other day. The authors should've asked Skillsaw to design maps for them.

 

[Lagi]

I just play Hellforge to refresh memories, reach map 4, in one day. Before I spend 1day+ on one map - i remember this green skull in map 3, when you had to dive into specific place in bloodpool.

In general 5 first maps (till assembly line) are "average"? Switch / key hunt and wondering what is open now / where to go. Good maps start from hellkeep which is maplevel 6, then 7, 8 are even better, for my taste. Open big areas, with OMG functional bridges, there is colorful fog, nice textures.

Spoiler

weapons are interesting and I enjoy using them. They are very detailed, have different fire mode. Each weapon fill some niche. And are not copy-paste/reskin of doom arsenal - which i find refreshing.

There is very scarce supplies, ammo, health - but this actual is good, I even enjoy that monster dont drop ammo. Each pickup is valuable like gold, I even empty blood from barrels, and it dont feel like its a boring activity. Finding some secrets are mandatory to progress the levels. I often (too often) deplete all ammo, and im forced to use sword.

The biggest flaw for me, is that monster punishing you too hard. I can be full health and armor, 2x good hits and Im again scavenging with heart weapon for +1 HP. The recolor Revenant is super annoying, Infernal same, or this new sentry. Each monster is like min 3x tougher than player. You use imps and pinkies as livestock supply to charge heart or blade for power attacks.

I hate quicksaving but here Im doing it like every room :/ . Gitgud i know.

that saying there is TON of interesting mods / maps. I think Im done with playing same stuff again.

 

[Lagi]

Im playing Eviterity with Final Doomer with Pistol Start.

It is the greatest fun i have in years, I think even board games with fast-decision-making, non-nerd players are worse.

Eviterity is the most amazing map pack i experience in my life. Everything in it is perfect. The maps are different because of the architecture (3d block) of levels, still decoration are a nice touch, to subtle emphasized the rooms designations. Monster placement, combat challenges, all is fair and satisfying. I go with it on normal, to reduce amount of quicksaving. Playing this maps is like a sacral visitation.

Final doomer
Its set of dozens (i dont know how many, dont have so many fingers) player class with different weapons (not sure if mod alter the monsters as well?).
basically each class follow the same principle with weapons. Start melee - only good with berserk, upgraded melee, start pistol (unlimited ammo, but need to reload), shotgun, super shotgun, machinegun, explosive, Heavy Machinegun, BFG), but each class has different skin, and the mechanic behind of each weapon is altered.

Im playing with Hellbound dude, because like this visuals the most. Interesting things, that I love: shotgun shoot up to 4 times, but need to reload 4x longer as well after. instead rocket launcher he thrown C4 that stick to surface or monsters, and you decide when to blow it up.

this weapons pack are most balance thing ever. I change and use each weapon according to situation. There is no instant weapon changeing, so you have to decide is it worthy to change it in this split of second, or when you hide behind the pillar. The creator of this mod has excellent understanding of the doom formula, and squeeze it to the max, without adding any unnecessary novelty elements.

not sure if its fair to nit picking here... nahh...

Pistol Start
I was blind whole my life now I see.
The overabundance of items is gone. The joy of finding same weapon is back - on EACH new map (i almost cry). Start of each map is gripping (I better avoid Hellknights now). Scavenging for pickups is satisfying (3 shotgun shells, could be useful). Gameplay as per designer intention is revealing (you start with explosive, without guns; BFG access when you need it, to make specific mapplace a carnage; no trivial combat because you full ammo on plasma; your best weapon is for now chainsaw).

the end of levels - i always after seeing the EXIT, go back and hoard as many supplies as I can. Now it doesnt matter. The supplies are only important to beat current level, pickups are tools not your master. You almost dying? - dont be sad, rejoice. Here await ascension, a new start. I feel like in a movie, when the final goal is here, and the protagonist drop all guns, because he doesnt need them anymore.

Spoiler

Where the fuck is my Hammer?!! It didnt spawn like in a 3 levels. It cannot be a map mistake (not here). Berserk is not the same.

 

[Sjukob]

Lagi
Now you understand what I was talking about. Don't feel bad about yourself though, it too took me years to realize all of that.

 

[OctavianRomulus]

Ever heard of the Doomer Boards? We are a new-ish Doom board that have monthly limit removing projects, with lots of cool themes. We don't close threads like on Doomworld so you can say whatever you want as long as you are not a complete cunt. We are always looking for more mappers and I think Kodexers will like it. It's more like the old Doomworld.

Most of our projects are made for limit removing ports. This is the 24th Doomer Boards Project and our newest theme is based on Space Balls, the classic Star Wars parody. My map was co-created with the user dmdr and is called Millenium Falcon Punch. Here are the links to the Doomer Boards and Doomworld threads. If you like it, remember to check our other stuff as well. The upcoming project is based on the Cthulhu Mythos and will be centered around Nightmare gameplay.

