[Final release] “Hell's Bane” - an Ult Doom megawad

Ironically, I used CH Episode among other episode replacements to create a megawad of my own. In hindsight, I guess I should not have bothered. :P

But why reuse maps from the ADO megawads? Are you not happy with their original incarnations?

Good luck with completing the project, the screenshots look just great. Definitely playing this once it's out.

Thanks for the support and encouragement guys. Much appreciated!

3 hours ago, Rudolph said:

Ironically, I used CH Episode among other episode replacements to create a megawad of my own. In hindsight, I guess I should not have bothered. :P

Episode 1 of Hell's Bane is not 100% CH Retro and the remaining maps have had work done to them, so not a complete waste of time :)

3 hours ago, Rudolph said:

But why reuse maps from the ADO megawads? Are you not happy with their original incarnations?

I'm very happy and proud of those maps and despite their oddities, I still think they are good. But things have changed in 20+ years, so I needed to change a few things in order to meet the demands and expectations of today's players. We could get away with unaligned textures, too much ammo, too little health or lazy item placement and various other shortcuts back in the day. Not today. Players today are used to quality stuff, so level designers need to be very aware of bugs and how the level plays today. At least in my opinion/experience. I've never ever spent so much time meticulously going through a level as I do today and I also need at least 3 play testers to help me. Releasing 20 year old levels today as they were then wouldn't work. At least not when I try to at least bring something new to the table despite Hell's Bane being a 90% greatest hits album ;)

Progress has been good on the last map before all 36 are complete. I am aiming for a public beta sometime in November if all goes well.

I am still some midis short before we have a full OST for this megawad. The team of composers have done a bang-up job and I am super proud of them! But the ones who are left are faced with a daunting task of making 7 midis which is too much to ask for. Therefore, I am looking for midi composers willing to help out so that we can 36 brand new tracks for all levels. Spread the word and report back to me in this thread or via a PM. Thank you.

1 hour ago, Chris Hansen said:

Therefore, I am looking for midi composers willing to help out so that we can 36 brand new tracks for all levels.

Out of curiosity, what kind of styles of music are you looking for, and how much is the music being tailored specifically to the maps?

It’s a bit of a mix. Some tracks are tailored to the levels, but most have been made with an episode in mind after which I assigned them to a level. It’s been quite a puzzle but the midis are so Doomish that it wasn’t after all that hard to find a suitable level to assign them to.

I am looking for music that sort of resembles the original Ult Doom midis. There’s plenty of room for creativity though.

9 hours ago, Chris Hansen said:

Progress has been good on the last map before all 36 are complete. I am aiming for a public beta sometime in November if all goes well.

 

 

I am still some midis short before we have a full OST for this megawad. The team of composers have done a bang-up job and I am super proud of them! But the ones who are left are faced with a daunting task of making 7 midis which is too much to ask for. Therefore, I am looking for midi composers willing to help out so that we can 36 brand new tracks for all levels. Spread the word and report back to me in this thread or via a PM. Thank you.

LMK, I’ve do music for a living so I’d be happy to do some more with it!

Sounds good, Bobby. Send me a personal message and we can discuss it further :)

I could also try my hand at composing too, I've yet to properly score something for UDoom.

Thank you, Korp. Send me a PM and we can have talk about it there.

Time to catch a (demonic) predator... offguard with a shotgun! XD

E1M3's music file is misnamed as D-E1M3 so it won't play properly.

10 minutes ago, plums said:

E1M3's music file is misnamed as D-E1M3 so it won't play properly.

Damn! What a stupid mistake. I wonder when that typo happened! Damn it. Thanks though for letting me know. Until RC2 lands I guess people should open the wad in Slade and rename it. @BattleCat's music is too good to be ignored like that :(

Don't be so hard on yourself, in a project this size mistakes are bound to happen.

In the meantime for anyone who doesn't want to edit the wad, load this file alongside hb-rc1.wad:

https://user.fm/files/v2-dbb3ccf71216774ac77c2a5b90ced449/hb_rc1-13.wad

Played the first two maps, pretty classic and chill so far.

Things I noticed:

E1M1

• texture on sidedef 1363 (of the lift leading to the blue key) is misaligned
• it's hard to see the exit sign when you approach it. I pressed the switch without realizing it's the exit. I didn't notice it before from the other viewpoints. That was a bit annoying because I wanted to keep searching for secrets before exiting

E1M2

• this is something of a nitpick, but the sector 106 door (leading to the exit anteroom) is grey and not brown like other remotely opened doors

Playlist:

Thanks boris! I'll be sure to check out those issues.

14 minutes ago, boris said:

pretty classic and chill

That's all I ever aimed for, so thanks for that.

