Original idea was to create a 4-level megawad containing levels of absolutely different styles (medieval, hi-tech, hell, etc.). For numerous reasons I failed to create it. Testae Virtus (The Castle of Skull) is one level in medieval style. Mostly it was impressed by Shadowman's great Cheogsh and Hexen. It is a big castle, mostly skull-themed (which is original, as usually we see various hell castles), filled with mostly new monsters (and some old ones too). I didn't change weapons, though, to preserve original gameplay.
You are invulnerable during the cuscenes while the camera is changed, so don't worry. Also, most of them usually can't be triggered while you're fighting someone.
The wad features no finishing statistics, hidden places aren't marked as secrets. The falling damage is forced, both for player and for monsters. In this aspect gameplay is more Hexen-ish than Doom-ish.
Also this is some kind o rebirth of my very old and one of the very first levels I created. It was called "Kyragem" and represented the final episodes of an old adventure Legend of Kyrandia. Now I'm much more skilled in Doom modding and mapping, so Testae Virtus is something with Kyragem atmosphere, but much more detailed. Don't misunderstand me, Testae Virtus is not a representation of Legend of Kyrandia. However, I used three midi tracks from LoK. Kyragem.wad was released only among Russian Doom Community and it isn't an interesting work.
Maybe once I'll be able to compile the levels and finally release that project, or maybe I'll be releasing what I can do when I can one by one. Who knows.
Credits:
id Software for Doom, Raven for Hexen, Westwood for The Legend of Kyrandia and music, Shadowman for Cheogsh, Tormentor667 for Realm667, authors of the monsters for the monsters and anyone whose resources I used and for some reason forgot to mention
Base:
New from scratch
Build time:
Over two months with long breaks, hard to say exactly
Editor(s) used:
Doom Builder, XWE, Photoshop CS2, Sound Forge 6.0
Bugs:
visual bugs with polyobjects and possible lags in some areas; also you may get suck into some polyobject doors, use IDCLIP (NOCLIP) in case; that's all I know
