Double Impact release thread!

[RottKing]

Get it here: http://rottking.unidoom.org/dbimpact.zip

After about a year and a half, Double Impact is finally done! Double Impact is a 9-map episode 1 replacement for Doom 1 by me and Ralphis that's constructed in a unique way. Basically we made every map by passing a map back and forth, we'd add a few areas, and then send it back until the map is completed.

"You're a mechanic working in a garage on [Planet]'s [Moon]. Then, all of a sudden some zombies appear and start shooting at you. Fortunately, you have a gun so you start killing them and you try and reach the rockets and escape the planet! Good Luck mechanic."

A Limit-Removing Port is Required!

An Exciting Innovative Style of Mapping!

Cooperative Tag-Team Construction Resulting In Dynamic Feel!









Shout outs to esselfortium for the titlepic, infurnus for the sky texture, and dewww, st.alfonzo, NaturalTvventy, Xenaero, glortho, joshsmith, whiteboy567 for play testing!

Get it here: http://rottking.unidoom.org/dbimpact.zip

[Mithran Denizen]

Cool, I've been looking forward to this for months. Downloading.

[esselfortium]

Awesome! Downloading now :D

[Mechadon]

OH YEA! I needed something new to play and this should fit the bill very nicely. Also the sky in that first screenshot looks sick.

[Lizardcommando]

That was pretty fun. A bit tough, but still fun to play. I oughto try and play this in Coop next time.

[JadedLexi]

Downloading!

[DeathevokatioN]

Awesome. :)

That spanner in the menu made me laugh. Actually makes me wanna nominate this for a Mockaward.

I'll play it once I've finished Requiem.

[Lila Feuer]

There's a huge chunk of E1M3 I'm unable to get into, I cannot find the blue key nor am I able to open two doors. I've looked around and used/shot any suspicious looking terminals, what gives?

So far though this has a deliciously oldschool flavor to it.

[DeathevokatioN]

So far I'm finding this really enjoyable, which is something that most E1 replacements fail at. The action is great, it's nice to see that you didn't make it too easy, and the layouts feel really good.

Who did the music btw? The music kicks ass. :)

[Memfis]

Great job! Some people might hate excessive use of DARK traps, but I enjoyed them all.

As usual, here is my demos: http://www.doomworld.com/vb/post/958246

[Vermil]

E1M1 was a bit too empty, but otherwise this seems like a pretty good episode.

[didierbertrand]

good job ,very nice ep1 replacement
was the title inspired by jean-claude Van Damme movie?

[killingblair]

This owns.

[myk]

Cool, I will try this in coop as my first play-through, hopefully this weekend!

[40oz]

I think it's okay. I'd go out on a limb to call it a classic experience. The layouts are cool and I liked a lot of the secrets. A lot of rooms look intentionally left bland but what details there are don't really indicate anything special (this is going from a dtwid perspective though) I don't think this wad is what I would describe as hard. It comes off very formulaic on Ultra Violence. Give the player a fair amount of ammo and one stimpack per every 20 hit scan enemies. Basically kill all shotgun guys on sight with precise accuracy and you're fine. I haven't tried the other skill levels though.

I'm up to E1M4 so far and was a bit shocked to see lost souls and cacodemons used so early.

[RottKing]

Now I enjoy criticism as much as any creative person should, and I'm grateful you took the time to write some stuff, but I found some of the things you said to be kinda weird. I know I'm prolly coming off as very sensitive in this post, but your critiques really just sound very nit-picky and eccentric, and I feel the need to give a counter to some of your points!

40oz said:

A lot of rooms look intentionally left bland but what details there are don't really indicate anything special (this is going from a dtwid perspective though)

I'm not really sure what "not anything special from a dtwid perspective" means, but I guess we didn't follow id's design style to a T so therefore our details aren't anything special.

40oz said:

I don't think this wad is what I would describe as hard. It comes off very formulaic on Ultra Violence. Give the player a fair amount of ammo and one stimpack per every 20 hit scan enemies. Basically kill all shotgun guys on sight with precise accuracy and you're fine. I haven't tried the other skill levels though.

Now this is pretty funny. I don't know if you've forgotten what game, or hell even what genre it is you're playing, but this is Doom. Doom is a very simple and straight-foward FPS. In Doom and FPS games you generally shoot enemies with "precise accuracy" and pick up ammo to ensure you are capable of killing said enemies, and also picking up health items as you progress to keep yourself from dying. If you could give more details and examples as to why it's formulaic, I'd appreciate it. I do feel as though maybe we put too many stimpacks too close together, and maybe not enough varied environments or something ??? I dunno.

40oz said:

I'm up to E1M4 so far and was a bit shocked to see lost souls and cacodemons used so early.

I know it's probably breaking some Doom cardinal rule, but the thing is these levels are generally much larger than the original levels, so being limited to just zombiemen, imps, and demons would have gotten really old really fast. Not to mention that while this is a classic style wad, it has a fair amount of modern design principles, it's not supposed to be 100% classic.

