Skulldash - A Fast-Paced Speedrun Arcade Mod - OFFICIAL SERVER NOW LIVE!

[Dragonfly]

Salt-Man Z said:

Looks cool! This might finally motivate me to download/install Zandronum...

If you go via the website there's a 'full download' which includes the copy of Zandronum you need. :)

SavageCorona said:

This makes me oddly nostalgic of 2009/10 when Skulltag was a thing. And then annoyed that those fucking Blood Demons don't go down in one shot.

A handful of the maps were built during that era, so I was likely influenced in that time. :)

[Dragonfly]

SavageCorona said:

I need clarification if jumping is intended seeing as some parts seem impossible without it.

Also that part where you get attacked by 4 belphegors before the exit lowers at the end where you have to change liquid colour(???), I got stuck after killing them since neither the door would open or the exit would lower. It fixed after I inevitably died and restarted though.

Jumping and crouching are both required. Crouching only for some secrets.

I'm unsure on the cause of that, but I'll look into it for v1.1 :)

[SavageCorona]

It was a weird situation on a shitty run. I was nearly dead and I think I killed the last 2 at the same time with 1 rocket. That's pretty much all of the important info I can give you.

P.S. Tell Hectebus I said fuck you you fat overpowered piece of shit

[Dragonfly]

SavageCorona said:

It was a weird situation on a shitty run. I was nearly dead and I think I killed the last 2 at the same time with 1 rocket. That's pretty much all of the important info I can give you.

P.S. Tell Hectebus I said fuck you you fat overpowered piece of shit

2 kills, one rocket - very likely the cause. I've taken note, thanks for finding this bug!

And I gotta admit, the Hectebus is an asshole. :P

[SavageCorona]

Pretty much all of the Skulltag variants are flat out upgraded assholes.

[Dragonfly]

For those who are stuck on the "three last tokens" on Maltreatment, I'm sorry :P
Here's some help, since this secret is potentially TOO well hidden.

ALSO, I'd like to take this time to say a video 100% walkthrough guide is on it's way.

[Gez]

Dragonfly said:

For those who are stuck on the "three last tokens" on Maltreatment, I'm sorry :P
Here's some help, since this secret is potentially TOO well hidden.

It's not as well hidden as the super backpack in ZDCMP2. :D



So, trip report on the Skulltag data palette issue: all of them are in PNG, except for the mekfish texture. So pretty much all of them are palette-independent in OpenGL.

About skulldash.pk3: you should consider turning it into a "real" PK3 instead of a bunch of wads in a zip. That'll actually improve performances a tiny bit by reducing the mod's memory footprint.

[Springy]

Holy fucking piss biscuits. ARCADE + Doom two of my favourite things in the whole of video games instant nomination from me by the looks of it but I'll NEED to play around with it later. When I was flicking through this treasure of a thread yesterday I noticed that there was some complaints about the too easy difficulty. I have not played this myself yet but has this suspicion been looked at?

[SavageCorona]

It's definitely difficult after a certain point. Obviously the game isn't going to throw challenge right at you from the get-go. Those Skulltag "upgrades" definitely make it more difficult.

[Dragonfly]

Springy said:

Holy fucking piss biscuits. ARCADE + Doom two of my favourite things in the whole of video games instant nomination from me by the looks of it but I'll NEED to play around with it later. When I was flicking through this treasure of a thread yesterday I noticed that there was some complaints about the too easy difficulty. I have not played this myself yet but has this suspicion been looked at?

I tried to follow a more megawad friendly difficulty curve - I wanted the majority of players to feel more challenged in tier 4 onwards; everything up to that point is challenging but not 'hard'.

I hope you enjoy your time playing Skulldash! :)

Gez said:

It's not as well hidden as the super backpack in ZDCMP2. :D

So, trip report on the Skulltag data palette issue: all of them are in PNG, except for the mekfish texture. So pretty much all of them are palette-independent in OpenGL.

About skulldash.pk3: you should consider turning it into a "real" PK3 instead of a bunch of wads in a zip. That'll actually improve performances a tiny bit by reducing the mod's memory footprint.

