[0.5.0] Masterpack - The ultimate version of the Master Levels [UMAPINFO, Eternity, ZDoom] [5 Episodes, 46 Maps]

[elf-alchemist]

5 hours ago, TMMMS said:

given how bfthud is 29 maps long its a surprise chris klie didnt submit it to id instead of what would become his master levels submissions

 

all he wouldve needed to do is make one final map and two secret levels and id software wouldve gotten itself a full megawad!

Honestly pretty glad he made brand new maps. I briefly tried BFT and TLEoD months ago and wasn't exactly impressed at that time, but then, that was before Devalaous convinced me that Chris' maps have something to them.

 

5 hours ago, UnknDoomer said:

46 maps usually a not short journey, still, will see how things will go in overall on my side and would I be able to put this on usual recording shedule / not. After all it way not that hard in compare to, for exaple, two recently reviewed wads. Regarding mentioned maps - yes, it seems so, those two.

Yes, took me some time. But given average skill today they should all be pretty doable. Regarding time, splitting them into separate episodes is key, Klietech has 12 relatively short maps, while Titan's 6 levels are 30 minutes to an hour each, for me. But really, if you are gonna take time to play these maps, any time is fine by me. My missino is really to give the Master Levels the love they deserve, they are truly important levels that were forgotten to time, some of the Doom community's best of '95. Heck, I wonder if @Doomkid himself would appreciate these classic maps the way I and LeBreton do. I recall him calling them "mostly fine" at one point, maybe even he'd like them more too.

 

4 hours ago, UnknDoomer said:

@Average, @elf-alchemist, short / detailed installation instruction. Windows 11 + Steam + latest GzDoom.

Thank you brother, this is really good. Soon enough I will launch update 0.4 with a proper executable, so people won't need Python installed anymore.

Edited May 12 by elf-alchemist

[ethel5691]

I see this is going really well with updates and such. Great work @elf-alchemist, Im going to try the new versions of the masterpack tomorrow.

[elf-alchemist]

Version 0.4.0,  "No More Snakes in my Boots" Update

 

Finally, at long fricking last.

Masterpack is now distributed as executable binaries, a.k.a. EXEs. Currently a Windows '.exe' and Linux '.elf' are being published.

A new 'data.zip' has been temporarily introduced, it must remain unextracted for proper function.

Many, many, under-the-hood changes have been finally merged into the main script. mostly stuff that concerns me as the developer, but that will help make this tool even better later on :)

 

Get it here:

https://elf-alchemist.itch.io/masterpack

 

Or here:

https://github.com/elf-alchemist/masterpack/releases/tag/0.4.0

 

Installation instructions here:

https://github.com/elf-alchemist/masterpack?tab=readme-ov-file#instructions

 

[liPillON]

quick heads-up: both the windows and linux 0.4.0 release files on github are missing the "data.zip" archive

 

stopgap fix: download it from here and put it alongside the .exe

Edited May 13 by liPillON

[elf-alchemist]

8 hours ago, liPillON said:

quick heads-up: both the windows and linux 0.4.0 release files on github are missing the "data.zip" archive

 

stopgap fix: download it from here and put it alongside the .exe

And fixed.
 

Version 0.4.1,  "I really need to automate this process" Update

 

Readded a whole missing file critical to it working :(

 

Get it here:

https://elf-alchemist.itch.io/masterpack

 

Or here:

https://github.com/elf-alchemist/masterpack/releases/tag/0.4.1

 

Installation instructions here:

https://github.com/elf-alchemist/masterpack?tab=readme-ov-file#instructions

 

[elf-alchemist]

Version 0.4.2,  "Simplified for average Windows user" Update

 

Finally getting this to a usable state. All data required for the .exe to work is now embedded in itself. Less error-prone now.

 

Get it here:

https://elf-alchemist.itch.io/masterpack

 

Or here:

https://github.com/elf-alchemist/masterpack/releases/latest

 

Installation instructions here:

https://github.com/elf-alchemist/masterpack?tab=readme-ov-file#instructions

[elf-alchemist]

Version 0.4.3,  "Even GZDoom deserves hotfixes" Update

 

Fixed skies not showing for episodes Inferno and Titan on GZDoom, readded TNT's MAP01 builtin demo as DEMO1 for the Masterpack.

 

Get it here:

https://elf-alchemist.itch.io/masterpack

 

Or here:

https://github.com/elf-alchemist/masterpack/releases/latest

 

Installation instructions here:

https://github.com/elf-alchemist/masterpack?tab=readme-ov-file#instructions

[liPillON]

With 0.4.3 I get this error:

 

Spoiler

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "masterpack.py", line 15, in <module>
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'omg'
[7704] Failed to execute script 'masterpack' due to unhandled exception!

