[NEW - v1.2] Austrian Avian Association (AAA) - Eight Levels of 1800s Fun

I'll check it out! Looks interesting!

Just played the first two maps... wow. Amazing work you did there :) It has a certain Blood vibe, but then it is also very unique. Really love the enemy/weapon re-balancing so far.

After just the first lvl I can already state that Im in love.

Well since I have been to Austria so many times I'll give this a go! 👌😎

Beated it, very fun stuff! The theme and level of detail for this set is great, and I really enjoyed all the custom content.

Perhaps the first 6 maps are a bit too stingy with the ammo but besides that, good work.

I'm stuck on map 6. I got all three keys (yellow skull, red & blue key), but I have no idea where to use them.

Played this all the way through yesterday, it's absolutely fantastic. The theme is really interesting and unique (I'm intrigued about just how much of this is based off of the original folklore and how much you made up on top of it) and I really like the custom sprites. I did have a little trouble navigating some of the maps (I'll put some suggestions in the spoiler below alongside some bugs I found), and I do think the wad gets a fair bit easier the further you get through it just because ammo is far more abundant in the later maps, but neither of these spoiled the overall experience for me. I would highly recommend this to anyone who wants to play a really high-quality, fun and unique total conversion, it's great!

Some things I found:

What is a Schnabelperchten?

I'd like to echo finnks13's sentiments (some in the spoiler) - this was quite a unique experience, one akin to those classic TCs in my mind, which kinda took me back in a strange way but it was a welcome feeling.

Thanks for the heads-up, y'all. I'm planning to release a patch with fixes + a few additions on Friday or the weekend, depending on how work goes. As for the Elephant/Maxim Gun's ammo thing, it seems to be a compatability thing I had no idea about during development. I might be able to fix it by lengthening the frames that do the CheckReload action, but we'll see.

Also, yeah, you need to kill all the Acrochordons in MAP06 to finish it (along with the three keys). I made that way too obscure on reflection, haha!

4 hours ago, MundyC said:

Also, yeah, you need to kill all the Acrochordons in MAP06 to finish it (along with the three keys). I made that way too obscure on reflection, haha!

I'm glad you said that :D Will check again later if I can find where I missed some enemies (or are those the 'eggs'?).

Edit: Found the last Acrochordons. A hint that those need to be destroyed would be very welcome :) Onto map 7!

Checked a map out of this, and this is quality stuff! The death sounds were funny and the premise is entirely unique!

the weapon redesigns are so wicked i love it. heck, every redesign works so well together and looks great too.

I love this. So much character and charm to the whole thing. The sound effects and new weapons immediately won me over, and the maps are a genuine joy to explore. 

Just played a little so far but I'm loving it!

Great work, and more respect for it being a one man project.

Gonna play the rest this weekend.

A new update appears! v1.1 of AAA fixes 99% of the issues mentioned in this thread, and also adds some new visual flourishes. Go get it.

Changelog:

This is stellar work.  I played the first two maps tonight, and look forward to playing the rest soon.  Unique setting, delightful replacements, gorgeous levels.  Excited to play more!

i can't believe this hasn't been a bigger deal. this is one of the more enjoyable things i've played this decade so far. absolutely positively awesome. great (and very tight) ammo balance, monster health is perfectly tuned, everything feels like a great expansion on doom's groundwork. second last map's progression was a little unclear because of key placement but otherwise everything moved along at a really great pace and i adored the atmosphere. being unable to really unload on enemies until later in the game made it all the more enjoyable to use all the awesome new weapons once i really could. all the new (original?) sprite work is SUPER great, too - all the prerendered lookin' guys. i'd love to see more of that.

the zelda CDi music is a wonderful choice, too.

A total conversion for Boom? This looks really stellar, I'll have to give this one a go!

Amazing set, I had so much fun with it.

The weapon roster is my favourite thing in here, all the weapons feel so good to use and none of them is redundant. Elephant gun is super powerful, but is wasteful in terms of ammo usage unless used on very heavy foes, so the regular shotgun actually has more use. But this single shotgun also feels great to use. The Maxim gun is now my fav custom doom weapon ever, I can't get enough of it (to the point where I feel like I didn't get to use it enough in the set, I want more). I'm totally stealing this weapon concept thank you :p

Enemy roster is also fun, although some of the creatures are annoying as hell (revenant that spawns lost souls and blows up when dies so you cannot even melee him totally goes to the top of my "holy shit fuck this guy" list). Gameplay is not very doomy and feels a lot like Blood. 

All the TC stuff is great, very cool setting and main character, maps are beautiful and layouts are very neat. Secrets are creative and fun, ++ here.

A few nitpicks I guess:

1. Maps 06 and 07 progressions are too cryptic imo, even though 06 has a neat "tote es" sign, this fucking thing is way too hidden xd:

2. Ammo on maps 02-04 (maybe 05 as well) is way too tight on UV for my tastes (if pistol-started). I think this is especially noticeable because the maps are all sandboxes, so it's way too easy to follow the path that leaves you with no ammo and then too much time is spent running around the maps trying to find some ammo scraps in different corners. IMO all these maps would totally benefit from a few more buckshot boxes and a dozen more throwing axes.

