[RC3] Jack Builds a Techbase (4 maps, -cl21)

[BENCHY]

Hello people, after way too long I'm happy to show this project I've been working on with Xulgonoth for about 10 or so months (mostly due to my procrastination😅). This is a standalone release of a map we made for the Balls of Steel Community project but with a couple of additional maps and flare.

 

Be warned that this is made to be a pretty niche wad, the phrase "set of challenging maps" gets thrown around a lot these days, but this one takes a slightly different approach where the difficulty mainly doesn't come from the encounters themselves being tuned to a high difficulty, it comes more from unfriendliness to blind players, from punishing the slightest errors and from not being clear in what exactly the map wants you to do.

 

Currently only tested on DSDA-Doom, but it should work on versions of GZDoom that support MBF21.

 

MAP LIST:

Spoiler

• MAP01: Brick by Brick

• MAP02: Processing Station

• MAP03: Jack Builds a Techbase

• MAP04: Unravelled Creation (gameplay-less epilogue)

• MAP31: Toxic Tide

 

MUSIC LIST:

Spoiler

• Title: "Talking 2" from Stonekeep

• Intermission: "Guess We Are Fighting Cyberdemons" by MegaSphere

• MAP01: Equinox MAP13 theme

• MAP02: "Lurking the Stranger's House" (bespoke track)

• MAP03: "Palace of Shadows" from Stonekeep

• MAP04: MIDI rendition of "Exogenesis: Symphony Part III (Redemption)" by Muse

• MAP31: MIDI rendition of "Circus Bells" by Robert Armani

 

SCREENSHOTS:

 

DOWNLOAD:

IdGames

Edited May 3 by BENCHY
Added ID games link

[BENCHY]

Link to DoomUniverse thread:

https://doomuniverse.com/topic/120/rc1-jack-builds-a-techbase-4-maps-cl21

 

[bnbhehe]

This WAD was a bizarre experience for me. I might not be a good doom player myself but I feel like this is definitely something veterans would find amusing.
 

• MAP01 is a nice introduction to what you should expect from this mapset, from a mechanics & visual perspective.
• MAP02 is probably a bit out of my league, but doable. Doom veterans would find the challenge interesting though.
• MAP31 is way to challenging for me but I will still give it another try after I practice it more.

But MAP03, ooooh...

The description is spot on:

On 6/28/2023 at 7:52 AM, BENCHY said:

from punishing the slightest errors and from not being clear in what exactly the map wants you to do.

I never played a map like this before and due to my lack of experience and I never knew these kind of maps for Doom were a thing, or even possible. But I still loved every step of my playthrough, even if I died like a ***** quite often.

The visuals are amazing, the exploration of the map becomes fluid after you have traversed it multiple times to complete every puzzle & find every possible secret and you will probably become better at some aspect of Doom ( at least I feel like that ), be it encounters or secret hunting. And even if I was failing in every step of the way I still wanted to continue playing till I get what I wanted right, what the map wants me to do.

For veterans maybe their experience will be different but I do have to say that the challenge is there, and that this is not your average 'circle strafe until everything is dead' situation. And for completionists is probably going to be even more interesting, because the way some puzzles are solved in this map are quite impressive.
 

Edited July 10, 2023 by bnbhehe

[Tiramisu]

I played this one a few days ago - great wad! I never managed to beat MAP02 so I didn't really get to see much of it, but I liked what I saw so I'll definitely be coming back to try again.

 

I have to ask though,

Spoiler

does the mapset require SR50 or any other obscure tricks to beat, or is it standard DOOM fare in that regard? I'm asking because on MAP01 I think I discovered all there was to find, but I just couldn't for the life of me make the jump to the fourth switch - so I want to know if it's an advanced platforming thing or if there's something else that needs to be found!

Edited July 15, 2023 by sq. Tiramisu

[BENCHY]

On 7/16/2023 at 12:47 AM, sq. Tiramisu said:

I played this one a few days ago - great wad! I never managed to beat MAP02 so I didn't really get to see much of it, but I liked what I saw so I'll definitely be coming back to try again.

 

I have to ask though,

  Hide contents

does the mapset require SR50 or any other obscure tricks to beat, or is it standard DOOM fare in that regard? I'm asking because on MAP01 I think I discovered all there was to find, but I just couldn't for the life of me make the jump to the fourth switch - so I want to know if it's an advanced platforming thing or if there's something else that needs to be found!

