Ultimate Doom "In Name Only" - On IDgames

[dobu gabu maru]

19 minutes ago, plums said:

just making sure that you caught @taviow's comment that the E4M8 red key

 

Yup yup, the fix should be in the next RC. I just changed the switch trigger to a simple S1 Floor Lower to Lowest. Did not know about the -500 limit! Would explain why a lot of my maps have minor broken mechanics.

 

And as to the prickliness of that area, I thought way less people would stumble upon it!

[plums]

1 hour ago, dobu gabu maru said:

Yup yup, the fix should be in the next RC. I just changed the switch trigger to a simple S1 Floor Lower to Lowest. Did not know about the -500 limit! Would explain why a lot of my maps have minor broken mechanics.

Yeah it's such an arbitrary limit. Like a lot of Doom's limits make sense in the context of it being a cutting-edge piece of software at the time, but then someone is like "-500 is probably low enough for floors, better hard code it!"

 

I wonder if anyone has ever made a vanilla/limit-removing map that uses the -500 limit intentionally, breaking compatibility in all ports that fix it?

 

I'd suggest going over the map fully in cl3, there's at least one more place that bug pops up: the green armour you get by pressing on the skin-pentagram isn't gettable. There might be more but I don't know the map well enough to say, those are the only two where something seemed off when I played.

 

Anyhow E4M8 seemed to be the most contentious map that wasn't made by NIH, so that's why I thought I'd try it next.

 

Quote

And as to the prickliness of that area, I thought way less people would stumble upon it!

Having played through the map fully now I get it, but the problem with a nonlinear layout like you have is that people might not even realize that they don't need to do that area, especially if they manage to find it before getting another red key. Not sure you can do too much about that but a teleporter to back out of that area, before you go down the crusher hall, might be a good idea? Also makes is less likely for people to lock themselves in by saving after they get down there.

 

Anyhow bugs aside I thought this was a great map, definitely going to be (and already has been) a bit polarizing but I'm sure you knew that going in. And as someone who usually enjoys unconventional maps I really liked it. The decision for continuous players to potentially just blast their way to victory was a good one though. The only other area I thought that was a bit harsh was the "dodge the cyberdemon" square that you need the yellow key to get to, mainly because the diagonal walls have a habit of catching the player -- given that this area is effectively a square, I am curious whether this was done on purpose or not. In any case I made it through after a bunch of attempts.

 

edit: One more question. The berserk pack and chaingun, is that just for a tease? Based on the dead baron wall texture I assumed it would have something to do with dealing with all the barons, but AFAICT it's just inaccessible.

Edited July 19, 2023 by plums

[Catpho]

Just to be clear, all playthrough vids are first playthroughs.

E4M2 (YT vid link) - @Steve D

- Everything in the first courtyard is straight fire. No complaints.
- Afterwards, there's a bit of a bump when you reach the big Plasma gun sanctuary. I love SteveD caco clouds and massive hordes, but I felt that there needs to be either more rockets or cells spread around in that area to help thin that horde easily. In my vid, there was a lot of tedious running around waiting for the cacos to move out of the way, and the infighting is too slow to be relied on.
- Three cyberdemons to fight on UV isn't that exciting imo, given the layout it's easy to camp. Is there a way to spawn in some cacos for fun?

[fabian]

On 7/17/2023 at 5:37 PM, fabian said:

Thank you for the savegame, but neither me nor @rfomin can reproduce the crash with it.

 

@finnks13 which Woof release are you using? And are you sure you used the same version of the PWAD when you saved and restored the game? 

[finnks13]

32 minutes ago, fabian said:

 

@finnks13 which Woof release are you using? And are you sure you used the same version of the PWAD when you saved and restored the game? 

 

I believe I'm using 11.3.0 (downloaded it upon it's release) and that savegame was definitely loaded in the same version as it was made.

 

I'm not currently home right now, a friend mentioned a similar problem being fixed by updating graphics drivers so I'll give that a go when I'm back and mention if it helped at all.

[Catpho]

No vid for E4M3, as I mentioned I already did a blind play without a recording. Great map though!

E4M4 (Vid playthrough link)

 

Very kooky idea, but it works. I managed to max it off-camera using IDDT. No complaints.

E4M5 (Vid playthrough link) - @cannonball

Weirded out by this one a bit. If this is intended to be a full pacifist map, why are there so many big weapons and important-looking monster warp-ins around? Otherwise, this reminds me of when I played Hadron E1M6 and broke the map in a similar way, but this one is even easier. Regardless of intent, pacifisting this one feels cheeky but insubstantial, like I was breaking the level somehow. Was anyone else in this thread not firing their weapon throughout the whole level?

