ABSCISSION - Dark, Atmospheric Doom II Megawad [32 Vanilla Maps] Now On IdGames!

More Abscission action, this map was really cool and that near final conflict wreckt me so many times lol - cool visuals as always including the thumbnail pic with the freaky dimensional rip there - epic

demo time :)

I been waiting Abscission to hit idgames before playing it, and now that its finally release, i can say that im enjoying this mapset a lot. A perfect atmosphere, with an amazing ambient OST and a sinister but appealing usage of lighting and architecture (Loved the references to shadow and spirit temple on the soundtrack).

Combat its great too, and syncs pretty well with the aesthetics this WAD tries to archive. There's also some minor but really good details thrown to the visual narrative of the maps, like getting out of the bunker/facility on MAP06 before exiting. 

So far i enjoyed all map replacements, MAP10 being my favorite so far (Really loved how you placed the cyber on the hitscan hell zone, very clever). Only played the first episode, cant wait to see the city/urban levels.

Again, amazing work Snaxalotl! Thank you for this great experience.

Here's another one - frantic wild action where the monsters never stop - amazing atmosphere and music as always lol and an archvile wore me as a hat!

Finished! What an amazing experience. Legit your mapping has inspired me and there will be some signs of this in my upcoming megawad someday 

Great memorable experience and the fact this works in vanilla is major props. Thanks for making these and visiting me while enjoying the experience. I'll revisit these on my own super fun. 

Just can't say enough good things hope u enjoy vid 

Hey, I checked this out largely because I think your username is hilarious, turns out it was really good! The first few maps were fine but fairly standard, however things took a big upturn on MAP06 and it stayed strong from there. Played UV pistol start, a few hairy situations but nothing that made me feel frustrated.

Favourite maps were 06 for the way it opens up, 09, 15 & 17 for how interconnected they get, 11 and 21 for the BLAME! vibes, 32 for lol intercepts, and 13 & 23 for just good layouts and being fun. Only thing I didn't really like was the invisible enemies in MAP30 making me rocket myself in the face, I would've appreciated the trollishness in another context but at the end of a mainly-serious wad it was more annoying than anything. I also thought you did a good job with the corrupted-by-Hell visuals, especially within vanilla limits.

Music was nice too, I mostly used the MP3s but I also played some with a good soundfont (modified arachno) and while they were quite different that way it was generally the same moody vibe.

Work-in-progress,  UV max playthrough:

I won't comment much on it here since I've written notes on my channel for every level from MAP09 onwards. Suffice to say, it's one of the most inventive and frightening experiences in Doom. Between recording MAP14 and MAP15 I had like a 2 month gap, being too afraid to tackle it. I'm glad I came back to it with fresh energy. Hope you like it, and all my praise for @Snaxalotl!

Edit: I've completed my UV-Max playthrough of this wonderful wad. A crazy, dark, amazing journey!

Alright this wad was badass. Excellent Doom 64-esque atmosphere, engaging environmental storytelling, and fun level design with well-calibrated combat that's definitely hair-raising at times but never feels impossible. The one quibble I do have is with the secrets, which are pretty fair all things considered but it took me looking up how to get them for a couple maps to grasp the pattern: if you can see something that's out of reach, the means to get to it is never too far away. Other than that, an excellent redux and recontextualization of Doom 2's level concepts into something totally fresh, and I'd dare say this is easily the best iwad remake I've played because of it.

Came here after the Eduardo and Friends trailer, really cool stuff.

UV pistol starts with saves

Port: DSDA-Doom v0.26.2 -complevel 2

Total IGT: 4:01:55

Personal Difficulty Evaluation: 1.2 (1 = Plutonia)

Personal Rating: 9.0 (out of 10)

Sorry, I finished this way earlier this year but I forgot to write this comment and it's long overdue so I already forgot things...

I don't remember anything being too hard to beat, maybe except Map32 which is a bit hard to navigate, and the overflow will be reset after save/load so technically you can't save in this map lol. Now I suddenly remembered Map29... which is a bit annoying to beat, so I up-ed the difficulty a bit by going over Plutonia now lol.

Again, I really like mapsets that represent the IWAD maps but it's changed. This set fits the bill where you can see some of the homages here and there, yet it also has its own design where you can't really tell the signs of the original IWAD.

It's pretty funny that I don't remember when I played the first few maps. Maybe there was an Episode 1 released earlier before the full WAD? @SnaxalotlPlease fill me up on this fact. It's pretty funny that after I looked at the spreadsheet that I use to keep track of all the IL IGTs for different WADs, the records for those maps are still there.

I really like the feeling of the "abandoned industrial areas" (lack of a better word), such as the outdoor areas of Map19 and the opening shot of Map21. It really gives the feeling that after 500 years or something, you're the only person left in the world and trying to explore some former lively active factories, but now abandoned hollow industrial areas. The lighting for the environment is done so well and it gives me some chill while playing it.

The length is not very long, only handful of maps took me more than 10+ min IGT and none of the map goes over 20+ min IGT for me. If you're looking for some short-ish maps with a moody settings, this is the WAD you would go for.

The TITLEPIC is different from the CREDIT, INTERPIC, and BOSSBACK.

On 10/13/2023 at 5:19 PM, GarrettChan said:

Again, I really like mapsets that represent the IWAD maps but it's changed. This set fits the bill where you can see some of the homages here and there, yet it also has its own design where you can't really tell the signs of the original IWAD.

 

It's pretty funny that I don't remember when I played the first few maps. Maybe there was an Episode 1 released earlier before the full WAD? @SnaxalotlPlease fill me up on this fact. It's pretty funny that after I looked at the spreadsheet that I use to keep track of all the IL IGTs for different WADs, the records for those maps are still there.

