Valiant.wad - now on /idgames!

review is up, thank you for this

First wad I've played in months and not the slightest bit disappointed by it. Skillsaw, you are the master.

Eighth map, back in RC1. Yea, it was hard, glad to hear you made it easier.

I suppose the "MAPINFO" lump should be named "ZMAPINFO" given that it's in the new ZDoom format.

Thanks everyone! Been too busy this week to do much of anything Valiant related, so I probably won't be able to get RC3 out tonight or tomorrow like I had hoped, but since the DWMC seems to be leaning towards playing Concerned, it's not going to be too big of a deal to push it back a bit.


Also, super hyped to read your review, kmx.

The bestiary is ridiculous. The levels are really great too, but I just can't get over how awesome some of these new monsters are. (The only glaring problem is the arachnorb's death, which looks kind of silly from any noticeable height -- it hits its resting corpse position too quickly, possibly a limitation of Doom?)

Which ones, if any, are open to public use?

rdwpa said:

(The only glaring problem is the arachnorb's death, which looks kind of silly from any noticeable height -- it hits its resting corpse position too quickly, possibly a limitation of Doom?)

Yes. In Heretic there's coding for a "crash" state that's entered when a flying monster's corpse hits the ground; but that doesn't exist in Dooom (you'll get the same issue with the cacodemon).

rdwpa said:

Which ones, if any, are open to public use?

Those that are adapted from the Realm667 monster resource?

Resources from R667 repository are generally free to use: http://realm667.com/index.php/en/repository-18489

Valiant uses some sprites from there. Other custom sprites might be original work.

Monster sprites found in Valiant:

Gez said:

Demonicron

Ha - so that's the remaining source! And well, the red eyed arachnotron is a simple recolor. Thanks, Gez. I was under an impression that the mancubus wasn't at R667, but he was - edit: wait, your link gives me 404 error and I can't find Daedabus in the list.

So that's what the reddish background meant, it's not publicly accessible for some reason.

I think there might be three dodgy sidedefs in RC2 on MAP20 which I've circled in red here...

In map9 the orange skullkey door has a rock ceiling

The music credits do not cover title screen, text screen, and intermission. For intermission and title screen, the metadata allows to identify, but for D_READ_M I have no idea.

Intermission - Gundam Wing: Endless Duel character select theme
Title - Gundam Wing: Endless Duel versus screen theme
Text screen - Gundam Wing: Endless Duel credits theme

I'll make sure to add this to the text file in the future.

While you're adding credits, how about the modified palette? If you made it yourself, say so. :)

Preliminary impressions.

Visuals: perfect; smooth, refreshing, balanced, consistent.
Great lighting, balanced, interesting, adding too the visuals and gameplay.
Gameplay: good to very good, very challenging, maybe too hard for lesser skilled players.
Content: very well applied new monsters, guns and textures.

Downsides; being often instantly attacked upon spawning into the later levels.
At the early levels a few times a bit low on ammo, playing coop in uv.

Cool mechanics: shooting activated traps.

What would make this wad even better?

- adding a bit more storyline. I feel this wad is made with a story in mind, but as a player I would like to have a few lines of in game narration and or visuals to flesh out the story a bit more.

- adding environmental reverbs, and ambient sounds.


Thank you for making this epic effort map - it's very evident there is many years of work in it, glad you pushed through and published it.
Certainly a Cacoaward worthy!
It also pushes me to push harder for my upcoming 13lvl megawad.- WIP.

I expect to finish the RC2 Valiant this evening.

Kars

cas1 said:

Downsides; being often instantly attacked upon spawning into the later levels.

I'm perfectly fine with this.

- adding a bit more storyline. I feel this wad is made with a story in mind, but as a player I would like to have a few lines of in game narration and or visuals to flesh out the story a bit more.

Heh, is story even important in a doom mapset? In my opinion, not really.