It's not like I think our wad is super great or anything, I just found the stuff you mentioned to be silly is all.

[WH-Wilou84]

RottKing said:

I do feel as though maybe we put too many stimpacks too close together

Health and ammo resources were correctly balanced I think, if only a bit tight on some maps ( E1M3 in particular, but then again I probably missed many secrets ).

40oz said:

I don't think this wad is what I would describe as hard.

Well it's certainly harder than many other classic Doom episode replacements ( e.g. Mapgame, Back to Basics, Base Ganymede... ).

[dew]

40oz said:

I don't think this wad is what I would describe as hard. It comes off very formulaic on Ultra Violence.

as rott said, this is a classic doom episode, of course it is formulaic. it'd hardly be classic if it was full of "novel" zdoom stuff or spammed cacos and barons in giant castles like a sunder throwback. however within these restraints dbimpact does a pretty good job of being a challenge even for us veteran players. hell, it doesn't even need asshole traps for it!

Give the player a fair amount of ammo and one stimpack per every 20 hit scan enemies. Basically kill all shotgun guys on sight with precise accuracy and you're fine.

yeah, playing the corner sniper gets you through just fine, but that can be said about pretty much any other wad that doesn't abuse the opposite formula - lock a player in an arena and throw crap at him. try playing at higher pace though, you'll notice how much trouble the free roaming monsters will put you through. health is scarce and a single imp sneaking into your back can wreck your stack. this design aiming for monster movement freedom even with their retarded AI is the biggest and best homage to the original doom e1, imo.

just a note on the ammo part - it's only balanced with ammo drops from zombies. this is deliberate and honestly, quite rare these days.

oh and m8 is anything but formulaic.

[Vermil]

40oz said:

Basically kill all shotgun guys on sight with precise accuracy and you're fine.

This sounds more like a criticism of Doom1's beastiary more than anything else.

[Lila Feuer]

Apart from some nonsensical level design, which I found uncomfortably non-linear at times, it doesn't stray too far away from the E1 formula and thus felt satisfyingly nostalgic.

[Graf Zahl]

RottKing said:

I know it's probably breaking some Doom cardinal rule.

I'll be blunt here: This 'cardinal rule' about E1 is utter bullshit. What makes E1 is not the monsters being used but some general design principles (which, btw, most of the so-called 'E1-styled' mods totally miss) To this day I find Fava Beans the one that came closest and it doesn't even try to limit itself to E1 resources.

[esselfortium]

Graf Zahl said:

I'll be blunt here: This 'cardinal rule' about E1 is utter bullshit. What makes E1 is not the monsters being used but some general design principles (which, btw, most of the so-called 'E1-styled' mods totally miss) To this day I find Fava Beans the one that came closest and it doesn't even try to limit itself to E1 resources.

Pretty much. I think it'd actually be really interesting to see some E1-styled episodes made in totally different themes.

[Ralphis]

40oz said:

I don't think this wad is what I would describe as hard.

What with the wad having been out almost a week since you've initially played it, I can genuinely say that I'd love to see some demos of you playing through the wad straight through on ultra-violence! Willing to take me up on the challenge? :)

Also I guess my only other comment is questioning where this notion came from that any level set that replaces episode 1 of Doom has to stick to the shareware monsters? Does Double Impact suffer in your eyes for not living up to specific dtwid-style guidelines? Unlike dtwid, we did not intend to (and never claimed to be) reproduce the Knee Deep in the Dead experience.

What we did intend to do was build a solid 9-level journey which offered the potential for a different experience each time through the level set. All of this while passing the maps back and forth sometimes up to 6 times in a day. I feel like, at the end of the day, we accomplished our goal!

[Lila Feuer]

I find these maps have a lot of replay value with my heavily modified version of Mutiny 2.0 and I'm enjoying them more each time I play. Definitely a keeper!

[KwadDamyj]

Currently up to E1M3 and having a blast. :D

[The Ultimate DooMer]

Hmm, when did Phobos episodes get hard all of a sudden? There I was thinking they'll always be linear snorefests where you walk around with 50+ rockets and nothing big to shoot them at, next thing I know I've played 2 in 4 days that are anything but :P

Not actually sure why I picked this one up but it was certainly worth it. A few more barons would've been good but otherwise the monster usage was fine, those cacos and big traps certainly gave me an excuse to whittle off the usual rocket stash. (in fact that was the only way I could get out of some traps, given the settings I play on)

It was nice to see some non-linear design, if a bit confusing at times (which is one aspect of E1 that all these Phobos wads seem to miss, as Graf pointed out earlier) and nice big secrets. The final map was quite clever too, although part of that was down to arriving in the map without a full stash of cells (I had to use most of them to survive earlier).

RottKing said:

I know it's probably breaking some Doom cardinal rule, but the thing is these levels are generally much larger than the original levels, so being limited to just zombiemen, imps, and demons would have gotten really old really fast.

There aren't any rules when it comes to mapping (despite what some think). It wouldn't have been as hard (or fun) without the Deimos monsters, and the Deimos textures made things look better too.