The maps are all designed with pistol starts in mind.

https://doomer.boards.net/thread/1749/dbp24-spaceballs-sequel-quest-more?page=1#scrollTo=21983
https://www.doomworld.com/forum/top...alls-the-sequel-the-search-for-more-dbp-maps/

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Always more ways to play Doom:

 

[Lord Rocket]

There's a new Doomer Boards Project out:

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/115453-dbp25-dead-but-dreaming/

If you don't know the DBPs are short monthly WADs (usually around 10 maps long) released by members of the eponymous forum. This one might be of interest to Codexians since it's probably the Codexiest wad eva, with maps by me, OctavianRomulus and Morpheus Kitami. It's also (maybe) the first eva wad made specifically for Nightmare! difficulty.
It does use the new UMAPINFO mapinfo standard so you need to use either a recent version of PrBoom-Plus or GZDoom to play it. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Thanks, let's see how does it compare to Strange Aeons.

 

[Sjukob]

So I've been playing some Build Engine stuff recently. I remember some guy saying that you can't really create any unique encounters with Duke Nukem 3D enemy roster, their purpose is to look cool and die with some fancy visuals. This is what I've experienced pretty much, there's no real drive to the combat like in Doom or Quake, you won't be maneuvering around hundreds of enemies using their bodies to hide from chaingunner fire or revenenat rockets, you won't go through crazy shit like archvile carousel from sunlust or mancubian candidate from valiant, or solve enemy puzzles like in cyberdreams, you won't be getting that sick Quake movement and it's weapon switching combos either, that's all because the Build Engine games weren't designed to support that. That applies to all games from the mighty trinity: Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Blood. So you end up going through levels enjoying pretty visuals while doing some trivial combat from time to time, I guess you can say that cinematic shooters really started with Build Engine games, even before Half Life came out.

 

[Tacgnol]

So I've been playing some Build Engine stuff recently. I remember some guy saying that you can't really create any unique encounters with Duke Nukem 3D enemy roster, their purpose is to look cool and die with some fancy visuals. This is what I've experienced pretty much, there's no real drive to the combat like in Doom or Quake, you won't be maneuvering around hundreds of enemies using their bodies to hide from chaingunner fire or revenenat rockets, you won't go through crazy shit like archvile carousel from sunlust or mancubian candidate from valiant, or solve enemy puzzles like in cyberdreams, you won't be getting that sick Quake movement and it's weapon switching combos either, that's all because the Build Engine games weren't designed to support that. That applies to all games from the mighty trinity: Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Blood. So you end up going through levels enjoying pretty visuals while doing some trivial combat from time to time, I guess you can say that cinematic shooters really started with Build Engine games, even before Half Life came out.

Duke 3D was probably one of the first big "Set piece" FPS. You had lots of fancy stuff going on in the environments, like buildings being demolished and "cinematic" changes to the maps.

 

[Sjukob]

Duke 3D was probably one of the first big "Set piece" FPS. You had lots of fancy stuff going on in the environments, like buildings being demolished and "cinematic" changes to the maps.

Sure, but I believe that you can deliver both strong combat and good visuals with some interactivity, theoretically at least. I still enjoy playing Build Engine games, but it's pretty sad to realize something like this.

 

[JarlFrank]

My favorite Build Engine game is Ion Fury. It has a decent enemy roster, good weapons, and big combat encounters favor lots of movement.

 

[Average Manatee]

Duke 3D started the of game designers not understanding how to make good enemies. Difficulty ends up comes from lots of hitscanners with too much HP that just surprise you and shoot. Chaingun guys in Doom 2 were hated for this reason but at least they were very fragile, easy to stun and useful for triggering infighting.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Ion Fury has amazing level design and weapons that are far more interesting than they appear at first glance, but generic enemy design.

Duke 3D started the of game designers not understanding how to make good enemies. Difficulty ends up comes from lots of hitscanners with too much HP that just surprise you and shoot. Chaingun guys in Doom 2 were hated for this reason but at least they were very fragile, easy to stun and useful for triggering infighting.

I don't think Duke can be blamed for that. No matter what happened the more realistic shooters would have always killed off good enemies. What I think it can be laid at the feet of, is the supposed continuations of "classic" FPS design from the early '00s, like Serious Sam and Painkiller. For all their praise they seemed less like shooters of old, even compared to console FPS campaigns, and more like a different kind of decline. They had nice-looking levels, but with little regard to actually fighting enemies. While the realistic ones kept a good hand on their level design in relation to enemy placement.

 

[Lagi]

I would say combat in Blood 1 was still good, but maybe its because of the glorious dynamite.

 

[Average Manatee]

I don't think Duke can be blamed for that. No matter what happened the more realistic shooters would have always killed off good enemies. What I think it can be laid at the feet of, is the supposed continuations of "classic" FPS design from the early '00s, like Serious Sam and Painkiller. For all their praise they seemed less like shooters of old, even compared to console FPS campaigns, and more like a different kind of decline. They had nice-looking levels, but with little regard to actually fighting enemies. While the realistic ones kept a good hand on their level design in relation to enemy placement.

