Elementalism, an ambitious new GZDoom mapset. Phase 1 out now!

[JD_Method]

Is it possible to play this properly in co-op? I could get into the maps with my co-op partner but I was missing my HUD and intermission text wouldn't appear on my screen. I can't start a new game in co-op through the main menu options, only by choosing a map to load in ZDL, so maybe it's not starting the game with correct configurations and that is messing with things?

[Bauul]

3 hours ago, JD_Method said:

Is it possible to play this properly in co-op? I could get into the maps with my co-op partner but I was missing my HUD and intermission text wouldn't appear on my screen. I can't start a new game in co-op through the main menu options, only by choosing a map to load in ZDL, so maybe it's not starting the game with correct configurations and that is messing with things?

 

As outlined in the Readme file, unfortunately co-op isn't supported at all. Having a second player will break most maps very quickly due to all the scripts. It just wasn't possible to support co-op and stay true to the vision of the project I'm afraid.

[JD_Method]

On 5/15/2022 at 7:50 PM, Bauul said:

 

As outlined in the Readme file, unfortunately co-op isn't supported at all. Having a second player will break most maps very quickly due to all the scripts. It just wasn't possible to support co-op and stay true to the vision of the project I'm afraid.

 

Oh whoops, my bad! That'll teach me for not looking at the readme!

 

No worries then, guess I'll have to solo it! I'm loving what I've seen so far!

[JD_Method]

Weirdly, my GZDoom is crashing during certain encounters. It crashed a few times during the big fight at the end of E3, and now I'm at a fight during E4 (pictured below) where it crashes every single time so I'm unable to make any progress.

 

 

Just wondering if anyone else has had any issues with crashing?

I'm running GZDoom 4.7.1, and it crashes with both Vulkan and OpenGL. I loaded up Eviternity map15 to try out that map's big fight to see if it would just crash whenever there was a lot of action on-screen, but I didn't get any crashing there. What's odd is that I loaded up E4 in GZDoom 4.6.0 and managed to complete the fight without any crashing, so I'm not sure what's going on. Using the latest dev build of GZDoom just seems to crash upon attempting to start a new game. I'm running good PC specs so that shouldn't be the issue. At this point I'm kinda stumped, and it's looking like I might have to just use GZDoom 4.6.0 if I want to progress.

Edited May 17, 2022 by JD_Method

[Graf Zahl]

6 minutes ago, JD_Method said:

I'm running GZDoom 4.7.1, and it crashes with both Vulkan and OpenGL. I loaded up Eviternity map15 to try out that map's big fight to see if it would just crash whenever there was a lot of action on-screen, but I didn't get any crashing there. What's odd is that I loaded up E4 in GZDoom 4.6.0 and managed to complete the fight without any crashing, so I'm not sure what's going on. Using the latest dev build of GZDoom just seems to crash upon attempting to start a new game. I'm running good PC specs so that shouldn't be the issue. At this point I'm kinda stumped, and it's looking like I might have to just use GZDoom 4.6.0 if I want to progress.

 

If you get the crash from a savegame, please file a bug report at zdoom.org, outlining what files are needed and what to do to get the crash.

You can also check a more recent devbuild from here https://devbuilds.drdteam.org/gzdoom/ and check if it still happens in more recent versions.

 

[Bauul]

18 hours ago, JD_Method said:

Weirdly, my GZDoom is crashing during certain encounters.

 

I second Graf's suggestion to file a bug report. There's nothing particularly novel about that fight specifically, so nothing springs to mind that could be causing a crash. 

 

Just to check, you're not running any mods at all are you? Even relatively simple ones?

[ginc]

19 hours ago, JD_Method said:

Weirdly, my GZDoom is crashing during certain encounters. It crashed a few times during the big fight at the end of E3, and now I'm at a fight during E4 (pictured below) where it crashes every single time so I'm unable to make any progress.

 

 

I didn't get any crashes, but that fight in E4 did softlock for me one time. I somehow punted one of the cacos upward into an area where it was no longer shootable, and since you need to kill all the monsters to escape the arena, I was trapped. I restarted the fight and everything went fine the second time.

