Ultimate Doom "In Name Only" - On IDgames

[cannonball]

7 hours ago, grothendieck1453 said:

I'm playing through the wad, and am loving it so far!

 

I noticed a possible minor bug: The step that leads out of the far side of the nukage pool with the two nukage pillars in E1M6 (sector 355) starts out not being damaging, but seems to turn into a damaging floor once it re-raises. Is this an engine-bug and/or is there a work-around?

 

I have had a look, interesting, it appears that whilst you can change the floor flat multiple times, it appears that the damaging floor is retained when the floor raises back up. I will have a think about how to resolve this, it isn't the end of the world but it will be nice to fix this.

 

Just a quick general update - dobu gabu maru is currently making some adjustments to some maps, so at this point I will be jotting down any other issues raised and will make any necessary changes when those edits are sent back to me.

Edited July 13, 2023 by cannonball

[Flyxolydian]

You couldn't ask him to get rid of the crusher corridor in E4M8 by any chance, could you? I can't really see a reason for it other than to lower the players health for the sake of it. 

[finnks13]

Finished Episode 4, and I had an excellent time with it. It's definitely the weirdest and most experimental out of a weird and experimental bunch, and while there are a couple of maps here I didn't care for, a lot of my absolute favourites in the entire set are here too. I particularly enjoyed E4M9 for the incredibly fun interpretations of different fears as combat arenas (shoutouts in particular to the Public Speaking & Commitment ones that I was grinning throughout at the surroundings), E4M4 for it's tense and incredibly satisfying combat, E4M5 for being a fun challenge of monster herding in order to not wake up the cybers and E4M8 for being absolutely insane.

 

The main problem I encountered while playing through the episode was with Woof crashing randomly when reloading saves in E4M2, E4M9, E4M7 & E4M8. I have absolutely no idea why this happened and only on these maps specifically but I think it must be a problem with Woof itself, as this is not the first wad I've had this problem with, though it is odd that this didn't happen at all on the previous episodes.

 

Found a lot less bugs this time, but here's map-by-map things anyway:
E4M1:

- Floating medikit on these stairs (honestly looks quite cool)

Spoiler

 

E4M9:
- It's a shame you can skip the slaughtery finale cause it's really cool.

 

E4M3:

- I think the fact that the chainsaw becomes accessible after the first time you're whisked away to another part of the map without anything visually changing (to my knowledge, I didn't notice it if there was) was very unintuitive and I only managed to get it by trying to teleport back to the cave area and discovering that the teleporter no longer worked. The bait for the first time is funny, but perhaps the water could be changed to something else to indicate that something new has happened?

- Do the radsuits in the lava area really need to be under crushers that are pretty tightly timed? This area is already pretty mean.

 

E4M6:

- I was surprised by just how easy the BFG is to grab, especially considering how trivial it makes the rest of the map as soon as you get it.

 

E4M7:

- Stuck shotgun guy (it's only his corpse in this picture but I promise he was wedged in a pillar)

Spoiler

- The map feels a little dull in it's current state, the set-piece encounters for the keys & finale are good but the rest is kinda nothing.

 

E4M8:

Spoiler

OK the good news is that E3M8 doesn't really stick out for me as an obvious outlier in terms of difficulty and expectation on the part of the player because this completely blows that map out of the water. I have absolutely no idea how most of this map works and what specific points of progression are, and I was continually losing my mind over how much inscrutable of a challenge it is. I can respect something that has this high expectations on the player, but it comes out of absolutely nowhere and despite how cool the map is (like holy shit it might be one of the most visually striking maps I've ever played), I think would leave a rather bad final impression on a lot of people.

 

The gimmick of teleporting barons away into monster closets being the central focus of the map is incredibly cool and I think the structured fights that are about herding them towards and away from important switches and then into the baron teleportation unit^TM were very well designed for this, and even if they sometimes felt a little trial-and-error at first, there was always that "aha!" moment when I figured out the best strategy. I was genuinely surprised when the end of the map took place in a completely different arena than I expected, and finally getting to kill everything was pretty satisfying - I expected the map to loop back to the starting area again with the barons you'd collected being used as meatshields from the masterminds' hitscanning attacks so it was nice to be surprised like this.

 

I have a few questions about this map because I am still kind of baffled about it:

- Is it intended that you're able to just about kill the spider masterminds at the start of the map and exit with 1% of the kills? I managed it after a shitload of save-scumming and getting two of the masterminds to infight somehow but I still felt like I wasn't supposed to be able to do that.

