Realm of Chaos: 25th Anniv. Edition - NOW ON IDGAMES!

[Andromeda]

3 hours ago, taufan99 said:

There's another thread on the same topic by Steve D himself (focusing more on the development side). If he's to be believed, only two maps are left for the finishing before the eventual RC1.

The other thread is for Realm of Chaos 2 (a brand new project), this one is for Realm of Chaos: 25th Anniversary Edition (a revamp of the original Realm of Chaos with a full set of MIDIs).

[taufan99]

2 minutes ago, Andromeda said:

The other thread is for Realm of Chaos 2 (a brand new project), this one is for Realm of Chaos: 25th Anniversary Edition (a revamp of the original Realm of Chaos with a full set of MIDIs).

Ah snap, didn't realize that. Should've drank a glass of water to get back my concentration after sleeping with a few hours of lack of hydration.

[Cammy]

Hey guys! I'm so sorry for the prolonged silence about this project. It is still going on - hell, I was up until 5 or 6 AM just the other night working on it! (Don't worry, my sleep schedule was already that bad to begin with.)

 

I know better at this rate than to say it will definitely be out by x date, but my current goal is a February release. This February, I swear. After a very thorough playtesting by the brilliant @Michael Jensen, some issues revealed themselves and I'm back to work fixing them up. All of the midis are completed as well - just need to do some conversion passes and balance the audio levels. I'll have this in your hands as soon as I reasonably can, that's a promise!

 

@taufan99 Remember to stay hydrated!

[Cammy]

Well, there's some unfortunate news - the computer which I'm using to work on RoC25.wad is now refusing to boot. I've been religiously backing up the wad so I won't have lost a ton of work, but this is definitely going to set forwards progress back until I find out how to get it to cooperate with me again. :(

[Devalaous]

Seems like RoC really means 'Really obnoxiously Cursed'. I have been meaning to play Realm of Chaos as I enjoy older mapsets, but the lack of level names, music, and most importantly, all those MBF21(?) bugs that occurred thanks to quirks of the mac editor have put me off. With how much of a remaster this is getting, I'll likely end up playing both versions, just to fully appreciate the changes. I think I'll wait till this is out though, so I can play both versions with the new soundtrack :p (especially since its all Cammy, and the Cammy tracks were some of my favourites in past midipacks)

Edited March 5, 2023 by Devalaous

[Cammy]

I'm happy to hear you're excited for it, Devalaous! Hopefully you and everyone else end up enjoying the modified levels and new music - and hopefully the modern Doom editors I'm using are detecting and getting rid of the offending linedef bugs. I haven't encountered anything of the sort in Choco and neither has anyone who's playtested the wad, so fingers crossed!

 

Not to imply that I've been skimping on the levels themselves of course, but I've been paying extra attention to the quality of the music for this wad; some of the tracks in here have been rewritten or replaced two or even three times by now. Hopefully my musical style will be able to carry a whole campaign without getting tiring or predictable; it's a heap of work to keep things fresh without having fellow composers to fall back on, but I think this wad will end up housing a lot of my best work yet!

 

As far as an update on the computer situation, it seems I suffered a hard drive crash (and might also be having battery issues?), which really sucks, but thankfully as I said I have a backup of this whole project from only a day or two before the crash happened. Once I get a new drive installed and everything is up and running again, it's right back to work. Remember to back up your important stuff, folks. You'll thank yourself.

[Andromeda]

4 hours ago, Cammy said:

and hopefully the modern Doom editors I'm using are detecting and getting rid of the offending linedef bugs. I haven't encountered anything of the sort in Choco and neither has anyone who's playtested the wad, so fingers crossed!

I believe what happened is that the Mac editors wrote some stupidly high number to the flag data of many linedefs. That was not a problem back then, since the extra data would simply get ignored. But the MBF21 standard came along and with it support for two new flags: block land monsters and block players. With those new flags the stupidly high number can now be processed entirely, so MBF21 source ports interpret that the mapper actually intended to place those flags when it's clearly not the case!

 

I think the easiest way to fix it is to add a COMPLVL lump to the wad.

[Steve D]

11 hours ago, Devalaous said:

Seems like RoC really means 'Really obnoxiously Cursed'. I have been meaning to play Realm of Chaos as I enjoy older mapsets, but the lack of level names, music, and most importantly, all those MBF21(?) bugs that occurred thanks to quirks of the mac editor have put me off. 

