The /newstuff Chronicles #94

[Grazza]

Gherkin said:

The only FAQ I can find on doomworld is the game info/faq. If the answer would be in there, that would help, but AFAIK it isnt.

http://www.doomworld.com/demise/shit/faq.html
Scroll down the page until you get to The /newstuff FAQ. Yes, it has been suggested that there could be better hyperlinks in the FAQ.

There is also:
http://www.gamers.org/pub/idgames/README.INCOMING

I hope this answers your question.

[NiGHTMARE]

Gherkin said:

The only FAQ I can find on doomworld is the game info/faq. If the answer would be in there, that would help, but AFAIK it isnt.

Look at the options at the top of the forums pages.

[sailor moon]

myk said:

Considering the person or people behind 1337.wad went through the effort of putting together the 30 crappy maps, and even made a mocking textfile for it, I guess it's sort of OK as a joke. This trend is, though, getting old. Hopefully there won't be more uploads like this... I mean, we already had supar1337.wad; now we have the megawad, fine. But we shouldn't make a conscious effort to fill the Archive with garbage. It already has enough, considering the multitude of misguided newbie maps made with shoddy editors through the years. The Archive already has a "no slige maps policy." It might be time to add a "no purposely lame maps" rule. And I don't mean WADs that suck because the maker doesn't have a clue, I mean the "1337" ones specifically.

There will always be uploads like this.Yes it's good fun and a joke in the short-term but there should definitely be some distinction between a 'serious' effort and a passing 'joke' as regards long-term storage.

[The Ultimate DooMer]

sgtcrispy said:

More Heretic maps! Yippee!

Yep, me too!

(Looks like I triggered a heretic revival...)

Now if it would stop crashing every three seconds... [/B]

You have to use a source port. ZDoom works but doesn't display the morph eggs, Legacy works but ravmap doesn't work and you get the usual crashes. jHeretic is probably the best, but I haven't tried it with that yet.

(oh, and guess what? After a long search, I finally concluded that my heretic episode doesn't work with any source ports! They all have something that stops its puzzles from working properly!)

[The Ultimate DooMer]

Ooh, where do I start....1337 cyberdemons, probably. Sphagne's maps sound pretty good as well.

Sphagne: which of your maps are in Community Chest?

edit: nevermind, I've just checked the CC site and found out there.

[Grazza]

Ultimate DooMer said:

(oh, and guess what? After a long search, I finally concluded that my heretic episode doesn't work with any source ports! They all have something that stops its puzzles from working properly!)

I hadn't even tried Shadowcaster with Legacy. Is the problem something really terminal? And BTW, have you tried Legacy 1.40 rc1 yet? (It seems very similar to 1.32 beta 5, but maybe is more stable?)

[Ichor]

...hopes he started a Hexen revival, but hasn't seen anything yet...

[myk]

Actually, looking at 1337 more carefully, I've started seeing it has some sparks of genius in it, take map23 for example, and also the map names and the text file itself...

But recently we've had quite a few freaky maps. There was that map with 2 rooms and 1000s of monsters, then supar1337, and Ralphis' AndrewB series... to name what I remember.

There's strong evidence that RTC-3057 was behind this megawad...

[myk]

Grazza said:

I hadn't even tried Shadowcaster with Legacy. Is the problem something really terminal? And BTW, have you tried Legacy 1.40 rc1 yet? (It seems very similar to 1.32 beta 5, but maybe is more stable?)

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9780

[Grazza]

myk said:

Actually, looking at 1337 more carefully, I've started seeing it has some sparks of genius in it, take map23 for example, and also the map names and the text file itself...

Yes... Once I'd stopped laughing at it, the thought occurred to me that some of these maps might even be worth playing, in a twisted sort of way. Do you recall that THISSUXX.WAD had a joke movie demo made for it? (Hilarious - if the guy died, he just carried on recording from a pistol start...) I doubt that is feasible with 1337.wad though, due to MAP21, if nothing else.

myk said:

But recently we've had quite a few freaky maps. There was that map with 2 rooms and 1000s of monsters, then supar1337, and Ralphis' AndrewB series... to name what I remember.

All these have attracted some speedrunning attention (except the first AndrewB map, AFAIK). Nuts.wad (made by a really good mapper, presumably on his day off) provoked a lot of interest, and please take a look at my 7-second "run" on supar1337.wad (I spent a couple of hours last night trying for 6 seconds, with a route involving a lot of SR50 and a rocket suicide). Joke maps rule!

[dsm]

myk said:

There's strong evidence that RTC-3057 was behind this megawad...

Evidence my ass! What is this "Evidence" of which you speak?
You just wait and see - when Rtc-3057 is released, you'll be able to PROPERLY judge whether Team Future did the 1337.wad or not.