- What's the point of that crusher corridor? You don't need to do the arena behind there to unlock the exit (since I didn't!), and managing to keep 150+ health and a green armour through to the start of the corridor seems rather unreasonable, even for a secret optional encounter.

- How do you unlock the chaingun & berserk pack? The hanged baron on the front of it seemed to suggest I'd need a baron (or another monster I guess) to open it for me, but that doesn't seem to work.

- Is there a way to go back and try to deal with the masterminds when you've completed the rest of the map? (I don't care if maps are possible to max myself, mostly just interested)

 

And a couple of things I think are bugs:
- The switches in the area that has the red key don't seem to actually do anything and I wasn't able to get the red key itself (I was clipping around the map after I was done to try to make sense of the parts I skipped and noticed this, it could just be because of that)

- You can press the switch on the large computer pyramid from the layer below the switch, I don't think you can get up here without being able to get up to the switch itself but it might be possible to sequence break with it.

 

So yeah, the wad's excellent, it's jumped straight to the top of my "Good Ultimate Doom wads" list and I've been recommending it to pretty much everyone I've talked to since playing it. There's definitely maps here that I really did not like, but I normally understood what they were going for, and it just wasn't something that clicked with me instead of them being actively bad. I think my favourite map overall was E4M9, but E3M6, E2M9 & E1M8 are really close contenders for that title too and I could name at least a dozen maps that I thought were absolutely fantastic.

 

As something of a Doom 1 hater, I've been genuinely shocked and impressed by the quality of the combat in this wad, it absolutely makes the most of a very limited roster and is definitely something I will point to when people say that it's impossible to make Doom 1 combat fun. My thanks to everyone involved with the project as I had a ton of fun with this playthrough - I hope some of my ramblings have helped out :)

[dobu gabu maru]

1 hour ago, finnks13 said:

E4M8:

  Hide contents

OK the good news is that E3M8 doesn't really stick out for me as an obvious outlier in terms of difficulty and expectation on the part of the player because this completely blows that map out of the water. I have absolutely no idea how most of this map works and what specific points of progression are, and I was continually losing my mind over how much inscrutable of a challenge it is. I can respect something that has this high expectations on the player, but it comes out of absolutely nowhere and despite how cool the map is (like holy shit it might be one of the most visually striking maps I've ever played), I think would leave a rather bad final impression on a lot of people.

 

The gimmick of teleporting barons away into monster closets being the central focus of the map is incredibly cool and I think the structured fights that are about herding them towards and away from important switches and then into the baron teleportation unit^TM were very well designed for this, and even if they sometimes felt a little trial-and-error at first, there was always that "aha!" moment when I figured out the best strategy. I was genuinely surprised when the end of the map took place in a completely different arena than I expected, and finally getting to kill everything was pretty satisfying - I expected the map to loop back to the starting area again with the barons you'd collected being used as meatshields from the masterminds' hitscanning attacks so it was nice to be surprised like this.

 

I have a few questions about this map because I am still kind of baffled about it:

- Is it intended that you're able to just about kill the spider masterminds at the start of the map and exit with 1% of the kills? I managed it after a shitload of save-scumming and getting two of the masterminds to infight somehow but I still felt like I wasn't supposed to be able to do that.

- What's the point of that crusher corridor? You don't need to do the arena behind there to unlock the exit (since I didn't!), and managing to keep 150+ health and a green armour through to the start of the corridor seems rather unreasonable, even for a secret optional encounter.

- How do you unlock the chaingun & berserk pack? The hanged baron on the front of it seemed to suggest I'd need a baron (or another monster I guess) to open it for me, but that doesn't seem to work.

- Is there a way to go back and try to deal with the masterminds when you've completed the rest of the map? (I don't care if maps are possible to max myself, mostly just interested)

 

And a couple of things I think are bugs:
- The switches in the area that has the red key don't seem to actually do anything and I wasn't able to get the red key itself (I was clipping around the map after I was done to try to make sense of the parts I skipped and noticed this, it could just be because of that)

- You can press the switch on the large computer pyramid from the layer below the switch, I don't think you can get up here without being able to get up to the switch itself but it might be possible to sequence break with it.