In terms of map 1 I've never attempted the jumps with just straifing but they should all be doable with sr50. As for map 2 and 3 there are no sr50 jumps required.

 

Edit: found out that map 1 is technically possible with exact angles

Edited July 17, 2023 by BENCHY

[bnbhehe]

On 7/15/2023 at 6:47 PM, sq. Tiramisu said:

I played this one a few days ago - great wad! I never managed to beat MAP02 so I didn't really get to see much of it, but I liked what I saw so I'll definitely be coming back to try again.

 

I have to ask though,

  Hide contents

does the mapset require SR50 or any other obscure tricks to beat, or is it standard DOOM fare in that regard? I'm asking because on MAP01 I think I discovered all there was to find, but I just couldn't for the life of me make the jump to the fourth switch - so I want to know if it's an advanced platforming thing or if there's something else that needs to be found!

Spoiler

It's an annoying jump but is doable even without SR50. Trial & error was my case.

 

Edited July 17, 2023 by bnbhehe

[purple_ruberoid]

Guys, I think you mixed up "Save game" and "Load game" sprites : )

[BENCHY]

5 hours ago, purple_ruberoid said:

Guys, I think you mixed up "Save game" and "Load game" sprites : )

Oh? Did we😈

(Intentional added layer of CBT)

[randomsounds01]

i tried it yesterday and i got stuck

then i realized it was for MBF 21

then i played it in MBF 21 and still got stuck

then i looked at it in an editor and found one thing

and today i found another thing but i'm STILL STUCk

 

confusing as hell but a great wad nonetheless

[BENCHY]

oh shit:(

What map you stuck on?

 

[randomsounds01]

first one 

 

i got the red key, the two 1% health bonuses, activated two of the switches, opened that weird area with the guy on a stick, and i got the two structures super far in the background to be constructed.

 

this is an amazing map though

[BENCHY]

check DM for hint :D

 

[purple_ruberoid]

Oh, MAP03 -- I've never felt so helpless in the beginning

Edited July 24, 2023 by purple_ruberoid

[ipaqmaster]

Love the pistol sound was and was tapping it for a beat wasting all my ammo. I had a lot of trouble on map01's 4th switch but with enough loads and strafestrafing at it I made it up there. The map was a good opportunity to introduce the damaging aqua floor texture which made appearances in the following maps either from the beginning or as the map changed.

Spoiler

The moment I saw that optional red key at the end of map01 I knew I had to find some map cheese laying around. Glad I went looking!

 

Early map02 I had issues managing ammo despite best efforts. I feel this wouldn't feel so tough if the melee (Axe) did a bit more damage for the sprite. I found myself jumping into dangerous new areas just for the next gun. I can appreciate the map being designed to introduce a challenge only as you enter a new area and activate it. Backtracking the other direction into the 

Spoiler

reskinned BFG fight section

was a major improvement but I ultimately had to treat ammo pretty special.

 

Spoiler

Finding the "out of bounds" teal key was nice though my first few attempts to grab it failed as I got warped away. Only at full speed was I able to pick it up. Was that intended?

 

That sneaky button on the other side of the elevator call button was nuts

 

Despite the map seeming dead quiet for about 10 minutes, I was unable to find the final trick to open the level exit columns before running out of time tonight.

[Caleb13]

Is the WAD's name reference to movie The House That Jack Built?

 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4003440/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

[apichatpong]

Sorry for the bump but I have one question...

 

More or less when the wad was released I downloaded it and "tried it". I lost my first copy and had to redownload it recently... and it  seems that I miss something. When I launch map 03 I have the explosive barrels, the 1% health but when teleported to the beginning area I instantly receive berserk... I thought I dreamed (or extrapolated the heavy difficulty of this map) by falsely remembering that the 1% health was for the full playthrough but watched again decino's video and... it wasn't a dream.

I  tried in every skill level, always berserk, I downloaded old versions from doomuniverse thread, still berserk...

 

To be honest, even with berserk, I won't be able to finish the map but I liked the idea that this masterpiece of a wad pushed the sadism to the extreme in every direction !

 

Can't have dsda-doom so I play with gzdoom-default compatibility (and I'm (quite) sure that I already had the "1% for the full playthrough"-thing since I remember being aware of it before decino's stream)(even tried on the BOS version, still berserk).

