Dominus Diabolicus - MBF21 33-map megawad [now on idgames]

[bofu]

Bit of an update here, and it's a big one!

 

MAP29 is now undergoing playtesting, which means we are right around the corner. But besides the final map and everything that entails, there are a few other things I'm in the process of doing:

 

• Going through the earlier maps and giving them a fresh coat of paint. Sometimes, this means taking advantage of Boom linedef specials, and sometimes, it just means using the mapping experience I've gained from the two years of making this project so far.
• Tweaking the new monster DEHACKED behaviors to take advantage of MBF21 codepointers and flags.
• Converting everything over into UMAPINFO/ZMAPINFO.
• Adding co-op monsters, differentiating between co-op and deathmatch spawns, etc.

While my goal was originally to have everything out by the end of the year, I'm instead going to target a January 2024 release. I think this will give me enough time to polish everything up to my standards. Here are some teaser images.

 

MAP28: There's no way out of that pit, so how do you get the yellow key?

 

MAP02: Oh, nice. Looks like they finally bought some coffee machines for the workplace.

[bofu]

Finally in the home stretch here, with MAP30 about 75% done. A few little updates:

 

• An additional enemy has been added, with its own custom projectile attack: the Cybermancubus, loosely based off of the enemy of the same name in Doom 2016/Eternal Doom. Slightly tougher than a standard Mancubus, its projectiles do less immediate damage but leave lingering pools of corrosive damage that can temporarily impede your movement.
• Early maps are being overhauled to increase the difficulty to make the difficulty slope more even, mostly focused on increasing the difficulty of encounters in UV (other skills less so).
• Widescreen assets have been created and will be distributed with the main release.

Still on track for a release by the end of the month, so long as I can actually get the spritework done for the boss!

[Shaqodemon]

Damn, man. These are some good maps. I'm only 5 maps in and I can already tell this will be my favorite WAD I've played in 2024 thus far. You've got a knack for vanilla design without them feeling boring or bleak. I also dig your secret style. Nothing has been too cryptic so far and I appreciate that the computer area map actually shows secret areas! The only one I couldn't figure out was the map with the bathrooms. I got the toilet one but there was one behind a wall I gave up on. Anyway, very good job. I'm excited to play the rest!

[bofu]

IT'S DONE

 

Or rather, it's ready for some open playtesting. All 33 maps are complete, all spritework is done, whole thing is playable from beginning to end, etc.

 

So, this is officially release candidate one, and this is the initial soak to see if any bugs or blockers or gross HOMs show up that I missed during these last two and a half years of ups and downs, I can quash them before finally uploading.

 

Download RC1 here

[Nihlith]

Congratulations! It's been quite a journey.

[kalensar]

Oh heck yes. Been on this dude since almost day one, haha. Letsa Go!!

[T-117]

This one just keeps getting better (and more devious) with every update.  Congrats on finishing this one!  Even has one more map than you originally planned for.

[Insaneprophet]

Was here to say that there are textures and sprites missing all over the place, with (!) showing up or a cheker board pattern and that lzdoom threw out a bunch of errors on start up, was going to ask if I was doing something wrong but all it took was a quick read of the original post to find out that I need to play this in dsda... 😀

[bofu]

2 minutes ago, Insaneprophet said:

Was here to say that there are textures and sprites missing all over the place, with (!) showing up or a cheker board pattern and that lzdoom threw out a bunch of errors on start up, was going to ask if I was doing something wrong but all it took was a quick read of the original post to find out that I need to play this in dsda... 😀

Yeah, it looks like LZDoom hasn't been updated in a while and is thus missing support for the MBF21 standard, unfortunately! It should work fine in recent builds of GZDoom, though.

[Insaneprophet]

What iwad should i be using? The 3 episodes made me think doom1 but some of the screen shots here show the double barrel shotty so...?

[bofu]

1 hour ago, Insaneprophet said:

What iwad should i be using? The 3 episodes made me think doom1 but some of the screen shots here show the double barrel shotty so...?

Doom 2! I added episode support (even though it's continuous) so that people can skip to the starts of specific sections if they want.

Edited February 12 by bofu

[VoanHead]

Great to see this (almost) complete! 

I have other pwads I am currently playing rn, as soon as I clear a couple out this going straight to the next thing I’m playing. Hopefully maybe around the time this goes onto idgames.

[Nihlith]

2 hours ago, bofu said:

Doom 2! I added episode support (even though it's continuous) so that people can skip to the starts of specific sections if they want.

That helps a lot. I've played this from the beginning a half dozen times and it gets more intimidating each time. On the other hand it's a chance to play with a new mod. Options are good 😊.