[The Ultimate DooMer]

Grazza said:

I hadn't even tried Shadowcaster with Legacy. Is the problem something really terminal?

Yep, as Legacy doesn't display manikins (dummy players), which stops some of its puzzles from working. (like the latest JDooM)

The only thing that works is vanilla Heretic, which has a few problems of its own (see text file)

(BTW, what did you think of it?)

I haven't tried Legacy 1.40 yet, but I bet it doesn't show manikins. The only hope is that Randy has acted on my bug report and fixes the non-existent morph egg problem in ZDoom.

[Spike]

Epyo said:

I just tried it with zdoom and it looked much better. I could actually make out the new textures! It looked really cool. But the blue key door didnt work so i decided not to bother playing anymore. Anyway, It looked and played pretty good.

The door didn't work because it's an jdoom-only XGdata linetype that also prints a custom message when activated - in the case of that particular door, 'Warning - Non-human presence detected'.

[Virgil]

I can't download any of Sphagne's wads. What's with this planetmirror crap? Where are the normal 3darchives.in-span.net links?

[NiGHTMARE]

It isn't Planetmirror that's crap. It's 3darchives.in-span.net that's crap, as the lazy so-and-so's who are supposedly responsible for maintaining the archive haven't updated the place for almost a month now.

[Grazza]

Ultimate DooMer said:

(BTW, what did you think of it?)

We exchanged a few e-mails about it a month or two ago (notably bringing the JHeretic chaos device/manikin issue to your attention). I liked Shadowcaster, and hope it can be made to work in a source port (I've got XP, so "vanilla" doesn't taste too good).

Ultimate DooMer said:

I haven't tried Legacy 1.40 yet, but I bet it doesn't show manikins.

I've just tried Legacy 1.40. Something odd: where there should be a manikin, there is an immobilized Iron Lich. It looks cool, but doesn't function as a manikin. [Edit: please ignore the last two sentences; in fact there was an immobilized Iron Lich very near one place where there should have been a manikin; the manikins aren't there at all.] Some pretty bad see-through walls in OpenGL mode - worse than in JDoom.

Ultimate DooMer said:

The only hope is that Randy has acted on my bug report and fixes the non-existent morph egg problem in ZDoom.

Yes - there's also the issue in E5M3 with switch 2 that can't be shot.

[mystic]

Thanks for the review Liam, actually I never thought of discos, just wanted pretty rooms.

Gherkin. You can upload your files at this url...
ftp://archives.3dgamers.com/pub/idgames/incoming/

and view them here...
ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/incoming/

Sometimes its really hard to get connected to the uploading place, it only allows 200 users at the same time so it may take quite a few tries.

[DarkWolf]

*Sigh* My scdemo.wad didn't make it on the last /newstuff or this one either. Oh well...

[SyntherAugustus]

DarkWolf said:

*Sigh* My scdemo.wad didn't make it on the last /newstuff or this one either. Oh well...

That was funny. Make more!

[The Ultimate DooMer]

Grazza said:

there's also the issue in E5M3 with switch 2 that can't be shot.

So that's who it was. (I didn't know your handle on DW)

Damn, I forgot about that. I didn't fix it because I found out about the ZDoom morph egg problem, and I saw no point in fixing it when the port doesn't run it correctly. I think I'll play it through once with ZDoom, and see how it goes. If nothing else is wrong, I might fix that bug in the hope that Randy fixes the morph egg problem in ZDoom.

I think the OpenGL missing walls are because glBSP wasn't run on the wad (I didn't know that at the time). I bet it fixes the cell doors in the e5m6 dungeon as well.

[Grazza]

Ultimate DooMer said:

So that's who it was. (I didn't know your handle on DW)

Yes, it would be much less confusing if everyone used their real names round here. Heh, and you thought at least 2 people had played Shadowcaster :p

Ultimate DooMer said:

I think the OpenGL missing walls are because glBSP wasn't run on the wad (I didn't know that at the time). I bet it fixes the cell doors in the e5m6 dungeon as well.

I had run glBSP over it before playing it and there were still visual problems, so perhaps not. I don't know e5m6, since the chaos device problem stopped me reaching it.

[The Shinjo]

A couple serious things wrong with the readme I released with Steeple chase (Aside from there being 2 much gibberish)

1. The Wad WILL work under Legacy and Also unknown 2 me until now Zdoom
However it works best under Jheretic becasue the Physics (I.e Phoenix Rod Explosion) are off in Zdoom and some of the badguy data is bugged in Heretic (I.e sabreclaws move 2 slow)

2. The Music and Lich sound Mentioned were cut due 2 file size

In response 2 it crashing every 3 seconds, It will not work under any V1.7 Of Doomsday (August releases), but it will work under V1.6 however(The March releases)which it runs fine on as well as Legacy and Zdoom

[The Ultimate DooMer]

I presume that's on skill 5, as the farthest you could have got with jHeretic was the end of e5m4. If you wish to play the rest of it (recommended), then use Legacy or ZDoom with fast monsters turned on.