 

While we're on the topic of GZDoom crashes though: while doing some mapping last year (Infested MAP03 development) I did occasionally get some lockups when flying monsters attempted to navigate through too many stacked sector portals. Basically GZDoom stopped responding and I had to force close it. The portal setup on the map was kind of a janky mess at the time though.

Edited May 18, 2022 by ginc

[JD_Method]

On 5/18/2022 at 4:29 PM, Bauul said:

 

I second Graf's suggestion to file a bug report. There's nothing particularly novel about that fight specifically, so nothing springs to mind that could be causing a crash. 

 

Just to check, you're not running any mods at all are you? Even relatively simple ones?

 

Yep, turns out it was one of my mods. I was running Beautiful Doom 6.3.2 and having that loaded crashed the fight in E4 every time. Switched over to the latest version of Beautiful Doom (7.1.6) and it was smooth sailing afterwards! In fact, I just finished it on Medium-Violence and I absolutely loved my time with it! These are some of the most impressive maps I've seen in Doom! Superb stuff!

[evouga]

I just finished this really fantastic WAD. F3 is the standout map of the set, but every episode had some excellent maps with frantic set-piece fights and stunning aesthetics. E4, W3, F1, and F4 are some of my other favorites.

The bossfights were well-implemented and a nice change of pace from standard mapping. The water god was my favorite. The bullet hell phases of the fire god are great (they seem impossible at first, then when you learn the patterns you can complete them taking zero damage) but size of the arena, and the fact that it's pretty much impossible to maintain a sense of orientation during the fight, makes hunting for ammo and megaspheres during the "chase" phases frustrating.

[sandwedge]

Just started this one, right from the beginning this just oozes quality and the first 3 maps had tons of interesting visuals, setpieces and combat scenarios to sink my teeth into!  The music is also fantastic.  I can see why people were calling this a future Cacoward winner and so I'm excited to keep playing through it!

 

 

[Bauul]

A small update has just been posted!  Download link is in the OP.  I hadn't really planned on doing any more updates, but after finding a pretty hilarious bug with W5 (the back of the pyramid was inverted!) I used it as a good excuse to fix a few other small bugs, as well as add a few little enhancements.

 

The changes are:

• Earth 1: Added slightly more ammo at start of level
• Earth 3: Removed excess ammo at start of level
• Earth 4: Slight monster adjustment
• Water 4: Fixed secret not appearing on lower difficulties
• Water 5: Fixed minor graphical issues
• Fire 1: Fixed that stupidly stubborn void hole
• Fire 4: Better view of the vista at start of level
• General: Level title remains on screen for slightly longer to aid readability
• General: Opening text makes it clearer there are currently only three episodes
• General: Fixed damaging floors being ineffective on Mild-Violence and Medium-Violence

The most obvious change will be the start of Fire 4.  I had always intended to create more of a vista at the start of the level, but ran out of time before the initial release.  Seeing how much everyone enjoyed the other vistas, I finally found time to head back and implement something closer to my original intention.

 

 

You can see pretty much the whole episode from this location, so it seemed too good of an opportunity to pass up making it a scenic view point.

 

Finally, I'm thrilled to announce we have passed 10,000 downloads!  A huge thank you from myself and the rest of the team to everyone who has downloaded and played the mapset!

[eqagunn]

On 3/5/2022 at 11:00 PM, Bauul said:

So of course it wouldn't be a big new release without featuring at least one accidental softlock I somehow added at the last minute.  The Blue Key in W3 is broken, meaning you can't exit the map.

Somehow this bug from RC1 gets reintroduced when using Supercharge v2.9. Tested with v1.2 and v1.3 of Elementalism. Once collected the blue skull key disappears from the map, but doesn't end up in inventory. (workaround: give blueskull)

 

On 3/28/2018 at 8:12 PM, Bauul said:

Can I run mods with this?

Probably not.  Robustly made mods may work to a degree, but some conflicts are likely inevitable.  If you run into specific problems and would like more information, speak to the mods’ author.

This sounds like something that should be approached from Elementalism side. If you are willing. Perhaps there is a better way to apply the blue key bug fix? Aside from this bug, so far Supercharge worked beautifully with Elementalism (with some optional tweaks).

