Armadosia demos [mostly -complevel 2] — discontinued

Armadosia The Mad Corridor by arma kero (2005)
On /idgames
On DSDA
armadmus - optional music WAD by Memfis for maps 01-15 and 31

Compatibility notes
(WIP, contributions welcome)

Although ostensibly billed as limit-removing, the WAD was tested with Doom Legacy only and suffers from a variety of port-specific issues, as well as common mapping errors.

The following maps require Boom compat or higher (-complevel 9, i.e. Boom v2.02 compat, is preferred) in order to exit:

• MAP07
  
• MAP16
  
• MAP31 (regular exit only)

The following maps do not allow 100% kills and secrets:

• MAP10 - 99% kills only (a chaingunner on a pillar too high for autoaim)
  
• MAP15 - 99% kills and 46% secrets only (a Sarge in the void and eight pillars marked as secrets)
  
• MAP16 - 99% kills only (a Hell Knight in the void)
  
• MAP27 - 66% secrets (a stairway step too shallow to register being stepped on)

Other things to watch out for:

• MAP05 - possible stuckage in two spots (read vdgg's notes to his excellent ar05-1507 run on DSDA and Grazza's post here)
  
• MAP08 - the teleporter from the outdoor half of the map back to the start (and the exit) is single-use only
  
• MAP09 - possible stuckage in the room with the teleporter to the secret with the green armor (see notes to the armadosia-09-1801 run posted below)
  
• MAP26 - uncompletable because of hanging decorations blocking a crucial switch
  
• MAP31 - a shit joke map, might be interesting as a speedrunning/survival challenge
  
• MAP32 - possibly slightly worse than MAP31
  
• ALL MAPS - no skill levels implemented, so any HNTR, HMP and UV demos are mutually interchangeable

Vanilla compatibility
Surprisingly, many of Armadosia levels work in vanilla and Chocolate Doom. Some won't, though, because of:

• visplanes overflows - MAP03, MAP11, MAP32
  
• Boomisms - MAP07, MAP16, MAP31 (regular exit)

edit: It may be possible in theory to get 100% kills on maps 10 (by instigating a fight between the Chaingunner and the Cacos nearby), 15 and 16 (both by using blast damage from rockets on the adjacent walls); however, as per precedent set by Compet-N, killing monsters that are almost impossible to reach should not be required for a valid UV Max. OTOH, this should not prevent a perfectionist from trying to pull it off anyway. :)



Demos part I

• MAP04 - UV Max in 17:22
  
• MAP09 - UV Max in 18:01
  
• MAP11 - UV Max in 21:17
  
• MAP12 - UV Max in 19:27
  

Background reading:
new megawad "armadosia" - the original thread by the author in WADs & Mods
Armadosia megawad - another thread in WADs & Mods, featuring a cameo by the author (a monster bump in response to a T/nC)
Armadosia Megawad Demo - the only thread about the WAD in the Demo sub-forum
Armadosia - an in-depth review by RjY


The "Devil-is-not-so-black-as-he-is-painted" section:

vdgg said:

Well I think armadosia MAP04 is quite shitty

Well, I think quite the opposite. Perhaps you never got to the secret maps? :P Seriously, it's too bad if you gave up on this megawad just because of one map; I really wanted to see more vdgg Armadosia runs. OTOH, if you had completed and posted a valid MAP04 UV Max this thread might have not existed. So thank you for what you posted at least.

vdgg said:

Armadosia - totally not interested, the best maps are done I think?

I haven't played all of them yet, but at the time neither MAP12 nor MAP13 was done.

Memfis said:

So far I had problems with ammo only on MAP09. Very serious problems though: I still can't finish it without saves and skipping many monsters.

Then you no doubt will find armadosia-09-1801 of interest. Anyway, I had at least three recorded exits on this map, and never once was I out of ammo.

Grazza said:

As I mentioned above, Map11 is perhaps the worst example of a map that clearly isn't designed to be played from a pistol start: there are rockets and cells, but no weapons provided to use them. It might be possible to exit the map (I've made it most of the way through), but some luck would be needed to get all the way through, and it might not be feasible to kill everything.

The playability from pistol start has been mentioned various times in discussions about this WAD. From what I've seen, all Armadosia maps (edit: naturally, not counting the joke secret maps) support pistol start, even if they may not have been designed with it in mind. As for MAP11 (MAP08 suffers from the same flaw, BTW), I think Arma just forgot to put the higher level weapons in there. Be as it may, the SSG and chaingun combo proved adequate for 100% kills on my end, although the ammo did get a little tight toward the end.