Edited July 19, 2023 by Catpho

[cannonball]

29 minutes ago, Catpho said:

E4M5 (Vid playthrough link) - @cannonball

Weirded out by this one a bit. If this is intended to be a full pacifist map, why are there so many big weapons and important-looking monster warp-ins around? Otherwise, this reminds me of when I played Hadron E1M6 and broke the map in a similar way, but this one is even easier. Regardless of intent, pacifisting this one feels cheeky but insubstantial, like I was breaking the level somehow. Was anyone else in this thread not firing their weapon throughout the whole level?

Nope you are fine with your assumptions here and theoretically the whole map can be played pacifist. In the grand scheme of things, the gimmick is much more bluntly thrown at the player and beating the map in UV max is essentially optional, however I made sure that the player would be able to do this from a certain point.

Spoiler

The map is deliberately presented as a normal map, though the cyber “closets” being visible to the player at the start should be viewed as ‘odd’. The map essentially punishes the player for acting on instinct given that the player could easily be pinned by the heavy presence of the incidental opposition. The player is safe to open fire once the switch beyond the red door is pressed and activated the crushers to kill all the cyberdemons in the closets. I tried my best to display this by the crushing ceilings by the switch (There are marble faces behind the crushers to signal that it is the cybers being crushed).

Edited July 19, 2023 by cannonball

[Inuk]

I went in UDB and searched for harmless lava/nukage and found some interesting safe spots that you'd think would be dangerous, but these things are sometimes intentional so I'll just post the spots I found and leave it at that:

e4m7: Harms the player for stepping inside the monster teleporters, but missed sector 1928 and 1890, 1892, 1893, 1894 which are safe to stand around in.

e4m6: Harmless lava floors on sectors 220, 318, 207, 317, 316, 363, 314

e3m6: Harmless lava sector 379. Since there's a very long linedef 0 there's also a danger of this bug happening. I haven't seen it on this map, but I know that it can randomly show up and block bullets because I found it on Freedoom map29 and it was only recently fixed there by subdividing the linedef.

e3m5: There's also a possibility of that linedef 0 bug happening here.

e2m8: The plasma rifle rests on harmless lava in sector 914, there's also 901

e1m3: The vats full of nukage are safe in sectors 344, 347

[dobu gabu maru]

17 hours ago, plums said:

I'd suggest going over the map fully in cl3, there's at least one more place that bug pops up

 

I've been over the map in -cl3, it was just the RK bars that were the issue. The green armor can be acquired from the other side, where the larger skin pentagram is. The "broken lift" inside the flesh chamber is there to show you that the skin switch operates a lift. And yeah, the bumpy cyber diamond is intentional, because in a square room folks can just zoom around the outside at light speed. It's kind of unfortunate that the player gets caught on the edges so frequently, but it's better than the fight being toothless IMO.

 

The berserk pack/chaingun area can only be accessed once you've filled all the monster closets on the map (the very last monster goes into a sector where they open the "dead baron" door repeatedly). There's no real way for me to telegraph that, but having the closets full of monsters is the "intended" finale, and I want people aiming for a UVmax to experience it. There's actually like 9 or 10 more monsters than closets on the map so it's not a strict limitation (and any monsters that can't fit into closets get crushed). Considering that Heels has that double rocket maneuver in E4M8, I'm not too worried about it being an esoteric secret; worse comes to worse, folks just have to look it up on doomwiki (and go "that's bullshit!")

 

EDIT: also forgot to say kudos on suggesting a teleporter out of the optional RK area. I've added that, marked the zone as a secret, and made it a bit harder to notice the light difference of the crusher sector up above.

 

9 hours ago, Inuk said:

e3m5: There's also a possibility of that linedef 0 bug happening here.

 

Hey thanks for this! Yet another eccentricity I didn't know how to fix but have suffered from.

Edited July 19, 2023 by dobu gabu maru

[plums]

36 minutes ago, dobu gabu maru said:

The green armor can be acquired from the other side, where the larger skin pentagram is. The "broken lift" inside the flesh chamber is there to show you that the skin switch operates a lift.

Oh my bad, I had sworn that the actual lift you take up to the armour didn't work in Crispy, but looks like I'm wrong.

 

Quote

And yeah, the bumpy cyber diamond is intentional, because in a square room folks can just zoom around the outside at light speed.

Fair enough; it's not *that* much harder really, just frustrating when you spring back and eat a rocket lol. (It also doesn't have the same effect in GZDoom and any other ports that fix Doom's movement, can't do much about that probably.)
 