Thanks for that Gez. I guess in v1.1 I'll be moving and modifying all the Skulltag components which were used into the main pk3 itself (and storing it as a 'proper' pk3), and converting then in the palletted doom format.

SavageCorona said:

It's definitely difficult after a certain point. Obviously the game isn't going to throw challenge right at you from the get-go. Those Skulltag "upgrades" definitely make it more difficult.

I'd say the difficulty becomes most apparent in tier 4 onwards. The use of Skulltag monsters was to hoth increase the challenge and provide a larger variety of monsters while keeping the enemies familiar enough that you don't need to 'learn what they do'.

[Dime]

http://www.twitch.tv/kingdime/v/22109850

Here was my full playthrough of skulldash dragonfly.

I'll quickly toss down my thoughts down below if
you're uninterested in watching the vod.

-Enjoyed the concept, basically was encouraging the player to use
speed instead of killing everything.

-Level 2. The red filter looks especially bad in my opinion. Other
maps may have used a screen to separate an area, but the entire first
section of 2 just doesn't do it for me. (I did another check on this
and the filter looks wayyy better in OpenGL, so i might try and 100%
skulldash uses openGL over software mode.)

Level 5: The music in this level has incredibly loud points. I recommend
swapping this out.

Final Boss: A little too much BFG is given out in my opinion. It's so
easy to cleave down a boss with the BFG.

Time Limits: Extremely lenient, i either recommend difficulty settings
requiring the player to get all coins (THAT DO NOT REQUIRE SECRETS, this
system would mean the 75% requirement would change likely.

Just a quick writeup here for you Dragonfly.

[scalliano]

For those of you who don't want to see the results of this year's Cacowards ... look away now.

I'm all over this like a rash. Excellent stuff.

[Dragonfly]

scalliano said:

For those of you who don't want to see the results of this year's Cacowards ... look away now.

I'm all over this like a rash. Excellent stuff.

Wow, thank you for the compliments Scalliano! I'm glad you are enjoying it! :)

Dime said:

http://www.twitch.tv/kingdime/v/22109850

Here was my full playthrough of skulldash dragonfly.

I'll quickly toss down my thoughts down below if
you're uninterested in watching the vod.

-Enjoyed the concept, basically was encouraging the player to use
speed instead of killing everything.

-Level 2. The red filter looks especially bad in my opinion. Other
maps may have used a screen to separate an area, but the entire first
section of 2 just doesn't do it for me. (I did another check on this
and the filter looks wayyy better in OpenGL, so i might try and 100%
skulldash uses openGL over software mode.)

Level 5: The music in this level has incredibly loud points. I recommend
swapping this out.

Final Boss: A little too much BFG is given out in my opinion. It's so
easy to cleave down a boss with the BFG.

Time Limits: Extremely lenient, i either recommend difficulty settings
requiring the player to get all coins (THAT DO NOT REQUIRE SECRETS, this
system would mean the 75% requirement would change likely.

Just a quick writeup here for you Dragonfly.

Every comment you made is a valid one! I really appreciate you linking me to the video and live streaming it too! How many viewers did you have?

I've seen the first 45 mins and plan on watching the rest today. I confess I didn't exstensively test in software mode. I also take note from the video that it would have been good if I explained in the tutorial about checkpoint based time bonuses, and if I explained that jump and crouch is indeed required. I think I'll update the tutorial to accommodate this in v1.1

Talking of v1.1, I also intend to start work on it today.

[General Rainbow Bacon]

I have been enjoying this a lot too. I would say maybe for difficulty settings having more tokens in levels might be interesting too, or moving some of the existing ones to harder to reach spots for higher difficulties.

[Dime]

Well i think what happened to an extent is the base game doesn't really assume the player knows how to strafe40 or strafe50, like an idea is maybe the game explains to the player in the tutorial how this works. (Like an advanced tutorial for the harder difficulties). Then on lower diff's nothing much has to change but higher ones would assume the player knows these "advanced techniques).