 

 

Spoiler

 

- Masterminds can be killed whenever to exit the level. It's designed to be stupidly difficult without first grabbing a backpack, cell, and a blue armor, but with those in tow the battle becomes a viable exit strategy. The fight itself was included to both satisfy the Proverbs 5:9 title and to allow an "easier" exit for continuous players, should the map displease them.

- Crusher corridor is there as an optional "fast" route to grab a red key without completing either of the other standard key routes. The green armor nearby outside is all that's really required to survive the smush hall, as the following encounter is meant to be done at excruciatingly low health. Completing it provides the player with a soulsphere and instant access to the final fight (where there are two blue armors), so I think it's a fair trade off.

- Chaingun & berserk are only handed to the player once they adequately fill the monster closets for the final encounter. That is, once all monster closets have been occupied, the last enemy will then repeatedly activate the "dead-baron" door to allow players access (which reminds me that I forgot to mark it as secret).

- The Masterminds are crushed to death once the timer for the final encounter ends.

- The optional red key bars should work in the following update—was yet another -cl3 goof.

- The minor pyramid shortcut is a fun quirk in my book :)

 

 

Thanks a ton for all the feedback—it's been massively helpful! Sad to say there's not a lot I can do about E4M7... due to the size of the map, it kind of is what it is.

[cannonball]

6 hours ago, finnks13 said:

Finished Episode 4, and I had an excellent time with it. It's definitely the weirdest and most experimental out of a weird and experimental bunch, and while there are a couple of maps here I didn't care for, a lot of my absolute favourites in the entire set are here too. I particularly enjoyed E4M9 for the incredibly fun interpretations of different fears as combat arenas (shoutouts in particular to the Public Speaking & Commitment ones that I was grinning throughout at the surroundings), E4M4 for it's tense and incredibly satisfying combat, E4M5 for being a fun challenge of monster herding in order to not wake up the cybers and E4M8 for being absolutely insane.

 

The main problem I encountered while playing through the episode was with Woof crashing randomly when reloading saves in E4M2, E4M9, E4M7 & E4M8. I have absolutely no idea why this happened and only on these maps specifically but I think it must be a problem with Woof itself, as this is not the first wad I've had this problem with, though it is odd that this didn't happen at all on the previous episodes.

 

Found a lot less bugs this time, but here's map-by-map things anyway:
E4M1:

- Floating medikit on these stairs (honestly looks quite cool)

  Reveal hidden contents

 

E4M9:
- It's a shame you can skip the slaughtery finale cause it's really cool.

 

E4M3:

- I think the fact that the chainsaw becomes accessible after the first time you're whisked away to another part of the map without anything visually changing (to my knowledge, I didn't notice it if there was) was very unintuitive and I only managed to get it by trying to teleport back to the cave area and discovering that the teleporter no longer worked. The bait for the first time is funny, but perhaps the water could be changed to something else to indicate that something new has happened?

- Do the radsuits in the lava area really need to be under crushers that are pretty tightly timed? This area is already pretty mean.

 

E4M6:

- I was surprised by just how easy the BFG is to grab, especially considering how trivial it makes the rest of the map as soon as you get it.

 

E4M7:

- Stuck shotgun guy (it's only his corpse in this picture but I promise he was wedged in a pillar)

  Reveal hidden contents

- The map feels a little dull in it's current state, the set-piece encounters for the keys & finale are good but the rest is kinda nothing.

 

E4M8:

  Reveal hidden contents

OK the good news is that E3M8 doesn't really stick out for me as an obvious outlier in terms of difficulty and expectation on the part of the player because this completely blows that map out of the water. I have absolutely no idea how most of this map works and what specific points of progression are, and I was continually losing my mind over how much inscrutable of a challenge it is. I can respect something that has this high expectations on the player, but it comes out of absolutely nowhere and despite how cool the map is (like holy shit it might be one of the most visually striking maps I've ever played), I think would leave a rather bad final impression on a lot of people.

 

The gimmick of teleporting barons away into monster closets being the central focus of the map is incredibly cool and I think the structured fights that are about herding them towards and away from important switches and then into the baron teleportation unit^TM were very well designed for this, and even if they sometimes felt a little trial-and-error at first, there was always that "aha!" moment when I figured out the best strategy. I was genuinely surprised when the end of the map took place in a completely different arena than I expected, and finally getting to kill everything was pretty satisfying - I expected the map to loop back to the starting area again with the barons you'd collected being used as meatshields from the masterminds' hitscanning attacks so it was nice to be surprised like this.