[40oz]

Eeeessh Alright to be clear on what I said.

I've seen Rottking's and Ralphis' maps before in numerous different collaboration projects. These maps look very similar to their mapping style. A lot of rooms are very clean the way they are designed, and don't look very different from your usual mapping style, only with less computer terminals and borders and whatever to detail it up. From being involved in the Doom The Way Id Did project, I've just come to expect more significant height variation and angles and not too varied texture usage. In hindsight it seems kinda unfair to only expect that though.

I don't really get what you mean by Doom being a very simple and straightforward FPS. I know many of Doom's predecessors follow that school of thought, but wads such as well.. Doom 2 for example, hardly come off that way. Maps such as Dead Simple, Circle of Death, The Factory, Downtown Suburbs, The Courtyard, The Catacombs were designed knowing that Doomers were already becoming very good at the game and they wanted something harder. All the maps kinda require you to get familiar with where things are in the map in order to complete it. Many wads such as Memento Mori, Requiem, and Newgothic feature maps that play by those rules too. Not to say Double Impact is bad, I'm just saying that you can make some maps with any number of monsters and be very stingy on health and it becomes automatically hard.

That said I'm sure it's very possible to create some maps that are hard, classic in nature, and don't use cacodemons and lost souls, by way of more exciting traps, setting mission objectives for the player such as requiring him/her to evade monster attacks, find the shotgun, then find the ammo, etc.

I should also let you know that this isn't at all bad. I'm still playing it and I do like it. I'm just being critical of other people's comments on it.

[Guest]

So I have been playing through these levels, and I gotta say, great job guys.

It has been quite a while since spectres were scary, but this mapset has managed it. Great use of lighting, loads of secrets, tougher than the original E1, which is a good thing, and the maps are bigger. Lots to explore. This is honestly what an E1 levelset should be.

If I was going to criticise anything, it would be that a few times I got lost and things turned into a bit of a switch hunt. But that is probably my fault, as I am notoriously unobservant when playing Doom.

But honestly for me, this is really close to capturing that E1 spirit, as close as I have seen in quite a while. A genuine E1 mission pack right here. Great stuff.

Thanks RottKing and Ralphis.

Now back to work you two. That E2-themed sequel isn't going to make itself you know. :D

[Steve D]

I was amazed by these levels, though I do have some nits to pick.

The architecture was stunning. I was a bit surprised by comments about there being a lack of height differentials, as I thought the deck plane was highly varied and in the E1 style. Comments about this or that room being "bland" also surprised me, as I found this to have a high detail level, without going overboard. I'm not a detail junkie, in any case.

The authors, in my view, expertly captured the basic design philosophy of E1. As others have mentioned, this style is simple but is rarely put into practice. Basically, you need to have a lot of interconnected spaces, with hitscanners spaced out at intervals to walk into rooms unexpectedly, or to snipe at you from windows, ledges, etc. You also need to see goals from places where you can't immediately reach them, and so on. The authors did this better than anyone I can think of with the possible exception of Sean Birkel and Jan Van der Veken, so Double Impact is up there with Fava Beans, Dawn of The Dead and The Classic Episode, IMO.

Monster placement was excellent, and often agonizing, especially when Cacos, Lost Souls, Demons/Spectres and hitscanners were all mixed in. I must have killed myself with rockets at least six times because of that. The levels were tough, but not excessively so, and I played all the way through E1M7 on UV. Individual levels were tougher than the entire Fava Beans episode. ;D I didn't play E1M8 because I don't like Boss levels, and E1M9 will be saved for later, and I'll start the map with an IDFA cheat.

I thought the authors achieved great suspense and tension, rare in Doom levels, through occasional quiet moments as well as fantastic light and shadow. There were a lot of E1M2ish dark computer rooms, and I enjoyed every one, though sometimes the flashing lights were very annoying.

There were some fabulous traps, too, even in the first level, though those were just a hint of what was to come.

I would have liked more plasma cells. A BFG would've been nice, too.

The only flaws, relative to my way of looking at things, involved some of the levels being too obtuse or too much of a switch hunt, especially given their size. IIRC, in E1M2, one of my faves from this set, the Blue Key was behind a secret door. And in E1M3 I never found the Blue or Yellow key until I started clipping. Likewise, I clipped to the Blue Key in E1M7 and didn't bother with the third, Yellow I think, and I finished that level with only 50% kills. I'll watch demos to see how people got to those keys, since the path isn't obvious in Doom Builder. To be concise, I'm not into playing Keepaway with keys as a way of making a level more difficult. To me, it just becomes more frustrating, and I start to cheat, since I have no intention of wandering around aimlessly for 30 minutes looking for a key.

Bottom line, I think this is among the greatest E1-style mapsets. These are also probably the best-looking techbase-style levels I've seen. Great job, guys!

[Memfis]

though sometimes the flashing lights were very annoying.

Yeah. I think the worst example is this room from E1M6: http://img545.imageshack.us/i/hgjgfkgfk.jpg/