Deathless - v1.1 out.

[CommanderRex328]

i have to say... AWESOME! the textures are awesome, you did this in 9 days? you have to be like...the flash!

nice detailing and great blend of doom 2 and doom 1, i love this.

[Sapfiar]

No words, AWESOME!!!, 2 and 3 episode passed, everything is perfect as always)

[Capellan]

8 hours ago, Jimmy said:

Please report any more problem doors like this! I don't think I actually know of a reliable way to find them quickly in the editor. :(

 

Yeah, because a guy who makes a megawad in 9 days needs help from the rest of us on being fast :-P

[Loud Silence]

No IDCLIP used.

[Dragonfly]

Port used? Reproduction steps?

[Jimmy]

That's a secret. The lines are just hidden on the automap.

[pcorf]

Deathless (aka Doom Odyssey jr)

 

Very nice stuff Jimmy!

[Touchdown]

Just finished it (the first three episodes because I've already replayed Griefless recently). Really neat mapset, the start of E1 is especially cool with all this damaging sludge everywhere. Nice, compact, bite-sized levels with interesting layouts. Would have to play it again to provide more detailed feedback on specific levels... but I had a lot of fun keyboarding+pistol-starting through it so thanks for making it!

 

With that said, I hate to say it but there are A LOT of misaligned textures everywhere. In the first level or two you can also see the sky repeat when you get to some higher point.

 

Also I gotta say I'm not a fan of the secret levels in the first three episodes - E4M9 was probably my favourite map in Griefless but the rest of the secret maps are kind of

Spoiler

boring because they're pretty much just recreations of other levels.

 

[Loud Silence]

9 hours ago, Dragonfly said:

Port used? Reproduction steps?

Eternity Engine. Simply entered secret area. I thought it's bug.

 

3 hours ago, Jimmy said:

That's a secret. The lines are just hidden on the automap.

Very clever idea!

[Deadwing]

E2 was even better than E1. Some moments can be surprisingly tough and I found myself dying a few times haha The concepts in this episode are stronger and there are more enemies than a usual ultimate doom wad (thankfully a lot more rockets too!). The final level was a lot of fun too with the limited area to deal with the cyber. The city level was a nice surprise and I loved the somewhat cinematic ending! I also really liked the plutonia-esque garden map and the first one without the teleport gimmick). I also found amusing that you've changed map's 3 songs with 4 and then 4 with E1M6 haha Can't wait to play E3!

 

 

 

Edited November 12, 2018 by Deadwing

[Hells Kitchen]

Played through the last couple maps of E2 and all of E3 and things get more high octane with a nice hell theme to go with it, and some unforgiving trips through lava to accomplish your mission. Hell is not gonna let you off lightly here. Highlight was E3M5, that map is tense, it had me on edge and killed me once aswell. Did not find the secret exit on E3M6 so played the secret level after finishing the set, still love the interesting concept to the secret levels here. The secret exits on E1 and E2 were relatively straightforward, but E3, no amount of wall humping and shooting at gargoyles etc worked. That switch in the tower in the lava pit which must've been the secret exit, with no way of getting to it was such a tease, lol

 

E2M7 was just a blast, I mean it is just righteous fun for all the right reasons. 

 

E3 was another mad fun episode of a mad fun wad so far! What I love it that these maps are relatively short, with small monster counts, yet they are dangerous, it really feels you are playing an episode with double or triple the monster count. 

Edited November 11, 2018 by Hells Kitchen

[Touchdown]

26 minutes ago, Hells Kitchen said:

Did not find the secret exit on E3M6 so played the secret level after finishing the set, still love the interesting concept to the secret levels here. The secret exits on E1 and E2 were relatively straightforward, but E3, no amount of wall humping and shooting at gargoyles etc worked. That switch in the tower in the lava pit which must've been the secret exit, with no way of getting to it was such a tease, lol

 

That was a pretty insidious secret indeed. :) Hint:

Spoiler

you might want to dive into lava to find it.

 

[Hells Kitchen]

lol I did, and found the rad suit with the berserk. I even dove in to see if there were any lifts around that structure, but no such luck. I think did some humping in the rad suit alcove, but nothing happened. 

 

 

 

[boris]

Nice maps.

 

Some bugs I found:

 

E3M1: you can grab the berserk pack from the ground floor.