 

I have a few questions about this map because I am still kind of baffled about it:

- Is it intended that you're able to just about kill the spider masterminds at the start of the map and exit with 1% of the kills? I managed it after a shitload of save-scumming and getting two of the masterminds to infight somehow but I still felt like I wasn't supposed to be able to do that.

- What's the point of that crusher corridor? You don't need to do the arena behind there to unlock the exit (since I didn't!), and managing to keep 150+ health and a green armour through to the start of the corridor seems rather unreasonable, even for a secret optional encounter.

- How do you unlock the chaingun & berserk pack? The hanged baron on the front of it seemed to suggest I'd need a baron (or another monster I guess) to open it for me, but that doesn't seem to work.

- Is there a way to go back and try to deal with the masterminds when you've completed the rest of the map? (I don't care if maps are possible to max myself, mostly just interested)

 

And a couple of things I think are bugs:
- The switches in the area that has the red key don't seem to actually do anything and I wasn't able to get the red key itself (I was clipping around the map after I was done to try to make sense of the parts I skipped and noticed this, it could just be because of that)

- You can press the switch on the large computer pyramid from the layer below the switch, I don't think you can get up here without being able to get up to the switch itself but it might be possible to sequence break with it.

 

So yeah, the wad's excellent, it's jumped straight to the top of my "Good Ultimate Doom wads" list and I've been recommending it to pretty much everyone I've talked to since playing it. There's definitely maps here that I really did not like, but I normally understood what they were going for, and it just wasn't something that clicked with me instead of them being actively bad. I think my favourite map overall was E4M9, but E3M6, E2M9 & E1M8 are really close contenders for that title too and I could name at least a dozen maps that I thought were absolutely fantastic.

 

As something of a Doom 1 hater, I've been genuinely shocked and impressed by the quality of the combat in this wad, it absolutely makes the most of a very limited roster and is definitely something I will point to when people say that it's impossible to make Doom 1 combat fun. My thanks to everyone involved with the project as I had a ton of fun with this playthrough - I hope some of my ramblings have helped out :)

Thanks for playing through all of this and yes the feedback has been very helpful. I am glad that you have enjoyed this wad. I was expecting reactions to be pretty mixed, but to get people who tend to shy away from UDoom wads to see that there is a lot that can be done with the source material is always a good thing in my book.

Edited July 14, 2023 by cannonball

[grothendieck1453]

Another really minor bug: In E1M7, the two spectres Thing 1093 and Thing 1094 (that appear on Easy/Medium difficulty) are stuck together.

[taviow]

12 hours ago, dobu gabu maru said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

- Masterminds can be killed whenever to exit the level. It's designed to be stupidly difficult without first grabbing a backpack, cell, and a blue armor, but with those in tow the battle becomes a viable exit strategy. The fight itself was included to both satisfy the Proverbs 5:9 title and to allow an "easier" exit for continuous players, should the map displease them.

- Crusher corridor is there as an optional "fast" route to grab a red key without completing either of the other standard key routes. The green armor nearby outside is all that's really required to survive the smush hall, as the following encounter is meant to be done at excruciatingly low health. Completing it provides the player with a soulsphere and instant access to the final fight (where there are two blue armors), so I think it's a fair trade off.

- Chaingun & berserk are only handed to the player once they adequately fill the monster closets for the final encounter. That is, once all monster closets have been occupied, the last enemy will then repeatedly activate the "dead-baron" door to allow players access (which reminds me that I forgot to mark it as secret).

- The Masterminds are crushed to death once the timer for the final encounter ends.

- The optional red key bars should work in the following update—was yet another -cl3 goof.

- The minor pyramid shortcut is a fun quirk in my book :)

 

 

Thanks a ton for all the feedback—it's been massively helpful! Sad to say there's not a lot I can do about E4M7... due to the size of the map, it kind of is what it is.

 

What about a cyber instead of the pinkies spawning on that small platform in the final island? Because as it is, I don't even understand it. That's maybe one thing that would improve the finale, a few monsters placed in strategic spots.

[dobu gabu maru]

7 hours ago, taviow said:

What about a cyber instead of the pinkies spawning on that small platform in the final island?

 

The pinkies were never intended to get stranded up there and I've lowered the platform so that they can leave it. A stationary cyber turret is an interesting idea however, will have to test the map under those conditions.