 

 

on a win10 x64 machine with python 3.12 installed

Edited May 15 by liPillON

[elf-alchemist]

5 hours ago, liPillON said:

With 0.4.3 I get this error:

And fixed.

 

Version 0.4.4,  "It works on my machine, why doesn't it work on the user's?" Update

 

Fixed EXE not running at all, due to an unexpected misconfiguration of the build tool.

 

And also, little update.

 

I'm working on the next optional patch to be included in 0.5.0, a PSX Doom (or PSX Final Doom) conversion based primarily on the VanillaPSX of @DRON12261 and @fenderc01's PSX TC OGG music files. May take a little bit to work over, mostly because I'm not as familiar with Aubrey Hodges' work on Doom as I wish I was. But it will the next non-hotfix update. My idea right now, is to keep the PSX Final Doom music choices and figure out the rest after. Since this a brand new musical selection being added in the project, anyone who has any suggestion, is welcome to share it, keeping in mind the original choices.

 

From the Doomwiki, on the right are the Master Levels present in PSX Final Doom, this particular selection is most likely not to change at all. But these are only 14 of the total 30 tracks present, and considering there are 46 maps in total, this means that 16 maps will have duplicate music. But the same principle from the base MIDI choice applies still, that is that not one track will play twice on the same episode.

Spoiler

 

 

Get it here:

https://elf-alchemist.itch.io/masterpack

https://github.com/elf-alchemist/masterpack/releases/latest

 

Installation instructions here:

https://github.com/elf-alchemist/masterpack?tab=readme-ov-file#instructions

[elf-alchemist]

I completely overlooked this the first sight I laid on the music list, but TNT's "Processing Area" is in PSX Final Doom and does have a song picked out already, that being "Corrupted".

 

Also here be a screenshot, as it currently stands. More work is still to be done, of course. But the base assets, alternative palette, music rips and a _possible_ DeHackEd lump are already in.

[elf-alchemist]

Quick Update:

 

Oh. Boy. Figuring out the custom font text graphics for episode and map name has been more complicated than what I'd like to admit, me being not particularly well versed in image editing software. I came across an older post wherein James Paddock commented about an old bitmap font text generating program and when trying to use it I realized I'd need to create a custom bitmap image of the complete font set, my knuckleheadedness had me struggling against GIMP, when trying to make such a piece of graphic come to life. Still figuring this program out. This bit of research also gave me the idea of a possible Freedoom TC as well, since the project has it's own textgen program with a kerning table built in, no less! This one would be much easier by comparison, too.

 

Now, I recently came across @Erick194's [GEC] Master Edition PSX Doom project and have decided to use it as a base for the Masterpack PSX TC music choices and quickly came across the big issue about selection, that being fricking duplication. There's a _bit_ of it. Many reused. Some even unused. As mentioned before, of course, there are 30 map OGGs to be used across 46 maps, so in theory only 16 tracks need to be reused twice for maximum efficiency (Unless we being D64 music in, but that's out-of-scope for this add-on). Now that is not the case in GEC Master Edition when transplanted for the Masterpack, having many reused tracks primarily from the PSX Master Levels episode and, to a lesser degree, the Evilution and Plutonia episodes too.

The task right now is to question where everything should go, below is a list of all tracks their mainly associated episode in PSX Final Doom, and how many times there are repeated in the list right now. Knowing also that i won't be changing the songs selected in the original PSX Final Doom maps. With the example of track 28, Demon Drone, being reused four(!) times by GEC's selection will definitely be questioned for change in all the 4 episode it is present in (Inferno, Titan, Cabal and Klietech).
 

Spoiler

In here, the selections right now.

Asterisks * indicate a song reused across an episode. Must change.
And pluses + indicated a song reused across multiple episodes. Needs deliberation.

Inferno:

Spoiler

Titan:

Spoiler

Cabal:

Spoiler

Klietech:

Spoiler

Lost levels:

Spoiler

For now, I'll take a short break from the PSX stuff and try to get the Freedoom TC add-on idea going, it ought to need only removing the maps and text graphics, and and adding new text for episodes maps, considering they have a generator for them it may be relatively easy, if I can't get the PSX stuff figured out soon, I'll probably just delay it to later in the 0.5.x release window and have the Freedoom TC be the 0.5.0 release itself.

