[UPDATED] Umbra of Fate - v1.2 (8 Nov 2018)

[Remilia Scarlet]

Umbra of Fate is finally done and released (and updated)!  The download links are at the bottom of this post.
 
Quick Overview:

• Singleplayer only
• GZDoom 3.4.x or higher and Doom2.wad
• You must include brightmaps.pk3 and lights.pk3, both of which come with GZDoom
• dmflags/dmflags2 are both expected to be set to 0
• Mouselook is required.  I also suggest binding Swim Up to a key (I personally used F during testing).
• The hardware renderer is required, and the following must be enabled: dynamic lights, high resolution texture, and 3d models  Enabling bloom is encouraged, but not necessary.  Shadowmaps (gl_light_shadowmap) can be used as well, but there's some visual artifacts in some places with them enabled since it wasn't designed with them in mind.
• No jumping/crouching
• Additional mods are not supported .  This include mods that may not seem like they would break it, like Beautiful Doom.
• Designed for a widescreen resolution (16:9, 16:10, etc) of at least 1280x720
• Make sure you enable music

 
Like my last mapset, Shadows of The Nightmare Realm, the premise is inspired by H.P. Lovecraft.  The story takes place many years before Doom 1, and revolves around a man (NOT the Doomguy) who is on vacation and is out enjoying a day of hunting while his wife and infant son are at home. After a long and boring day, he starts walking back to his car, only to discover a ravine that wasn't there before.  Feeling an unusually strong urge to find out what lurks beyond the ravine, he jumps down into it and heads out into the dark, foggy forest night.  The rest of the story is told in the level itself through additional (skippable) text.

 

Umbra of Fate an experimental map, where I tried to push the type of gameplay that I personally enjoy to the limit rather than trying to include something for everyone.  So expect an emphasis on dark, spooky areas; intense colored lighting; an emphasis on fights with a smaller number of tough enemies; a mix of Quake, Doom 64, and Doom 3 inspired map design; and interesting boss fights.  It's also one giant level, conceptually split into four areas that are roughly equal to one level each.

 

Difficulty settings can be adjusted in the level itself right at the beginning.
 
The music is all done by me, and is under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.  If you'd like, you can grab the soundtrack from my website: https://www.partition36.com/discography/umbra-of-fate/
 
Obligatory screenshots are behind the spoiler*:

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Download Links:

• https://mega.nz/folder/MxMWDRIB#QOPIuiYqcRSnzNvAaqPCPw/file/UlMiiLbS (40MB)

 

v1.2 Changes (8 November 2018)

v1.2 fixes an issue with the QWarp.fp shader that prevented Umbra of Fate from loading on newer GZDoom versions.

 

v1.1 Changes (6 August 2018)

v1.1 adds some new options for boss mechanics and performance tuning.  The biggest change is that the bosses should now feel a lot less "chewy" and "grindy".  Check out the Umbra of Fate Options menu for all the new options.

 

Full changelog for v1.1:

Spoiler

• Added an options menu for UoF-specific stuff.

• Added a "levels" post processing shader for fine tuning the final picture.  Think of it like the Levels filter in Gimp or Photoshop.  You can adjust this in the menu.

• All water and lava textures replaced.

• Added new liquid warping shader for lava and water that's based on Quake's liquid warping code

• Area 2's boss now has (optional) new mechanics where he is less chewy.  With the new mechanics, he will not go into a sub phase unless you do a minimum amount of damage.  There is also a limit of three sub phases.  The old mechanics are still available in the options menu.

• Changed final boss arena so that there are no longer cages that open.  Instead, there are now teleporters on the side of the pillars.  This fixes the bug where cages weren't closing.

• Reduced final boss's health a bit

• The final boss's guardians can now take splash damage

• The final boss's guardians have had their health slightly increased

• The final boss has new (optional) mechanics.  With the new mechanics, he will not go into a sub phase unless you do a minimum amount of damage.  There is also a limit of three sub phases.  The old mechanics are still available in the options menu.

• Removed foggenerator.wad and replaced it with a customized ZScript version.  This changes the look of most of the fog slightly.

• Removed needless shader attached to the fog that probably impacted performance a bit

• Added a menu option to hide all fog things in the map

• Added a menu option to hide ground clutter in the map

• Added a menu option to lessen or remove some of the messages that get printed during play

• Added a menu option to enable debugging output

• Reformatted bits of ACS and ZScript code here and there

• Lava and water transparency (160 for lava, 180 for water) and scale should now be consistent across the map

• Changed texture2D() to texture() in all shaders that used it (thanks _mental_)

• Added CVars for all menu options.

• ACS code now uses libalexa, an ACS library I recently started.

