Pirate Doom II (finished!)

[Jakub Majewski]

Update's out, so I will play the latter half of the megawad on Wednesday afternoon.

 

 

[netcurse2000]

map-01-05

 

[Darch]

Alright, I think we've got a decent enough version for a public release!

 

Download:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/17s9YV1ocVT4MLOeZBcG-8U3W9HhI7Iv3/view?usp=drive_link

 

Still beta because every time I play it, I find a minor thing to fix, like misaligned textures or one wrong pixel on a sprite :P

Please report any issues, even misaligned textures, through PM or here in the thread.

 

Ports tested so far:

PrBoom 2.6 (software mode)

Dsda Doom 2.7

GZDoom 4.11

ZDoom 8.1

Woof 14.2

Nugget Doom 3.0

 

Complevel 11

 

Multiplayer ports like Odamex and Zandronum don't fully support music changers, which are used in almost every map. There will be a version without music changers for these ports, after the final single-player version is finished.

 

First post edited with this link and info.

 

[yukes.von.faust]

Glad to see this one bein' released (in beta form)!
Will there be a possibility that you'll redo the first Pirate Doom (as a definitive edition using prboom as a base)?
 

[cannonball]

So great to see this fully in release candidate. I will say right away that the overall artwork is stunning and creates a wonderful immersive atmosphere and was so prevalent in the first Pirate Doom. I haven't been able to fully get into the maps outside of briefing going through them with IDCLEV, but there are a couple of maps that I might have some issues with (Lets just say the numbers in particular may match the name of an American convenience store chain :P), as the maps are short I might be able to give more extensive feedback in the coming days.

PS, this automap made me smile;

 

Spoiler

 

[Darch]

Lol I swear that was a coincidence, Cannonball! 

 

3 hours ago, yukes.von.faust said:

Glad to see this one bein' released (in beta form)!
Will there be a possibility that you'll redo the first Pirate Doom (as a definitive edition using prboom as a base)?
 

Well, PD2 is actually the Pirate Doom "prboom" version. It was even called Pirate Boom in the very beginning, then it had enough new content to be called Pirate Doom 2. Not that I was remaking PD1 maps; I thought it was less work to simply make new maps. Also, there are many design choices in PD1 that I would do differently today, such as some weapons and map layouts, so it was better to make a whole new set. However, many themes are revisited. For example:

PD1 map41 - PD2 maps02 and 03

PD1 map42 - PD2 map22

PD1 map43 - PD2 map31

 

And so on.

 

Oh, and of course I found a wrong texture and 4 monsters that don't "awake" in MAP27 right after releasing this beta. 

 

[senpaigru]

I'm near the end of my first playthrough and this is probably one of my favorite wads I've ever played. After this playthrough (playing continuous, uv on dsda) I'm going to do another another with pistol starts. So far I've only noticed a couple slime trails on one of the bonus levels and I believe a minor slime trail on another. I'll keep taking screenshots and get it all together by the end of my second playthrough. You did a remarkable job on this!

 

Also, I'm thankful this is mbf21 because it runs well in dsda on my toaster laptop <3

[Darch]

Awesome, thank you! It's MBF11  :)

[S3M_XM]

I've finished today, it's nice seeing a sequel that no one was really expecting and making it compatible towards non-ZDoom source ports as well.
Played this through Helion 0.9.2.8 in Bring the Rum mode and here's some things during my playthrough. I'll give the wad again in Doom Retro when next release candidate gets released.

Spoiler

The Spiderbrain Mastermind's death sound has an audio crackle.

 

Aren't most of the maps have unmarked secrets?

MAP08 & MAP12 needs more ammo, just barely able to 100% kills.

 

MAP14
Is the Soulsphere on the ledge should be a secret?

 

MAP15

The Grog Spitter is supposed to be a secret.

I don't know if the trees are supposed to be floating, not sure if it's the hardware rendering or Helion itself.
     I looked at UDB, and went through Nugget Doom and GZDoom, and they don't from this given image below.

 

MAP16

The Grog Spitter and the Soulsphere should be secets.

MAP17
I don't know if the Soulsphere (Thing 188) is should be a secret.
      If so, then why the rails (Linedefs 340, 631, & 1631-1633) are passable?

 

Misaligned texture on one of the barrels.

 

MAP18

The Grog Spitter should be a secret?

 

MAP22

The two Muskratters (Things 581 & 582) are set with an ambush tag, not sure if that's intentional.

I don't know if the green armor (Thing 60) is obtainable.

 

MAP24

One of the armor bonuses (Thing 283) floating when the lift goes down and stays that way.

 

MAP28

Is the Soulsphere on the ledge (Thing 471) is supposed to be a secret?

 

[Darch]

Thanks for the feedback!

Spoiler

 

Fixed the SpiderMastermind death sound, the unaligned texture, and the armor bonus of map 24.

 

Everything else is meant to be as they are. I wasn't aware of this Helion port; I might give it a try later. However, those trees aren't floating in any of the other ports tested.

