Dance Of Fire And Ice Custom Levels
Joao Charlesbois
Featured Levels is an official curated list of custom levels made by the community. These levels are scouted by the developers and have also their songs licensed officially into the game.[1] [2]
Note that the itch.io version here is cheaper than the Steam version because it does not come with Steam Workshop support (Steam doesn't allow it!). Level editor and custom levels are still totally available, you just have to load the levels manually from a URL.
An ADOFAI file is a custom level used in A Dance of Fire and Ice, a multi-platform, one-button rhythm game. It contains game data that, alongside an accompanying .MP3 or .OGG file, is used to play a level. ADOFAI files can be shared among A Dance of Fire and Ice players.
In 2019, indie game A Dance of Fire and Ice gave players the ability to create their own custom levels. To do so, players upload an MP3 or OGG file into the game's Custom Level Editor and create a level to accompany the audio file. A Dance of Fire and Ice saves players' custom levels in ADOFAI files, which are stored in a folder alongside the MP3 or OGG file used to create the level.
You can open an ADOFAI file (and play the custom level it contains) in A Dance of Fire and Ice (Windows, Mac). To do so, open the game's Custom Level Editor and then select your ADOFAI file. Note that, for the custom level to play with audio, the MP3 or OGG file used to create the level must be stored in the same folder as the ADOFAI file.
The FileInfo.com team has independently researched the A Dance of Fire and Ice Level file format and Mac and Windows apps listed on this page. Our goal is 100% accuracy and we only publish information about file types that we have verified.
The Just Shapes & Beats' Level Editor is a PC program that enables users to create their own custom levels. In some of Lachhh's streams, he uses it to create levels and edit them (e.g. adding the warnings to Cool Friends 1.1). It can be used for contests. It is currently unimplemented in the game, but Lachhh has mentioned it in multiple of his streams, so it's a possibility that it could come in future updates. It is currently in pre-alpha.
On the bottom of the editor, there is a timeline that allows you to place hazards or checkpoints on. This timeline can be dragged up and down to fit the user's experience. You can create multiple layers of timelines. To place hazards, you can either drag and drop, or record it with the song.
To record hazards, you can assign a button to a hazard onto a specific layer with the IO button. The level with then start, but every time you press the selected button, it places the hazard onto the timeline. Pressing alt will duplicate items.
On the timeline, some hazards will have two bars with its icon on top of it. One bar will be red and the other will be blue. These bars can be expanded or reduced by dragging them. The red bar is the warning time. The blue bar is the time the hazard is going to stay on the screen. Some of the examples of these hazards are lasers, walls, four-way lasers, etc.
Even if you consider just the original DOS versions of Ultimate Doom and Doom 2, DOOM is very easily arguable as the greatest FPS ever made, an incredibly forward-thinking and deep lightning in a bottle masterpiece made by game designers, artists, musicians, and programmers at their peak.
But DOOM is so much more than the original DOS games, and if you consider it taken as a whole - an open source game with hundreds of thousands of packs of custom levels and nearly 30 years of mods and source ports pushing the potential of the game further and further - DOOM is the undisputed king. The massive amount of custom content for DOOM is so core to DOOM's identity today that even the official Unity ports sold on consoles and Steam contain a selection of custom level packs to enjoy.
But the question is, when DOOM is so many things to so many people, with such an overwhelming amount of source ports, mods, and level packs, where do you start? What levels do you play? What mods do you use, if any? What source port is best for your needs?
DOOM is an undisputed masterclass in game design, unmatched by almost any FPS made since. It's fast - the Doomguy runs at 30MPH. It has creative enemy designs including the homing missile launching Revenant, spread-firing Mancubus, enemy spewing Pain Elemental, and the Archvile, which can resurrect monsters and launch a long-range spellcasting attack from across the map. It has some of the most satisfying weapons in the history of the genre such as the BFG 9000 and Super Shotgun. DOOM is simply fun to play.
For further detail on why DOOM works as well as it does, I highly recommend reading "Lessons from Doom" by Bioshock level designer JP LeBreton, an essay on DOOM's design and why it holds up. I'll quote it here:
Such diversity creates a large but simple to understand toolset that level design can combine with architecture to create a huge variety of combat setups. One tough guy with a lot of fodder means the player has to do crowd control while focusing on the real threat. Lots of flying enemies make the player seek low cover and choke points. Enemies with strong melee in tight spaces make the player dance and really exploit the stun properties of their weapons. This versatility of the core design makes life easier and more fun for the level designer, and thus the player.