 

EDIT: Maybe needs to be fixed from Supercharge side after all. The red/blue switch in W4 also gets broken. Both skull keys collected and in inventory, but the switch doesn't see them. (workaround: give blueskull, give redskull)

Edited September 3, 2022 by eqagunn

[Bauul]

@eqagunn Thanks for the feedback! I don't know how Supercharge works under the hood, but my suspicion is both of these issues are caused by it using custom Key things, which automatically replace the standard ones.

 

In the case of Water 3, that map uses a custom extra-wide Blue Skull to make it harder for the player to accidentally skip. Meanwhile Water 4's locked switch uses a script to check for the presence of Blueskull and Redskull in the inventory (because that combination isn't a standard lock requirement). If Supercharge is replacing the standard skull keys with new items, it might explain why these situations are breaking.

 

I could envision solutions to both issues: for W3 adding a standard Blue Skull underneath the current one (likely made invisible), to act as a base for mods that replace the vanilla key Things. And for W4 replacing the script with a custom LOCKDEF definition for blue and red keys (which is arguably the "right" way to do it, but I didn't know about LOCKDEF when I made W3).

 

However, given this only impacts mods (which aren't supported) and the in-game fix is easy enough (just give yourself the keys in the console), I probably won't do another update just for this. However, if for any reason I do need to do another update, I'll be sure to make these additional changes at the same time.

Edited September 3, 2022 by Bauul

[eqagunn]

@Bauul Happy to see you are looking to address this! There is one more to add to the list. Red/blue and white switches in F4 get broken as well. Unfortunately, the workaround of giving yourself keys doesn't work here (but noclip does). Normally, the message you get upon interaction is "You need the red and blue skulls to activate this object" and "You need the secret white skull key to open this door", but with Supercharge the message for both is "That doesn't seem to work". Nevertheless, the mapset is 10/10.

Edited September 4, 2022 by eqagunn

[Bauul]

4 hours ago, eqagunn said:

Red/blue and white switches in F4 get broken as well. Unfortunately

 

That's interesting. F4 does use the proper LOCKDEF approach for the red/blue key combination, and makes no changes to the standard keys. So if that doesn't even work with Supercharge, then that's an issue with the mod, because that's as standard approach to locked doors as possible. It also probably means the W4 switch would remain incompatible as well.

 

Might be worth raising it with Tango to look into. I'm sure he'd prefer it if Supercharge did work with custom keys and LOCKDEFs natively.

Edited September 4, 2022 by Bauul

[Mothtrag94]

I'm curious will High Noon Drifter work with this mod and if not is there a patch for it I feel like this map would be perfect for the mod?

[Bauul]

18 hours ago, Mothtrag94 said:

I'm curious will High Noon Drifter work with this mod and if not is there a patch for it I feel like this map would be perfect for the mod?

 

I'm not sure I'm afraid, I've never used High Noon Drifter. Why don't you try it and report back how it goes?

 

Mod support isn't official, but most seem to work reasonably well with Elementalism (just small conflicts here and there). 

 

As for whether there's a patch, you'd need to talk to the mod developer for something like that (if it's necessary).

[ZethXM]

As an aspirant UDMF mapper, this mapset really shows me how much I have yet to learn to get the most out of the format.

 

To me it strongly evokes the aesthetics of Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub Zero, but without all the bad game design stuff.

[Lizardcommando]

I finally got around to playing this megawad and holy shit, this looks insane! At first glance, you'd think this would have come out of Unreal instead of Doom! I just need to find the perfect weapons mod to go with this.

[TheShep]

Just wanted to say I do intend to play this eventually, as it looks superb and a lot of bug fixes have come along since initial release.

 

Thanks to all who worked on this great wad / mod!

Edited September 13, 2022 by TheShep

[WiredNet]

On 3/28/2018 at 2:12 PM, Bauul said:

 

I'm only on E03 right now, starting my first playthrough with the earth maps.  It shouldn't spoil too much to say this.