Quote

The berserk pack/chaingun area can only be accessed once you've filled all the monster closets on the map (the very last monster goes into a sector where they open the "dead baron" door repeatedly).

Oh cool, I missed that it was a linked sector and that the door trigger was physically on the other side of the map. All good then!

 

I'll poke through the rest of the wad as I can; are there any other maps you or others feel should have extra eyes on them?

 

 

10 hours ago, Inuk said:

Since there's a very long linedef 0 there's also a danger of this bug happening

Hey, that one's new to me too. Nice catch & good to know!

Edited July 19, 2023 by plums

[Catpho]

I'm also wondering should I wait until RC2 before continuing. I was going through E4M8 until I saw the latest posts.

[boom_compatible]

I just rebuilt the E2M4 using zdbsp and everything works as expected. Something crazy happened when creating the nodes of this map but some ports seem to fix the problem (rebuilding on the fly?).

[plums]

59 minutes ago, Catpho said:

I'm also wondering should I wait until RC2 before continuing. I was going through E4M8 until I saw the latest posts.

E4M8 works fine, except for one optional and hidden* area that a) breaks in complevel 2/3/4 but works fine in DSDA's default complevel 21, and b) is really hard and currently has no way to back out of. All the other questions I had about the map are actually working as intended.

*despite being hidden a lot of players have managed to find it, and then complained about the difficulty, to dobu's frustration ;)

 

Since you seem to save frequently in multiple slots, you'll probably be fine. Spoiler description for the area just in case though:

Spoiler

There's an obscured place where you can drop down under some crushers, that leads to a small room with a demon and a lot more crushers, including a very long crushing hallway.

 

Edited July 20, 2023 by plums

[Catpho]

Dang, the one place I was super excited to find :D Thanks, I'll reload and go through the other areas of the map then.

[Keyboard_Doomer]

Hello,

we're going to play (probably) episode 1 and 2 for Thursday Night Survival today.
The session starts 11 hours from the time of this reply and you can expect it to be fairly active for 4+ hours.

A few issues were already spotted and as we always do we'll try our best to break as many maps as we can so feel free to join us!

[cannonball]

Cool, I will see if I can drop in on this at some point. I am working late though today and won’t be home until essentially the start of the session and that doesn’t take into account putting my daughter to bed etc. 

I will try to find some time to squash some of the issues raised in the several posts above this one. There won’t be a new RC until at the very least an update to E2M5 is posted and possibly updates to other maps by their respective authors.

[mouldy]

Here's the updated E2M5. I decided to tidy up the final fight and make the room it happens in a bit bigger so its more rocket friendly and less claustrophobic. This involved shifting all the other rooms a bit so hopefully i didn't break anything in the process. I've tested it in dsda complevel 3.

 

 

udino-E2M5-update20-7.zip

[grothendieck1453]

I just tested the changes to E2M5 using PrBoom+ complevel 3. I enjoyed the changes that you've made! Just curious: What was your reasoning behind making the teleporter-pads at the beginning of the map non-functional? (Or am I missing something?) As for breaking things, the only thing I noticed was a misaligned texture (linedef 1365 -- see image below).

 

Spoiler

[mouldy]

43 minutes ago, grothendieck1453 said:

I just tested the changes to E2M5 using PrBoom+ complevel 3. I enjoyed the changes that you've made! Just curious: What was your reasoning behind making the teleporter-pads at the beginning of the map non-functional? (Or am I missing something?) As for breaking things, the only thing I noticed was a misaligned texture (linedef 1365 -- see image below).

 

  Hide contents

Thanks for testing and spotting that texture. The teleporters at the start were a convoluted fix for vanilla compatibility - the starting corridor caused visplane overflow when viewed from the other side of the map, so i had to close that area off with a door, but then co-op players would get stuck in there when they respawned, so i added teleports to get out. None of that is necessary without vanilla limits so I just got rid, but I kept the non-functioning teleport pads as scenery.

[grothendieck1453]

18 hours ago, mouldy said:

Thanks for testing and spotting that texture. The teleporters at the start were a convoluted fix for vanilla compatibility - the starting corridor caused visplane overflow when viewed from the other side of the map, so i had to close that area off with a door, but then co-op players would get stuck in there when they respawned, so i added teleports to get out. None of that is necessary without vanilla limits so I just got rid, but I kept the non-functioning teleport pads as scenery.

 

Thanks for your quick and interesting answer to my question!

