Progressive Fiction (Hadephobia now on /idgames)

Death Egg, the headache you caused me on MAP31!

;)

Good news, I'm finally done Beta 2 of Hadephobia! It was quite a run at it but it's done.

Hadephobia Beta 2 released today:

LINK

Thanks go out to Cacatou and Memfis whose feedback has been very useful and extending extra special thanks to hawkwind who compiled a painstakingly detailed bug report and Pottus who carried out most of these fixes as well as many of his own.

From here I'm only interested in showstopping bugs*

* Places the player can get stuck
* Bugs that prevent 100% kills or secrets
* Bugs that break co-op
* Objectively bad gameplay decisions
* Blantant or intrusive visual errors

I would also like to organise some co-op testing. If you're interested in joining in please post your availability (date, time, timezone) and port preferance if any and I'll try and set something up.

Release candidate coming up next time...

EDIT: Download Beta 2.1 instead.

Let's do this for TNS, lads.

purist said:

Hadephobia Beta 2 released today

Well, I've seen it... quite a few differences!

I actually had no objection against those lights placed above the doors in MAP02, even if it doesn't really represent my style of mapping and I couldn't make head or tail of them.

The first burning problem encountered was in MAP04 where it could be clearly seen if one faced the blue door's inside side whilst it slutting that it is upper unpegged.

However, I was shocked in MAP07 when I saw the lift switch. OK, there was a dumb error back then in 1992, when someone made STARTAN3 fade into highly saturated brown instead of the real STARTAN1. I understand that it looks better with the longued texture, but that horrid switch socket! Seriously, it's a '90's immature fault of making such a height differences without changing the flat textures. The alcove for the armor in the "library" block was not that eyebleeding.

MAP13 was nothing bad to mention about, except for those two ammo boxes near the blue key. They look distinctive and unaesthetical along with the shellbox and bulk cell in the "windows". Better placed into the dark backroom after the four piles instead. Oh, and that seemingly-only health bonus in the last secret, even if it's several placed on one spot, looks extremely cheesy seeing that there are also health and armor bonuses on the brick barrier.

MAP19: what was the point of putting me into the chaos and even leaving a voodoo doll in the starting area?

MAP26: how it's music is still Give In With Pleasure? That's for MAP33, the "lost" version of my first attempt.

Sorry, but I HAD to mention these.

Evolution said:

Let's do this for TNS, lads.

I approve of this but if you do please use beta 2.1:

DOWNLOAD LINK

Changes:

• Blue door in MAP04 re-pegged
  
• Ammo boxes moved in MAP13
  
• Superflous player 1 starts removed from MAP18, MAP19 and MAP27 (thanks for finding these MegaDoomer, Cell. I think they were left in by Pottus after playtesting by mistake).
  
• Music corrected for MAP26
  
• MAP35, Scotch Bonnet by Grain of Salt added. This was an early candidate for MAP25 and a heavily modified version was in the process of being converted to MAP30 but was never finished in time.

@Cell: Some of your points have been corrected but you'll need to be more specific about your beef with MAP07. Also, I've not changed the secret for MAP13. I was being cheesy on purpose because I repeatedly told you the BFG needs taking out and you never did it :-)

EDIT: Fixed link

EDIT 2: Fixed link again!

Ya, I must have left them in by accident sorry about that.

Wait, I thought my map (MAP31) had music composed for it? It's still using TNT MAP02's track.

I seem to have made a mistake in zipping up the beta 2.1 file. I've re-uploaded - see original link.

EDIT: Don't try to fix your mistakes at 6:00am! I think I linked to the wrong file. Here's the correct link:

https://www.box.net/shared/28wv9dms9e4u9d68tk06

If this one is not correct I might need shooting. I've amended the previous links and removed the old file to try to limit further confusion.

purist said:

I approve of this but if you do please use beta 2.1

Of course!

purist said:

EDIT 2: Fixed link again!

HRRRRRRRRNNGHGHGH!



EDIT: Also, might I suggest the archive and .txt use the exact same name as the wad file so that multiplayers can find it online using search tools like GetWAD; as well as being able to detect and grab the .txt file along with the .wad? We had to rename the package like this so the masses are able to join the server alright. Handy for future practise :)

EDIT 2: Check it: http://downloads.zdaemon.org/wads/had-beta2_1a.zip

Hi guys,

during yesterday's survival playthrough in ZDaemon I wrote down a few things - this is in no way an attempt for a comprehensive list (maybe except for map10 and map11:).

map03:
-> One half of the bars before exit failed to lower (it has been attributed to the switches being pressed almost at the same time).

map06:
-> The seamless teleporter behind the blue door messes up player's angle.