• Changed a few Loop statements to Stop statements in ZScript because I was a derp

• Added Doomsphere

• Added a modified quad damage sound

• Some ZScript source is now in separate files and in their own folder

• Added some impassible lines in the cyberdemon boss's area, and moved the health spawn points slightly

• Fixed a typo in one of the messages

 

^{* Yeah I know about the misaligned skull textures in the screenshots.  Those were already fixed :-P}

Edited February 13, 2024 by Remilia Scarlet
v1.2 released

[Catpho]

Aw yiss

Purple for the doom gods! Congrats :)

 

Edited May 1, 2018 by Catpho

[Misty]

It's so nice and lots of purple, sadly my laptop screams in pain and makes fps drop. I'll try optimise my stuff and try once more. 

[Remilia Scarlet]

17 minutes ago, Myst.Haruko said:

It's so nice and lots of purple, sadly my laptop screams in pain and makes fps drop. I'll try optimise my stuff and try once more. 

From my own experience, the toughest areas for your computer are going to be the opening area, and the Courtyard area.  Other areas shouldn't be quite as bad.

[antares031]

It's not a critical issue, but playing with 4:3 ratio cuts the left side of the title in the beginning:

Spoiler

 

At any rate, this looks really beautiful. Congratulations on the release. :)

[Remilia Scarlet]

Just now, antares031 said:

It's not a critical issue, but playing with 4:3 ratio cuts the left side of the title in the beginning:

  Hide contents

 

At any rate, this looks really beautiful. Congratulations on the release. :)

I should have mentioned, use a 16:9 or similar ratio.  I think I mentioned something about 1280x720 in the readme...

[antares031]

13 minutes ago, YukiRaven said:

I should have mentioned, use a 16:9 or similar ratio.  I think I mentioned something about 1280x720 in the readme...

 

Ah, yes. I only read the thread in here, since I thought those are all I needed to know. The text file does have an information about it. Thanks for pointing that out!

[Merry Widow]

Thank you! Youare an excellent mapper. :D

[leodoom85]

@YukiRavenyou picked up the right day to release the map 'cause I'm free today :)

I'll be sure to play it.

[Van Daemon]

2 hours ago, YukiRaven said:

Umbra of Fate is finally done and released!  The download links are at the bottom of this post.
 
Quick Overview:

• Singleplayer only
• This is for GZDoom 3.3.x or higher
• This uses Doom2.wad for the IWAD
• You must include brightmaps.pk3 and lights.pk3, both of which come with GZDoom
• dmflags/dmflags2 are both expected to be set to 0
• Mouselook is required.  I also suggest binding Swim Up to a key (I personally used F during testing).
• The hardware renderer is required.  So dynamic lights, high resolution texture, and 3d models are required.  Enabling bloom is encouraged, but not necessary.  Shadowmaps (gl_light_shadowmap) can be used as well, but there's some visual artifacts in some places with them enabled since it wasn't designed with them in mind.
• No jumping/crouching (these should already be disabled via MAPINFO anyway)
• Additional mods are not supported
• Designed for a widescreen resolution (16:9, 16:10, etc) of at least 1280x720

 
Like my last mapset, Shadows of The Nightmare Realm, the premise is inspired by H.P. Lovecraft.  The story takes place many years before Doom 1, and revolves around a man (NOT the Doomguy) who is on vacation and is out enjoying a day of hunting while his wife and infant son are at home. After a long and boring day, he starts walking back to his car, only to discover a ravine that wasn't there before.  Feeling an unusually strong urge to find out what lurks beyond the ravine, he jumps down into it and heads out into the dark, foggy forest night.  The rest of the story is told in the level itself through additional (skippable) text.

 

Umbra of Fate an experimental map, where I tried to push the type of gameplay that I personally enjoy to the limit rather than trying to include something for everyone.  So expect an emphasis on dark, spooky areas; intense colored lighting; an emphasis on fights with a smaller number of tough enemies; a mix of Quake, Doom 64, and Doom 3 inspired map design; and interesting boss fights.  It's also one giant level (12,000+ sectors), conceptually split into four areas that are roughly equal to one level each.

 

Difficulty settings can be adjusted in the level itself right at the beginning.
 
The music is all done by me, and is under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.  If you'd like, you can grab the soundtrack from my website: https://www.partition36.com/discography/umbra-of-fate/
 
This will probably be my final Doom map for quite a few years, so I hope you all enjoy it ^_^

 

Obligatory screenshots are behind the spoiler*:

  Hide contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Download Links:

• My website: http://alexa.partition36.com/files/doom/uof.zip
• idgames (coming soonish)

 

^{* Yeah I know about the misaligned skull textures in the screenshots.  Those were already fixed :-P}

This look simply amazing :D 

[Dragonfly]

Congrats on the release at long last! I'll be sure to blast through this bad boy on stream some time in the nearish future. Might be a multiple-sitting playthrough, but we'll see.

 

Go on, run along, you can finally sink your teeth into Quake mapping like you wanted! ;D

[PetalousPanoply]

I've been looking forward to this one! Sad to hear this will be your last Doom map for the foreseeable future, but I'll be sure to check out your Quake maps when they're released.