I'm not objecting to the fact that hitscanners exist, but rather that a lot of devs clearly completely fail to understand how to use them. Take Duke3D for example:

All non-hitscan enemies: a complete joke that are effortless to kill and only rarely manage to harm the player unless by a surprise hit in the back. This includes really unique, awesome looking enemies like Octabrain and Assault Commanders.
Enforcer: Takes off half your health before you look at them. Also has ZERO pain chance, despite pain chance being the obvious thing you should be giving hitscanners.
Battlelord: Takes off 3x your health in under a second, unless you are lucky and it uses its non-hitscan attack which is non-threatening
Every boss other than Battlelord: complete joke that you'll probably never take damage from.

It's like no-one spent even a modicum of time understanding how Doom worked or how to balance their own game. It seems like Doom was either an inspired or accidental genius on the first try. I can't think of a successor to Doom that has a similar level of every monster feeling balanced, unique, and impactful.

It's also noteworthy that very few games take the same route as Doom to difficulty: NO HP CHANGES. NO DPS CHANGES. JUST GIVE ME MORE SHIT TO KILL. Instead we see the lazy "just give everything 50% damage on easy and 200% damage on hard". Doom didn't do any of that except on nightmare, which was originally intended to be impossible. Indeed its a testament to how good Doom is designed that playing with Fast Monsters is fairly common nowadays and the gameplay holds up both on normal and fast monsters.

I would say combat in Blood 1 was still good, but maybe its because of the glorious dynamite.

Blood is better than Duke, but dynamite being a staple weapon is just a work-around to the fact that cultist hitscan is ridiculous so you just bounce dynamite around corners constantly.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

I don't think Duke can be blamed for that. No matter what happened the more realistic shooters would have always killed off good enemies. What I think it can be laid at the feet of, is the supposed continuations of "classic" FPS design from the early '00s, like Serious Sam and Painkiller. For all their praise they seemed less like shooters of old, even compared to console FPS campaigns, and more like a different kind of decline. They had nice-looking levels, but with little regard to actually fighting enemies. While the realistic ones kept a good hand on their level design in relation to enemy placement.

I'm not objecting to the fact that hitscanners exist, but rather that a lot of devs clearly completely fail to understand how to use them. Take Duke3D for example:

All non-hitscan enemies: a complete joke that are effortless to kill and only rarely manage to harm the player unless by a surprise hit in the back. This includes really unique, awesome looking enemies like Octabrain and Assault Commanders.
Enforcer: Takes off half your health before you look at them. Also has ZERO pain chance, despite pain chance being the obvious thing you should be giving hitscanners.
Battlelord: Takes off 3x your health in under a second, unless you are lucky and it uses its non-hitscan attack which is non-threatening
Every boss other than Battlelord: complete joke that you'll probably never take damage from.

It's like no-one spent even a modicum of time understanding how Doom worked or how to balance their own game. It seems like Doom was either an inspired or accidental genius on the first try. I can't think of a successor to Doom that has a similar level of every monster feeling balanced, unique, and impactful.

It's also noteworthy that very few games take the same route as Doom to difficulty: NO HP CHANGES. NO DPS CHANGES. JUST GIVE ME MORE SHIT TO KILL. Instead we see the lazy "just give everything 50% damage on easy and 200% damage on hard". Doom didn't do any of that except on nightmare, which was originally intended to be impossible. Indeed its a testament to how good Doom is designed that playing with Fast Monsters is fairly common nowadays and the gameplay holds up both on normal and fast monsters.

I don't argue that most games failed to use hitscanners wisely, but rather that the true decline in enemy quality is that developers don't give a shit nor do they need to. I don't disagree that Duke's hitscanners are unfun to fight, I never finished the game because they kill my enthusiasm that hard. The thing is that anyone designing their game isn't just going to be playing Duke, they'll be playing Shadow Warrior and Blood too, which had their hitscanners treated as the killing machines they are. I'd even go as far to say those two games had monsters to rival Doom, except all the human monsters are just the same sprite recolored. (although SW's invisible ninja definitely makes an impact the first time you fight one) I have to agree, at this point, that there are no successors to Doom that has as good as monster selection. Key word, successor, Catacomb Armageddon and Nitemare 3D have as good monster selections, but are very much not successors.

 

[HansDampf]

I would always list DN3D in my top 10 of all time. But in recent years I played and caught up on a lot of other good/great FPS games, including Doom I/II and several megawads, and my perspective has shifted a bit. Now I'm afraid to revisit the Duke because I might not like it as much any more. Time will tell.

Anyway, I'm still looking for more WADs to play, browsing through past Cacowards. There are so many... Is there anything that one absolutely must play?