 

I've tried RoC on several ports, and so far, the only one that has linedef glitches is DSDA-Doom. I recently downloaded the latest version to check Map01, where the trigger lines by the stairs of the Red Key platform are impassable, and sure enough, the problem persists. The Exit door line is also impassable, and presumably this is true with many more lines throughout the megawad. However, it plays fine in GZDoom, Eternity, PrBoom, Crispy, Risen3D and K8Vavoom. I know people can become wedded to a port, for example, GZDoom is my favorite, but back when I played in the Ironman League, I used PrBoom, and when I first came back to the Doom community, Risen3D was my port of choice. So anyone who loves DSDA-Doom but wants to play RoC will have to use another port. I personally like DSDA-Doom a lot. It feels a lot like GZDoom but has the extra kinetics of bumpy floors and stairs, which I enjoy, since it feels more realistic. Alas, you can't play RoC on it, unless you follow Andromeda's advice.

 

It's true that map names don't show up on the automap, though they do appear on the intermission screens. I had nothing to do with that, so blame it all on Clint Sago. ;)

 

@Andromeda There were only 2 Mac editors that I'm aware of for Doom. Demon was a straight port of DEU and was used only by Antoni Chan. I checked his first map, Outpost 27, and it had no problems in DSDA-Doom on a -nomonsters playthrough. It was Hellmaker that caused the problems, so that was Paul Davidson's fault. I checked my own Map09, Machine Gun Etiquette, and couldn't ride up the first lift. I'm going to investigate your Complevel lump idea. Luckily, everything seems to work in Cammy's RoC25, so good going!

Edited March 5, 2023 by Steve D

[Steve D]

10 hours ago, Cammy said:

As far as an update on the computer situation, it seems I suffered a hard drive crash (and might also be having battery issues?), which really sucks, but thankfully as I said I have a backup of this whole project from only a day or two before the crash happened. Once I get a new drive installed and everything is up and running again, it's right back to work. Remember to back up your important stuff, folks. You'll thank yourself.

 

So glad you had everything backed up, Cammy. If worse came to worse, at least I had plenty of the RoC25 material, even though it's older. Will you be able to retrieve data off your dead drive?

[Cammy]

6 hours ago, Steve D said:

 

So glad you had everything backed up, Cammy. If worse came to worse, at least I had plenty of the RoC25 material, even though it's older. Will you be able to retrieve data off your dead drive?

 

Managed to recover everything from RoC25, and it's all functional! As long as no further issues crop up, I should be able to get right back into the grind.

[VoanHead]

Glad to hear everything is doing fine after a scary set of circumstances. Can't wait for this pwad to drop anytime soon!

[Cammy]

I've got some bad news and some good news - the bad being that a hard drive failure was not the end of problems for the old machine. It kicked the bucket completely a couple weeks back, hence my recent stretch of absence from DW. The good news is that I've managed to pull out a leftover laptop from a couple years back, and it's working like a charm so far! All my work from the old computer was backed up (as you could imagine) and I've managed to port it over and get back to work. I'm gonna smack this Really Obnoxious Curse so hard, you have no idea.

 

May I interest you in a few new before-and-afters? :)

 

 

[taufan99]

In hindsight, I think the death of the old machine may have been a blessing in disguise. Hope the development still goes on strong!

[Cammy]

44 minutes ago, taufan99 said:

In hindsight, I think the death of the old machine may have been a blessing in disguise. Hope the development still goes on strong!

 

Ha, it probably was! It was starting to become a real pain in the ass. This new one (newer, anyway) is much fresher and faster. I even got a new mouse while I was at it. I feel like a new man.

[Rudolph]

Some of the maps look completely different! Is it still fair to call it an "anniversary edition" at this point? :P

[Firedust]

Fingers crossed this is out before RoC 2 so I can play them in order!

[Cammy]

On 5/5/2023 at 10:11 AM, Rudolph said:

Some of the maps look completely different! Is it still fair to call it an "anniversary edition" at this point? :P

 

I sure hope so! It's a really difficult balance to strike, and there's not much of a precedent for it in the Doom scene. I think Paul Corfiatis's remasters of his own wads are just about the only comparable projects there, and that was him remastering his own work. I'm a third party viewing these maps through my own lens, so it's a bit harder for me to gauge what the RoC map authors considered crucial parts of their work; a lot of this has been played by ear, but Steve and Rob haven't sat down and told me the maps are too different yet, and that's good enough for me!

 

Just don't expect map04 in particular to be its old self, because its old self kinda sucks. I've grown to really like Jim Bagrow's work, but Sewers needed a lot more than just a nip and tuck...

 

On 5/5/2023 at 10:24 AM, Firedust said:

Fingers crossed this is out before RoC 2 so I can play them in order!