[bioshockfan90]

Just finished E2M4, this is quite the interesting WAD to be sure! Not sure I've played something so weird and yet cohesive at the same time in a while...

 

I am not a fan of the very Dobu-esque puzzles that are in some maps (2, so far, to be exact) but at least they're optional. It's just the way it goes. Still, makes me regret missing out on some content. I suspect if someone puts in the time, this can be an experience that players 5 years from now would greatly benefit from some Doomwiki articles. Not necc. complaining though, like I said it's all optional and hasn't made the maps any harder going without the benefits from them. "Wow" moments so far are probably E1M7 and E2M4. The

 

Spoiler

crazy frenetic platforming section in E2M4 with all the cacos

 

was a highlight to be sure and felt like a fire got lit under my ass. Video recording is still going good, I calculated how long it'd take to upload the entire set at a weekly pace and am starting to redecide some of that depending on how long it takes me to get to E3. If I can get to E3 by 2 weeks from now, I might upload some playthroughs sooner rather than later seeing as videos of gameplay are probably crucial to the mapmakers. In fact, I think I'll work on uploading E1M2 and E1M3 today, just because time is somewhat of the essence. Need to get that updated file, too - I imagine it'll come in handy for any upcoming maps. Thanks so far and this is certainly a WAD that gives you a lot to think about. Was not expecting this AT ALL based on the premise.

 

 

[Catpho]

Dang, you guys play quick. I'm such a turtle. Here's my playthrough of E2M4 (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) for the first RC. Fun map, I enjoyed everything, including the idea that there are poor souls using the chainsaw :D The baron fight in my vid is a luck-based win imo; I later found a better strategy of running from one extreme corner of the room to another, but I probably still need to play more to see if I can get consistent with it. Also that secret is would've been way harder to solve to me if I didn't start dabbling in Doom Builder and realized what kind of mechanic was at play.

Edited July 15, 2023 by Catpho

[taviow]

21 hours ago, dobu gabu maru said:

 

The pinkies were never intended to get stranded up there and I've lowered the platform so that they can leave it. A stationary cyber turret is an interesting idea however, will have to test the map under those conditions.

 

Oh lol when I saw them, I thought it was silly to have the pinkies on the pillars, but I should have known it was something not triggering and you guys wouldn't do that on purpose. Lesson learned.

[dobu gabu maru]

5 hours ago, Catpho said:

Here's my playthrough of E2M4 (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) for the first RC.

 

Nicely done—I removed the "scroll texture left" effect in the red puzzle room so the switches will be significantly easier to hit. Adhering to my own philosophy for community projects, I'm gonna add a soulsphere to the baron fight, as I agree with others that it's a bit weird to have the episode's difficulty peak midway through. And yeah, the lift secret is probably the most devious puzzle in the whole wad—I had to do something a little time consuming so the player didn't have to wait for the cacos to get crushed for 100% kills.

[fabian]

On 7/12/2023 at 3:33 AM, finnks13 said:

I'm getting a weird crashing bug in Woof when loading saves sometimes so it might take me a bit longer (I have no idea why this happens, but it's not unique to this wad). Hope any of this is useful :)

 

Could you post a crashing savegame here or on github? That'd be really helpful. 

[finnks13]

16 minutes ago, fabian said:

 

Could you post a crashing savegame here or on github? That'd be really helpful. 

 

Here you go, it's on the RC1.2 version of the wad, on E4M9: udino_crashingsave.zip

 

The other wads I remember it's crashed on are Violet Shift (v2) and Interception II, though I do not have savefiles for these anymore, sorry.

[dobu gabu maru]

31 minutes ago, fabian said:

Could you post a crashing savegame here or on github? That'd be really helpful. 

 

One of the only things I can think of that make those maps stick out is the nodebuilder I use to save them: ZDBSP - Normal (zero reject). E4M7, E4M8, E4M9 all use that nodebuilder, which is where the save game crashes occur.

[TimeGuardian]

I started playing this recently and will be uploading the videos to my youtube channel. The first video is E1M8 because E1M6 is when I started thinking about recording and E1M7 is what really convinced me to do it. The first video has a bit of an audio issue but on the other maps i uploaded so far (E2M1/M2) it should be fixed. Its not saveless, its not 100%, it has no commentary, its just me playing badly on ultra violence and regretting choosing this difficulty. The final map of episode 1 was probably the hardest so far which caused to rage quit for a bit and when I came back I used noclip/god mode to look around the map but after that I did it in the first try... which I wasnt recording and had to do again but I did it without a problem next time as you can see in the video. I know I'm not very good but I hope this has some, if minimal, use to you folks.