Further than this, DOOM is entirely unprecedented in the level of user-generated levels, mods, source ports, and other enhancements and expansions to the game and its engine. There's something for everyone in DOOM, from beginners to experts, those who want challenging combat puzzles and those who just want to mow down hordes of demons, those who want gentle exploratory levels and those who want to never let go of the fire button.
The most obvious place to begin with DOOM is the Unity ports, available on Steam or any modern console storefront, with the original, classic maps. This gives an overall accurate presentation and gameplay experience to the original games, as they were released in the mid-90s.
Subjectively, the Unity ports are inferior to almost any other source port, having more limits and being more difficult to mod or tweak outside of the limitations of the port. Objectively, the Unity ports come with censored sprites and edited levels - for instance, the first-aid kits no longer have a Red Cross symbol, the bonus Wolfenstein levels have removed all Nazi imagery and textures, and the Nine Inch Nails secret in E4M1 no longer displays "NiN."
The original, unmodified DOOM IWADs (doom.wad, doom2.wad, plutonia.wad, tnt.wad) are extremely easy to find online, and I would highly suggest using those instead. Regardless of if you ever play the original levels, doom2.wad contains all of the game's textures, sprites, sounds, and other non-code data, and is required to play any custom levels or mods.
However, if you are uncomfortable with downloading the unmodified IWADs online, an alternative is Freedoom, an IWAD containing entirely original graphics, textures, and sounds. While not a replacement for the original IWAD, this would give you the ability to play many WADs and even some mods without needing to purchase or download anything but a source port to play them on.
The most commonly suggested source port, and the one you're going to be using in most cases, is GZdoom. GZdoom, or just Zdoom, is effectively an entirely new engine based on the DOOM idtech1 engine, featuring a large number of bugfixes, enhancements, graphical updates such as widescreen and high resolution, and new features to the original game, including free mouse look.
However, for this exact reason, it is important to note it is not a REPLACEMENT for the vanilla game. ZDoom is not vanilla, and it is not intended to be vanilla. It is an enhanced port, and is so different under the hood that vanilla demo files are not compatible with it. Some players experienced with the vanilla game even report Zdoom feeling "slippery," although I personally haven't noticed this.
These are all very similar, with PRBoom being the most accurate and Doom Retro being the least. They're compatible with "limit removing" levels, such as those designed for the now ancient Boom source port for DOS, and are compatible with any "vanilla compatible" wad or patch. They give an inherently closer to vanilla experience than Zdoom.
However, if strictness to vanilla doesn't bother you (or you really want features such as free mouse look), stick to Zdoom. Zdoom is generally more user-friendly and convenient than other source ports, and its huge popularity makes it widely compatible with mods and more complex custom levels. Zdoom also allows you to set compatibility settings in the menu. In most cases, I recommend "Doom (Strict)", and do not recommend the default compatibility. I personally also suggest turning off mouse look in the settings as the game is not designed for you to be able to look up and down, and also disabling jumping and crouching, which break many maps.
Finally, most source ports are not convenient to launch or keep track of your WADs and mods. For this reason, download Doom Launcher. It can download level packs on the IDGames archive for you, keep track of your wads and statistics, and launch your source ports and wad files easily.
Once you have your IWAD and your source ports, the question becomes, what maps do you start with? My suggestion is, if you have it, to start with the first episode of Ultimate Doom - Knee Deep in the Dead. These levels were designed after the other Doom 1 levels in order to represent the best available levels made by Romero and other designers. Episode 2 and 3 are considerably weaker in terms of level design, and Episode 4 is not made for beginners, so I would still suggest trying them, but skipping them if you don't find them enjoyable.
The elephant in the room when it comes to Doom 2 is that it's very commonly agreed that the later levels in it are, at best, a mixed bag (and at worst, awful - looking at you, The Chasm.) Despite the dramatic improvement of the new monsters and the Super Shotgun, Doom 2 was developed in a period of only ten months. As a result, later levels suffer from gimmicky, frustrating design, and they fail to realize the potential of the new gameplay elements.
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