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Tango

Mayan Mishap (FINAL RELEASE; idgames uploaded)

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*** updated Dec 5 with the final version

After several threads, lots of tweaks and revisions, I think I'm finally just about ready to release this thing. The low-down of the mapset:

* 5 maps made for MBF compatible ports (PrBoom+, Eternity, ZDoom)
* handful of monster behavior changes including faster fireballs, Cyber Barons that shoot rockets, and flying Mancubi
* palette shifts, most notably replacing the blue ranges with purple
* bunch of sprite replacements, minor recolors, etc.
* organic layouts, Mayan textures and DKC3 tunes

I think every single one of these maps (including map31) was each made within a day (not all on the same day), with varying levels of reworks and tweaks done throughout the course of the last few months. I'm at a point where I'm satisfied with mostly everything with the exception of a few gameplay-related tweaks. There are a number of gameplay changes and fixes since last I posted the wad (and I guess the entirety of map04, which I was considering not including at all because the gameplay ideas feel kind of half-baked), so before a real, final release to the archives, I'd like to get some feedback on all that and then make the necessary changes asap.

A quick note about difficulty: what was UV in previous iterations has now become HMP, and UV's monster counts have been beefed up. Unless you're looking for a challenge, I would recommend sticking with HMP for now, as some of the stuff in there on UV could get frustrating for a first play. There's a good chance some of my additions on UV really only hurt the gameplay more than helped it, and I'm not entirely satisfied with the gameplay, especially in map04 and map31, so feedback there would be much appreciated. I am, however, getting a bit tired of working on this, so... mileage may vary, I suppose.

SCREENSHOTS

DOWNLOAD (idgames archive)


to-do list:
[x] upload to the archives DONE!!!

Edited by Tango

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I'll play this tomorrow when my head stops hurting.

Cool looking flying Manc. I don't do DEHACKED editing, but is there an extra animation frame in the wad? I looked through it quickly and saw an SSWVA2A8 and also an SSWVA2, both of which are exactly the same.

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funny you should mention that, actually, haha. that was a special case; the flying manc replacements didn't have a SSWVA2 because of SSWVA2A8, and DB's default sprite for the SS guy is SSWVA2, so I grew tired of seeing the silly little purple nazis everytime I placed a flying manc in a map. thus, SSWVA2 was born

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Awesome! The screenshots you've been posting around always interested me. And I'm looking forward to the dehacked work you've done. I'll try to give this a spin soon :)

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Wow! Great theme, strong layouts, challenging encounters, unique content including a new palette, new monsters, and new music. I've only given each level a short casual play, but damn! This has all the components of a truly great level set!

With that said, there is a few things I noticed. I was using freedoom + zdoom and encountered some minor glitches. At a glance I can't account for why any of them would be there.

-hall of mirrors @ map 2, linedef 2310, located on the northern rampart in the southwestern courtyard.
-slug trail @ map 2, linedef 6614, located near the eastern entrance to the southwest courtyard
-hall of mirrors @ map 31, linedef 2546, located near the stairs in the exit area

If you are getting burnt take a short break and let some play testers hammer out some game-play issues. One more solid balance and bug update and it should be complete. Keep pushing forward! Your almost done!

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Map01 FDA, UV, -complevel 11 in GlBoom+. ~1 hour long.

Mixed feelings while playing, some things seemed excellent and others... less so. Not too surprising, diviseness is to be expected in a mod changing so much. Ultimately, as I reached the exit I was left with a good impression. :)

New palette: meh, but then I'm one of these people who believe desaturation is the work of the devil, so what can you do. In GLBoom+ I thought the revenants looked particularly icky, and the mancs seemed dull. On the other hand things seemed, overall, visually consistent, which is good with so many additions.

I loved the faceless imp and demon look. It'd be cool if every monster looked that way, but ofc that's an unreasonable amount of work. Arachnotrons were creepy. Flying mancs looked... OK, I guess? Not too keen on the cyberbaron, I think the other cyberbaron sprite Eriance (?) made, the black one, looks better, but ymmv.

Weapon sprites are cool, too. I especially like the SSG and chaingun.