 

I just took the elevator down near the beginning of the E03 map.  I've been extremely impressed with this so far, but immediately after completing the descent on this elevator, I had to come and post here about how incredible this has been already.

EDIT: And holy shit, I hadn't even entered the next room yet!  This is just... Man.  I'm speechless.

 

The level layouts, the difficulty (I'm a scrub who can't normally do UV very well, so I'm using the new Mild Violence setting, which is great), and the music are all just absolutely top-notch.

 

I can't possibly give enough kudos for this.  You guys are amazing.  Thank you all so very much for sharing this with us.

Edited October 28, 2022 by WiredNet

[Captain Keen]

On 10/28/2018 at 11:22 AM, Aquila Chrysaetos said:

I have this crazy idea: don't play the wad when it's released. Problem solved.

People are going to make what they want. You have no right to tell them to make it to your requirements.

Seconding this. Part of what makes the Doom community so great anyway is the huge variety of fan projects. Plus, if vanilla is your thing (and in my case it is) there are a wealth of wads to play that scratch that itch. Especially the last few years, us vanilla fans have been very spoiled. But I also love my Valiants, Ancient Aliens, Eviternities and Elimentalisms too.

[eharper256]

Here's a patch for Walpurgis and Elementalism.

They mostly work together already as long as you load Walp after Elementalism; this is just a quick ACS replacement that makes sure that Elementalism correctly removes Walp Weapons and doesn't give you Doom pistols when you start a level. You can get Walpurgis here. Load the patch after both of them in your order.

I think they thematically work wonderfully together, especially if you play as the Druid. :)

 

[eharper256]

As I made the above patch and hadn't actually got around to playing Elementalism yet, I took it out for a spin with the new Walpurgis 0.97 version:

It's a gorgeous level-set (and I only the cover the first two levels of Earth here; the other hubs are equally amazing looking!) but I guess that's to be expected of the Hellforge regulars. And of course, the elemental theme goes really well with the Walp characters too!

 

I'm not entirely sure if jumping for the last part of the second level was the intended solution or if jumping is actually allowed normally, but I couldn't see what else to do to get to those switches and I did get a majority of the kills so I can't have missed a big chunk of the level or anything. All's well that ends well.

[Consummation]

        I apologize if this has been asked, but skimming through the thread I have not seen anything about my question be asked or answered either indirectly or directly.

What exactly is Phase 2? Is phase 1 only half of this project? I am only asking because I would prefer to play the mapset in its entirety. Thank you to those who take the time to answer my question.

 

[Bauul]

16 minutes ago, Consummation said:

        I apologize if this has been asked, but skimming through the thread I have not seen anything about my question be asked or answered either indirectly or directly.

What exactly is Phase 2? Is phase 1 only half of this project? I am only asking because I would prefer to play the mapset in its entirety. Thank you to those who take the time to answer my question.

 

 

Phase 1 covers the Earth, Water and Fire worlds. Phase 2 will cover Air, Light and Darkness. I think in my excitement for releasing Phase 1 I forgot to make this clearer in the OP!

 

I consider Phase 1 a fully standalone release, similar to something like BTSX Episode 1. 

 

You could wait until Phase 2 comes out and then play both back to back if you like, but to be honest, I have no current timeline for when that might be. My current expectations are likely a decade or more.

[Consummation]

34 minutes ago, Bauul said:

 

Phase 1 covers the Earth, Water and Fire worlds. Phase 2 will cover Air, Light and Darkness. I think in my excitement for releasing Phase 1 I forgot to make this clearer in the OP!

 

I consider Phase 1 a fully standalone release, similar to something like BTSX Episode 1. 

 

You could wait until Phase 2 comes out and then play both back to back if you like, but to be honest, I have no current timeline for when that might be. My current expectations are likely a decade or more.

Perfect way for me to think of it, then I will be playing!

[AceiusIO]

Downloading this Right Now, this looks insanely cool :)

[Garland]

Phase 1 is terrific. My Quake nostalgia was delighted by the environmental themes, Fire 3 being a personal favorite. It was like being in a Cube film without betraying the Doom gameplay experience.

[NPC_CO8ALT]

Congrats on your Cacoward. Well done, sir.