First time posting my mod, would love feedback. Poseidon's Wrath

[Zikar]

Hello, I'm new here but I've been working on a mod for a while now and feel it's ready to get some eyes on it. I'd love to get feedback, positive or critical.

You will need:
Doom 2
GZDoom - Hardware renderer, dynamic lights, shadowmaps, default compat, mouselook, crouch, jump.
Custom keybinds in options: Quickswitch to grenade (recommended Q), Flashlight (recommended F), Time Oculus (used in a secret map, recommended T)

Contains:

15 new levels, 13 regular split between two episodes and 2 hidden levels.

Episode 1 features an underwater base with an emphasis on atmosphere and suspense that starts easy and gradually ramps up in difficulty.
Episode 2 features mind bending non-euclidean space, dimension hopping and time travel!

Also contains:

New Weapons, New Monsters, New Items, New Textures, New HUD and New Models all created by myself.

Apologies if I've not done forum etiquette properly.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/lz2ntmljt3i2wtx10phwe/Poseidon-s-Wrath-0.91.pk3?rlkey=4ookvzjcgkp4s1kh3iqcehhod&dl=0

[Nihlith]

That looks amazing, I definitely want to play with it. Do you dig recorded play? 

[Zikar]

3 minutes ago, Nihlith said:

Do you dig recorded play? 

Sure!

[Nihlith]

Poseidon's Wrath is awesome! I'd compare it most to Psychophobia which is my favorite stand alone wad yet. I'm uploading a play of Water Treatment (map 2). It'll take a while because it took me most of an hour. Its moody, beautiful, engaging... I've got some notes but this is already something to be proud of. I can tell I'm going to love the rest of it. Great work!

[Riclo500]

Wow! This looks incredible. I'll have to try this when I have the time

[Zikar]

3 hours ago, Nihlith said:

Poseidon's Wrath is awesome! I'd compare it most to Psychophobia which is my favorite stand alone wad yet. I'm uploading a play of Water Treatment (map 2). It'll take a while because it took me most of an hour. Its moody, beautiful, engaging... I've got some notes but this is already something to be proud of. I can tell I'm going to love the rest of it. Great work!

I'm glad you're enjoying it, I'll look forward to the video :)

[Nihlith]

yt[

Again, super fun great looking, thematic atmospheric and all that great stuff. I love the sea monsters, though one of them glitched out and turned into a lost soul at some point, and it's an interesting challenge to get through the pipe room but I think I looked for the exit far longer than I needed to because it looks like that switch will open the door but it just causes a message to be printed on screen. That was a little frustrating. It seems like there's something to do with the stair steps around the pillars but if there is I didn't find it. I hope this will be useful to you. Good show.

Edit: also something strange going on with the chainsaw and the grenades. I couldn't reliably select them and I don't know why. Maybe just me. 

Edited February 9 by Nihlith

[Zikar]

Glad you're having fun with it!
On the Lost Soul: There are a couple of Lost Souls in that room, I think one just came from above to join the party.
On the door in the pipe: Yeah, I see what you mean. The switch is actually to allow for back tracking, it will drain the tank if the player backtracks. I could just have that functionality connected to the door itself.
On the Chainsaw and Grenades: The Chainsaw require fuel now, so you won't be able to select it if you are out. This is to compensate for me improving the Chainsaw.

As for the Grenades, make sure you set them in the options, same goes for the flashlight which you weren't using. Though I noticed you kinda had a halo of light, maybe I turned that off on mine and forgot to set it for the player.

Thanks for the video, was fun to watch!

Oh, and be on the lookout for broken walls ;)

[kalensar]

That was just unusual... and I couldnt play it for beans. Basically it has some compatibility issues that are weird as hades. Basically I tried it on GZD 4.7 and failed with error needs GZD 4.8.

So then I move to GZD 4.82, fails on Decorate errors. Then onto GZD 4.10... And this is where it gets weird. It is API coded to load Softpoly instead of OpenGL ES.

That is weird because SoftPoly was discontinued on GZD 4.10 and is also absent from GZD 4.11.3.

Basically things are mismatched for API needs and its not real friendly to OpenGL or Vulkan on GZD 4.11.3 or 4.10. So yeah, potato gets chopped with lag, but the software--Hardware mismatch doesnt help things either.

 

I dont know the fix for this because I've never seen this happen ever with any mod.

 

Edit Update-- Got it fixed. IT was the MenuDef file. That was odd and unusual and completely unnecessary. It was causing the compatibility issues, and once I deleted it then it solved most of the problems. That entire limp lump of a file adds nothing to the mod or GZDoom that is not already present on the GZD version that it requires which is at least GZD 4.10. More importantly, it calls for an API Rendering protocol that is not supported since GZD 4.82( the mod is not compatible with GZD 4.82 due to Decorate syntax errors, aka missing commands that dont exist in that version.) Basically this is a case of using a cool old mod(Probably PolyObjects based), pasting in the stuff, and the final  result is that the new mod is reliant on ancient stuff that has bloat. So basically When GZD encounters a problem with API rendering it will backseat the fail option and resort to what it thinks is the default for the PC, in my case OpenGL or Vulkan. Thats bad for me because both rendering options are heavy resource compared to OpenGL ES, otherwise known as OpenGL 2.0 outside of GZDoom. So in this scenario the mod is calling for Softpoly which does not exist at all on GZD 4.10 or higher, the mod crashes before start on GZD 4.82 which does support Softpoly, and My system was resorting to OpenGL 3.0 which is hard on my system depending on Mod assets used. The mod ran perfectly fine in OpenGL ES mode.

