Griefless - Final Release (v1.1)

[Jimmy]

 

 

Was having a stroke of bad days so I channeled it into a speedmap set. Layouts were speedmapped over a matter of hours late last night (10-20mins each), and then fleshed out into maps today. I've basically spent two entire nights exclusively on this mapset - though bearing in mind that I did actually sleep between these two sittings, it's actually been fewer than 24 hours. So uh, yeah, I pretty much just smashed that 6 maps over 20 hours that I scored during the Team Rocket stream, haha.

 

This is an Ultimate Doom E4 replacement - something I've always wanted to do.

Limit-removing port recommended. It runs fine in Chocolate Doom (as long as you run the WAD with -merge), but E4M7 will be full of visual glitches due to its size/openness.

 

Please report bugs! FDAs welcome. The maps are all pretty short, so this shouldn't take you long to play at all. <:D

 

Many thanks to @Fuzzball for all the new graphics, sprites and sky!

 

Name: Griefless
Map Format: Vanilla Doom
Ports Tested: PrBoom+, GLBoom+, Eternity, GZDoom, Zandronum
IWAD: The Ultimate Doom
Map(s): E4M1-M9
Par Time(s): None set
Music: doom.wad and doom2.wad
Gameplay: Single play/co-op
Difficulty Settings: Yes
Multiplayer Placement: No
Build Time: <24 hours for the initial release candidate, 5 days of playtesting/bugfixing.
Textures: doom2.wad
Requirements: No jumping or crouching (enforced). Freelook allowed.

 

Screenshots! (monsterless)

 

Maplist:

E4M1: Inhuman Remains
E4M2: Fetid Site
E4M3: Corroded
E4M4: Incision
E4M5: Serene Shadows
E4M6: Vertigo
E4M7: Sea of Entrails
E4M8: Desecrators
E4M9: Under

Edited July 12, 2018 by Jimmy
Final version released to DW downloads.

[Fuzzball]

! Suddenly a release~ :3c Good job Jimmy, looking forward to trying this out for sure~!

[Steve D]

Looks great! And that sexy green sky -- yum. I'll be looking to play it this week.

[galileo31dos01]

Gave this a quick try, in GLBoom+ (cl3) it runs fine, got to map 05 until wild invisible spectres "appeared" and it seemed fun so far. In Crispy Doom it sends this error: "R_InitTextures: bad textures directory", no idea why. Chocolate runs fine, but haven't tested thoroughly.

[Dragonfly]

Just beaten this quickly. Great mapset, you really performed on this one! I played in GZDoom because I'm a heathen, heh. I recorded my play through but it's 1:21 am and I need sleep, so I'll post a YouTube upload tomorrow.

[SOSU]

Really fun episode 4 replacement!Had a lot of fun with it on ultra violence,my only problem with it though was the lack of ammo wich made me punch my way through most encounters (Save scumming too) some more ammo/berserkpacks would be nice :D

[Fuzzball]

For anybody who is planning on playing this in OGL with GLdefs- here ya go!

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/309795962518372354/462786619448098818/griefGL.pk3

Stops the Soulsphere and Health Bonuses having a blue glow to them! :)

[Pegleg]

4 hours ago, Steve D said:

Looks great! And that sexy green sky -- yum. I'll be looking to play it this week.

I agree. They look great. Where did you get the sky? I may borrow that at some point.

 

It's amazing to me the quality of work you can do in quantity so quickly.

[Xyzzу]

When I try to play this in Chocolate Doom 3.0.0, I get an "R_ProjectSprite: invalid sprite frame 28 : 13" error. I don't think choco Doom accepts custom sprites at all unless everything in replaced.

[Baratus]

Very cool maps! Each map was short and simple in design which flowed nicely into the next one. This was a fun, digestible little set of maps.

 

Encountered a few minor issues that weren't gamebreaking:

 

E4M7: Monster popup next to the exit door triggers a bit too late as I found myself standing on top of the monsters, not in front of them.

E4M8: The player can enter the little alcove behind the playerstart after hitting only one switch, and can get stuck when trying to leave it, unless they walk out at the right angle alongside the wall.

 

Overall I had a blast with these levels. I can see myself playing this short, fun mapset over and over. Your current mapping output is astounding. I'd say keep up the good work but I wouldn't want you to exhaust yourself on mapping. Save some for the rest of us! =P

Edited July 1, 2018 by Baratus

[Job]

Way to channel a negative situation into something very positive. :) 

[Revved]

I didn't like the lack of rocket ammo on E4M6 since I don't feel it's enough to properly deal with the several barons on that level.

Other than that, solid mapset overall. Can't wait for the final release to give this WAD the inevitable maxrun.

[Catpho]

I see your custom title is back Jimmy :)

[Darox]

Ran through it in pr+ with 35 minutes on the clock and 3 deaths, a stupid one in E4M3 and two on E4M8. Ammo hit the nice balance of being interesting to manage without being unreasonable, but doing continuous definitely helped out with the Barons.

 

drx-grieflessFDA.zip

[Phobus]

About an hour or so very well-spent playing this to 100% completion in each map. You remain a favourite of mine Jimmy - good job.

[boris]

Really nice layouts for speedmaps done so quickly.