 

Edit: I downloaded Helion and checked out that tree. I was able to fix it by adjusting some settings in Options > Render > Clip Max Height Percentage: I changed this value to 1, and the tree landed back on the floor.

 

Regarding the secrets: all secrets that are revealed on the automap before they are actually found are unmarked. I think finding a secret shouldn't be as easy as identifying purple sectors on the automap. 

 

Edit 2: That said, I think I can mark some of the secrets back by creating a sector around the item with invisible linedefs :P

Working on it

 

Edited April 11 by Darch

[Batandy]

Oh my god I wasn't expecting this outta nowhere, fantastic job matey!

[Sikreci]

I haven't played Pirate Doom 1 yet (I will now!) but I gotta say this is the most pure fun and joy I've had with a Doom WAD in years. Amazingly done on all accounts, this is one of the GOATs for sure. I've been working on a personal project with a very similar scope and goals lately and this gives me a lot of inspiration and hope that maybe I'll finish it someday too.

[Aeddes666]

Some videos.

 

(From a previous version)

 

 

[Gibbitudinous]

Played almost halfway through by now and I can definitely feel the decade-worth of maturation since the first one.

Pirate Doom 1 was a great mod but this one has felt a lot more cohesive and more fun as an overall experience so far, with the level design, progression, art style, it's all very much a tip-top evolution on what was already a really neat idea.

[Gothic]

I'm really enjoying this wad so far, and the textures look so much better when you stick to a palette.

So far the only visual bug I've noticed is the first frame of the demon dying is misaligned with the rest of the sprites.

I also noticed that a couple of vanilla Doom sounds lost quality when they got mixed with other sounds, so I tried to fix them in Audacity:

pd2sndfx.zip

[Darch]

Oh, thanks a lot!!

 

Working on it daily.

Cleaning sprites and textures at the moment.

Also, secrets are back :)

 

Spoiler

 

Now:                    Before:

 

 

 

Edited April 16 by Darch

[plums]

31 minutes ago, Darch said:

Oh, thanks a lot!!

 

Working on it daily.

Cleaning sprites and textures at the moment.

Also, secrets are back :)

You're going to be tweaking this for another 6 months, aren't you? ;)

[Toilet_Wine_Connoisseur]

PIRATE DOOM IS LIKE LEGIT MY FAV MOD I AM SO DAMN HAPPY TO SEE IT GET A SEQUEL!!!

[Darch]

13 hours ago, plums said:

You're going to be tweaking this for another 6 months, aren't you? ;)

hehe, just a few more tweaks! 

[Sikreci]

Did you really work on this for the last 10 years? I assumed that you just meant it was 10 years since Pirate Doom 1, and that development on 2 started maybe a few years ago. Extra congratulations, if so, on finally making it to the end of a very long road!

[Darch]

53 minutes ago, Sikreci said:

Did you really work on this for the last 10 years? I assumed that you just meant it was 10 years since Pirate Doom 1, and that development on 2 started maybe a few years ago. Extra congratulations, if so, on finally making it to the end of a very long road!

Thank you! But that's exactly what I meant; it's been 10 years since Pirate Doom 1. I started this around five years ago, but I really took my time; sometimes, I would go months without touching it. 

[Traysandor]

I like most of what I see so far, blazing through about half the wad with only an occasional death, mostly to hitscan. UV seems a bit on the tame side - at least compared to most of the other wads released lately where UV would either rip you a new one or turn into slaughter combat puzzles. I guess I'll see what the second half has to offer soon enough... but it is refreshing to see a wad I can mostly handle on UV without having my butt kicked ad nauseam. It does feel a bit odd having to rely on normal guns for so long though. Might not be the worst idea to throw a Slot 5 and slot 6 weapon (or it's ammo) in a secret somewhere in the first half.

 

A few minor things:

The hit collision for the barrel replacement is extremely jank.

The slot 5 weapon when you do acquire it, the firing sprite blocks too much of the screen, making it difficult to aim properly when a situation arises where you need to use a lot to deal with a horde of enemies.

The secret exit for Map 15 - should probably be marked as a secret once you find where it is and more tagged secrets when you figure out what you need to do to unlock it.

 

Though once you're done with the main wad you could also work on a version that steps up the difficulty for those up to the challenge (Like what the creator of another wad did and had a new game + version of the levels that was much more slaughter/difficult). But that's up to you.

Edited April 17 by Traysandor

[Darch]

Well, this is a wad on the easy side. Considering the theme and art style, I think it shouldn't be too hard. It will eventually get harder on EP03, and of course, you can pistol start or even use -fast or -coop monsters if it's too easy for you.

 

I had unmarked many secrets because of the automap, but now they're marked again. The next version will have most of the secrets back. I got it, players want their secrets marked! By the way, you can find secret slot 5 weapons in the first half. But yeah, everything is presented slowly. My general rule was to introduce one new thing per map, be it a monster or a weapon. Although you can find new weapons and even new monsters in secrets before the map where they would be "officially" introduced.

 

The barrel is just a graphical replacement, what was janky about it?