[Urthar]

An atmospheric monster of a map with some nasty ambushes that are accentuated by the deadlier monsters. I recognised bits of Temple of Azeroth along the way when I wasn't running for my life. It's perhaps too reliant on using text messages to direct the player at times, but in the moments when I did feel a bit lost, I didn't stay lost for very long.

 

In summary, beautiful and deadly.

[MFG38]

I'm gonna be brutally honest: for the level of hype I had for this, I was mildly disappointed by the "short" length, even though it still took me about an hour to finish. :P

 

In all seriousness, this was a very beautiful and enjoyable map. I'm already looking forward to whatever you whip up next. c:

[Chris Moyer]

Nice work!

 

[Bauul]

Awesome to see this released Yuki, nice job! I'm thoroughly looking forward to giving this a play through!

[DarKHunTeR]

YukiRaven! I recently played your Shadows of the Nightmare Realm WAD and found it to be very cool! Unfortunately, I wasn't able to finish, because I couldn't figure out how to get the teleporters to rise on the final boss level. Could you fill me in? Also this WAD looks fantastic and I'll definitely be giving it a shot!

[ZZYZX]

This looks awesome, but could you please use some SetHudSize >_>

It's really hard to read text messages at 1:1 size at 1920x1080... Too smol

 

Otherwise I'm literally going to show this level to everyone and say "this is how you map for GZDoom" :P

 

 

btw: I suggest adding "turning on music is recommended" in the first post.

I usually turn it off due to D_RUNNIN overdose, but in this specific wad I liked it a lot (and good thing I accidentally didn't have music turned off)

Edited May 1, 2018 by ZZYZX

[ZZYZX]

One bad thing I found so far: Pyrosuccubus basically oneshoots me up close, takes two SSG shots to die, and is really fast.

And with hard mode, there are 4 or 5 of them that spawn right around me without any way to escape.

 

The first thing to think of here is hiding in a defensive position quickly, but thing here is that when I tried hiding multiple times, they always killed me instead. So somehow only the most unobvious decision of ignoring them and running around wildly worked.

 

Not sure if it's THAT bad though, since overall it looks like this map is just actually being hard when I click "hard" :P

Edited May 1, 2018 by ZZYZX

[Remilia Scarlet]

2 hours ago, DarKHunTeR said:

YukiRaven! I recently played your Shadows of the Nightmare Realm WAD and found it to be very cool! Unfortunately, I wasn't able to finish, because I couldn't figure out how to get the teleporters to rise on the final boss level. Could you fill me in? Also this WAD looks fantastic and I'll definitely be giving it a shot!

They're on a timer, so they'll rise up when they're ready ^_^

[Remilia Scarlet]

2 hours ago, ZZYZX said:

This looks awesome, but could you please use some SetHudSize >_>

It's really hard to read text messages at 1:1 size at 1920x1080... Too smol

Huh... I use the same resolution and didn't have any issues. But I'll keep that in mind, for sure.

[ZZYZX]

https://i.imgur.com/QvK8ynd.png

["JL" was too short]

Awww yiss.

[Remilia Scarlet]

12 minutes ago, ZZYZX said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

https://i.imgur.com/QvK8ynd.png

 

Ohhhh... I can't confirm it yet since I'm literally in bed, but I bet I have my HUD scaled up a bit. I usually try to leave stuff at default, but I must have forgotten about that. My bad! I'll keep that in mind for whatever I work on next (which will be Quake, not Doom).

 

I'm so glad to see such a positive response from everyone so far! If you haven't picked up on it yet, UoF is the prequel to SoTNR.

Edited May 1, 2018 by YukiRaven

[DarKHunTeR]

48 minutes ago, YukiRaven said:

They're on a timer, so they'll rise up when they're ready ^_^

Ah, excellent! I'll have to finish it up, thanks :D

[Suitepee]

I will have to check this out at some point.

[Big Ol Billy]

4 hours ago, YukiRaven said:

 If you haven't picked up on it yet, UoF is the prequel to SoTNR.

 

Intriguing! Would it be ok (narrative-wise, that's is) to play this then SoTNR? Could be a fun double feature, especially since SoTNR has been kicking around on my too-long to-play list for quite a while now.

[Remilia Scarlet]

14 minutes ago, Big Ol Billy said:

 

Intriguing! Would it be ok (narrative-wise, that's is) to play this then SoTNR? Could be a fun double feature, especially since SoTNR has been kicking around on my too-long to-play list for quite a while now.

Yeah, I don't see why not!

[StormCatcher.77]

I'll try to get acquainted with the project as soon as I have free time. Looks superb.

[DOOMGABR[RU]]

Masterwork! Very and very awesome gameplay and level design. I don't even notice my framerate (35-40 FPS), because this wad is pretty f#$%ing badass. AND DAT MUSIC!!! OHHHHHH

Edited May 2, 2018 by DOOMGABR[RU]