EDIT:
- added missing "demos" to the thread title
- added link to Memfis music WAD
- added Work-in-Progress note to Compatibility Notes
- added note about absence of skill levels to Compatibility Notes
- removed "unconfirmed" from the note to MAP26, RjY is a premium source
- added link to RjY's review
- added link to original thread in WADs & Mods
- added note about 99% kills on MAP16
- added note about theoretically possible 100% kills
- added vanilla compat section

armadosia1_na.zip

Demos part II:

• MAP13 - UV Max in 26:09
  
• MAP14 - UV Max in 14:27
  
• MAP15 - UV Max in 20:22
  
• MAP31 - ITYTD Speed in 4:19
  
• MAP32 - ITYTD Speed in 2:33
  

There was also a MAP08 run, but with ar081424 being a full three minutes faster I reckon there's no need to post it.

Ah yes, special thanks to Revved for proving that Armadosia is not a demo-unfriendly WAD. Without him and vdgg you wouldn't be reading this.

armadosia2_na.zip

Wow, nice. I never would have expected something like this to have ever been released. I just have a thing for recording for megawads in general, so I thought the maps here would be interesting challenges. Nice to see more attention being paid to this maps in particular. I'm definitely watching these once I get home tonight.

Oh and uh, thanks for the shoutout :)

Awesome first post; I chuckled at a bunch of quotes of my own words. To clarify: even though map04 was the closest one to have a max demo of my own, I did play through 2/3 of the WAD, not stopping after just the first levels. Alas, didn't like most of them. Let's see if my opinion changes after watching your demos :)


Also, let me add one more quote, a cool WAD review by RjY: http://rjy.org.uk/1128533749

Nice work on the compatibility notes, I was hoping something like this would appear.

For music enthusiasts: I made armadmus.wad back when we ran the fist half of this wad in ZDaemon TNS because I really didn't want to listen to the default midis. It adds new music to maps 01-15 and 31 and imo they suit them very well. The wad turned out rather crappy for crowded multiplayer (too linear and confusing), so we never played part 2 and I didn't complete this "fan soundtrack" wad...

Damn, that's what happens when you post in the morning after staying the previous night up. How could I have left RjY's review out? It's the most comprehensive write-up on Armadosia around and is right on the money in every aspect. There's just one paragraph I disagree with:

RjY said:

I think playing this thing through one map after another is pretty much mandatory. You can do some of the levels from scratch but not very many. It's not very replayable or demo-friendly.

This, of course, is largely a subjective issue and can even change over time. RjY himself initially lambasted NDCP2 as a travesty (quite deservedly, I might add) but five years later came up with a reappraisal. Who knows, we might even see a demo or two from him here now. Hell, even an rboom run with player_bobbing off would be fine. ;)

I have your music WAD as well, Memfis. Some of the tracks may not be quite to my taste - in particularly, the MAP04 track is an obnoxiously loud MOD you cannot even edit the volume of - but you should complete it, IMO. Armadosia seems kind of odd with the default D2 soundtrack at times.

Thanks for the feedback, folks. I edited the first post accordingly. Any additional reports on compat issues, map errors and noteworthy trivia, as well as corrections, are welcome. And more new demos, of course - this is what this thread is all about. This WAD is too good for the Misc Demos thread.



An amusing bit of trivia. I have on my HD two unTXTed Armadosia demos (for MAP02 and MAP03) from 2009 that are not on DSDA. Honestly don't remember how or when I got them, but I'm pretty sure they are by a certain currently inactive speedrunner, well-known for his aggressiveness and skill - no names, as he probably didn't want those files publicly released at the time. Well, vdgg, you might be surprised and happy to hear that your ar02-1042 run is almost 30 seconds faster. :D

Well, that mysterious person agreed to share the demo so...

MAP03 UV-Max in 11:24 by skepticist

ar031124.zip

Never_Again said:

we might even see a demo or two from him here now. Hell, even an rboom run with player_bobbing off would be fine. ;)

Haha, I think you're hoping a bit there. Endurance demos are not my thing. I find it almost impossible enough to play perfectly and have all luck go my way for two or three minutes - thirty is out of the question.