map10:
-> BK failed to lower once (probably a similar problem to map03 and pressing those two switches too closely together in time)
-> The elevator leading to the YSK room is not very coop friendly and definitely not survival friendly. You can't call it from above nor from the blue armor secret down below if someone else changes it's position - in such cases you simply become stuck.
-> Only one player in coop/survival can get YSK and only once.
-> From the niche in the graveyard I was able to walk atop of one of the coffins and I fell down to sector 832 and met the rev there (UV) - I was unable to continue any further. Please note that actors were not set to be infinitely tall in my game.
-> Monsters spawning behind your back when you walk into the exit room are strange but perhaps it has something to do with the story or UV-MAX.

map11:
-> Sectors 340 (tag 27) and 341 (tag 28) did nor rise (properly) after pressing associated switches behind those yellow/red bars. The floor stayed on the lava level.
-> The torch is a little bit too close to the platform to easily walk out of the NW part of sector 6. At first I thought I was stuck in a pit with non-damaging floor.

map17:
-> The switch behind the blue door which is supposed to raise the bars blocking the way can be pressed before the bars are lowered and because it works only once this situation then leaves the bars down forever.
-> The very same switch has a texture problem showing a part of another switch when the texture scrolls over.

map??:
-> HOM behind a RL.

in general:
-> BARS, BARS EVERYWHERE! For public coop/survival play it is always annoying when you're locked out of a room which contains a key or even worse a whole portion of a map that you need to get to - and, furthermore, if someone dies in such places, the map is usually over for the rest. You may want to consider replacing some of those hard lock-ins with an outside trigger or a timer that opens them or that opens an alternative way - using the latter you can still leave the original escape switch in place to keep speedruns smooth.
-> I noticed that sectors from which monsters teleport in showed on the automap in map10 - but I spawned myself a fullmap which is probably not normally present there. This is more of a cosmetic issue and I suppose it could only arise in levels which contain fullmap - anyway, I don't know if it is even possible to hide these sectors with what you're aiming for.

PS: I'm not a mapper and some of these points may just be my misconceptions but I still hope the rest will help.

Im copying the same post of TNS:

If anyone is interested (p.e. authors) I've uploaded 99% of the seshion to Speedyshare:

http://speedy.sh/ZEfT8/Hadephobia-Demos.zip.001
http://speedy.sh/78CUP/Hadephobia-Demos.zip.002
http://speedy.sh/hqYg6/Hadephobia-Demos.zip.003
http://speedy.sh/WFajm/Hadephobia-Demos.zip.004
http://speedy.sh/wpTbf/Hadephobia-Demos.zip.005

The size is 300 mb but you can actually check every player POV or spectate while we try to go through levels and more important you can check "in live broadcast" the bugs and other issues we encountered.

PD: oh, and by popular demand we played the ENTIRE wad, not only part I.

map10:
-missing textures on linedef 4845

@Evolution, Rhinoduck, Alteus and Memfis: Thanks for joining in last night and posting notes here. I will fix as much as I can without altering other author's work too much before releasing Beta 3.

Extremely minor, but here we go: http://imgur.com/a/IKSFa

*09* - The support tex at the sides in the platform sector are pegged. The elevator texture looks bad when it repeats (when the ceiling is low enough); and the floor flat isn't dazzling at that offset. The walls close to this area look odd as they are not aligned. I might just be too picky...

The last screen (06 - Hull Revealed): door tracks pegged. D:!

Alteus said:

If anyone is interested (p.e. authors) I've uploaded 99% of the seshion to Speedyshare:

Alteus, thanks. I've downloaded but I don't know how to play them. Can you give me the idiot's guide?

purist said:

Alteus, thanks. I've downloaded but I don't know how to play them. Can you give me the idiot's guide?

1. Download the latest Zdaemon
2. Put the necessary wad files into the Zdaemon/Wads folder
3. Just drag the demo you want to watch onto zdaemon.exe

Just like NoneeLlama said; if you want some comfort I would recommend copying demos in zdaemon/demos folder and play them via ZDLauncher -> Local -> View Demos. You can even do a playlist of them copying all demos' name in a .txt and renaming it to .zdl; for this session:

http://speedy.sh/qK4te/Hadephobia-Playlist.zdl

Copy it in your demos folder too and just run .zdl file with launcher; you'll be able to go next/prev map demo in-game. (Configure demo keys in options-> configure controls). You will be deployed in spectator mode when playing demo (navigate freely or F12 to spectate someone) and uh... just press spacebar to pause and resume actual demo, I think that's all. 8)

purist said:

... you'll need to be more specific about your beef with MAP07.

Well...

Have you ever seen me mapping in such an ignorant way? This solution implifies itself as being thrown together in half-a-minute.

