At War with Satan, wad for crispy doom/gzdoom

no real critics, sorry. i made it up to map07 so far, and had fun with it. especially when i entered techbases (because techbases is the only map type i really love ;-).

it simply means that i have nothing constructive to say except "it was fun, thank you!" there wasn't anything i definitely don't like, traps are nasty, maps are solid, well done!

such type of maps is not really my cup of tea, but somehow i kept playing. i think this means "very good" in my ranking.

so thank you!

i dropped a quick note, so you wouldn't think that nobody was interested. let's hope someone will come with some constructive criticism later.

for me, the maps are too small and too crowded, but this is not your flaw, it's just my personal preference.

p.s.: you can also add DEHACKED lump right into your pwad. most sourceports will automatically load it then.

yes, loading DEH file shows correct level names.

Screenshots look great! Im not home right now but im looking forward to playing this when i get back.

Some general thoughts- Not bad for your first maps. There's some interesting ideas and the visuals are really nice, particularly your lighting effects. There's an old-school feel to the maps and some of the cave sections even reminded me of Sigil. Your enemy placements are usually good, seems like you have an understanding of the monsters' strengths.
You place a limited but fair amount of health in your maps. That's not the case with ammo, which you do not place near enough of. Keep in mind that you know the position of every single enemy and every item placement in the map, and you will know exactly when to use what ammo on what enemies and how to best line up your shots to conserve the most amount of ammo, and you probably aren't missing many of your shots either because you've played the map multiple times and developed the muscle memory for it. Other players will not have these same advantages that you have. My personal rule of thumb is I take whatever amount of ammo that I need to beat my own map and add an additional 20-30% for other players.
Here is a link to my demos- (https://doomshack.org/uploads/AWWSDemos.zip)
If you're not used to watching demos, you should definitely start. You can try your best to envision how other players will approach your maps but it's a completely different thing to see how players actually do play through your maps. You can see where players got lost or stuck, needed more health, got fucked over because they don't know the map like you do, etc.

MAP01
Good enemy placement and ammo balance in this map. Has an old-school feel to it. Nice visuals, I like the scene. Pretty small but works well for a first map. Some of the barrels were a little useless since they were too far away from the imps, could be moved over. The spectres are too hard to see with the bright flashing lights.

MAP02
Kind of neat that the opening of this map looks similar to the first map, it follows a theme.
Didn't appreciate the trap near the yellow key that teleports you into the previous room except now you're completely surrounded by new enemies. There's not enough room in there for the amount of enemies thrown at you and a player can be blocked off in that situation. Even if that teleporter wasn't there and you're just supposed to turn around and re-clear out that room I don't think that's a very enjoyable fight. It would feel less clunky and more fun to just build a new arena. If you can organically loop a player back to a previous area, like a hub,then revisiting an arena for another fight could be cool, but you should change the architecture and therefore the dynamics of a fight when you reuse an arena. (i.e. open up the room, raise pillars, lower certain walls, things like that) There doesn't seem to be enough ammo in the last half of this map. Didn't want to deal with the remaining enemies because of these conditions so I just went through the exit. Missing ceiling textures in areas.

MAP03
The SSG at the beginning should be brighter, it blends into the shadows and I didn't even notice it until about my fourth attempt. I liked the fight behind the blue key door. Ran out of ammo at the end, so I couldn't kill everything and had to just run for the exit. I point out some misaligned textures and there's another missing ceiling texture. Something I thought about was that your caves look natural but in contrast, your man-made environments can be a little too boxy, you should experiment more with nonorthogonal walls.

MAP04
Disliked this. There's not enough ammo and the setup in the beginning sucks. You have to wait on a slow door that practically guarantees you're going to get hit by arachnotron projectiles. The switch inside this room that raises the bridge goes unnoticed at first because the switch texture is above Doomguy's eye level. In order to not run out of ammo, I was forced to try corner peeking the two arachnotrons with my pistol and punching out the two pinkies without berserk. Not at all enjoyable. When you open up the door that the arachnotrons are guarding, another door opens behind you releasing a bunch of pinkies but you don't hear it open so it felt unfair when I was suddenly gang raped from behind without warning. It's difficult but for the wrong reasons IMO. The cramped layout and enemy placements were unacommadating in a way that felt more sloppy or tedious. If you were to place even just one box of shells near the beginning, this could fix most of that and be a lot more enjoyable. I actually liked the layout of this map from what I saw, but the lack of ammo makes it very annoying.