3. Weapon autoswitch is super weird (picking up throwing axe with 0 ammo for all weapons switches you to mosin for example, and other things like that), but that's a limitation of a boom format, so yeah nothing to do about it (mbf21 would have probably handles it better although I'm not sure).

Anyway, super cool set, if anyone wanted to check this out but had doubts - go check it out, this is great. I would recommend playing in continuously though.

Just to add my two cents here since I see other folks suggesting the ammo is too limited, I played what I believe is the latest version and found the balance to be quite good. Ammo is definitely a problem in the first half, but in a good way that furthers the sense of scarcity and exploration befitting the setting. Every last throwing axe carries tremendous value. Maybe you could add more secrets -- to force players who run out of bullets to take some time poking around for hidden caches -- but personally I would not recommend adding too much extra ammo to the critical path. The other wonderful thing that the ammo deprivation does for this mapset is give the player immense satisfaction when they're finally given mountains of ammo to let loose and tear into the bigger monster counts at the end. In my opinion it all works out perfectly.

One issue I did notice was that the background flat for the text intermission is missing (or possibly just misspelled).

Delightful and unique little wad. Thank you for sharing it.

5 hours ago, scwiba said:

Ammo is definitely a problem in the first half, but in a good way that furthers the sense of scarcity and exploration befitting the setting.

 

The other wonderful thing that the ammo deprivation does for this mapset is give the player immense satisfaction when they're finally given mountains of ammo to let loose and tear into the bigger monster counts at the end.

agreed - in a continuous play it worked out more or less excellently for me with a couple tight spots. i think to hurt that by balancing more for pistol start would actually be to the detriment of the experience here.

9 hours ago, msx2plus said:

agreed - in a continuous play it worked out more or less excellently for me with a couple tight spots. i think to hurt that by balancing more for pistol start would actually be to the detriment of the experience here.

Ok, so I will elaborate a bit on my ammo experience as well.

For me when pistol-starting the maps, ammo was uncomfortably scarce (until around map 06) and made me spend a lot of time just running around the map in search of ammo. Or I would need to reload every time I missed an Elephant gun shot, but this is not fun.

But when playing continuously ammo stops being a problem at all, the ammo you can carry between maps solves all the issues. This is especially noticeable in map 05 because you can carry a Maxim gun from map 04, and as much as I love this gun, it is incredibly overpowered for how ammo efficient it is. Once you have it, ammo problems become non-existent. And using Mosin once you have Maxim is just a waste of ammo basically.

This also makes maps 05-07 ten times easier when played continuously. They don't give Maxim early when pistol-starting and you have to make do, but continuously you just shred through everything on these maps.

So yeah, it is ultimately up to wad creators what game experience they want to cater to more, and I'm not saying "noo, add ammo or the maps are unplayable". But currently I think continuous play experience is almost universally better than pistol-starting. Which is fine, but I wanted to give feedback on how pistol-starting feels as well.

Oh, just to be clear my feedback is also from the perspective of a pistol-starter. I do agree that the latter maps are easier than the earlier maps mostly due to ammo balancing, so they could definitely be tuned to be harder to account for that.

Thanks for the recent comments. The MAP06 text screen does have a BG, I just removed the last letter of the texture by accident and thought it not displaying was a GZDoom error (and not a mistake I made).

Regarding ammo distribution - the WAD was designed for pistol starts, with a lower amount of ammo/health in levels to give it a survival horror feel. I do agree that it needs to be evened out, so I'll give a small bump in supplies to the daylight levels (MAP02 to MAP04) and strengthen the forces in MAP06 and MAP07 (especially the latter).

I am working on a six-map epilogue for this WAD, so there'll likely be a small update (v1.1.1?) with fixes once I get the original maps tweaked.

There's something simultaneously adorable and terrifying about it all. The ammo scarcity (not something I'm typically a big fan of) and snipers work so well counterposed against the lunacy of batting off axe-wielding warriors with a broom as some sort of raven woman. And that contrast is hammered home with the carnival atmosphere and maddening music of the second map, all the little pens trying to entice you to gaze in wonder at the majestic beasts (I assume that's what they're doing: I don't speak corvid). It's all completely daft, but I'm terrified because there are dark hooded figures wielding flintlocks in dark hidden places and it's a TC so I have nfi what any of these creatures are capable of and oh shi- how much of my health did that harpy just take with a single hit?

@TheCyberDruid is on the money: this isn't just a bit like Blood because "axes and hooded cultists", it's a bit like Blood because it's bursting with personality, dragging you off to its own demented universe. Whole lot of fun to be had here - thank you, Mundy.

On 5/21/2023 at 9:30 PM, MundyC said:

 

I just finished AAA and I liked it a lot. This wad is definitely worth it!

Avian Vendetta

Hello! I played this for the last two days and had a great experience all throughout. Here's several assorted thoughts:

Thanks for making this!