I am pretty sure I am the only solo player to have recorded with weapon bobbing off, although I believe it is a more common choice in multiplayer. I originally turned it off not for any reason such as motion sickness - fortunately I have never experienced that - but because I found the weapon swing subtlely threw off my aim; if one begins firing at high swing, the weapon sprite becomes locked out of position, and I noticed a sustained period of shotgun fire, without returning to ready state, left my aim distinctly off. (Disclaimer: the code change in the linked post may break demosync. It was written many years ago: I know better now.)

• MAP26 - possibly uncompletable because of hanging decorations blocking a crucial switch

Some more trivia: while a blocked monster teleporter on Deus Vult map05 was also responsible, the largest part of the reason Pr+ has the walking under solid corpses option is Armadosia 26. I wrote the first version of the patch after getting stuck there having gone through 20+ hours of huge levels. Later I ported it from rboom and sent it to entryway, who was sufficiently taken with the wad to immediately record map27.

Thank you for the info, RjY - always savor juicy bits of trivia like that. Another piece from me: silly e6y must have been so excited he even misnamed the demo - obviously, MAP26 must have been on his mind. DSDA has it corrected but anyone remember the original filename? ;)

I looked into that map, took about 15 minutes to fix the blocking decorations and the stubborn blue-key door (sector 414) that wouldn't open and wouldn't let a nearby monster closet open either. Thanks again to Memfis and Graf for explaining the mechanics behind it, although I was able to figure out a fix on my own - just changed the sector references of the sidedefs of the offending linedef bisecting the door sector to point to an adjacent sector (#415 in this case). Hackish, but works as intended in -complevel 2 and has no perceptible side effects.


And now let me present something else nobody ever seemed to expect: the first NM Armadosia run!

MAP07 - NM Speed in 1:35

and it's vanilla-compatible to boot (otherwise I wouldn't have bothered, heheh).

This probably will be the last Armadosia run in this thread for a while. Bad new? Hardly. I keep forgetting to post the good news, so here it is.


I'm in contact with the author. He's aware of the port issues and the obsolence of Legacy and is willing to have another look at his megawad and have them fixed (the port issues, that is; Legacy is hopeless). Certain questions (like boosting pistol starts and vanilla vs. Boom compat) still need to be worked out, but we've reached basic understanding.

I should probably start a bugfixing thread in WADs & Mods for this. Just doing the preliminary research made me realize the scope of this endeavor and the sheer amount of work Arma put into it. So this is probably not a task to be undertaken alone.
BTW, NDCP2 had two such threads, I really hope the outcome will not be the same this time!

armadosia-07-135_na.zip

The 10th Anniversary Update (AKA v2) has been released.


Demos for the following maps will desync with the new version:

05 08 10 11 15 25 31 32

Note that Revved's MAP07 UV Max still works but my NM run doesn't. ;)
For the demos on these maps load arma-old.wad (included in the alt download) after the new armadosia.wad. These are not just map entries copy-pasted from the original; each received the same cosmetic treatment as the rest of the maps in the update (to the extent that demo compat allowed it), so there's no need for the old armadosia.wad any longer.

A few demo compat notes the remastering process generated.
- Rebuilding nodes doesn't automatically guarantee a desync (although I still took the pains to copy the relevant map entries from the original), even when the new nodes are demonstrably different (CRC mismatch) from the old ones.
- Rebuilding REJECT on maps 02 and 27 breaks the corresponding demos. Doing it on other maps does not produce the same effect.
- Removing switch specials (including manual Dx doors) on linedefs that should be theoretically inaccessble to anyone (e.g., linedefs' front sidedefs pointing into the void) leads to desyncs, while walkover triggers placed on single-sided linedefs can usually be removed without problems.
- Correcting a Boomism practically guarantees a desync, even in cases where the change produces the same effect as intended. Case in point: changing a linedef special "19 W1 Floor Lower to Highest Floor" (which, thanks to comp_floors, often doesn't work as intended in vanilla) to "38 W1 Floor Lower to Lowest Floor" on MAP25 desyncs Revved's ar25-1824, even though in Boom compat both specials produce the same effect on the target floor.

If no one minds, I'll close this thread in a little while and make a new one for the 2015 version. All future demos should be recorded on the new version, although I recommend waiting until the new thread is up. I don't expect any demo-sync issues with the updated version to crop up, but better safe than sorry, eh?