MAP05
I love the single barreled shotgun but I got bored of shooting midtier monsters with it. For example, the hell knights at the beginning of this map aren't very threatening, they're just tedious to kill. One with the two revenants would be better. Midtier monsters especially become tedious to kill when you don't give out enough shells in your maps and the player has to resort to plinking away with the pistol. You give out a rocket launcher near the end of the map but nobody besides you is going to know that it's there until the fight is over I don't think. Think about it, a player is suddenly faced with two mancubi and a teleporting archvile and they're supposed to react to this dangerous situation by wandering around the corner behind them on the offchance an inconspicuous wall has opened up to reveal a rocket launcher? Weapon placements should be obvious, especially when they're vital. Something you could do is place a window into the rocket launcher room so the player can first see that it's there and then when the fight happens they'll actually know to go check out this cubby.
Another thing I thought about in this map is that it's not always immediately obvious where you're supposed to go in these maps. Something I like to do is brighten up doorways and switches to make navigation/progression more obvious.

MAP06
Layout-wise, this is the best map of the set so far, with the way it wraps around itself, opens up on itself, uses verticality well, etc. It looks really good too, probably my favorite of these. Another thing this map does well is its use of monster closets.
It's easy to miss the SSG at the beginning of the map simply by choosing to go down the left path before going down the right.
In the dark computer room, there's a pinky and a cacodemon stuck inside of each other so they can't move. This map has the opposite problem from your other maps, there's plenty of ammo but a very stingy amount of health. I died to an archvile in a long, open room full of hitscanners. Anytime you have hitscanners, especially an archvile, that room needs to have cover. Even a single 16 unit wide pillar is helpful. I didn't like dying that way, and I didn't like the lack of health, so I DNF the map.

MAP07
There's some really good enemy placement in this map. The mancubi, revenant, and cyberdemon placements in the beginning are very oppressive and require some quick thinking. Lots of pinkies throughout the map to apply pressure. You use a lot of verticality really well in this map.
The cyberdemon really isn't justified though, you're not in that area long enough. If the cyberdemon could also see into the next room where you get the blue key, and continued to be a threat there, that would make it worth it. How are you supposed to kill him by the way? Usually with turreted cyberdemons it's best to provide a way to telefrag them or kill them with crushers. Also, unlike most monsters, cybers don't light up when they attack, so it's nice to make sure there's bright lights on them. I don't think any of the baron placements are justified either. Most times a hell knight will suffice, a baron should really only be used as a "door with health" or as a bulky thing to infight with cyberdemons. I got killed with about thirty monsters left and moved on even though I did like most of what I played.

MAP08
You can literally just run through this map in ten seconds, this map feels very out of place size-wise and difficulty-wise.

MAP09
Softlocked because there's a switch that can't be pressed. I'm not sure if the switch is broken or if I've been playing in the wrong complevel this whole time. There's a fence midtexture that should be set to impassable, you can just run through it.

Edit: Just now seeing that MAP09 isn't finished, maybe that's what happened
Edit 2: I'm someone who would always prefer way too much criticism (even nitpicky criticism) rather than not enough criticism, so I take that approach when I offer feedback.

lunchlunch

what i forgot is to upload the new version of the wad , sorry for that , here it is doomshack.org/uploads/WARSATAN%20-%20Kopie.wad

The easiest way to play back demos is you download either PrBoom+ or DSDA DOOM, then you simply drag and drop your WAD, your DEH file, and the demo onto the shortcut. Just make sure to use the same version of the WAD that the demo was recorded with or it will desync.
I'm glad the criticism is helpful and not overbearing.

alright here 's a little update i made

so map 8 and 9 , which have been a point of criticism since they were so unfinished have been extended greatly. so i 'm posting this in case some one is interested in re- playing the wad , and for every one who already played the old version i will say that they should probably try it again since i have also fixed a lot of issues that lunchlunch has pointed out so yeah i 'd say it 's worth a replay especially if you didn 't enjoy the ammo shortage

here 's the link doomshack.org/uploads/warawrawrawr.zip

40oz thx for playing , and i have fixed some of the issues u said , and i still could fix them becuase somne of what you said was still present in the newest version of my wad so i did them but i also have to say that the ammo issues are not present any more in the newest version and also that the enemy placement was changed a little bit to feel less clunky at certain spots

and the newest version also has fixed map 9 and map 8 and in map 7 the cyberdemon can teleport in the room with the blue key , and because u have generally more rockets and stuff , you can use all the rockets to kill them and after all rockets are empty you can ssg kill him. that 's what i do , but if you don 't like to do that you can find the secret switch that will crush him , but you have to do that before thje cyberdemon teleports in the blue key room

and yes you can carry your stuff from playing previous levels , you don 't have to pistol start every level , you can try to do it but it 's not you 're forced to do it. every level in doom is balanced around pistol starts always and that 's what i did to , the element of carrying stuff from previous levels if you don 't die is a nice reward

the newest version also has added map 10 and started map 11 but i want map 11 to be a reference to the o of destuction , i want it to start out as a circle but i 'm not sure yet how to do it , i guess the ideas are like always going to emerge in my head as i place enemies

here is a link to the newest version with all the newest updates!!