[Deadwing]

I enjoyed a lot the mostly unmarked secrets, it's something unique for the wad and given the so many cool little details in the maps it was a nice way to force the player to rely in the environment to find clues, but I can understand changing this tbh

[Sikreci]

Some final thoughts now that I've finished the WAD, pistol starts on UV:

 

Difficulty felt pretty good for the most part, as someone who doesn't generally enjoy slaughter or "hard for the sake of being hard" WADs. The main difficulty spikes involved Spider Masterminds. I remain unconvinced that fighting the Spider Mastermind can ever be actually fun, but you made a valiant effort for sure.

 

I can't really complain about the map design at all, it was just a lot of fun, but I personally loved the smaller, faster maps in the first half, that's my jam. The town at night was definitely a standout for me among the latter half, too. The art and sound is extremely consistent and just beautiful to experience. Very well done all in all.

 

I just want to lodge one complaint: the brown-skinned humanoid "cannibals" and "witch doctors" feel extremely Not Great. And using the Gatling Gun to gun them down by the dozens when the real Gatling Gun was historically used by colonial armies to slaughter and enslave the real human beings that these are caricatures of... that's a big oof. It definitely took the wind out of my sails in what is otherwise an absolutely amazing experience.

[Darch]

1 hour ago, Sikreci said:

 

I just want to lodge one complaint: the brown-skinned humanoid "cannibals" and "witch doctors" feel extremely Not Great. And using the Gatling Gun to gun them down by the dozens when the real Gatling Gun was historically used by colonial armies to slaughter and enslave the real human beings that these are caricatures of... that's a big oof. It definitely took the wind out of my sails in what is otherwise an absolutely amazing experience.

Well, I'm sorry to hear that; this is meant to be a light and fun mod, and not to offend anyone. These monsters were based on characters from other games, like the Cannibals from Monkey Island 1 and The Fetishes and Shaman Fetishes from Diablo 2. The Gatling gun is included simply because it is an effective weapon against low-tier monsters, as is the shotgun. That said, I think I would made their skin color green or dark gray if I made it nowadays. But they were made for PD1 ten years ago, and changing their skin color would require remaking them from scratch, which is a lot of work. The Arch-Vile is the monster with the most frames, and just adding the skull helmet for PD2 took a huge amount of time. I tried remapping their colors in Slade, but it looked really bad. If there is someone more skilled than me interested in changing their colors, I wouldn't mind changing them. But I don't think anything in this mod should be taken too seriously, and they're not even human.

[Gothic]

I just reached the end, what a great experience and a big improvement over the first Pirate Doom, except for the final boss but I guess you can do so much with a Dehacked boss as opposed to Decorate. Another thing that threw me off a bit was the introduction of the Barons in map18, now that they shoot rockets they can get into infighting and also damage themselves with their own splash damage, so having a pair so close to each other is not a very good idea.

I found 2 visual oddities while playing:

-In map16, when you activate the cauldron it rises the thing, which I don't think it's supposed to happen since the floor below it doesn't rise. Happened in GZDoom and DSDADoom:

Spoiler

-In map17 there's a minor texture misalignment in the area with the barrels:

Spoiler

I too agree with the cannon muzzleflash being obstructive, it got pretty troublesome in the more populated maps.

I also noticed that the Lost Soul plays its dying sound twice, is that intended?

 

4 hours ago, Sikreci said:

the brown-skinned humanoid "cannibals" and "witch doctors" feel extremely Not Great.

Would it make you feel better if they go back to their pale Archvile skin, or is it still the idea of demonic cannibals bothersome to you? Nobody seemed to mind about them in the original Pirate Doom, because it was clear that Darch wasn't trying to offend anyone.

Edited April 19 by Gothic

[plums]

27 minutes ago, Gothic said:

Nobody seemed to mind about them in the original Pirate Doom, because it was clear that Darch wasn't trying to offend anyone.

Well, a lot has changed in 10 years, and people are more sensitive to cultural issues, and more empowered to speak up about them. Overall I think that's a positive thing. I also think it's clear that Darch wasn't trying to offend anyone, then or now, and that changing them now would be an enormous amount of effort; and if they don't get changed at this point it's pretty understandable, and shouldn't reflect poorly on Darch. But that doesn't mean the complaint doesn't have merit.

[Sikreci]

I get that it's all meant to just be good hearted reference to tropes from older games like Monkey Island and Diablo, and those themselves are references to other media and so on, but the root origins of those tropes is pretty cringe and that's becoming more widely recognized. Not trying to level accusations of anyone being racist or ill-intentioned, that's not my place to say anyway. It just stands out as being...hmm, let's go with "old fashioned".

 

It's kind of like Shadow Warrior. This is just another one of those old tropes I think it's time to leave in the bin.

[plums]

@Darch and @Sikreci, how do you feel about either of these? Helmet needs cleanup but that's not too hard. Left one has some green to keep the colour depth and make it look a bit more monstrous, right is all grey and cleaner.

edit: still too much brown, going to take some more time to work on it, if people think it's an improvement

Maybe this?

 

 

 

Edited April 18 by plums
better sprite edit