 

The RL in E4M4 only shows up on UV. Is that intentional? It's a bit irritating to have rockets in the map, but no RL. I spent a few minutes looking for it, thinking I had somehow missed it. What I also don't like are items directly in front of switches or in the middle of a pathway, just makes navigation tedious if you don't want to pick it up.

 

[edit] The WAD seems to include all Doom 2 patches, even the unused ones like the Wolf3D ones.

Edited July 1, 2018 by boris

[Dragonfly]

As promised, my FDA:

 

 

No voice in this one, it was late and I was tired, heh.

[Veinen]

A fun set for sure, well done again! For speedmaps done in less than 24 hours total these are pretty great quality and nicely varied.

 

See attachment for UV pistol start FDAs for all maps, recorded in glboom+.

Griefless_FDAs_Veinen.zip

[fabian]

15 hours ago, galileo31dos01 said:

In Crispy Doom it sends this error: "R_InitTextures: bad textures directory", no idea why.

 

There is an "empty" TEXTURE2 lump in the PWAD (i.e. one not actually defining a single texture) which Crispy chokes upon. Fixed in GIT, thanks!

[Jimmy]

@boris Thanks for pointing out that E4M4 RL bug. Oops, sorry! Can you show some areas where the forced pickups are a particular issue? I'll get them fixed - plus the unused Doom 2 patches will get pruned once the maps are finalised. (They pretty much are at this point, but the /idgames release will obviously need to have as few IWAD duplicates as possible).

 

@Darox @Dragonfly @Veinen Thanks so much for your demos!

 

I believe all the bugs mentioned in this thread have been addressed, and I've spent a good two days on what I hope will be the final quality-pass and adding the secret level: E4M9 - Under. Thanks to Fuzzball for suggesting the idea behind this level while I was speedmapping the layouts! ;)

 

Download Griefless RC2 - 977KB

 

Have some screenshots of the new secret level. (Spoilers, though.)
 

Spoiler

 

 

 

[boris]

1 hour ago, Jimmy said:

@boris Can you show some areas where the forced pickups are a particular issue?

 

E4M2:

 

 

E4M4:

 

 

E4M8:

 

Same with the box of rockets on the other side.

 

I wouldn't call it "forced" pickup, since you can navigate to not pick them up, as I said it's just tedious to do so. I also see it as less annoying with ammo, since you're not swimming in ammo, so it's not as likely to waste it as it is with health.

 

Also I'm not a fan of the scrolling upper texture around the plasma gun in E4M7, it just looks weird to me.

[boris]

Just played E4M9. Nice homage to Doom 2 Map02. The red key area instantly reminded me of map02, but what really gave it away way the blue key drop and exit room.

 

I noticed you can grab the blue key from the plasma secret.

[Jimmy]

I've addressed all those problems you pointed out. Thanks a bunch! :D

 

I'll give it a day or so more, maybe, then RC3 will be the /idgames release, all being well.

Edited July 2, 2018 by Jimmy

[fabian]

If I may add a suggestion, instead of shipping an "empty" TEXTURE2 lump you'd better ship none at all.

[Dragonfly]

I asked Jimmy why he added this over on Discord. To quote:

 

Quote

It's done this way because it's easier to manage - Doom 1 splits its textures into TEXTURE1 and 2 somewhat arbitrarily, but I wanted to copy over all of the Doom 2 patches, and it just made more sense to have everything in one lump rather than 2 - TEXTURE2 is empty to avoid double-defines, basically.

 

[Aquila Chrysaetos]

Jimmy! Great wad here. Only thing of note: in E4M7, the locked switches act as doors (as in, they don't "switch") in Crispy Doom.

You may've already addressed that, I just wanted to bring it to your attention.

 

Also, I've got demos for you. There are two, since I didn't find E4M9 on my first trip through, I recorded that one separately.

Demo M1-M8 and Demo M9.

Recorded in Crispy Doom 5.2, skill 4 with RC2.

 

I didn't notice any hiccup with Crispy loading this wad, though I may have caught the fixed version, so I don't know.

I liked the use of the cyberdemons in the maps they appeared in (except M8, but I'm kind of ambivalent toward that map as a whole), though I did deal with one in a way that I didn't have to, which you'll see in the demo.

Also, there was a misaligned floor gate texture in E4M7, you'll know it when I get to it.

Edited July 2, 2018 by Aquila Chrysaetos

[Denim Destroyer]

Just got through playing on UV. I only died on E4M8 because I didn't realize that the switches were optional, despite the next 15 minutes of frustration I still found it to be fun. Overall I found what you made to be nice to look at and to be faithful to episode 4, you had some nice details with my favorite being the hanging corpses in E4M3. My favorite level was E4M7 which provided me with a few of "Oh crap!" moments. My only complaint I'd say is that I expected the blood floor to hurt me but I quickly got used to that.

[Lorenz0]

I played it through in GZDoom, and I think that it's a great wad, perfectly mixing the visual style of episode 4, with modern map making techniques, not much more to say.

 

But why doesn't it work in Zandronum?

[Aquila Chrysaetos]

Maybe Zandro has a problem with the empty TEXTURE2 lump, @Lorenz0, though I don't see why.

Looking at it in SLumpEd, I can't see anything else that it should have any trouble with.

[UgiBugi]

@Lorenz0 Zan doesn't recognise some GLDEFS features of GZDoom so it throws errors.
You can run it in software mode though.