Pickups sprites felt a bit out of place.

Sounds... again, mixed bag. The chaingun sound is really beefy, makes you want to use the weapon. But explosions sound off like a gunshot rather than an explosion of that size. I kept looking around thinking a shotgunner was shooting at me whenever revenant rockets crashed into walls.

There's another issue with the sound, shared with the SSG, and this is a big one for me: those sounds cut off abruptly. There's no gradual falloff in volume like you'd expect, it just goes silent at once. Now I know finding/recording sounds is a pain in the ass, but perhaps you could get to a better result by simply adding an echo effect in Audacity or somesuch.

Regarding gameplay, I didn't pick up on all the changes. It seemed worrying and luck-based to have a baron alternating between normal projectiles and rockets, but the windup time coupled with a distinctive sound makes it appropriate. Flying mancs are... OK, I guess? :) I felt like you made rockets slower and stronger, but didn't get to use them much so this might be in my head. No real comment on that.

The level itself was equally fun and frustrating at times. It's a great layout for the most part, with little bits here and there that are just questionable. Right at the start, having monsters teleport behind you... Why? :p Then you open that door and there's that revenant that teleports behind you... Whyyy? :p and that's *if* he teleports at all, maybe he moves left or right instead and another monster will teleport later for no reason. Then you've got the mancubus endlessly resurrected by an invisible arch-vile, which makes it tricky to fight in that room *and* easier to camp the door as the manc kills everything for you, and monsters don't have much room to get to you.

I think this was characteristic of the map for me, the layout goes in every direction so you don't know where monsters are going to come from. Coupled with some locations that are way too efficient as chokepoints, some hitscanners/arch-viles in inconvenient spots, camping is often the safest bet. It's not due to much either, just little bits here and there.

Basically, my biggest pet peeves in that regard would be:

- sector 12 door, it's the perfect chokepoint, and it would be that way even without the manc. I think if the path was twisted so it'd break line of sight, like the door would start at linedef 392 and do a turn to end up where the other side is now, it'd make things more interesting. Or maybe if the teleporting sector (#59) was removed, there could be a second exit from the room there, not a door but a wall that'd open once you crossed a certain threshold inside, so you'd have the door to camp a few of the early fights, but not all of them, forcing some variety.

- arch-vile (thing #557). Along with the two revs, the shape and the interconnectivity of the rooms around, it's kind of a pacebreaker. There's perhaps an interesting balancing act in how much you want to rush it vs waiting for things to pop out and running out of ammo as stuff gets resurrected, but I feel the difficulty curve is too wide between those two extremes. I think it'd play better if either the AV or the two revs were removed.

(On the other hand I have no problem with the other AV (#586) and his two revenant buddies, here the layout gives you a much more fair fighting chance.)

- pillar chaingunners (#729, #731, #770, #771, #772, #773). They're just assholes. At long range you can't lock on to them, at close range they're devastating due to the height difference. Just as bad in a different way, they can clean the room by themselves, starting infights with other monster that can't even hit you. Less of them, none of them, either choice would be better imho.

- flying mancs #597 and #599 are stuck into each other. Frankly, the balance in that part seemed just right without them, and I feel having 5 flying mancs in total (adding the other one here, and the two from the other side) would be overkill. These guys could go away, or at least one of them.

- it wasn't obvious to me linedef 2369 was meant to be a lift/door. I guess I should have tried it, but eeeh. Spoonfeed me dammit!


Less whining, more praise. I loved the part with the crushers, what an excellent way to spice up an otherwise mundane corridor, and with the monsters sitting on that other platform all the way to the back making you want to run there right away, you fall right into the trap. Genius. Then there's the monsters coming out of the walls, just the right amount of pressure. It looks neat visually, too. This is the moment that made me love the map. :)

The fight at the arachnotron switch could be fun, but with that arch-vile and sector 394 being another chokepoint, it's not quite what it could be. I feel if you had the corridor branch out, like add an extra path connecting linedef 2396 and linedef 504, you might end up with something more chaotic and interesting. But then, perhaps the player would just camp in sector 328 instead... Perhaps cram some pools of damaging poo at strategic locations.