[dobu gabu maru]

3 hours ago, TimeGuardian said:

I know I'm not very good but I hope this has some, if minimal, use to you folks.

 

If E1M8 caused you to rage quit, I strongly recommend dropping the difficulty to Hey Not Too Rough or Hurt Me Plenty for the future episodes. It's a bumpy ride.

[cannonball]

3 hours ago, TimeGuardian said:

I started playing this recently and will be uploading the videos to my youtube channel. The first video is E1M8 because E1M6 is when I started thinking about recording and E1M7 is what really convinced me to do it. The first video has a bit of an audio issue but on the other maps i uploaded so far (E2M1/M2) it should be fixed. Its not saveless, its not 100%, it has no commentary, its just me playing badly on ultra violence and regretting choosing this difficulty. The final map of episode 1 was probably the hardest so far which caused to rage quit for a bit and when I came back I used noclip/god mode to look around the map but after that I did it in the first try... which I wasnt recording and had to do again but I did it without a problem next time as you can see in the video. I know I'm not very good but I hope this has some, if minimal, use to you folks.

Thanks for uploading those videos, it will be interesting to see how things pan out later on. It is fair to say that E1M8 is the first moment where the wad bares its teeth, it should act as a warning for maps further down the road. Best of luck and as Dobu said, never be afraid to drop down a difficulty level.

[mouldy]

I'm making a few minor tweaks to E2M5, so if anyone has any problems with that map let me know. Just fixing a problem with infinite height monsters trapping you on the central walkway. Also making the secret exit a little less wall-humpy and removing some vanilla-limit oddities.

[fabian]

18 hours ago, finnks13 said:

Here you go, it's on the RC1.2 version of the wad, on E4M9: udino_crashingsave.zip

 

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

 

17 hours ago, dobu gabu maru said:

One of the only things I can think of that make those maps stick out is the nodebuilder I use to save them: ZDBSP - Normal (zero reject). E4M7, E4M8, E4M9 all use that nodebuilder, which is where the save game crashes occur.

 

E4M9 still uses regular Doom nodes, though, nothing special.

[grothendieck1453]

A small bug report for E2

 

E2M3: I think there is a miss-aligned texture on linedef 2131:

 

E2M4: There are a lot of visual glitches when I use PrBoom+ 2.5.1.5 (complevel 3). See for instance the floor below (in the first room):

 

E2M7: I managed to softlock myself next to one of the cylinders in sector 611:

[plums]

16 minutes ago, grothendieck1453 said:

E2M4: There are a lot of visual glitches when I use PrBoom+ 2.5.1.5 (complevel 3). See for instance the floor below (in the first room):

I just tried loading this map and it crashes Crispy Doom. None of the others do. (Still haven't actually played any yet.) Also visual errors on DSDA-Doom in software mode.

 

Rebuilding the nodes with BSP-W32 seems to fix the problem? Barely tested at all, just immediate crashes/opening visual problems are gone.

https://user.fm/files/v2-111c3eb57a35115b68ce88b526670d58/udino_24.wad

 

Edited July 17, 2023 by plums

[plums]

Figured while I had the wad loaded I thought I'd try E3M8 to see what all the fuss is about and, wow... I actually really like the idea, but having that map in a community project is kinda like showing up to a potluck with a Carolina Reaper chili and asking people to eat it without having anything to drink. At the very least I think HNTR needs to be scaled back a lot, I can understand wanting to keep it hard on UV but I think it would be good for players to have the option to dial it back, as well as for less-skilled ones to have a remote hope of beating it. I've barely tried it so no win yet, going to make a more serious effort later.

[TimeGuardian]

Finally finished E2M3. Cant say i like toxic areas but this wasnt too bad and I found a missing texture in this secret. Also nugget doom crashes on E2M4 for me.

Edited July 18, 2023 by TimeGuardian

[dobu gabu maru]

Turns out the E2M4 I added to the hotfix is bugged for some reason—I've tested my newest one in DSDA/Crispy and it works just fine. Dunno what happened to it.

 

3 hours ago, plums said:

having that map in a community project is kinda like showing up to a potluck with a Carolina Reaper chili and asking people to eat it without having anything to drink.