 

TLDR--- Delete the MenuDef.lmp because it does nothing and only causes compatibility problems.

Edited February 9 by kalensar
Update

[Nihlith]

3 hours ago, Zikar said:

Glad you're having fun with it!
On the Lost Soul: There are a couple of Lost Souls in that room, I think one just came from above to join the party.
On the door in the pipe: Yeah, I see what you mean. The switch is actually to allow for back tracking, it will drain the tank if the player backtracks. I could just have that functionality connected to the door itself.
On the Chainsaw and Grenades: The Chainsaw require fuel now, so you won't be able to select it if you are out. This is to compensate for me improving the Chainsaw.

As for the Grenades, make sure you set them in the options, same goes for the flashlight which you weren't using. Though I noticed you kinda had a halo of light, maybe I turned that off on mine and forgot to set it for the player.

Thanks for the video, was fun to watch!

Oh, and be on the lookout for broken walls ;)

I do remember picking up gas now. Just plum forgot. Weird illusion for the lost soul. It's crazy that you were using just basic textures for most of that. Very resourceful. It looks like things get more colorful as the wad progresses. I wonder if it would work to have another way back or if the switch could become available after you go into the tank. I'll try setting the grenades in the options but I could have sworn I got them to come up sometimes by pressing the number keys but I just didn't remember which one. 

I really like these maps that have all the bells and whistles but are still clearly doom. Did you rip the sea monsters or did you make them?

Edited February 9 by Nihlith

[Zikar]

2 hours ago, kalensar said:

 

Thanks for the feedback, it's this kind of stuff that's very helpful because I only have my rig to test it on. I think one big mistake was that I did not update the GZDoom/zscript version, which should be 4.11.3, not 4.8.

 

You're right that MenuDef is bloated, I added it there a while back and haven't touched it, it was mainly just to get my custom cursor and other icons in. If there is another way I'm more that willing to change the way it's done, but you know what it's like, you look for solutions and the answers you get can span decades, different source ports etc etc lol

[Zikar]

1 hour ago, Nihlith said:

I'll try setting the grenades in the options but I could have sworn I got them to come up sometimes by pressing the number keys but I just didn't remember which one. 

I really like these maps that have all the bells and whistles but are still clearly doom. Did you rip the sea monsters or did you make them?

I think the grenades are 9 by default, which is way out of the way.

 

The seamonsters "SeaMonks", are made by me, they're a 3D model I made in blender and then wrote the Zscript for.
There are other new monsters, either made in Blender or pixel art by me too. ;)

Also thank you, I tried my best with the textures at hand. I felt I didn't want to stray too far from the default textures to retain that Doom look.

Edited February 9 by Zikar

[Nihlith]

Level three is a trip. I cleared the bathrooms, the pool, the arcade and found the hiding marine in the ruined apartment who sent me on a quest.

I was exploring the big chandelier above the horror fountain in the main room when I realized my recording was likely to be too long for reasonable viewing... Still haven't got the better of it but there is a lot there. I wonder if level three only has three levels 🤔.

In any case, so far it's just getting better. I'd recommend this to anyone. 

I got the hang of the grenades, they're fun to use when you've got enemies bottlenecked at a doorway, but I haven't got the trick of bouncing them off the doorways into the room beyond. 

The way they are they seem improvised somehow, like you're misusing air capsules or batteries or something to destroy your enemies.

[LadyMistDragon]

Boy, I just LOVED this setting! It kind of starts out like an underwater version of the Icarus bases and that train sequence...it would probably make more sense if it was being played continuously but that was really cool!

 

 

[Zikar]

14 minutes ago, Nihlith said:

In any case, so far it's just getting better. I'd recommend this to anyone.

Glad to hear! Great to hear you're liking map 3, too!

[Zikar]

18 minutes ago, LadyMistDragon said:

Boy, I just LOVED this setting! It kind of starts out like an underwater version of the Icarus bases and that train sequence...it would probably make more sense if it was being played continuously but that was really cool!

Thanks!

lol, your video jumping around all over the place! Yeah, I try to have each level lead into the next (though they can all be Pistol Started)

[Nihlith]

Haven't been able to play with this as much as I have wanted to so I still haven't gotten through Recreation, but this is an impressive piece of work, I'd strongly recommend this as a solid wad. Have you thought of Moddb? 

[Zikar]

On 3/14/2024 at 4:12 AM, Nihlith said:

Have you thought of Moddb? 

In what way?

[Nihlith]

On 3/21/2024 at 11:38 AM, Zikar said:

In what way?

It's a good way to get your wad out there, it could get a following.