References to bodily functions feels as appropriate as any to end a wall of text feedback post, so, that's about it. I really liked the map in the end. Plan for tonight: more Doom. :)

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Map02 FDA, UV, -complevel 11 in GlBoom+. Probably around a hour as well (I took a break in the middle, and started using saves). Did not finish.

This felt much more relaxed than the first level. Nice music choice, fits the map even better than those DKC levels.

I found it perhaps a little questionable how easy it is to ride the lift and wait for things to infight instead of getting in there in the outdoor fight. I think the trees are a problem... Granted they look cool, but they significantly reduce visibility. You don't really want to see a fireball pop out of nowhere, much less a rocket.

I got stuck at the green key switch. Looking at it in Doom Builder, I assume the linedefs are too close for MBF compatibility.

I'm starting to notice more changes... I find it more helpful to not look at the dehacked patch as to avoid preconceptions and point out perception bias, so here's some guesses:

- imp fireballs are faster, seems like 25 speed like HK. I think that's a cool change, makes them deceptively harder. Took me by surprise a couple of times, against the great imp horde.

- demons are faster, probably 1,5x speed? I'm guessing they bite faster too. I like their increased movement speed, their sudden dashes to the left or right makes them more efficient in their area denial role.

- chaingun is faster, 3 frame duration per shot instead of 4. It's a great change, both mechanically and visually. The sprites and sounds fit the behavior so well, at first it's not even obvious there's been a change.

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Just started playing this - Map 01 is good fun! Some of the sprite work is excellent - love the faceless imps. Spotted a nasty slime trail in the courtyard area near the RL:

Spoiler


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thanks so much for all the feedback and kind words :D I thought I caught all the slimetrails but apparently I wasn't careful enough, so I'll go back and fix those and the HOMs you guys noted.

Phml: huge thanks for all the gameplay notes on both maps, particularly map01. a lot of the chokepoint situations I didn't really know how to prevent without major changes (or perhaps I should say I didn't bother enough to try really fixing them), so feedback on that is definitely good. the teleporting Rev at the start was just an attempt to force the player into the room, to avoid using the door as a choke, but I'm gonna have to find a better solution. I'll try out what you mentioned, dunno why it never occurred to me to just... change the door somehow.

I can dig basically all the other suggestions though, so I'll look into those for sure. you're not the first to complain about the sounds, I think, so perhaps it'd be good for me to give those another go too.

I'll look into the map02 switch as well... feel silly for missing that. when you mean the lift in the outdoor battle, you mean the lift kind of tucked away in the corner that gets you up to that manc platform? regarding the trees, there's relatively few outside the ones lining the buildings, so I assume you mean those ones?

and I'll let you keep guessing what the changes are :p

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when you mean the lift in the outdoor battle, you mean the lift kind of tucked away in the corner that gets you up to that manc platform? regarding the trees, there's relatively few outside the ones lining the buildings, so I assume you mean those ones?


Correct on both counts!

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Map03 FDA, UV, cl11, about 20 minutes. Did not finish.

Fun outdoors roam, reminiscent of that Vanguard map. I liked it, no complaints.

Small issues: cacos in sector 129 seemed more or less stuck in that area due to the trees. Flying mancs in both sector 129 and 216 couldn't go through the trees either.

I couldn't get to the teleporter leading to the final area (sector 201). Looking in Doom Builder, I think there's pillars around it supposed to lower, but there's a bigger sector (#204) surrounding these pillars with a tag of 15 and no corresponding linedef action.

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Map04 FDA, UV, cl11, about 20 minutes. Did not finish.

Another cool map. Loving this mini HUB style.

I died a few times in the white key area before even getting past the imps; but that's largely because I was cocky earlier against the spiderMM, having fun with pain chance and the chaingun *and* missed the soulsphere at the start. All fights felt balanced and appropriately challenging.

I couldn't open the final door despite having all three keys. I think this is because the linedef action is a "Switch" rather than a "Door".