 

Great comparison lol

[cannonball]

6 hours ago, TimeGuardian said:

Finally finished E2M3. Cant say i like toxic areas but this wasnt too bad and I found a missing texture in this secret. Also nugget doom crashes on E2M4 for me.

 

Good catch on that oversight on my end (and grothendieck1453 for the misalignment). The more extensive intrusion of nukage was one of the alterations I put into this one, I did try to compensate with more radsuits but obviously in general mandatory wading through damaging floor is always a rather prickly subject and it felt like a more useful way for creating a sense of peril and showing the base being consumed by the very subject it refines.

[plums]

Some more feedback on Nine Inch Heels's maps:

 

So I think I will never be able beat E3M8 on UV the non-secret way; this is fine in and of itself. I can do it on HNTR, and I could probably manage on HMP if I wanted to have another go at it.

 

I don't know that making a double-rocket jump is something I can pull of without practicing for hours. By getting to the secret (in my case with noclip) the map becomes quite doable on UV, and quite a bit more fun IMHO. This is a bit of an odd situation given how specialized a trick it is to get to it legitimately.

 

I did really enjoy the concept, making an IoS-type fight in Ultimate Doom is quite brilliant. I do think as I said before, at a minimum, that HNTR should really be toned down; there are people who have been playing Doom for years who still feel like dealing with more than one cyberdemon at a time is exceedingly dangerous, people who have no interest in being particularly good, and this map completely shuts them out. Having a relatively easy difficulty for the map also helps you justify having the harder skill levels be really painful.

 

E3M6 I loved but I can see how a platform-hater, such as mouldy, wouldn't be able to stand it. I did think the 3-cyberdemon area near the end was *slightly* excessive, but trying it a second time it wasn't too bad with some brute-force quickloading. The race against the rising lifts was a fantastic piece but also very tough, because of the last three door switches that you have to hit as you're moving. The secret exit was clever and a nice spin on the original E3M6. (You sure do like making the player blow themselves up don't you.) I didn't notice appreciable difference between UV and HMP, I'm sure there's something that I could find with a map editor, but they seemed about the same to me.

Edited July 18, 2023 by plums

[grothendieck1453]

I forgot to mention something I noticed in E2M6. Four of the teleporter-alcoves in the red key room look like they have textures missing. Some of them are also inaccessible (as if there is an invisible wall in front of them):

[Inuk]

I saw UltraViolence play this and I wanted to try it out. UV-Max + items for each episode (so no pistol start on every level), bugs were found and I made a few notes. UDB helped me cheat to find the secrets.

I mostly wrote negatives because I focused on bugs, but I enjoyed the maps. There's only one map I didn't like and it'll be clear from my writing which one that is.

Played RC 1.2 on DSDA-Doom 0.26.2 complevel 3

 

Episode 1
 

Spoiler

 

e1m1: The ending looks unfinished, it's abruptly weird and glitchy for no apparent reason. I understand that the maps have no continuity and don't need to make sense, but this wasn't to my taste.

For the glitches, look behind you after dropping down at the ending strip and you will see HOM textures.

The edge of flat Earth can be seen from the end secret (right side of the screenshot)

e1m2: I think most people will go for the ship secret by running across the top of the crane, since that's easier than figuring out and taking the intended route.
e1m3: Sector 22 is an oasis of harmless slime because the sector blinks instead of damages. Sectors 340 and 348 are similar, but they hurt the player.
e1m5: The holes above the red key slime trap are just big enough to communicate that you're meant to drop through them, but this is only possible by squeeze gliding.
e1m6: Run from the slime elevator to the box, and continue to land in the windowsill. This is where I met a very disappointing invisible wall while exploring for secrets, and there's also another cameo from flat Earth.

e1m7: The walkover lines at the stair puzzle are not communicated well enough, I would've spent another half hour on the map if I didn't read this post by someone with the same issue

There are stuck/conjoined spectres (things 1094, 1093) on the easy and medium difficulties, see also this post

Episode 2
 

Spoiler

 

e2m1: 100% kills is impossible because some spectres (things 177, 179) can't escape their closets, the player crossing the trigger linedef doesn't seem to open the wall in the closets to release them. Could this be a node builder issue?
Subtle brick texture misalignment at the peeking marble demon.

e2m4: Completely visually broken, like virtual reality breaking apart in e1m7, except this time I doubt it's intentional. There are HOMs and flat bleeds absolutely everywhere.