 

Edited May 1 by apichatpong

[Xulgonoth]

@apichatpong It's a GZDoom thing. I only figured out this berserk thing was a problem long after the idgames release, but what happens is that you're getting the berserk pack that's sitting at the beginning of the conveyor belt that one of the secrets teleports you into. GZDoom's default compatibility preset somehow messes with the collisions, the berserk fails to stay put as a result, and it just goes off to be teleported to the beginning. It's annoying, but I have no idea which compatibility flag does this, and since GZDoom still has no preset for MBF21, I just consider this wad to be incompatible with the port. Maybe if GZDoom ever introduces an MBF21 compatibility setting and actually properly starts supporting MBF21, this can be resolved, but that's up to the devs.

[apichatpong]

29 minutes ago, Xulgonoth said:

@apichatpong It's a GZDoom thing. I only figured out this berserk thing was a problem long after the idgames release, but what happens is that you're getting the berserk pack that's sitting at the beginning of the conveyor belt that one of the secrets teleports you into. GZDoom's default compatibility preset somehow messes with the collisions, the berserk fails to stay put as a result, and it just goes off to be teleported to the beginning. It's annoying, but I have no idea which compatibility flag does this, and since GZDoom still has no preset for MBF21, I just consider this wad to be incompatible with the port. Maybe if GZDoom ever introduces an MBF21 compatibility setting and actually properly starts supporting MBF21, this can be resolved, but that's up to the devs.

 

Thanks for the answer ! I guess my memory tricked me when I said I was sure to have played the map with 1% health. It will be a sort of ITYTD for me (hoping there are no other major bugs on gzdoom).

Anyway, one year after the release, congrats to you two : hell of a good job (and a fantastic motivating horizon for mediocre players like me, even with some cheats (and so missing the intented way to play), these maps are wonderful places to lose yourself) !

Edited May 1 by apichatpong

[Xaser]

4 hours ago, Xulgonoth said:

@apichatpong It's a GZDoom thing. I only figured out this berserk thing was a problem long after the idgames release, but what happens is that you're getting the berserk pack that's sitting at the beginning of the conveyor belt that one of the secrets teleports you into. GZDoom's default compatibility preset somehow messes with the collisions, the berserk fails to stay put as a result, and it just goes off to be teleported to the beginning. It's annoying, but I have no idea which compatibility flag does this, and since GZDoom still has no preset for MBF21, I just consider this wad to be incompatible with the port. Maybe if GZDoom ever introduces an MBF21 compatibility setting and actually properly starts supporting MBF21, this can be resolved, but that's up to the devs.

 

Please open a GZDoom bug report for this -- GZDoom absolutely supports MBF21; if something's broken, it's a bug.

[Xulgonoth]

32 minutes ago, Xaser said:

Please open a GZDoom bug report for this -- GZDoom absolutely supports MBF21; if something's broken, it's a bug.

Okay, I played around a bit more with the wad in GZDoom. Turns out I was wrong. Last time I tried this, I saw that if I set the compatibility to any preset other than default, all the new floor types and linedef flags break, and the only way to make them work is by playing with the default preset, which removes stuff like infinite height, blockmap, and other fancy stuff an average PrBoom/DSDA user would be used to. So my conclusion was that something break when all these classic features are removed, the berserk starts moving, the map breaks and since it's unreasonable to try to dig through all the compatibility flags and set something custom for one silly wad, it just wasn't compatible. But that's not the case, I looked through the flags and it turns out that what makes the other presets not work is just a singular flag called "Disable MBF21 features," which is... honestly hilariously simpler than I expected. So you just set it to "MBF (strict)" or something, pop this one flag disabled, and it should work. But it doesn't, it's not a problem of GZDoom not supporting MBF21 (my apologies for the accusation), it's a problem of GZDoom just... being weird.

 

So the real problem is this: the naughty berserk pack in question that manages to break the whole map is sitting right on top of an impassable linedef, as seen here:

Since it should be completely stuck, the conveyor belt shouldn't be able to move it, and on DSDA-Doom's cl21 it doesn't. But in GZDoom, it always gets moved no matter what. Why it does that, I have no idea, I don't even know if it's a bug or a feature, really.


Also, since I'm here...
@Caleb13 Yep, it is. Sorry for the delayed response.

Edited May 1 by Xulgonoth

[Xaser]

FWIW, I went ahead and made a pull request for an MBF21 compat preset. The only reason it doesn't exist presumably is because nobody got around to making it just yet. :P

[VVL]

BTW, link to RC3 in the OP is broken.

[BENCHY]

19 hours ago, VVL said:

BTW, link to RC3 in the OP is broken.

Shit sorry forgot to change the link when we switched to ID games
 

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/j-l/jbat