If I cannot edit my maps anymore, here's what I would suggest as a bearable solution:
1) reduce the depth of the alcove to 1px;
2) change the surrounding 64px wallset to STARBR2 offseted by an unit that can be divided by 32 without remainance;
3) change both the floor and ceiling flattexture to CEIL3_1/FLOOR0_2/FLAT8;
4) change the sides to STARBR2 as well, x-offset by autoalign, proper y-offset by counting and doing manually.

The armor alcove in the library area is not that serious, however, I'd still change the floor to CEIL5_2 instead of RROCK03 (I only use that for it when the 32-unit-high metal scale of WOODMET* is broken, seen in the torch alcoves of MAP19 when you need to cross the blood pit in order to open the two-swing metal grate).

Also, I've not changed the secret for MAP13. I was being cheesy on purpose because I repeatedly told you the BFG needs taking out and you never did it :-)

Seeing all those blatant aesthetic errors and feeling inevitable urgency in case of correction, it repeatedly slipped my mind, but if you're willing to change the 101-potions crowd, I'd suggest a Soulsphere instead.

.

I've been playing my way slowly through the beta, and most of it is very nice, but I just had to express my appreciation for MAP19 (Satan's Fortress) in particular. Such a good map in terms of design, gameplay, and creativity--lots of different variations on the demonic/baroque theme but they never felt mashed together, it had a sort of hellish logic to it in the fashion of some of the original Episode 3 maps, but much more modern without being overdetailed. You could point to this map and say "See this? This is how you make a hell map with vanilla resources."

Okay, I'm done gushing for now. Looking forward to playing the rest of this!

jerrysheppy said:

..., but I just had to express my appreciation for MAP19 (Satan's Fortress) in particular. Such a good map in terms of design, gameplay, and creativity--lots of different variations on the demonic/baroque theme but they never felt mashed together, it had a sort of hellish logic to it in the fashion of some of the original Episode 3 maps, but much more modern without being overdetailed. You could point to this map and say "See this? This is how you make a hell map with vanilla resources."

Oh, thanks! *blushes* Now I can feel myself appreciated for making that map for seven weeks! (21 March 2011 - 07 May 2011).

...

Well, I've decided to handle the eye beefs myself, no offense.

Hey purist, sorry for disappearing for about 3 months, also sorry you had to go hunting for the music credits, I thought I had said but obviously not.

Anything for me to still do here? I've stalled progress on this wad for long enough (also sorry about that) so I should help finish it up. Is my co-op only area on MAP25 still outstanding or is somebody else working on it? I have no idea what to do for it but can give it another try if you need me to. Also I see a few posts up that there's an issue with map 3 on co-op that I'm kicking myself over. Do you need me to fix that or has it already been sorted?

Let me know if there's anything I can do.

Hello Melon! I'll PM you the latest version of the beta and you can make the necessary changes to MAP03 and MAP25 if you wish. In addition to the co-op issue I changed the teleport trap and not all monsters are warping now... I only ask that if you change anything other than what we've already mentioned please include a changelog text file in your upload so I can review it.


For everyone, here's what's left to do as far as I'm aware. I'd appreciate being told if anyone is aware of anything I've missed - particulary anything that broke co-op, will prevent 100% kills/secrets or will cause a player to get stuck.

MAP03

100% kills not possible: Check monster warps in hub area.

Broken in co-op: exit bars won't lower if switches hit at the same time.

MAP07

Aesthetics: I've allowed Cell to fix the way the switch and armour alcove looks as he wishes.

MAP10

Broken in co-op: Blue key pedestal doesn't lower if switches hit at the same time.

Aesthetics: Missing texture on linedef 4845

MAP11

Broken in co-op: Sector 340 and 341 did not rise after hitting switches (possible source port issue).

Aesthetic: A torch is placed too close to the platform near sector 6.

MAP13

Broken in co-op: Bars getting to yellow key room block

Broken in co-op: Bars getting out of yellow key room block

Broken in co-op: Blue bars towards the exit need to stay open

Player stuck: Can get stuck in sector 832 without infinitely tall monsters

MAP17

Broken in co-op: Co-op switch for bars after blue door needs to be repeatable.

Aesthetic: The very same switch has a texture problem showing a part of another switch when the texture scrolls over.

MAP19

Broken in co-op: Bars around the start teleport need removing as they block co-op

Aesthetic: Big HOM in central area AV cage when returning there later in the level.

MAP26

Broken in co-op: Bars after yellow door break co-op

MAP30

100% secrets: Needs secret adding (A.Gamma to fix)

Aesthetic: Exit needs changing to match story (A.Gamma to fix)

Misc:

Various hanging body things need swapping to non-blocking or the dehacked fixed variants as reported by hawkwind.