 

I have another small note on the map: There is a railing (linedefs 1078 and 1085) that is impassable, although it looks like the player should be able to "jump" over it and into the main courtyard. I'm guessing there's a reason for this, but I thought I'd mention it.

[mouldy]

3 hours ago, grothendieck1453 said:

 

Thanks for your quick and interesting answer to my question!

 

I have another small note on the map: There is a railing (linedefs 1078 and 1085) that is impassable, although it looks like the player should be able to "jump" over it and into the main courtyard. I'm guessing there's a reason for this, but I thought I'd mention it.

Yeah i wanted to lower that wall so you could shoot stuff over it, but it wasn't intended to be passable. I thought of adding midtexture railings but didnt want them getting in the way of the view, might have another look at that though

[grothendieck1453]

1 hour ago, mouldy said:

Yeah i wanted to lower that wall so you could shoot stuff over it, but it wasn't intended to be passable. I thought of adding midtexture railings but didnt want them getting in the way of the view, might have another look at that though

 

It makes sense not to obscure the view. Don't worry about it :)

[dobu gabu maru]

On 7/19/2023 at 7:25 PM, plums said:

I'll poke through the rest of the wad as I can; are there any other maps you or others feel should have extra eyes on them?

 

Those three maps (E3M6, E3M8, & E4M8) are probably going to be the most polarizing of the bunch. Gameplay-wise I think E3M7 might be pretty tough nut to crack, but it's no jawbreaker of pain like the maps surrounding it. Folks might initially be scared of E4M9 but I personally tweaked the difficulties myself there so I can vouch for its balance. Perhaps E2M4 is the last of my maps the needs any kind of feedback? Will have to wait for the next RC however, where it's not bizarrely busted.

 

On 7/20/2023 at 9:51 AM, mouldy said:

Here's the updated E2M5.

 

Nice modifications! I like the visual adjustments here: the white bordering on the walkways, the colorful building exteriors, the crimson core in the exit room—all welcome enhancements that manage to keep the visual noise of the map low. I also got the secret exit without having to IDDT, which was a first IIRC. Didn't experience any hiccups outside of the one UAC texture misalignment that grothendieck spotted.

[mouldy]

Cool, here's E2M5 again with that fix

udino-E2M5-update22-7.zip

[plums]

On 7/22/2023 at 2:37 AM, dobu gabu maru said:

Folks might initially be scared of E4M9 but I personally tweaked the difficulties myself there so I can vouch for its balance.

Played this one and loved it, and also thought the balance was well adjusted, I tried on both UV and HMP and the difference was noticeable. It also helps that you can partly set the challenge yourself, by declining the extra cyberdemons and even just bailing out of the map early at the cost of starting the next one at no health.

 

Maps like this make me wish @TimeOfDeath666 made more accessible maps more often (I consider this quite accessible by TimeOfDeath standards) because whenever he does they come out fantastic. I don't know how much dobu had a hand in that aspect of it, either way great entry.

 

Extremely minor quibbles:

-It kind of bugged me that there was no way to access the second area full of blue & red skull keys.

-On sections where the teleporter takes you to a different section of the level for balance (Dying & one other one) the section title is very far away on the map from the play area.

 

On 7/22/2023 at 2:37 AM, dobu gabu maru said:

Perhaps E2M4 is the last of my maps the needs any kind of feedback? Will have to wait for the next RC however, where it's not bizarrely busted.

 

I rebuilt the nodes on this one earlier in the thread and it looked like it worked OK after that, did anything change since the RC1.2 release?

Edited July 23, 2023 by plums

[plums]

E3M7 @cannonball: Played on UV with all secrets and then HMP ignoring all secrets, both of which felt comparable.

 

-Line 2234 (by the yellow key, lowers a wall that raised in the fight previously) should maybe be repeatable because it's possible to trigger it early by going to the blue key route, and riding the wall/lift up to get the YK. You're not locked in if you go back to the other side because you can still go around the BK route (which you needed to find to do that in the first place) but it is annoying.

 

-It would be nice if there were some way to telegraph that slime is non-damaging in this level early. I'd even consider starting the player in slime instead of just a teleporter pad, but maybe there's another way to do it.

 

-Early in the map I felt like I was incentivized to kill barons and even a cyberdemon with the shotgun/chaingun when it was safe to do so. I'd recommend maybe some more rockets early on HMP at least; swapping in barons for cybers makes you more likely to want to kill them instead of just dodge around them for the time being. (I don't know how many people play pistol start on HMP so it's probably not too big a deal. e: on the other hand, there might be a lot of people skipping E3M6.)