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I really like the style and the layout of the maps, some cool design choices that makes gameplay scenarios fun and challenging. I also really like the outdoors areas. played only the first map so far but i like how open it feels. gameplay is strong for the most part. but i'm sorry to report that i'm not a fan of the new monsters and the new skins, they look out of place to me, especially the arachnotron. can't wait to play the second map. well done sir.

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Map31 FDA, UV, cl11. About half an hour.

Secret theme, standard gameplay. I liked it.

Only one small issue: mancs took a long time to teleport in the final fight. Perhaps they could use a second teleport destination on each side to speed this up. I also ran out of ammo, but this might be because they took so long to TP they couldn't infight with the cacos.



Excellent mapset. In light of some recent discussions, it makes a pretty good case for showcasing gameplay mods with a few levels. Heck, I was about to pass up on this, because I was too lazy to get used to new rules, but the lure of delicious Tango maps prevailed. :)

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Completed the first map, I'm liking the wad so far.

The new sprites are very cool and mostly fitting. I especially like the flying fatso. The new palette is slightly weird, because it makes the blood pinkish.

Doomguy's face has a few out of place pink pixels that are only present on one frame, as far as I can tell.

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Phml said:

I couldn't open the final door despite having all three keys. I think this is because the linedef action is a "Switch" rather than a "Door".


I ran into this issue as well while developing an MBF wad. There is an MBF bug that prevents three key generalized doors from being openable if you have the yellow skull key. This bug has been retained in PrBoom+ -complevel 11 for compatibility reasons. If you play in ZDoom or Eternity, the door will open as intended.

The easiest way to fix the issue is to replace the door with three individually locked doors or change the yellow skull to a yellow card. Alternatively, if you're willing to play around some more with DeHacked, you can make the yellow skull pickup provide a yellow keycard instead (however, it will display the yellow card HUD message, and the yellow card on the status bar, so you'd have to change that stuff for consistency).

Also: this looks like tons of fun, but I'm waiting to play it until it's finalized... hopefully not too long! Looking forward to it.

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feel really quite dumb for missing the gamebreaking bug on map03. made some last-minute changes to that room before uploading, forgot about the other tag, clearly should have tested and/or paid more attention. that's what this pre-release is for though, I guess!

had no idea about that three door bug, pretty frustrating it's in there but I'll go with one of those fixes you mentioned, skillsaw. I do like the idea of having one big door that needs all keys as opposed to reducing it to three doors, so perhaps I'll just do a bit of little dehacked work and sprite replacement to fix it.

again thanks all for the feedback, really glad to hear it.

@SFoZ911: sorry to hear about the monsters, thanks for the feedback otherwise though :D I think you could get away with just deleting the monster sprites from the wad if it bothers you though! still a bit of a pain though

@Phml: noted on all the other bugs/oddities, thanks for reporting those. glad you enjoyed the maps :D

@Da Werecat: I think someone might have mentioned that to me before, forgot to fix it though. thanks man!

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I wondered why MAP04 is no easier on HNTR than on HMP. That's because of all the monsters present on the map only one mancubus is affected by the difficulty.

I've also encountered a lot of visual glitches in various maps. Many of them are very hard to miss. And I think you already know about the game-breaking bugs in maps 2-4.

DKC3 music is strangely fitting.

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hahaha yeah uhhh I went back and was replaying map04 myself the other day and realized I never bothered much with difficulty settings there. so that's definitely gonna get fixed. my apologies for all that :p

re: the glitches, yeah, I've gone back and caught all the ones reported here I think, definitely going to have to give all maps a few final plays myself though to make sure everything is gone for good. thanks for playing :D

I am pretty happy with how the music and levels turned out in relation to each other. the build time for most every map was spent with the corresponding stage song on repeat, or a similar DKC3 one at least, which could also have helped.

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grouchbag: thanks man :D


finally got around to fixing everything! here's a rundown of the changes:
- all the visual bugs that were pointed out and that I could find myself were fixed
- several minor structural and/or visual changes here and there
- added proper difficulty settings for every map
- all maps are now completable (gamebreaking bugs on 2, 3, and 4 fixed)

which means this should be really really close to a proper release! I'll leave this out in the wild a few more days and then probably upload to the archives this weekend unless anything pops up! as always, any and all feedback is appreciated

DOWNLOAD

(first post also updated with new link)

ps take that dew >:|

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Played this a few hours ago, I thought it was an outstanding piece of work. I'm always dubious about gameplay modifications but you've handled it nicely. Monsters are top notch. Maps are top notch. Only problem is needs more maps! Loved Token Tango(s).