 

E3M2: the switch sector (25) has a ceiling height of 160 (with missing upper textures), the surrounding sector only 96. For some reason that results in a rendering error in GZDoom. Works find in PrBoom-Plus.

 

E3M4: similar thing as in E3M2. Sector 73.

[Touchdown]

12 minutes ago, Hells Kitchen said:

lol I did, and found the rad suit with the berserk. I even dove in to see if there were any lifts around that structure, but no such luck. I think did some humping in the rad suit alcove, but nothing happened.

 

Ok, here are some more hints then. :)

Spoiler

There's an indoor area with a chasm where you can raise a bridge.

Spoiler

Once in the lava ignore the teleporter.

 

 

[Jimmy]

@Touchdown The misaligned textures aren't a particular concern of mine given that for the most part I wanted to go for something fairly classic-feeling. In fact I would say that I overused autoalign. :P

 

@Hells Kitchen Thank you for playing! Super glad you enjoyed everything. :D

 

@boris E3M1 berserk issue fixed, thanks! The ceilings of those sectors in E3M2 and E3M4 are deliberately raised that high to make the surrounding sector's light effects appear to seamlessly cover both sectors. I've not been able to reproduce any visual problems with GZDoom, as far as I know it tends to handle "missing textures" in this regard pretty well in most cases. What version/renderer are you using?

[boris]

2 hours ago, Jimmy said:

 

@boris E3M1 berserk issue fixed, thanks! The ceilings of those sectors in E3M2 and E3M4 are deliberately raised that high to make the surrounding sector's light effects appear to seamlessly cover both sectors. I've not been able to reproduce any visual problems with GZDoom, as far as I know it tends to handle "missing textures" in this regard pretty well in most cases. What version/renderer are you using?

I'm using the very latest devbuild. Looks like it's a bug, since it works fine-ish in earlier versions. I opened a bug report for it: https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=62524

 

[edit] Aaaaand it's fixed :D

Edited November 11, 2018 by boris

[Touchdown]

It definitely feels classic. That's actually what I've been thinking while playing it that in some parallel universe it could be an official expansion to the original DOOM. :) I think it does a better job at being classic/oldschool than "the way id did" projects for instance (but without trying to replicate the original styles).

[galileo31dos01]

Just gave it a very quick try to see what's about. All sweet gameplay/visuals, really into your style, but for another day (:

 

If there's any criticism, and this is purely subjective, it would be cool if there were a few music replacements and/or rearrangements with the stock midis. I saw E2 had a blue sky which gave at least e2m2 a more custom appeal rather than OG Doom-ish imo, thus a different midi could work better (tnt13 for example, or another one). But again, just a personal opinion, and I only played the first couple maps of each episode, so maybe you already changed midis and I'll have to find that out (:

[Jimmy]

@Deadwing Many thanks again! Fun playthrough to watch, once more. Hard luck with E2M4 (I've added more health to that damaging blue pad run, since that's a problem area still for me), plus that cheeky caco kill on E2M5. Looks like you had fun with finding out what the switches in E2M8 were for. :D Really hope E3 lives up to the expectation.

 

@galileo31dos01 I honestly felt that most of the stock tracks fit the maps pretty well, with E2M2 being one of my favorite fits, funnily enough - plus music selection wasn't a huge priority for me while I was frantically trying to get the maps done, heh. The only tracks I changed in the roster were E2M3 (to E2M4 - who wants to listen to the intermission theme in-game really) and E2M4 (to D_E1M6), plus a Doom 2 MIDI for E3M9. The rest of the music roster you can't really change a whole lot without messing up the progression of tracks in Episode 4, which simply references a bunch of E1-E3 tracks by lumpname internally. E4M6 refers to E2M4's track, hence that being changed, and that's how I left it. I don't know if I'll release a music pack to go along with this, but if I do it might just be more slightly rearranged stock tracks, haha.

[Jimmy]

RC2 out! Plenty of fixes, along with multiplayer placement. Thanks to everyone reporting problems here, rest assured they've all been addressed. :D

 

Download "Deathless" RC2 (1.58MB)

 

First post updated too.

[Urthar]

Jimmy you magnificent bastard, this just might be my new favorite 'I just want to casually play some Doom' mapset.