I couldn't get the last secret without SR50, is it meant to be that hard?

The four buttons at the end are very hard to press because you have to shove your face right onto them, I think because the decorative linedefs in front of them are blocking use.

A cacodemon got stuck and made 100% kills impossible, just like in this post

e2m5: The button at the red skullkey is annoying to press because of the linedef in front blocking use.

e2m9: One of the boxes in the first box puzzle has a massive flat bleed, I'm confident that's the node builder being weird.

This map exploits Doom's verticality limitation when it comes to pressing and shooting buttons, which I haven't seen done intentionally by a mapper before. If you're playing this wad you're likely going to know what to do though.

e2m6: The lava pillar area has a load of HOMs along the centre, see this post

There are a lot of candles placed too close to an upper ledge (like on a stair), and when you make open a door, they glitch up into the air and start floating. One of them is also placed on the exact edge of a sector and fell inside its corner.

Does this engine bug have a name?

 

Episode 3 (skipped map: e3m8)
 

Spoiler

 

e3m1: The stimpaks at the start are placed too close to an upper ledge and they floats out of reach when the door is opened.

If you trigger the chaingun ambush to the right of this start door, then nope out of there leaving the monsters alive, then you're as good as dead because the cyberdemon/yellow skullkey area prevents backtracking and forces you to pass through these monsters, and they're going to occupy the spot below the ledge you have to drop down, which is not going to happen if you're playing with infinitely tall actors.

e3m3: On medium difficulty there are bugged variant monsters (things 767, 43) that spawn stuck in eachother.

e3m5: The hazmat suit secret is nearly impossible to open because decorative linedefs in front block use.

e3m6: Duplicate monsters (things 693, 694) stuck in eachother, though this could be intentional for a louder noise since you only reach them by telefragging them.

The intermission screen before this map still has the misspelling "Mt Erubus" (wad resource: WILV25)

e3m7: The intermission screen before this map has a typo: "Cannnoball" (WILV26)

e3m8: After half an hour of trying to figure out any sort of strategy that would help against the cacodemons that fill the sky to prevent movement beneath them because of their infinite tallness, all I managed was to kill the mastermind with no health and no ammo remaining, with still hundreds of enemies alive. I did not have fun on this map, and I couldn't confirm that it's UV-Maxable. Cheating in UDB I couldn't find any way to get to the secret either. I'll give it another go if I find out what I'm missing.

 

Episode 4 (skipped map: e4m8)
 

Spoiler

 

e4m1: Misalignment on the hidden door next to the berserk pack in the north

e4m2: The row of six armour bonuses, thing 497 and friends, seem to be impossible to reach unless you get a lot of momentum and grab them piece by piece from behind the bars, which doesn't seem intended.

There's a cyberdemon stuck in a baron (things 407, 375) on easy difficulty.

e4m4: The cacodemons like to fly through this window, which has a nonsolid, yet solid-looking fence in it.

e4m5: The hazmat suit secret is easier to loot by running through the hole from the blue key platform, but this route makes actually tagging the secret sector awkward because it's on the lift to the side which you'd only use when going the intended way.

An armour bonus in the end room sits too close to a ledge and floats up when the door is opened

e4m7: I beat this map in 18 seconds on nightmare because of two massive skips, see the demo: udina47shortcuts.zip

There's a duplicated shotgunner (things 630, 1630) stuck in its twin on hard difficulty.

You can grab the secret soulsphere (thing 32) by just running into the bars in front that should have blocked you.

From what I can tell, the BFG secret is impossible to reach. Maybe forgotten during a revision?

This medkit is too close to an upper ledge and floats up out of reach as the map opens up:

e4m8: First impressions: This map is unplayable without a walkthrough guide. It looks good and I want to play it but I wanted to compile this post before I'm burnt out.

There's a baron of hell stuck in an imp (things 774, 276) on easy difficulty

 

 

[plums]

Hey @dobu gabu maru just making sure that you caught @taviow's comment that the E4M8 red key (in the spidery-looking area where you need to hit 8 switches and dodge barons) is inaccessible in complevel 3/Crispy Doom, since I didn't see you comment on it and I just had the same problem. I think you're getting bitten by the floor heights being lower than -500:

 

I also found this area particularly unpleasant to manage, fortunately for both those issues I found another red key...

Edited July 19, 2023 by plums