 

edit: -After you get the red key and it triggers the lift back, I was able to get the sections of the lift to go out of sync while monsters were on them. Not sure how, but better add some lower textures to both sides of line 3931, just in case.

 

Liked the map overall, loved the "guillotine" crushers in the red key area especially. It's a bit of a tough map but less so than the ones on either side of it, and seemed much more toned down on HMP than those two.

Edited July 24, 2023 by plums

[TimeGuardian]

Took a while but I finally finished episode 2. I'm a man of very few words but here are some thought about the episode:

 

Spoiler

-E2M1 and E2M2

Truth be told it has already been a while since I played these so I don't remember much but what I do remember is that they were good and I certainly enjoyed them more than the first maps of episode 1.

 

-E2M3

As I said before, I don't much enjoy toxic maps but this was a very good one and I really like how it looks too but I do have to ask about the rocket launcher. Is there a way to get it besides the secret near the start? It feels very important and after dying once I went to look for it. Admittedly, it's a very easy secret to get but if that's the case then maybe it would be better to just put somewhere more normal? Again, it has been a while since i played so it's possible that there was a rocket launcher somewhere else and I don't remember.

 

-E2M4

I saw some earlier posts saying nice things about this but it just crashes on Nugget and the rebuilt version posted by @plums does run but at some point it looks pretty broken with some missing textures so i didn't finish it. And honestly, the start area that i did play I didn't enjoy much because the vanilla hit detection sucks for punches (I think there is a option to fix it so i just might turn it on for episode 3).

 

-E2M5

I really, really enjoyed this map, it felt like near constant combat but wasn't brutally hard. The only part i died was at the final room due to a face rocket but that was mostly my fault because i took too much time chain gunning enemies when i should had switched to the rocket launcher and ended up getting swarmed. That being said i wouldn't mind a slight reduction in hitscanners.

 

-E2M9

Took me 45 minutes to figure out how to finish this map and i certainly didn't enjoy the time spent here.

 

-E2M6

A bit too dark for my taste, almost considered increasing the gamma (and maybe i should had due to youtube's compression) and as another user said, it kinda feels like you have to be lucky with the order you enter the rooms, I'm not sure i would be able to get out of the lost soul pit alive without the BFG. The timed switch with the crushers was unnecessarily mean. And in the big area with lava, I couldn't get out of it after falling because the portals were covered with invisible walls, which was also mentioned previously by others.

 

-E2M7

Amazing map, definitely my favorite from the episode and the whole wad so far and it helped revitalize my interest in this wad after E2M9 hehe.

 

-E2M8

Gorgeous map with very nice fights and in general it's much easier than E1M8 (not that I'm complaining) but the final fight certainly felt intense in that small-ish arena with the cyberdemon. The only tiny complaint i have is that after the fight with the barons and lost souls you have to ride up a elevator that is triggered by a linedef (?) and if you don't notice that you will have to walk all the way up again to trigger it. I probably just missed a way to trigger it from below.

 

Edited July 25, 2023 by TimeGuardian

[dobu gabu maru]

On 7/23/2023 at 3:09 AM, plums said:

I don't know how much dobu had a hand in that aspect of it, either way great entry.

 

HNTR & HMP was originally like 95% the same as UV, so I took a more stern approach and made sweeping changes. For instance, as mentioned in your second minor complaint, I included 3 different difficulty zones for the two platforming-focused fears. Due to that I really can't "re-center" the areas to line up with their corresponding text, as the UV zones get priority on the map looking "correct".

 

And as for why E2M4 & E2M6 are busted in RC1.2, I have no clue. The next RC should have working versions (or at least, I've played them in DSDA and they work as intended now)—maybe I just needed to rebuild the nodes myself. Thanks for the feedback by the way—I think the last thing I'll request is for you to try E4M7 when the next RC drops, as I'm curious if it feels too easy/boring compared to the rest of the set.

Edited July 25, 2023 by dobu gabu maru

[Catpho]

E4M6 - @Steve D (Vid playthrough link)

Awesome concept, awesome map. I had fun with all of it; even if you see me dying a lot in the vid, there was no IRL frustration. If anything, I'm happy the map kills me in that manner. It is exactly the reason I love high intensity maps. Spotted nothing wonky.

I suppose I'll wait for RC2 for E4M7 & E4M8. The latter is kicking my rear anyway.

Edited July 25, 2023 by Catpho

[plums]

@dobu gabu maru if you're rebuilding nodes of levels, E1M1 has a *tiny* bug that I think is a node builder error, with one of the stairs on the rightmost path of the outdoor area being oddly seethrough in software mode.