But thats not entirely true because map 6 I believe where you're in the hedge mazes seems fairly tightly tuned especially for 100%. But some other maps i've had 2-4 minutes even doing 100%.

If this came out in say 1993 or 1994 it wouldn't be a big deal but virtually the entire doom community knows how to strafe etc.

[Pencil of Doom]

Unique mod, looking great, it reminds me of Castlevania on Nes, but overall, a must try.

[Dragonfly]

J.B.R said:

Unique mod, looking great, it reminds me of Castlevania on Nes, but overall, a must try.

Interesting that you see a likeness to Castlevania. I find they're two completely different games. Thanks for the compliments! :)

General Rainbow Bacon said:

I have been enjoying this a lot too. I would say maybe for difficulty settings having more tokens in levels might be interesting too, or moving some of the existing ones to harder to reach spots for higher difficulties.

I'm so glad you and everyone else seems to be enjoying it. Makes it feel the effort was worthwhile!

As I will mention below Dime's quote, I have an idea for the time 'issue'

Dime said:

Well i think what happened to an extent is the base game doesn't really assume the player knows how to strafe40 or strafe50, like an idea is maybe the game explains to the player in the tutorial how this works. (Like an advanced tutorial for the harder difficulties). Then on lower diff's nothing much has to change but higher ones would assume the player knows these "advanced techniques).

But thats not entirely true because map 6 I believe where you're in the hedge mazes seems fairly tightly tuned especially for 100%. But some other maps i've had 2-4 minutes even doing 100%.

If this came out in say 1993 or 1994 it wouldn't be a big deal but virtually the entire doom community knows how to strafe etc.

I assumed players would jump, crouch & 'standard' strafe run.

The current timings were built around the general skill level of a few of the beta testers, and I was trying to also accommodate for 'knowing the map inside out' by adding more time than I need. Also, watching your play through Dime, I notice you take a lot more of a 'legit speedrunner' style with you, killing very few enemies along the way - I assumed players wouldn't be quite so good at surviving in some of the situations you've been in (Sector 13.37's imp horde & Revenant sniper fire seemed to challenge you!)

Watching your video has given me LOADS of insight into how to improve the overall product, so I thank you ever so much for that. Also, you make an interesting streamer, keep it up!

I have theorized a solution for the 'too much time phenomenon'. I will reduce the time by a considerable chunk for the sake of 75% players, and then give the player a small time boost on 75%, 80%, 85%, 90% and 95% tokens collected. Overall I will reduce the time of nearly every map though, so it will be more geared towards challenging the player.

I confess I had a concern always hovering over my mind when setting the times for each level, and that concern was that 'people will get too frustrated to want to complete this if it's too hard', so I tried to balance it to be fair. :)

I have taken several notes while watching your VoD, and will look to fix it all in version 1.1.

Can I ask you personally if you would be willing to be a tester for the patched version, as you seem to have good Doom & Speedrunning knowledge.

Thanks again for streaming it to a live audience, it was interesting to hear the comments from both you and the viewers.

[Dragonfly]

*BUMP*

The Skulldash Community Expansion Pack is now open to public sign ups!


The bump, part two:

Would people be interested in a dedicated thread to Skulldash speedrunning for a little competition?



The bump, part three:

100% Walkthrough with sloppy developer commentary is underway - Tier One available now:

[Archi]

Finished everything with 100% tokens on stream and the door to super secret level haven't opened. Final boss portal indicator had red cross all the time, even then I finished the map with all tokens.

[Dragonfly]

Archi said:

Finished everything with 100% tokens on stream and the door to super secret level haven't opened. Final boss portal indicator had red cross all the time, even then I finished the map with all tokens.

Very irritatingly this is something I broke the day before launch and didn't realise. I am going to release a critical bug-fix patch ASAP. I don't think you'd be able to load your savegame annoyingly...

I am very sorry for not noticing this pre-launch! And thank you for taking the time to beat Skulldash 100%! I'm impressed :)

Can you link me to the VoD's of the stream? I'd like to watch during lunch breaks at work. :)

EDIT: I should look before I ask.

