Unholy Realms Public Release Thread (/idgames link posted)

"It's all gone to hell again. Earth's reality is being torn from itself and merged in the vision of the Icon of Sin. Locations have been stripped from this very dimension. It's only a matter of time before all is corrupted and transformed into a twisted version of reality. All that stands in the way of total apocalypse is a marine, a pistol, and 50 bullets."

Download Link: Now on /idgames!

Unholy Realms is a new, mostly one-man megawad designed to give you nothing but pure, break-neck fun combined with some visual goodness. 3 1/2 years in the making, the maps tend to range in medium-sized and present a difficulty progression that goes from easy-breezy to just-below slaughter-level challenges. The original concept was to combine the classic gameplay aspects with the new - a mixture of themes, linearity, and challenges can be found throughout. Speedrunners and casual players alike were kept in mind during the mapping process. Enclosed in the beta you will find:

-32 new, super-cool limit-removing layouts
-32 new, super-cool MIDIs by doomworld staple PRIMEVAL
-Graphics work by his holiness Mechadon
-New textures for various themes (derived from CC4 textures)
-DeHacked work to change the stories texts, enhance the Mastermind, and make the Cyberdemon a bit more mandatory to kill on occasion

Credits also to joshy, skillsaw, Adrian Hanekom, valkriforce, and khorus for the 4 maps not completed by myself.

As this is a limit-removing megawad, it's best played using Doom2+ or PrBoom+ on -complevel 2. It has been tested and shown functional in Zdoom, though jumping/crouching can break the maps and should be avoided.

Screenshots:

Map09:


Map19:


Map26:


The beta will be open for playtesting month or so. Thanks for your time and remember: the main goal for this wad is fun. Any comments and bug reports will be greatly appreciated.

Good fragging!

Awesome, congratulations on the release!

indeed, grats on the release :). I shall peruse these now

Yayayay! 'grats on the release, it's been a long road! It'll be a lot of fun for those who haven't played it

Congrats on the release, I'll play this as soon as I can. And thanks for asking me to make a map for you, it was a pleasure.

Nice =). Between this and Zone 300, I won't be running short on quality doomin'in' anytime soon.

Nicely done, Snakes! Time to give these demons their just desserts!

This makes me happy. Glad this is done. :)

Also, it's 35 new songs, counting the Intro, Intermission, and Message themes as well ;) hehe

MAP02, Zandronum: (click to enlarge)

(apparently it's the only port where it shows, though)

Anyway this is awesome piece of work. Gonna spend some time with it :)

Yeehaa. Gonna play the SHIT outta this right now. Been at work all weekend, time for relaxing =)

Snakes said:

The beta will be open for playtesting in the following week.

If you are willing to wait a bit longer, we are planning to run this wad in ZDaemon Thursday Night Survival, which will probably reveal some multiplayer bugs and other gameplay issues. September 26th is already scheduled for Slaughterfest 2011 but the week after that we are planning to play some UR. We often run beta releases there and usually it generates some useful feedback, so think about it. :)

Sweet, you released it much earlier than you said you will.

Congrats on the release, Snakes! I am congratulating you even though I know this is a pipe dream and I'll wake back to stalled UR soon!

scifista42 said:

MAP02, Zandronum: (click to enlarge)

Anyway this is awesome piece of work. Gonna spend some time with it :)

Yeah, I spotted this bug way back at the very start of the project. It does seem to be a Zandronum-exclusive visual error. A lot of bridges have historically looked goofy in that port (well, for me anyways).

Memfis said:

If you are willing to wait a bit longer, we are planning to run this wad in ZDaemon Thursday Night Survival, which will probably reveal some multiplayer bugs and other gameplay issues. September 26th is already scheduled for Slaughterfest 2011 but the week after that we are planning to play some UR. We often run beta releases there and usually it generates some useful feedback, so think about it. :)

I'll shall be the Mr. Patient, then. Thanks for the tip, sir.

Thanks for the response thus far, everyone. Good to know my years of effort have not gone totally unnoticed (nor have they gone un-made fun of).

I found a bug on map05: you can open a RK trap without taking it, just by being close to the RK pillar.

That is a bug? I'd consider such a thing a bug only if it was vice versa (trap didn't open after taking a key). A prematurely opened trap may be OK, as long as the key can still be grabbed afterwards. Haven't seen that particular place though, I admit.

@Snakes It looks as if the Megawad Club wants to play this potentially in October as they feel it would provide good feedback (which I agree). So is it possible you may consider holding the final upload until November?

Awesome work Brian, now it's time to sit back, relax, drink beer and watch speedruns!
You've earned it!

I'm looking forward to saying the same for myself, hehe. ;)

I'm glad to see it's finally finished. I'm sorry I wasn't able to test it out more.

Only 3 or 4 words can describe this = Awesome maps. Awesome music.

pcorf said:

Awesome music.