[eev]

2 hours ago, elf-alchemist said:

try to get the Freedoom TC add-on idea going

Freedoom is so underrated, I'd have to play that on principle alone

[UnknDoomer]

 

[ethel5691]

Since i see what @elf-alchemist is trying to do with the PSX patch, i thought i could give my 2 cents to this convo. I recently came across this on the doom wiki https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Final_Doom_Playstation:_Official_Soundtrack_-_20th_Anniversary_Extended_Edition apparently aubrey hodges remastered and extended the soundtrack along with adding new bonus tracks to them, why not use that? There's also 3 bonus tracks from the Non-extended PSX soundtrack that are not in the extended https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Final_Doom_Playstation:_Official_Soundtrack. I think the inclusion of the bonus tracks would help with not having many duplicates. Whatcha think @elf-alchemist?

And if these aren't enough, you can use tracks from PSX doom too if you don't want repeating, nothing wrong with that right?

Edited May 17 by ethel5691
fixed grammar stuff

[elf-alchemist]

1 hour ago, ethel5691 said:

Since i see what @elf-alchemist is trying to do with the PSX patch, i thought i could give my 2 cents to this convo. I recently came across this on the doom wiki https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Final_Doom_Playstation:_Official_Soundtrack_-_20th_Anniversary_Extended_Edition apparently aubrey hodges remastered and extended the soundtrack along with adding new bonus tracks to them, why not use that? There's also 3 bonus tracks from the Non-extended PSX soundtrack that are not in the extended https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Final_Doom_Playstation:_Official_Soundtrack. I think the inclusion of the bonus tracks would help with not having many duplicates. Whatcha think @elf-alchemist?

And if these aren't enough, you can use tracks from PSX doom too if you don't want repeating, nothing wrong with that right?

 

Actually, that's pretty smart. To reduce duplicity even further, that would be pretty nice. I'll look into it as a possibility. But yeah, all of Final Doom's tracks are the 20 of the OG PSX Doom plus the additional 10 made for the earlier Master Levels as seen here. That's the where 30 tracks comes from. But looking at the extended track set, we have 17 tracks to choose from, getting to a unique music total of 47 tracks! Now we have we have officially overshot the total map count of 46. Nice. Now to decide where each track goes...
 

11 hours ago, dusk-iv said:

Freedoom is so underrated, I'd have to play that on principle alone

I think a lot of people look at Freedoom's assets and assume it's bad, purely by comparison to Doom's official art. It's kinda sad really. These WADs are legitimately fun to play, and since the 0.13.0 being all limit-removing now? It's a perfect megawad to go through after some vanilla Ultimate Doom and Doom 2 runs.

 

6 hours ago, UnknDoomer said:

 

This man is GOAT. Thank you so much, friend.

 

Now we have visual proof that the work of Dr. Sleep was not forgotten or lost. It's like a "Complete Works Of X" type book, but it's a Doom WAD, Inferno is up there as one of the important series there is. Too bad the fragmentary history of the Master Levels forbade from getting the Cacoward we know it deserves, maybe it doesn't hold up as much as what it once did, but Anderson's influence will always be present in the Doom community and this is just an awesome way of experiencing his works. I hope @Mr. Hypnos gets to see this, I hope he can enjoy this map set at least as much as I did, It remains a very key influence in all of Doom.

 

[ethel5691]

8 minutes ago, elf-alchemist said:

Actually, that's pretty smart. To reduce duplicity even further, that would be pretty nice. I'll look into it as a possibility. But yeah, all of Final Doom's tracks are the 20 of the OG PSX Doom plus the additional 10 made for the earlier Master Levels as seen here. That's the where 30 tracks comes from. But looking at the extended track set, we have 17 tracks to choose from, getting to a unique music total of 47 tracks! Now we have we have officially overshot the total map count of 46. Nice. Now to decide where each track goes...

That's nice, are you planning to use the Extended remastered versions for the original tracks?

[ethel5691]

On 5/13/2024 at 12:54 AM, ethel5691 said:

I see this is going really well with updates and such. Great work @elf-alchemist, Im going to try the new versions of the masterpack tomorrow.

So i uh, installed it and it threw this, obviously im going to assume it was a false alarm, but windows took it too personally and just straight up deleted the .exe when i ran it... yippie...?

[elf-alchemist]

1 minute ago, ethel5691 said:

So i uh, installed it and it threw this, obviously im going to assume it was a false alarm, but windows took it too personally and just straight up deleted the .exe when i ran it... yippie...?

 

So, the way Microsoft deals with virus false alarms is stupid. The require people to actually report it to them, so if we have a small number of people using a particular EXE or we don't have Microsoft-signed certificates we are out of luck. The only way here is really to manually tell Windows Defender that this binary is not malicious, and to take it out of quarantine.