[Archi]

Part 1: http://www.twitch.tv/d3archi/v/22003590
Part 2 (starts after an hour or so): http://www.twitch.tv/d3archi/v/22685163

I've already beaten super secret level, just used noclip to get past the door.

[Dragonfly]

Archi said:

I've already beaten super secret level, just used noclip to get past the door.

I assumed you would. Thanks again for taking the time to beat Skulldash in it's entirety! :D

[Dragonfly]

UPDATE - LINKED BELOW IS AN UPDATE PATCH THAT IS A HOTFIX FOR MAJOR ISSUES AND/OR QUICK-TO-FIX ISSUES. Within the linked zip is a text file outlining the issues which have been fixed, and who discovered the bug / made the suggestion.

SKULLDASH v1.0 hotfixes - replaces SKULDASH.pk3


Also...

antares031 said:

"TEN SECONDS REMAINING!!"

Your wish is my command!

[Salt-Man Z]

So this is fun! Two things:

1) When I finish a level, it says "YOU FINISHED THE LEVEL IN" and then my time, but the "IN" is always overlayed on top of my time. I wonder if maybe this is a widescreen thing? (My monitor is not a widescreen.)

2) It's kind of annoying starting back at the beginning of the hub every time I beat a level. Can I assume there was a reason for this?

Good stuff, otherwise!

[Dragonfly]

Salt-Man Z said:

So this is fun! Two things:

1) When I finish a level, it says "YOU FINISHED THE LEVEL IN" and then my time, but the "IN" is always overlayed on top of my time. I wonder if maybe this is a widescreen thing? (My monitor is not a widescreen.)

2) It's kind of annoying starting back at the beginning of the hub every time I beat a level. Can I assume there was a reason for this?

Good stuff, otherwise!

1) This is a known issue that didn't come up during testing. I think you may have some text-scaling options or a low resolution set?
Either way, I will be investigating into it!

2) Yeah, I agree. I think tiers 1-3 are quick enough to access, but 4 and 5 are quite long. To speed it up I will add teleporters in place of the two computer stations for each of the final tiers.

[scifista42]

Dragonfly said:

1) This is a known issue that didn't come up during testing. I think you may have some text-scaling options or a low resolution set?
Either way, I will be investigating into it!

If you posted the respective line(s) of code with HUDMessage(s), I might be able to tell you immediately what's not right with it.
EDIT: Wait, or is it not HUDMessage (intermission etc.)?

[antares031]

Dragonfly said:

Your wish is my command!

That's much better than before, thanks for implementing my opinion!

By the way, I wonder if anyone has ever suggested a powerup that boosts player's speed for a brief moment, or level concepts similar to Counter-Strike surf map mixed with Sonic the Hedgehog gameplay; Angled platforms with hundreds of rings(skulltokens) every paths. I want to contribute some maps for community project, but I'm not a big fan of making ZDoomHexen format map or UDMF; I always try to create maps with limit removing compatibility.

Anyway, the best of luck in your project. :)

[Dragonfly]

antares031 said:

That's much better than before, thanks for implementing my opinion!

By the way, I wonder if anyone has ever suggested a powerup that boosts player's speed for a brief moment, or level concepts similar to Counter-Strike surf map mixed with Sonic the Hedgehog gameplay; Angled platforms with hundreds of rings(skulltokens) every paths. I want to contribute some maps for community project, but I'm not a big fan of making ZDoomHexen format map or UDMF; I always try to create maps with limit removing compatibility.

Anyway, the best of luck in your project. :)

That powerup exists on level 16 - Maltreatment. The Turbosphere, found in the sewer area.

If you change your mind and are interested in making a Skulldash map, let me know! :)

scifista42 said:

If you posted the respective line(s) of code with HUDMessage(s), I might be able to tell you immediately what's not right with it.
EDIT: Wait, or is it not HUDMessage (intermission etc.)?

I'm currently at work with no WAD Editing utilities, so I'll get back to you later on. I'll most likely pm you. Thanks :)

[Nictendo]

Streaming Skulldash, come join me!
http://www.twitch.tv/nictendo

[kmxexii]

review is up, thank you for this!