Since the arachnotron plasma has been recolored to red, you could add this as a GLDEFS lump in the wad:

// Arachnotron Fireball
pointlight ARACHPLAS
{
    color 1.0 0.3 0.3
    size 56
}

flickerlight ARACHPLAS_X1
{
    color 0.8 0.2 0.2
    size 72
    secondarySize 80
    chance 0.3
}

flickerlight ARACHPLAS_X2
{
    color 0.9 0.1 0.1
    size 88
    secondarySize 96
    chance 0.3
}

flickerlight ARACHPLAS_X3
{
    color 0.6 0.1 0.1
    size 48
    secondarySize 32
    chance 0.3
}

flickerlight ARACHPLAS_X4
{
    color 0.3 0.0 0.0
    size 24
    secondarySize 16
    chance 0.3
}

MAP28: for the big finale (raising the lightbridge leading to the cyberdemon), there are six supermancus that are filtered to appear on all skill levels (easy, medium, hard), but their teleport destinations are filtered to only appear on hard. So in easy and medium, they are there on the map, but they never reach the playable area and it makes it impossible to get 100% kills.

Damn, this is fresh! Been kind of strapped for a .WAD to play in recent months and this fills the void nicely. Only on MAP05 but really enjoying it so far.

Thanks again, all.

Gez, I can't see any text when clicking on your spoiler. Could you repost it? Also, the Baron of Hell/HK fireball has also been changed to a large, orange fireball, so I assume it would also need to have its dynamic light definition modified.

cas1, there is a very minor story, if you play in a non-prBoom port you will see a text screen at the end of each episode, but it's intentionally vague. But I mostly agree with AD_79, for me, story is pretty unimportant and I threw those texts in there one afternoon without too much thought, heh.

Urban Space Cowboy: The palette is basically the default palette, except for the red range which was taken from 32-in-24-13. I *think* esselfortium made it.

Looks like the forum doesn't like code tags inside spoiler tags.

// Arachnotron Fireball
pointlight ARACHPLAS
{
    color 1.0 0.3 0.3
    size 56
}

flickerlight ARACHPLAS_X1
{
    color 0.8 0.2 0.2
    size 72
    secondarySize 80
    chance 0.3
}

flickerlight ARACHPLAS_X2
{
    color 0.9 0.1 0.1
    size 88
    secondarySize 96
    chance 0.3
}

flickerlight ARACHPLAS_X3
{
    color 0.6 0.1 0.1
    size 48
    secondarySize 32
    chance 0.3
}

flickerlight ARACHPLAS_X4
{
    color 0.3 0.0 0.0
    size 24
    secondarySize 16
    chance 0.3
}

loved pretty much everything about the mod. the music especially, the waterfall secrets, the alternative imps, all that stuff. however some areas become too chaotic if you reolease 20 imps in the face of a player, because he wont be able to dodge everything. also no burning eyeballs for the lost souls make them kind of foolish.

mdv said:

however some areas become too chaotic if you reolease 20 imps in the face of a player, because he wont be able to dodge everything.

Well, in order to make the wad appealing for experienced Doomers, skillsaw had to put a non-trivial challenge, which is all right. :)

mdv said:

also no burning eyeballs for the lost souls make them kind of foolish.

Foolish? I actually find them slightly more scary that way. On the other hand, their horns look like dog's ears at first sight to me, which I find strange.

Did some uv-speed demos for fun. Always a good run in a skillsaw map :)

MAP01 00:47
MAP03 00:27
MAP08 DNF

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8943931/lmp/valiant%20demos.zip

skillsaw, thank you for leaving the DL link to the old version up.

I like watching FDAs (to learn how other people play, to compare how I handled a situation to how others did, etc.), and I hate it whenever I find release threads littered with demos that are unwatchable due to the early versions of the maps being unavailable.

Mappers are under no obligation to keep the inferior versions of their work up for DL, but I appreciate it when they do.

Oh yeah, I have a question: what source(s) did the trees come from?

IDK if it's been caught but:

MAP11 - I can't access the 5th secret! I know that it's the berserk pack in the starting area, but how do I get to it? I need to know so I could 100% this map for my LP!!! HOW?!?!?!

stru said:

MAP11 - I can't access the 5th secret! I know that it's the berserk pack in the starting area, but how do I get to it? I need to know so I could 100% this map for my LP!!! HOW?!?!?!

From the start, press use on the red torch (tall red firestick) that's to the left of green armor and chaingun.