 

I don't know if this sky is just an artifact of playing in GZDoom. It could be read as a lake reflecting the sky, perhaps if it was darker towards the top of the image. Additionally, I modified my copy of Argent to reflect the Dehacked changes to the Mastermind, (which Argent seemed to overwrite regardless of load order.) I don't know how you feel about mod compatibility, but I imagine a bit of decorate code would alleviate the need to do that.

[Jimmy]

That friggin' sky! It's presented so many issues. It's not the usual height, it's taller (200px I believe), but still clearly has tiling issues in a bunch of ports. (Seems to display fine in Crispy, but I think GZDoom is the port that doesn't like it most.) I don't really wanna change it, but if you type "skyoffset -32" into the GZDoom console it will adjust the y position of the sky to a point that looks sensible. Bandaid fix, but it's better than nothing I guess.

[ukiro]

 

GZDoom sky rendering is broken

You can add a MAPINFO to set different parameters for that engine.

[Jimmy]

Yeah I did see that thread and figured it'd be a port-side issue. Can't see any MAPINFO flags that'll help me here - if skyoffset existed as one, that'd be great, but looks like "skystretch" is the only thing that exists - and it doesn't seem to wanna do anything, not with this sky anyway. :(

[Steve D]

I romped through E1 and really enjoyed it. I think my favorites were M5 for spookiness and M7 for action. I also had good luck on M3 by finding the secret exit before the normal one, so I went and finished the map and came back to it. If this had been an Ironman run, it would have ended early in M9 because when I opened a big door I was shocked to find a Mastermind, which left me completely discombobulated, and I was gunned down shortly after she teleported. Too bad I didn't open the Cyb door first! Luckily, I'm a savescummer, so I was soon reborn and went about exploiting the Gotcha! setup. I also would have died on M5 because I went the nukage route first and failed to trigger the doors and thus couldn't get out, so I either would have melted on the nukage or done a rocket suicide because I was trapped. So while the maps are pretty easy, they aren't without dangers that can snare the unwary.

 

And, as with my beloved Fava Beans, easy doesn't mean a lack of engaging action. I think you really captured the vibe of a good, fast-paced E1, complete with some fun secrets. I only maxed 2 or 3 maps, so I still have some secrets to hunt for. The maps are nice-looking, too, with a perfect level of detail for oldschool Doom, which to be honest is still my favorite Doom. I'm truly amazed that you managed to make so many good looking maps so rapidly.

 

The only complaint I have is that I was totally fiending for a Chaingun in the first 3 maps. Perhaps I missed a secret? Once I laid my grubby paws on the CG, everything was golden. :)

 

Coulda used more Cacos, though . . . ;)

 

Edit: Yes, I found the free CG on M3, though not right away.

Edited November 12, 2018 by Steve D

[ukiro]

20 hours ago, Jimmy said:

Yeah I did see that thread and figured it'd be a port-side issue. Can't see any MAPINFO flags that'll help me here - if skyoffset existed as one, that'd be great, but looks like "skystretch" is the only thing that exists - and it doesn't seem to wanna do anything, not with this sky anyway. :(

 

You could have MAPINFO override the MBF sky transfer and point to a different texture that has a baked-in offset that caters to GZDoom. I'm painfully aware of how stupid this is, but at least it's sort of a solution?

[Dragonfly]

I think the MBF Sky transfer overwrites the MAPINFO's sky, actually. Another solution is to reapply the sky using one with baked-in offsets via LOADACS.

 

https://zdoom.org/wiki/ChangeSky

 

https://zdoom.org/wiki/LOADACS

 

[Jimmy]

I can use MAPINFO to change the sky used, as these are Vanilla format maps and hence I'm not using MBF sky transfers. I'll see if I can work something out.

 

@Steve D Thanks for the detailed feedback! Hope you enjoy E2 and E3 just as much. Also, if you're so inclined, play on solo-net. You'll find some more cacos there. ;)

[Deadwing]

Here's E3 playthrough:

 

 

It was pretty fun as well! I would have preferred if the rocket launcher was available in map 2 (to deal with all the Caco's) and plasma gun in map 4. Map 8 was really fun even if I've played awfully haha I wanted to make the Barons to kill the spiders, but it didn't work as I planned :P Other maps were pretty fun, especially the final ones with the Cyberdemons! Secret levels were fun too, maybe bar E3 one which was too similar to the original, while E4 one was my favorite.