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first of all, I played your mapset through Map1 and 2, currently playing on Map3.

I found a little HOM (or missing texture I think?) on Map02 (using ZDoom) where you encounter the Cyberdemon.
Heres a video of it:http://youtu.be/cjfNhzm_S10


But all in all I have to say youve done some awesome work on this mapset, cant wait to play through the rest of the maps!

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Hi Tango! Glad to see that purple chaingunner that I suggested months ago in action, and what a great surprise to see Demonicron's Imp alongside the Pinky from the previous release; you really caught me off guard with that one, never expected to see them both in your project. I'm beyond honored.

Just one small thing, though. Mind if I submit a fixed version of the Pinky's death animation? I have it ready to go, with the offsets from the last beta you posted (Doom palette, not sure if you converted all the sprites to match the custom one so I left it that way)

The WAD is great, by the way! Loved the changes you did to MAP02, and I'm about to play the secret map; and boy, it surely kicks your butt from the beginning!

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I've been asked several times by FuzzballRenakitty to play this wad, which I will get around to at some point in the near future. Hope it proves enjoyable!

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By the way, I've noticed that you've included a lot of the stock graphics in the wad. It's understandable when you have a new palette, but it seems to me that you didn't actually convert these graphics. As a result, reds look much darker than they should.

Another thing I'd like to mention is that the flying fatso's corpse looks like it's floating above the ground.

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thanks again everybody :D

@omegamer: good to know, easy to see how I missed such a little thing haha. many thanks for finding it and going so far as to make a youtube upload haha. much appreciated

@Blackfish: glad to hear it :D

@IMX: that would be fantastic! yeah man. I hope it's ok that I pulled the imp from Demonicron too. credit is definitely given where deserved in the txt file (which is basically done and ready to go). I absolutely love all the spritework you did. but yeah if you've got them, send em on over! I hope you consider giving some of the other monsters in Demonicron a similar treatment, too :p actually, are there any other credits for those sprites I should add in there? not sure if Vader or Eriance or someone did any of the basework and whatnot for the imp/demon

@Suitepee: me too :p would be great to see someone else play it!

Da Werecat: all the stock graphics are actually in there for the purpose of sprite offset fixes (taken from the offset fix wad); never really considered any color changes, though that might be a good idea. I'm ok with how everything looks unconverted, really, though probably partly because I got so attached to the palette, but the revenants could definitely stand for a bit of blood brightening. re: the flying fatso, I'll look again at the offsets and see if I can fix anything. thanks for all the feedback :D

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Okay, thanks for the approval, here they go! Please tell me if the link doesn't work so I can add another link


https://www.dropbox.com/s/fs4sx7c56a3zfdw/MechDevourer_fixd_ded_maya.wad?dl=0


Take in mind that Demonicron itself is a resource mod as well, so don't be worried about using the Imp (Edit: As long as credits are given for each author of the frankensprites, of course!). Now, in regards of the monster sprites, this was how they were conceived, unless I am mistaken.

Imp - The base was made by Vader (Skulltag Dark Imp), which then was edited by ItsNatureToDie/David G to be classic brown + other small fixes, and then I omitted the eyes and turned it into dark green marble for Demonicron.

Pinky - This is a mixture of two custom monsters: the Blood Demon edit made by Neoworm and Vader (which was based itself on a concept made by Cyb, according to the credits in the Realm667 download), and a concept sprite made by Icytux which was turned into a fully sprited monster by me called Devourer. This monster was unofficially named "Mech Devourer" for Demonicron, since it uses the Devourer as base, it was turned back to pink and borrows the Blood Demon's legs.

SO the credits should be:

Imp: Base by Vader, edits by ItsNatureToDie and IMX
Pinky: Base by Neoworm, Vader, Cyb and Icytux, edits by IMX

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