[ethel5691]

Just now, elf-alchemist said:

 

So, the way Microsoft deals with virus false alarms is stupid. The require people to actually report it to them, so if we have a small number of people using a particular EXE or we don't have Microsoft-signed certificates we are out of luck. The only way here is really to manually tell Windows Defender that this binary is not malicious, and to take it out of quarantine.

yeah that and the fact that .exe's that open terminals are flagged by default. Most .exe files that open terminals usually tend to be harmful programs that are disguised as exe files to fool the unsuspecting... welp, what can ya do

[Mr. Hypnos]

6 hours ago, elf-alchemist said:

Now we have visual proof that the work of Dr. Sleep was not forgotten or lost. It's like a "Complete Works Of X" type book, but it's a Doom WAD, Inferno is up there as one of the important series there is. Too bad the fragmentary history of the Master Levels forbade from getting the Cacoward we know it deserves, maybe it doesn't hold up as much as what it once did, but Anderson's influence will always be present in the Doom community and this is just an awesome way of experiencing his works. I hope @Mr. Hypnos gets to see this, I hope he can enjoy this map set at least as much as I did, It remains a very key influence in all of Doom.

I'm definitely going to check this out later, it looks awesome. Thanks for sharing. 
 

I noticed that the night sky flat wasn’t used in the bits of video that I watched. Was it incompatible in this context? 

[elf-alchemist]

26 minutes ago, Mr. Hypnos said:

I'm definitely going to check this out later, it looks awesome. Thanks for sharing. 
 

I noticed that the night sky flat wasn’t used in the bits of video that I watched. Was it incompatible in this context? 

Hi, Hypnos!

 

From the outset, the project is aimed at bringing all of the Master Levels together from all of the authors involved in a single megawad, for this purpose I was creatively and technically interested in keeping these episodes with a higher degree of consistency that wasn't present in their original release, so one detail I kept in mind was to keep each episode associated with 1 sky texture only, again to emphasize the consistency of the whole package. For the Doctor's episode, I made the decision to use SKY4, as it was most fitting in this scenario to my creative goal, it felt best like it could be present in all maps, from Dante's Gate to Chiron and in Xaser's homage, the unofficial Waters of Lethe. Perhaps it is a divergence, yes, but it helps keep everything together. Not only in Inferno, but also for Jim Flynn's Titan as well, which had two skies, for Chris Klie's maps most of which lacked a new sky entirely, and so on.

[Average]

Just wanted to chime in and say thank you for doing this.  There are some really interesting bits and pieces in The Master Levels.  The way it was just thrown together and kicked out the door did everyone involved a great disservice.  It's lovely to see someone with the vision pull this together.

 

A slight tangent; I'd like to see a map project that took these classic old things and do them up a little.  A few years ago there was the 1994 Tune Up release.  People took good old but flawed maps and gave them a little polish and it was great fun to see.  I'd love a Master Levels Tune Up.  Nothing too much just maybe a little more detailing here and there and perhaps some more thoughtful texture choices... If I have to click on one more wall that turns out to be a door I'll go mad! :P

 

Anyway, again, thanks for your hard work. :)

[elf-alchemist]

22 hours ago, Average said:

Just wanted to chime in and say thank you for doing this.  There are some really interesting bits and pieces in The Master Levels.  The way it was just thrown together and kicked out the door did everyone involved a great disservice.  It's lovely to see someone with the vision pull this together.

Thank you, for enjoying it, it's great to see these maps get some lovin' after almost 29 years of being mostly crapped on, save for the few Dr. Sleep praises along the way, and the original saving grace, the "Works of The Masters" by JPL.
 

22 hours ago, Average said:

A slight tangent; I'd like to see a map project that took these classic old things and do them up a little.  A few years ago there was the 1994 Tune Up release.  People took good old but flawed maps and gave them a little polish and it was great fun to see.  I'd love a Master Levels Tune Up.  Nothing too much just maybe a little more detailing here and there and perhaps some more thoughtful texture choices... If I have to click on one more wall that turns out to be a door I'll go mad! :P

I was actually thinking about something of this type of nature, not a full remake akin to the "X the Way id Did" series, but truly a simple remastering of the maps in here. I've recently learned how to use VCDIFF files for patching WADs and it's definitely something that can be done despite many of the maps being commercial content.