 

Don't worry, this is still well on its way to being released before RoC2! Lots of maps still need testing and refining in that project, and from people a lot busier than I am. Hell, I even threw a sequel tease into the ENDOOM graphic for this one. It only felt appropriate. :)

Edited May 10, 2023 by Cammy

[Rudolph]

33 minutes ago, Cammy said:

Just don't expect map04 in particular to be its old self, because its old self kinda sucks. I've grown to really like Jim Bagrow's work, but Sewers needed a lot more than just a nip and tuck...

Oh yeah, the map that is basically impossible to complete without cheating. I sure will not miss it.

[Cammy]

Happy Halloween! This megawad is 99.9% completed - every map has been touched up, tested, then retouched again, then tested again, then finished for real. All the graphics and dehacked story stuff and vanilla-compat checks are done. I just need to finish up two midis, and at last, the 25th Anniversary Edition of Realm of Chaos will be complete - just after the 27th Anniversary of Realm of Chaos. (Sorry.)

 

Many of these maps have changed noticeably compared to their originals, but reception has been very positive both from the OG dev @Steve D and the first-time RoC player @Michael Jensen, whose playtesting was absolutely invaluable. I more or less learned how to map thanks to this project - doing all these edits on top of composing an entire 35-track soundtrack from the ground up has been a huge undertaking for me. I hope you guys are excited to play it!

[Rudolph]

I applaud your dedication to this project!

[Devalaous]

I'm actually more excited for the midis than the maps since Cammy is up there with Tristan Clark on my favourite composer list

 

I fully intend to play the mapset itself though, but I might go through the original first to properly appreciate the reworking

[Lila Feuer]

I played the original once or maybe twice but it was so long ago I don't remember shit. This looks cool, I'll have to play the original again.

[dobu gabu maru]

3 hours ago, Cammy said:

doing all these edits on top of composing an entire 35-track soundtrack from the ground up has been a huge undertaking for me

 

woof that's quite an undertaking. I'm sure it'll be fantastic in the end—I'm looking forward to hearing the tunes you've cooked up for the project. Curious how much of the megawad will be a facelift vs a remake. As you mentioned to Rudolph, "remastering" old mapsets is kind of uncharted territory for us as a community... makes me curious if outside folks would be interested in such a thing.

[Firedust]

Yay, hopefully this or next month!

[Jayextee]

Oh, I am hype for this; a revisitation of literally the first megaWAD that I ever played. YES.

[Michael Jensen]

There's a lot to look forward to :) Cammy did outstanding job on the music and sprucing up the maps. 

[TheShep]

18 hours ago, Cammy said:

Happy Halloween! This megawad is 99.9% completed - every map has been touched up, tested, then retouched again, then tested again, then finished for real. All the graphics and dehacked story stuff and vanilla-compat checks are done. I just need to finish up two midis, and at last, the 25th Anniversary Edition of Realm of Chaos will be complete - just after the 27th Anniversary of Realm of Chaos. (Sorry.)

 

Many of these maps have changed noticeably compared to their originals, but reception has been very positive both from the OG dev @Steve D and the first-time RoC player @Michael Jensen, whose playtesting was absolutely invaluable. I more or less learned how to map thanks to this project - doing all these edits on top of composing an entire 35-track soundtrack from the ground up has been a huge undertaking for me. I hope you guys are excited to play it!

 

man alive i can't wait :) i think the last thing i played of yours was in Jamal Jones.

[Dusty_Rhodes]

Glad to see this project come to a close soon! Really excited to play it.

[Insaneprophet]

So I have dedicated this, my day off, to playing through the entirety of the original Realm Of Chaos for the first time in anticipation of the release of both this and Realm Of Chaos 2. Godspeed and farewell 😝

[Cammy]

It's finally ready - download RC1 of the megawad here or in the OP! Thank you all so, so, so much for your kind words and patience. I can't tell you how much it means.

 

I'm leaving for a family Thanksgiving trip tomorrow, so I'll be gone all week, but once I get back I'll get to work on fixing it up for idgames. The soundtrack needs to be volume-balanced a little better than it is, and I'd like to implement a UMAPINFO lump. If you find any bugs or issues, especially those that impede the Vanilla experience, please, please post them in the thread! I'll fix whatever I can. Of course, I'll also upload the soundtrack to my Youtube channel so you can easily listen to it. I'm considering releasing it on Bandcamp, too, but that'd be a later thing.

 

I worked my ass off on this, and I hope you all enjoy it! Thank you so much. :D