[bofu]

There is definitely going to be an RC2 due to some annoyances found in some of the earlier maps, as well as some good feedback I got regarding what items are put in secrets vs. what's made available to the player without the secrets that's particularly fitting for the earlier levels. A quick list of what's coming so far:

 

Spoiler

• MAP01: chaingun will be removed from the lamp secret and put somewhere more accessible; lamp secret will be made slightly more obvious since people are mixed about being able to find it blind
• MAP02-MAP03: shuffling around a few items to take weapons out of secrets and backpacks or extra ammo in secrets instead
• MAP04: plasma moved outside of the secret, but extra plasma ammo staying in the secret
• MAP05: yellow key door that leads back out to the starting area is now a switch door that opens from the other side, helps with navigation; the soulsphere is now visible without triggering the secret; enemies will be able to more effectively target the player after they hit the last switch
• MAP06: slight tweaking of some encounters to make them less annoying, last fight tweaked slightly, fixing a secret that got broke due to height offsets that currently requires the SSG vertical spread to trigger
• MAP07: replaced a lot of the hitscanners with imps, particularly in the blue key fight

 

Thanks to everyone who's checked it out so far. I'll probably have the next RC posted at the end of the week, but feel free to let me know of any suggestions (within reason, of course)

[Insaneprophet]

That was great! At the end of map 7 the spider momma clipped one of the pinkies that proceeded to corner her and chomp her to death all by itself. Left me free to kill off the rest of the herd an cacos before watching the grudge match reach its ultimately forgone conclussion 😀

Edited February 14 by Insaneprophet

[Deadwing]

Congratz for the release!!

[bofu]

8 hours ago, Insaneprophet said:

That was great! At the end of map 7 the spider momma clipped one of the pinkies that proceeded to corner her and chomp her to death all by itself. Left me free to kill off the rest of the herd an cacos before watching the grudge match reach its ultimately forgone conclussion 😀

This part has been tweaked slightly for RC2, but yes, it is amusing when that happens!

[Insaneprophet]

Spoiler

The lvl 13 bfg secret is killing me. I have 6 of 7 secrets, all of the items and am missing 2 kills. Ive got in the hallway, figures out the 2 hints, at least i tgink i have, hit the little eye in the blood near the teleporter, take teleporter and ride lift up to get the eye up above the landing pad. That all opens up a switch similar to the one behind the teleporting revs where you get the yellow key and up in the halway is another switxh like that but Im still locked out of the bfg.... 

 

Yeah I see how this works and those big skull switches lower the walls but that last switch isnt working properly....

 

Edited February 15 by Insaneprophet

[bofu]

1 hour ago, Insaneprophet said:

  Hide contents

The lvl 13 bfg secret is killing me. I have 6 of 7 secrets, all of the items and am missing 2 kills. Ive got in the hallway, figures out the 2 hints, at least i tgink i have, hit the little eye in the blood near the teleporter, take teleporter and ride lift up to get the eye up above the landing pad. That all opens up a switch similar to the one behind the teleporting revs where you get the yellow key and up in the halway is another switxh like that but Im still locked out of the bfg.... 

 

Yeah I see how this works and those big skull switches lower the walls but that last switch isnt working properly....

 

Spoiler

There are four skull switches required.

 

Switch 1: the eye switch in the blood lake > teleporter > back up onto the lift > shoot the eye switch > flip the skull switch on the flesh column.

 

Switch 2: in the semi-circular hallway that leads into the cross-shaped room, you can unlock a megasphere by jumping from the stairs to the alcove with the marble wall on the west side of the hallway. If you start to exit through the western exit, it will lower a lift revealing another skull switch to your right inside the ledge with the megasphere. Either don't exit all the way, or jump back up the stairs into the alcove before it lowers if you're fast enough. You have unlimited chances.

 

Switch 3: in the library area, flipping the lion head switch that isn't lit up will lower a switch in one of the other two alcoves. Listen for it and quickly flip the skull switch behind it.

 

Switch 4: this is the first one in the area leading to the BFG and is a freebie.

 

Grabbing the BFG releases the last two enemies.

 

[Insaneprophet]

Spoiler

Ty was missing switch 2 😀

 

That was an awesome map by the way

 

Edited February 15 by Insaneprophet

[bofu]

RC2 is now available and can be found here. Here is a brief summary of the changes:

 