Aww shucks...

Great stuff so far. I'm enjoying it. I did notice a bug though, I think the Blue Door in MAP05 can only be opened once.

Thanks for the responses thus far, guys. Looks like I'll keep this in beta for a while for the megawad club. I'm overwhelmed by the reception.

Played it some. I'm to lazy to post screenshots, but here's three things I noticed right away.

map 02: It's easy to sr50 on the small ledge close to the BK and "jump" up to the small crate and then climb up to get the BK and just skipping RK completely.

map 18: There's some unclosed sectors in the area where there's a skull that's bleeding out it's eyes.

The doors that's opened with the YK are supposed to trap the player, but I managed to get a mancubus to block the door and after I killed him from the outside, I was unable to get in there again. Make the switch SR, rather than S1.

edit:

map 31: A shotgunner teleported on top of the secret BFG and got stuck up there. Maybe you should set the teleport lines to block monsters.

Good stuff. Map02's jump is intentional, though. Almost every map has some sort of route implemented for the demoers.

I'll make the necessary fixes :)

I remember seeing this when it was being worked on! Might try it out :D

Hm, I was planning to post my bug report when I'm finished, but some stuff I found is kinda serious and you might want to fix it ASAP. btw I'd recommend to name the beta releases differently from ur.wad to avoid confusion in the future. Like urbeta1, urbeta2, etc. But I guess it's kind of late now. Anyways...

13 - something went wrong here (linedefs 2185, 2186, etc), looking in the editor I see that you have a bunch of double-sided linedefs without a back side there.
14 - some stimpack changed its position near the end of the map, you could try moving it away from the window but a much easier solution would be to change the radius of some pickups and non-blocking decorations to 1 with DEHACKED, that will solve all similar problems on all maps.
17 - the plasmagun pillar can raise with the plasmagun still on it, looks funny. Also, you can hide the sounds made by the fake bridge. The sound originates from sector's center so if you move the dummy sector stuff further away from the bridge, the player will not hear the sounds it makes.
18 - stuck HK, moving stimpack.
19 - I was able to trigger the line that closes sector 193 and run out of that tunnel, sealing it forever. Wasn't even trying to break anything, just happened by accident.
22 - Revs and imps are stuck in each other in the pillars in the first room. Something weird happens near the yellow key, maybe linedef 1406 should also have "floor lower to lowest" action rather than "floor lower to highest"? And near the exit you can see the non-tiling nature of the sky texture. Ask esselfortium/Mechadon/etc to make a tiling version?

Memfis said:

Hm, I was planning to post my bug report when I'm finished, but some stuff I found is kinda serious and you might want to fix it ASAP. btw I'd recommend to name the beta releases differently from ur.wad to avoid confusion in the future. Like urbeta1, urbeta2, etc. But I guess it's kind of late now. Anyways...

13 - something went wrong here (linedefs 2185, 2186, etc), looking in the editor I see that you have a bunch of double-sided linedefs without a back side there.
14 - some stimpack changed its position near the end of the map, you could try moving it away from the window but a much easier solution would be to change the radius of some pickups and non-blocking decorations to 1 with DEHACKED, that will solve all similar problems on all maps.
17 - the plasmagun pillar can raise with the plasmagun still on it, looks funny. Also, you can hide the sounds made by the fake bridge. The sound originates from sector's center so if you move the dummy sector stuff further away from the bridge, the player will not hear the sounds it makes.
18 - stuck HK, moving stimpack.
19 - I was able to trigger the line that closes sector 193 and run out of that tunnel, sealing it forever. Wasn't even trying to break anything, just happened by accident.
22 - Revs and imps are stuck in each other in the pillars in the first room. Something weird happens near the yellow key, maybe linedef 1406 should also have "floor lower to lowest" action rather than "floor lower to highest"? And near the exit you can see the non-tiling nature of the sky texture. Ask esselfortium/Mechadon/etc to make a tiling version?

I'm honestly baffled at when/how some of this happened. Fixing the stuck monsters issue right now. Not even sure why I even have the sector close again in Map19. Seems rather redundant. Luckily, most of the issues seem to be with Map19 and Map22, which I'm particularly fond of :P

Will re-upload these fixes shortly.

EDIT: Should be good now.

I've got my fingers crossed that this is the next MegaWAD club subject as I really want to play it and that day-by-day analysis with a shared experience is probably the best way to enjoy a work, IMO.

Oops, I forgot to mention that when I was looking at map22 in the editor, I noticed a W1 teleporter in the cyberdemon closet. I guess it's not very likely that the destination will be blocked when he tries to teleport, but it might happen.

btw anyone wants to host this in ZDaemon\Zandronum? (Survival) I don't really feel like figuring out the harder maps in single player. Nowadays I usually give up after 1-2 deaths. =)