(as then you've basically got skill 5 with cheats on).

3 puzzles (2 in e5m7, 1 in e5m8) and 2 secrets (1 in e5m6, 1 in e5m8) are affected by absent manikins if you do. Missing morph eggs in ZDoom affect the same puzzles and secrets.

[Sphagne]

Hey man I`m quite sane and I did not want to show off, well, not in the way you think!

Those levels where sitting for a long time on my hard drive, surviving harddisk crashes and major hardware upgrades (Lost a few of them!) and I was forgetting about them until I saw Cadman`s project and his request for Doom2 only levels.

I remembered about those levels and gave them a quick refresh, wrote for them some text files and uploaded them to 3dArchive seperately, for two reasons.

A very crappy connection that disconnects in the middle of any major upload or download, (you can ask Ty Halderman about it, he helped me a lot in that process)

I wanted them to be seperate so that if Cadman wanted to download any of them I would not force the others down into his throught!

By the way, I had strayed from doom design until I saw ZDoom and it has brought me back to it. ;)

I`m currently porting "Mothership" to ZDoom using the resource file I have compiled for hightech ZDoom levels:

http://ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/idgames/combos/spzdoom2.zip

and adding some ZDoom specialities like scripts and real water sectors...

It now has a working jackpot machine and ticking digital clock... ;-)

[mystic]

Hey Sphagne, those of us who know you better will all agree you are not exactly the show off type, thanks for releasing all those wads, I always liked your work. I never said anything about them in the newdoom forums in case everyone thought I was sucking up. I agree with Liams reviews, as usual, he does a better (fairer) job than AndrewB ever did. (last year he announced no more mystic wads would be reviewed so I bear a small grudge, only a small one though.)

[Sphagne]

Sorry about off topic message, please do not read the following paragraph:
========================================
Hi there, Mystic. It`s good to meet people one knows! ;)
Sorry to hear about reviews, this was not fair. what happened then?
========================================
Well, as for dear L_the_B, I have no grudge, quite the contrary, I am glad at last someone showed some interest in my levels, and his review was perfectly fair and thoroughly complete, showing good points and bad ones, that would have escaped me! :)

[NiGHTMARE]

Sphagne said:

Sorry about off topic message, please do not read the following paragraph:

Private messaging works now! :)

[mystic]

Ahh, my wording was a bit confusing. My small grudge was against AndrewB, I always thought he was a bit unfair towards hi-tec style levels, favouring medieval/gothic style wads. Thats the only reason I released Grail1 and Grail2 when I did, they were far from finished.

But hey, we all have our preferences.

I love Liams reviews, he doesnt write enough of them. Gad it looks like Im sucking up but folk who know me will know I call a spade a spade and Im not averse to the odd flame war. But then again I do plan a few releases in the near future so I might just be sucking up after all. Hehe.

The wad reviews forum at newdoom was abandoned because of a combination of lack of interest and some abuse of the forum.

[Naked Snake]

1337.wad's creators exposed!

I'm 99.9% sure who is responsible for 1337.wad. Here's the evidence:

First, the text file mentions that 1337.wad replaces Map01-28 and the two secret levels, Map31 and Map32. However, there's a Map30 hidden in the 1337.wad. If you enter it by passing Map29, you'll find the level name to be "YOU'VE BEEN HAD!!!11", and two DoomWorld Forum member's personal logos in the center of the map.

Which forum members, might you ask? The first should be very obvious, the second, not as much, although it's well known you can't have one without the other. To further my case, I'll show screenshots of an Instant Message window with these members on AIM. AIM allows users to each have 48x48 buddy icons. Note these buddy icons in the lower left of the Instant Message windows:

http://www.boomspeed.com/liamthebard/1337lut.jpg

http://www.boomspeed.com/liamthebard/1337dash.jpg

Wet Drywall is Lüt's AIM identity, and DashEvil is Dashiva's AIM identity. They've each been using these icons as their idenfiers for well over a year. For further proof: deadnail's journal, 09/06/01.

Now, look at this screenshot of the logos looming ominously on the ceiling of Map30:

http://www.boomspeed.com/liamthebard/1337sig.jpg

My conclusion: DoomWorld's #1 prankster team, Lüt & Dashiva.

[Grazza]

bigbadgangsta said:

My conclusion: DoomWorld's #1 prankster team, Lüt & Dashiva.

Or someone trying to make it look that way?