I've played all of Episode 1 so far. Pretty good. I like how your stuff isn't insanely difficult like so much of what is out there these days. I played CH Retro Episode long before I returned to the Doom community and liked it, and replay it from time to time. So I liked that at least some of those levels are in this. Though other levels I don't recognize, like E1M1, E1M2 and E1M8. Anyway I shall continue playing, and I imagine I'll see more levels I'll recognize. And so far, I don't see any problems with this.

I'm happy to hear that you are having a good time, @Kor. I hope you find those levels you are familiar with interesting despite your foreknowledge. Some of the older levels have had a lot of work done to them and some have had more subtle changes.

Your maps kicked my ass the most in 2002 ADO, looks like they'll be doing it again for a third time.

Also that hell sky in the above shots is amazing

7 minutes ago, Devalaous said:

Your maps kicked my ass the most in 2002 ADO, looks like they'll be doing it again for a third time.

 

Also that hell sky in the above shots is amazing

That might be true but at least this time I hope the fights won't be quite as dickish. Hopefully you'll have more firepower than just a shotgun to fight those barons.

Glad you like the sky! Took me forever to make those skies, hehe!

Just a suggestion, maybe have the second level from Gore in E2M10? Unlike the CH Retro discards, this map looked pretty substantial! Could have a super secret exit in E2M9 or just a secret exit on some other map in E2.

Also maybe High/Low 1 or Gamma Labs (the map for the cancelled Enigma wad) in E1M10 likewise.

Thank you for your suggestion, Francis. The 2nd map from Gore is E1M8 in "Hell's Bane". The first map from Gore is a good map, but ultimately discarded along with High/Low 1 for "Hell's Bane" because they are episode 1 styled, but not really akin to the CH Retro maps. "Meek" and "Frontier Settlements" on the other hand are more like the CH Retro maps and therefore chosen. And no, sorry. I won't be adding any new maps like super secret maps or a 5th episode. This is 36 levels like the original and I'm exhausted just trying to accomplish that! :)

Finished Episode 1, good time overall and looking forward to what's next! I loved the way you handled the Barons in E1M8.

The level name graphic for E1M5 (WILV04) is wider than 320 px, so it hangs over the edge of the intermission graphic. I'd suggest making it two lines, or shortening the space between the letters.

Other than that and the music for E1M3, I didn't notice any problems.

6 minutes ago, plums said:

The level name graphic for E1M5 (WILV04) is wider than 320 px,

I'll add that to my to-do list. Glad to hear that you enjoyed episode 1.

20 minutes ago, Chris Hansen said:

Thank you for your suggestion, Francis. The 2nd map from Gore is E1M8 in "Hell's Bane". The first map from Gore is a good map, but ultimately discarded along with High/Low 1 for "Hell's Bane" because they are episode 1 styled, but not really akin to the CH Retro maps. "Meek" and "Frontier Settlements" on the other hand are more like the CH Retro maps and therefore chosen. And no, sorry. I won't be adding any new maps like super secret maps or a 5th episode. This is 36 levels like the original and I'm exhausted just trying to accomplish that! :)

That's fair. And I had just assumed E1M8 was the first map of Gore because the second map of Gore says it was an E2 style map. Hadn't actually checked!

Also are any levels based on your 2022ADO maps?

1 minute ago, FrancisT218 said:

I had just assumed E1M8 was the first map of Gore because the second map of Gore says it was an E2 style map

That's understandable. I wanted a better E1M8 than the one from CH Retro. And Gore's M2 was a much better fit with some adjustments in visual style and architecture and could despite it's nature as an episode 2 map actually act as a bridge to my episode 2. There's a bit of an episode 2 style to the original M8 as well if you think about it imho.

There are no 2022 ADO maps in Hell's Bane.

Congrats! Can't wait to play this set but I'll wait for a version that fixes all the small bugs. Expectations are high.

Dear @Chris Hansen, congratulations to you and us all on the release! Your name as a developer of Doom maps is already a certain quality mark for me personally and collecting them all in one megawad is a great gift for all of us by the end of the year!

12 hours ago, FrancisT218 said:

Just a suggestion, maybe have the second level from Gore in E2M10? Unlike the CH Retro discards, this map looked pretty substantial! Could have a super secret exit in E2M9 or just a secret exit on some other map in E2.

 

Also maybe High/Low 1 or Gamma Labs (the map for the cancelled Enigma wad) in E1M10 likewise.

I had a slightly different suggestion: it seems to me that maps not included in Hell's Bane should be enough to assemble the fifth episode from them. A single style does not have to be traced in it at all - this episode can become a kind of "collection within a collection". It can include the maps you have proposed and 4 maps from 2022ado and for sure some more can be found from those that did not have enough space... But again, this is just a suggestion and nothing more.