New versions of MAP10 and MAP31 that have slight aesthetical tweaks now have issues in, which I have reported to hawkwind.

Comments on some of these ...


MAP11

Broken in co-op: Sector 340 and 341 did not rise after hitting switches (possible source port issue).

This is not a source port issue. Beta1 had control sectors for these sectors, and it worked fine. For some reason, they are absent in Beta2.1.

Map13

Player stuck: Can get stuck in sector 832 without infinitely tall monsters

This sector is not present in either Beta1 or Beta2.1.

Map19

Aesthetic: Big HOM in central area AV cage when returning there later in the level.

This has been fixed in Beta2.1.

So I'm looking at the demo from the TNS session and something seems to break horribly with MAP25 on ZDaemon. There are some voodoo doll scripts for the archville room but they seem to fail. The archvilles and the voodoo doll are on a conveyor belt and blocked by a step that's 25 units tall. This is so that the monsters will cross over this and teleport in the second the steps are triggered to lower but it seems they just walked over them at the start of the map. Similarly the bars that blocked the entrance to the room were meant to open up on a timer, but the voodoo doll handling this just walked over the step at the start of the map and so crossed the line to raise the bars before they closed in the first place.

What can I do to fix this? Is this a ZDaemon bug? Or should I just raise the height of the step a little bit? Nothing should be able to walk up a height of 25 map units but it seems that that happened in ZDaemon, at least for things scrolling on a conveyor belt.

@purist, hawkwind: The sector 832 problem is probably what I referred to and that would be in map10 and not in map13. I think it can happen with infinitely tall monsters as well, it's just less likely.

This video might be worth a thousand words.

rhinoduck said:

@purist, hawkwind: The sector 832 problem is probably what I referred to and that would be in map10 and not in map13. I think it can happen with infinitely tall monsters as well, it's just less likely.

I think I know what's happening. Note that sector 841 has a floor height of 841 whereas sector 831, which abutts sector 832, has a floor height of -64, a floor height difference of 32, so the player, unless he/she uses jump, should not normally be able to get to sector 832. Now note that sector 959 has a floor height of -80. The player can legitimately get from sector 959 to 832. To simply fix this, just make line 6907 "impassible".

So I've managed to find out exactly what's up with MAP25 in ZDaemon. There seems to be two problems:

1) The centre point for when an archville is considered to cross a linedef is different to how it is in both Zdoom and PrBoom+ (I've not tested other ports). What was happening was that the archvilles were considered crossing a teleport line action before their centre point actually crossed the line, thereby causing them to teleport in too early. Either they have a smaller hitbox or the centre point is different or something, either way the linedef was triggering too early. I've managed to fix this by moving the teleport linedefs a bit, but it does cause the archvilles to teleport in a little bit slower than I'd like. Eh, no big loss.

2) Non-player things scroll way too slowly when the scroll things line action is on a line 16 units in length (not tried other lengths). This includes voodoo dolls. To give you some idea, things travel across the scroll floors 20 times(!) slower than they should. This completely and utterly breaks the timing on the trap. Due to some specifics of the nature of this trap, I hereby declare this trap unfixably broken in ZDaemon on my end, but you can still beat the level, if you're prepared to wait about two minutes 15 seconds for the bars to raise (it is supposed to take 10 seconds) or you stand under the bars and block them from lowering (which is doable due to how long it takes to trigger this).

Bugger, hopefully some ZDaemon guru can offer some advice on that MAP25 problem. It would be really disappointing for it to be (semi) broken.

I've put the control sectors back in MAP11 and fixed the torch thing in my version of the beta so that's another map ticked off.

Fixing the blue bar issue in MAP13 is just a case of making the switch that opens them repeatable so I'm comfortable enough to do this but I can't think an elegant way of fixing the bars either side of the yellow key that also break co-op so I will give Cell first refusal on fixing it his own way before I get my butcher's kit out :-)

At some point soon I will look at MAP17, MAP19 & MAP26 to see if they can be fixed without too much of an overhaul.

EDIT: MAP17 should be fixed in my beta now as well. Have made the co-op switch to re-raise bars repeatable and have made the alcove the switch sits in smaller to hopefully fix the graphic glitch.

Good news, I'll post it here in case anybody else is looking to make a ZDeamon compatible voodoo script, having your floors scroll with a linedef length of 32 does move things at the correct speed. I've not checked any other speeds yet but 32 is consistent with other ports. Also because this is just double the speed of the 16 I had previously it was easy to re-time my script, I just doubled the length of it :)

So MAP25 does work in ZDaemon now. Hooray.