Thanks!! And I did release the first 7 maps in November last year, instead of waiting for every map to be done before release.

Hey, I may be bit late to the party but after a long time I decided to play through! There's part 1

I really like how every map feels like you know what's about to happen but isn't going to..

PS: If anybody is going to watch it, hd quality is still proccesing

Just finished this and felt compelled to come here and say thank you, Snaxalotl, for sharing such a splendid megawad with us. The difficulty of the first few maps made me feel really confident and let my guard down, but quickly things ramped up and I got my ass handed to me in every possible way from map 16 onwards. Greatly varied layouts with beautiful use of texture and lighting, a kickass soundtrack and pristine combat, plus it shares its name with my favorite song by Deathspell Omega (which might have been accidental but is worth a few extra points anyway). Also, I love the way you do secrets. My only regret is not finishing it in time to nominate it in the Cacowards thread.

Fantastic work, seriously.

17 hours ago, JonExMachina said:

Just finished this and felt compelled to come here and say thank you, Snaxalotl, for sharing such a splendid megawad with us. The difficulty of the first few maps made me feel really confident and let my guard down, but quickly things ramped up and I got my ass handed to me in every possible way from map 16 onwards. Greatly varied layouts with beautiful use of texture and lighting, a kickass soundtrack and pristine combat, plus it shares its name with my favorite song by Deathspell Omega (which might have been accidental but is worth a few extra points anyway). Also, I love the way you do secrets. My only regret is not finishing it in time to nominate it in the Cacowards thread.

 

Fantastic work, seriously.

Wow thanks for the glowing review! And the song Abscission by Deathspell Omega is one of my favorite songs too, the name wasn't a coincidence. 

on map21 now as of this writing - im liking this wad a lot, the combat is great and the scenery is very nice - you can see the original soul of doom 2 still there but no longer there.......the atmosphere reminds me of penumbra:requiem, where the main char suffers from hallucinations before dying and its just a bunch of levels with puzzles but no story, i hope your new work is gonna be as atmospheric as this one(even if its not dark)

This is an extremely well-made wad. No gimmicks, no dehacked, just good Doom.

DOOM: Abscission Ultra-Violence First Playthrough Part 1: Map01-Map10

I played first 10 levels. This wad looks interesting. Classic levels with ambient music. Will continue playing someday.

I can't believe I found this wad again, last year when I started playing DOOM I downloaded a bunch of wads and scanned through then I cleaned and focused more on the original game. Now I'm going through some of the best and I'm playing them from start to end, this was one of my absolute best and completely forgot about it. Awesome awesome maps, ambiance, musics... I enjoy everything about it!

edit:

Just completed, this wad gets a solid 10 from me, one of my absolute favorites!

19 hours ago, Snaxalotl said:

Abscission has now been updated to include a custom status bar by @Ludi! Currently only the mediafire link contains the status bar as the idgames update is still pending.

That looks really cool, hoping for a widescreen version too!

I guess I'll take this moment to report that all of the built-in demos currently desync at varying points, probably due to the maps being updated after the demos were recorded. Tested with both DSDA and Woof.

4 hours ago, Scorcher said:

That looks really cool, hoping for a widescreen version too!

Usually, I would make a HUD widescreen by default but it's a vanilla wad and having a separate wad just for widescreen seemed more trouble than it's worth. 

The wad was updated to have pitch-black sides instead of GRNROCK though, so hopefully that suffices :)

That statusbar looks cool, on par with OBTIC one, I could see myself play vanilla iwads with it. As there's no separate file for it loading whole AB.wad first also works with other wads. Levels and music feels like Doom3 or horror themed so it's nice for serious tone. On another note I refuse to believe that no one ever posted only hud of vanilla obtic that's not widescreen.

On 7/11/2024 at 2:23 PM, Scorcher said:

That looks really cool, hoping for a widescreen version too!

If you don't feel like waiting for the author of the status bar to release a widescreen or ultrawide version, I recommend trying out SubZero's excellent STBAR Extender Python script:

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/141869-stbar-extender-python-script/

You need to get your hands a bit dirty with following the instructions, experimenting with various templates (since the results won't always be perfectly aesthetically pleasing), and possibly doing some manual work in MS Paint (correcting out of place pixels, cloning/healing small areas and so on). In general I find it to be a really neat tool.

I'm thinking about playing this and 25 Years On Earth side-by-side around Doom II's 30th and I'm just wondering, is it possible for Map 32 function properly in GZDoom or Eternity? If not, what advanced ports support enabling the intercept bug?

3 hours ago, Christopher Brown said:

I'm thinking about playing this and 25 Years On Earth side-by-side around Doom II's 30th and I'm just wondering, is it possible for Map 32 function properly in GZDoom or Eternity? If not, what advanced ports support enabling the intercept bug?

DSDA and PrBoom+, possibly Woof and/or Nugget Doom. I played it in DSDA and it worked perfectly with the following settings in Options > General > Emulation:

Warn on intercepts overflow: No

Try to emulate it: Yes

Very much doubt that GZ and Eternity can do it, they're pretty far from vanilla.

Noted, thank you @DreadWanderer.

Not 100% sold on the transitions, but ingame it does the trick, so...

Wad on Github

*UPDATE Jul 22*
Worked on it a bit more, should be good now.

Been slowly playing through this wad when I have some free time.
Really digging it so far!

I do enjoy the atmosphere, and the custom music tracks are a nice touch!
It's my kind of style!