Spoiler

• MAP01: Some light detail work and some rebalancing of secrets.
• MAP02: Some rebalancing of secrets.
• MAP03: Some rebalancing of secrets and subtle visual fixes.
• MAP04: Overhaul of the Hell Knight/Imp/Lost Soul trap and the following encounters.
• MAP05: Redesigned the area around the exit.
• MAP06: Rebalancing of some secrets and adding of some additional enemies and encounters.
• MAP07: Replaced balcony hitscanners in the cathedral ambush with imps, added a method to more easily traverse the balconies to clean up leftover enemies, and made the Spider Mastermind less likely to get jobbed by some pinkies.
• MAP09: Slightly tweaked the final combat. Gone is the optional crusher that nobody used, and instead, there are switches to open the exit so that cheesing your way out of the fight is a lot riskier now.
• MAP10: Increased ammunition amounts and changed some enemy types toward the end to make the fight less infighting-dependent.
• MAP14: Addressed ammo shortages at the beginning and moved the chaingun out of the first secret. You can also grab some goodies from the closet where the demon ambushes you from at the beginning.
• MAP30: Lowered the windows in the central area to make it harder to avoid monster projectiles, yet easier to retaliate if you choose to do so from outside.
• Former Human Vanguard: Now has the right obituary message when it kills the player in Woof (no such luck for the Cybermancubus, Summoner, or final boss, though!)
• Cybermancubus: Removed splash immunity and increased health.
• Summoner: Made infighting behavior more similar to the Archvile.
• Miscellaneous: Updated Credits screen.

 

Edited February 16 by bofu

[Screamapillar]

Congratulations! It's always super impressive when pretty much one person does whole megaward by themselves!

[bofu]

Just now, Screamapillar said:

Congratulations! It's always super impressive when pretty much one person does whole megaward by themselves!

 

Certainly not something I'll be doing again any time soon! But thank you very much for the kind words!

[princetontiger]

Watching PsychEyeBall play this on Twitch...

Edited February 17 by princetontiger

[DoomGuy2077]

Heck yeah. This is the kind of run and gun Doomin' I live for. I haven't finished the first episode yet and i can already tell this is going to be one of my favorites of 2024.

[bofu]

Thank everyone for the kind words so far! I've only found a couple minor things during the post-RC2 release that I want to touch up so far, which are just some minor inconsistencies with minimal-to-no gameplay impact. (For example, in MAP09, there's a stairway that can only be used in one direction - but considering that direction is "leading up from a damaging floor that the player should be avoiding anyway," it's such a minor thing that I'm probably the only person it would bother.)

 

I'll hold off on finalizing the release until I've gotten some more feedback (particularly from people who are finishing it). Just FYI, I have discovered that on Doom Retro, MAP30 and MAP33 can't be completed right now due to special bossdeath actions not performing from UMAPINFO, but hopefully, we can get that resolved soon.

[galileo31dos01]

Been looking forward to this. Currently up to map 08, it's been a nice time throughout, pretty classic-ish, doomcute galore - and some of that silliness I adore like the "you're fired" message on a printer, and lots of secrets! No bugs or major problems so far, though I couldn't not overlook how ammo was being granted in excess in general, e.g. I counted 12 boxes of shells in m07, 3 of cells and tons of bullets I never picked up. I started wondering whether these many freebie resources were meant for multiplayer but weren't flagged as such by mistake. One could say, that this way you can spam your favorite gun all you want, though even if I started mindlessly SSG-ing everything I'd still hardly come close to running out of shells, let alone for other guns. So I think there could be some tweaking there, cutting down of that ammo excess in order to make "exploring nooks and crannies" more valuable imo. I don't know yet how future maps handle ammo but we'll see.

 

Here are a few silly thoughts I have for map 02:

Spoiler

- I was mildly disappointed this machine didn't give me a beverage, despite saying "Push". Maybe it could do so? It'd be a funny setup.

- For the secret megasphere, have two archviles spawn in the office (one in the wooden hallways) as sort of a trade for finding such juicy secret. I was still quite healthy past the invasion the imps and zombies, so having a little extra surprise wouldn't be bad.

- There was a pile of blood floating in here, some decorations don't like to adjust to floors moving up or down for whatever reason and this is one of those.

 

[bofu]

RC3 (which I hope is the finished version) has been uploaded here!

 

Changelog:

Spoiler

• MAP02: Reduced the number of secrets overall and made some of the remaining ones simpler to find. Also made the snack machine give you some goodies.
• MAP03: Made some secrets easier to find and removed the very first one, as it no longer served a purpose.
• MAP13: Fixed some texture alignment issues.
• MAP21: Fixed some texture alignment issues.
• MAP22: Fixed some texture alignment issues and an inconsistency forcing the player to finish the level if they go past the red bar.
• MAP27: Fixed some texture alignment issues.
• MAP31: Fixed a potential softlock if you didn't bother to grab the yellow key.
• MAP33: Fixed visual issues that were happening due to some wacky nodebuilding.

 

Edited February 21 by bofu
Updated link, stupid Google Drive

[galileo31dos01]

How does one access map 33 in normal progression? As in, is it after map 32 or is there some secret exit around 16-30?

[bofu]

29 minutes ago, galileo31dos01 said:

How does one access map 33 in normal progression? As in, is it after map 32 or is there some secret exit around 16-30?

Spoiler

Secret exit in MAP29.

EDIT: Updated the link to RC3 to be Dropbox rather than Google Drive. I hate the share settings on the latter.

Edited February 21 by bofu