 

My thoughts revolve around mostly small tweaks and overall improvements not detracting too much from the original maps. If you remember from before, LeBreton made various changes to fix up a bunch of small issues:

On 5/10/2024 at 2:25 AM, JPL said:

That's all I could find. These were all done to fix bugs and/or allow 100% kills + items + secrets. I do wish there were a good "map diff" tool that would just tell you everything about a WAD that's changed

 

My ideas for a "Masterpack Remastered Edition", possible changes including:

• Fixes to enable complete 100% of every map, just as JP did.
• Improvements to level design, smoothing progression and overall flow of each episode
  • Working to further that agenda of tight episodic consistency, by way of stronger visual language and motifs
• Improvements to difficulty, better increasing challenges in combat encounters as levels progress
  • Also including in this, updating Cantos 8 and 9 to Doom II as opposed to being maps for Ultimate Doom
• Rebuilding _all_ the nodes, including GL_NODES
• A custom M_DOOM graphic, which is really missing in the current version, too
• Custom MIDIs that aren't mocking the Master Levels, like the 25th Anniversary MIDI Pack
• and possibly a bunch of stuff I'm not thinking about right now

Yeah there is a _lot_ that can be done to "tune up" the Master Levels even further, I definitely do think this is gonna go beyond a single mappers work, let alone all for me. Perhaps there others that would interested in such a project, but I think I am getting a little ahead of myself we don't even have a 1.0 just yet, haha. But yes, remastering the Masterpack is a real project I have in mind.

 

Edited May 18 by elf-alchemist
typo :p

[Mr. Hypnos]

2 hours ago, elf-alchemist said:

From the outset, the project is aimed at bringing all of the Master Levels together from all of the authors involved in a single megawad, for this purpose I was creatively and technically interested in keeping these episodes with a higher degree of consistency that wasn't present in their original release, so one detail I kept in mind was to keep each episode associated with 1 sky texture only, again to emphasize the consistency of the whole package.

That’s understandable. I think it gives the levels a slightly different feel in atmosphere, which is refreshing. I essentially based the concept and design of my level Octate off of the night sky he used in Master Levels, so seeing these maps in a new light (literally) is pretty neat.

[ethel5691]

8 hours ago, elf-alchemist said:

Custom MIDIs that are mocking the Master Levels, like the 25th Anniversary MIDI Pack

that are mocking or aren't mocking? i can't tell if it was intentional or a typo?

[ethel5691]

11 hours ago, elf-alchemist said:

My ideas for a "Masterpack Remastered Edition", possible changes including:

• Fixes to enable complete 100% of every map, just as JP did.
• Improvements to level design, smoothing progression and overall flow of each episode
  • Working to further that agenda of tight episodic consistency, by way of stronger visual language and motifs
• Improvements to difficulty, better increasing challenges in combat encounters as levels progress
  • Also including in this, updating Cantos 8 and 9 to Doom II as opposed to being maps for Ultimate Doom
• Rebuilding _all_ the nodes, including GL_NODES
• A custom M_DOOM graphic, which is really missing in the current version, too
• Custom MIDIs that are mocking the Master Levels, like the 25th Anniversary MIDI Pack
• and possibly a bunch of stuff I'm not thinking about right now

Yeah there is a _lot_ that can be done to "tune up" the Master Levels even further, I definitely do think this is gonna go beyond a single mappers work, let alone all for me. Perhaps there others that would interested in such a project, but I think I am getting a little ahead of myself we don't even have a 1.0 just yet, haha. But yes, remastering the Masterpack is a real project I have in mind.

That's a wonderful idea honestly, i would love seeing these maps get even a bit of fixing and improvements all together along with new midis and other stuff!

EDIT: If you do eventually make it, i was thinking of naming it "Masterpack: The Way They Did" basically just capitalizing on the "X the way Id Did" name but replacing "Id" with "They" since, the master levels are community's work that id published, "they" being the authors of the levels

Edited May 18 by ethel5691

[ethel5691]

Okay so i ran the game on woof with the 25th anniversary MIDI addon and it has some uhhhhh, issues. All maps on Inferno and Titan have this image as the skybox...

[ethel5691]

6 minutes ago, ethel5691 said:

Okay so i ran the game on woof with the 25th anniversary MIDI addon and it has some uhhhhh, issues. All maps on Inferno and Titan have this image as the skybox...

 

 

This is what happens with GZDoom... hey a nice bright blue sky :D

 

[ethel5691]

8 minutes ago, ethel5691 said:

This is what happens with GZDoom... hey a nice bright blue sky :D

 

 

I also tested DSDA and it tells me it just cant find SKY4 and MSKY4

[DreadWanderer]

1 hour ago, ethel5691 said:

I also tested DSDA and it tells me it just cant find SKY4 and MSKY4

 

The masterpack is currently not compatible with the BFG editions of the IWADs as far as I recall. elf-alchemist is planning on adding checksums for them and for the Anthology version of the TNT IWAD.