This part was so cool I saw myself on the moral obligation of making a short clip
Doom wads can get strangely postmodern.
Ohhhhhh neat
Played all the way through this last night. Great f’ing mod.
I had it pending to play it for a year, I was waiting until Ep 2 is released. Which has been released finally.
I had to first finish my current WAD (I like to play things in order), and I could play the first level, I liked it. Especially the AI, with the enemy guys not rushing to kill you like in Doom, he changed the AI for them.
The wad I was finishing before was Fractured Worlds. One last video
While I posted about the pretty lights, it has strikingly unique fights, from Cyberdemons mounted in conveyor belts to fights where the floor would switch in between separate floors with archviles entombed in the walls at different angles, to crushers that would run along narrow open corridors at specific intervals, creating dynamic covers and impassable areas.
So it’s very recommendable but with the asterisk of the difficulty, I read it was ‘late Sunlust’ but I’d say it’s even slightly harder. It isn’t only hard, it’s… exhausting. For example he has put a new CD variant in cyan, same damage but much less health. Cool. Except he uses at least one in almost every room in map 3 already to spice up things, when not dropping squads of 6 in climax fights. Exhausting, as I said, because even if they die much quicker, you have to be in focus mode 100% of the time or they will blow you up i pieces, as the normal CDs.
I came back to using pistol starts, but I scaled down the enemy damage to a shameful 0.6x. Well, after a while I thought about it, and the difference isn’t as huge as I thought at first, it’s really just one mistake you can make, no more. For example, let’s say you have 80 hp, and two 45 dmg fireball hit you, killing you (90 > 80 hp). With the damage reduction applied, I would be dead if three fireballs hit me, instead of two (45 x 0.6 x 3 = 81).
I’m playing Ashes 2063 Ep 1 Enriched Ed. and I’m enjoying it a good bit. The first levels were good, but level 5 (the metro and related underground caverns) was ~great~. Moody, tense, thrilling in parts, with more side areas and secrets, and cool new (and scary) enemies. And great music.
Bloom, the weird but well done Doom + Blood crossover mod, is out.
First, Turin, thanks for keeping this thread updated. Even though I don’t reply, I do appreciate the updates on what is going on in the scene. (I used to review Doom wads back in the day. My claim to fame is discovering wow.wad.)
Second, Blood is maybe the only classic shooter I like more than Doom. Downloading now!
Bloom finished.
A recommendable project, if only for the originality, the very well executed atmosphere and the ambition of the project. It’s 22 new monsters, the whole Blood weapons + items repertoire, including the voxel items, some new weapons for Doomguy too and a 9 map episode that remixes famous Doom and Blood maps, with lots of void parts and ‘reality breaking’ bits.
However, the other side of the coin is that is a bit… messy. A few of the monsters aren’t properly balanced, the difficulty is strangely low (in UV!), some of the last bosses aren’t fun to play, there is a UW map that is a pain in the ass. Still very much worth playing.
https://www.doomworld.com/cacowards/2021/
Auger;Zenith only runnerup? It received tooons of forum nominations. It feels as if DW is snubbing out the child of the competition (doomer board projects) :P
Also, I thought Timer Tripper would get it.
In any case it was a super tight year with many great wads. Heartland, Lullaby, Ashes: Afterglow, Fractured Worlds were locked in.
I was organizing my files, and seeing which ones didn’t get an award or at least a mention. They are a few:
Assembly Line
Attack on IO
Blade of Agony
Bloom
DBP36 Aquatic Wonder
Death’s Dichotomy
Delirium
Fear in your Memories
Final Scoure Catharsis
Grotto of the Scorned
DBP34 Luminous Gloom
Hell Farthest Shore
DBP33 Rainy Days In Casablanca
Ode To The Odonata
Redemption of the Slain
Refracted Reality
The Unending
Viscous Realms
Tribute to the Lamplighter
A fairly complete summary of TCs
Elementalism Phase one is out (well, in RC status)
Earth 1
An easy, non-slaughter map. Medium size with 270 enemies, it has a Aztec theme, with a courtyard area with temples and two underground areas where you get each key. It’s a 15 minutes experience, a good intro map.
Earth 2
Same theme as the previous one, but it feels different enough, located more in the jungle. Way more vegetation and some cool waterfalls at the start, and then it moves to interesting underground lairs. It’s harder than the first, with a few first somewhat hard moments, but still restrained. It ends up in the typical big fight, with the first CD for now. Both maps are mostly populated with low level enemies, and the combat is dominated by similarly low level weapons. No bfg or infinite rockets for you.
Gameplay changes: better pistol, reskinned shotgun, and new unique weapon with rare ammo, the elemental staff that I believe shoots different stuff in each episode (earth is some kind of flak cannon effect). For now I’ve seen a new enemy, the Revenant variant without weapons.
I like the small lore snippets you find at the start of each map
Earth 3
As the screenshot shows, you start in an moody foggy area devoid of danger, to lower into the catacombs, where well, the wad starts flexing its ‘epic’ muscles. New enemies appears, the green lost soul (that explodes) and the stone statues you have seen before finally turn alive. Despite the initial low enemy count, this map was longer than the others, with interesting labyrinthine corridors and rooms, and a final wave of enemies that spawn at the end, reusing the initial area. A good map, with a nice sense of adventure.
In none of the three maps I had problems with ammo, by the way, and they were all fairly straightforward in progress and flow.
Thanks for the head’s up
Earth 4
I didn’t like this map a lot. It’s impressive at first, the ruins of a titanic city. But it’s just… big. Like, imagine making a big map, and still think ‘not, it’s better if humongous!’ and multiply by 2 the scale of every sector, in the three coords. That’s the map. The number of actual fights is still normal, so you just walk more in between encounters and some ‘arena fights’ are fought indeed in a very big arena. As a bonus, the performance is iffy in this map because the mega scale. Also, because the primitive aspect of the also huge trees, it actually make it look as if it isn’t that everything is huge, but instead you have been miniaturized.
Gameplay wise, it has the first more slaughter-like fights, but nothing complicated. You don’t have the BFG, so it’s key to use the staff to eliminate key enemies, and then mop up later with the PG, and later with the RL. Apart from that, they are pretty normal, their setups didn’t surprise me. A circle of Knights and Mancubus with an Archvile mixed up and a single pillar in the middle? A big arena with a cloud of cacos, a few groups of Revenants high in the wall, some Mancubus and imps and 3 CDs? Yep, been there before.
Earth 5
Some fights to warm up for the boss and… damn, I’m bad in bullet hell games. The max I did for now has been 60% of its HP bar.
edit: done! that was pretty cool. The trick was to focus on one head at a time, each destroyed head activates a new type of projectile wave, and for me the first one was one of the hardest one. Even more, each destroyed head spawns some resources.
There are some interesting patterns used. You better be ready for GzDoom crouch and jumping abilities!
The screenshots honestly look pretty terrible with the extreme adherence to one color scheme. It’s like the early days of colored lighting but one color. Does it look better in motion?
It’s the theme of the wad: there are three episodes, for Earth / Water / Fire. There will be lots of blue on the water maps and red on the fire maps, I imagine.
I understand that. I’m criticizing the design. Looking over it some more on my PC, I think it’s mostly the glowing neon lights kind of clash with everything. Maybe a limitation of the game.