"Ruins of Death" updated

Mancer finally logged in to Doomworld and saw my request to distribute a Heretic conversion of his map, and gave me permission to do so. I do not believe it is OK to distribute this map commercially, so if you wish to do so, contact Mancer yourself, ideally at his Gmail address.

"Ruins of Death" is a 7-level "megawad" of Heretic levels suitable for for both single player and 1-on-1 deathmatch. The levels are a combination of modified Oblige (OK, ObHack) generated levels, and Heretic conversions of a couple of small deathmatch levels.

The only change in this release is that, instead of being a "quick and dirty" conversion of another Oblige-generated level, Ruins of Death's e1m3 is now a Heretic conversion of map11 in MANCERX3.ZIP.

I would like to thank Mancer for giving me permission to distribute a Heretic conversion of his level.

It is available at http://www.samiam.org/slump/evilruin.zip

- Sam

Does it work in prboom or zdoom (drag/dropping the wad in either just results in the standard doom2 levels, even if I use heretic.. but I'm an idiot)?

edit- I made it work in zdoom (had to move the doom2 iwad to a subfolder to make it use heretic instead)

It works in the original DOS Heretic (indeed, I did a good deal of testing in DOS Heretic to fix issues like HOM, the ugly white line in the SKY texture, and what not), so, if it doesn't work in your source port of Heretic, the issue is with the source port, not with the wad file.

gggmork said:

but I'm an idiot)?

Most likely. :P

If you get the Doom 2 levels, you don't start Heretic.

As far as single player, those were pretty easy relative to some obhack levels I've generated. I already got max kills on them all with a wand start on heretic's ultraviolence equivalent. Level 8 was the most challenging to get max kills on (but easy to beat w/o max) but still doable.

If you want to try one of my favorite doom2 obhack maps try map 10 on this megawad:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/cyr9b2

Its extremely difficult but not really in a typical slaughtermap way (well obhack has no cybers/masterminds, and ammo is limited making infighting pretty much required and tricky), and I've yet to beat even the first main part but have played it a lot.

If you want to try to generate it yourself I guess you can try these settings but I have no idea if it will result in the same map. So its probably best to just download it in the sendspace link above if you want to try it.

left column:
huge
swarms
some
more

right column:
steep
less
less
basic

seed: 4969, doom2, limit removing, full game, single player

(its map 10: you should start on a blue pad with 9 blue potions to your right and a small blue pool, and a railing and some stairs up above).

Thanks for verifying it is possible to finish all of the levels at UV/Smite-master (skill 4) with 100% kills. It's easy because I had to make sure it was possible to finish each level with only the wand using only the keyboard.

How is the mini-"Megawad" at Nightmare/"Black Plague" (skill 5)? Is it still possible to finish each level with max kills starting with only the wand?

- Sam

Yeah, just did (except 4 where I got max but couldn't find the exit and 9 I forgot the secret with 4 monsters). I think you get double ammo on that skill level, and new enemies don't warp in like doom so its not that much harder. And with no hitscanners you can snipe any stuck enemy from a completely safe position. You can not shoot at the beginning of most to take advantage of unalert enemies.

Thanks a lot for doing that. I will one of these days update the wad. Level 4 has no exit; levels 3 and 4 are conversions of Doom2/FreeDoom deatchmatch levels where I added a couple of bosses so they wouldn't be completely boring in single player.

I hope to get together with my old 1990s Heretic deatchmatch buddy again some day and 1-on-1 deathmatch him these levels. I went to a lot of effort to minimize camping spots, since my buddy is a mega camper.

- Sam