Doom2 limit removing map. NEW VERSION ACTUALLY WORKS!!

Doom2, MAP01, Limit removing. All difficulties done. UV will be a brutal fight. There are a number of new textures/flats in this map also.


2011: Dedicated to Katamori and C30N9, seeing as everyone else who posted in the october birthday thread has a map coming. Sorry if I missed anyone.

2012: Ok now the map is for everyone born in October. Yaaaay.

Happy birthday all.

This map was going to be for TNT2, but when I was making it, it just got outta control, and is at present way over vanilla restrictions. Specifically, the save game buffer had chickens and went home, as you can see from the monster count:

monsters: HNTR 542
HMP 656
UV 725

And as well there are a couple of battles that will leave the 128 sprite count limit looking a bit sorry too, though I wasn't able to make any architecture break the seg and linedef limit.

So in short, it is a vanilla map, but too many monsters turned up.











Enjoy.

Link:October(v3).wad

so... complevel 3? looks bad ass. you have talent :)

edit: "sky3 not found" I used tnt.wad as iwad in glboom+

Thanks Dannebubinga for the comments.

Just use Doom2.wad as base. Even though it was a TNT2 wad, I have edited it so that it now only requires Doom2.wad to run. :)

the error message remains

Sorry Danne and anyone else. Will return with a solution soon. :)

Coz frankly, I don't know why atm.

Thank you!

I'll try to play the map at night when I'll (probably) drunk and I'll record it. :D

Ok new version up. Hopefully fixed the issues. Thanks to Vermil, phml and essel for technical help regarding the PNAMES and TEXTURE1 lumps, to which I managed to do unspeakable things.

This new version (v3) runs in PrBoom, and in Chocorenderlimits.

FDA: Died at the second big ambush, blah. Fun map so far though. Nice work Kyka.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/1rumbjscda1oom7/octDH_FDA.lmp

Not a bad map at all. I got a ghost revenant and a couple of ghost demons, but they didn't ruin things too much. Playing cautiously, I took a little over 50 minutes to exit (first attempt, no deaths).

Ammo and health were maybe a bit too abundant, and I wasn't really sure where I was meant to use the invul. I assumed there was a large battle coming up, so I cleared the nearby areas, picked up the invul, and then couldn't find anything to fight.

FDA. Plays cautiously for 20 minutes and then starts being forced to run around by ghost monsters, and ultimately dies. Baah. I'm never playing a Kyka map in complevel 2 again even if it is intended for vanilla, you love your archviles rezzing stuff too much. :P

Other than that, it was fun. :)

Edit: reading Grazza's comment, I just thought at times, I wished for *more* health actually, as it is I hid behind corners and abused infighting more than I would have liked to ; but then again I've never been all that good at regular maps.

Thanks heaps for the comments and demos guys. You all made this map look easier than what I assumed it would be for people playing it for the first time.

What complevel do you guys recommend in order to avoid such behaviours as ghosts, so you can play this level in terms of vanilla, without the quirks and bugs that vanilla has?

I actually know very little about complevels and such. (I just mostly just play levels on prboom and ZDoom, thereby avoiding such technicalities), and while I am familiar with archviles making ghosts, they never even crossed my mind when making this map. I know this map breaks the savegame buffer, and I know I would have to reduce the monster count dramatically to make it fit vanilla sprite restrictions, but overall, I thought that limit removing should cover all those bases.

Also, I thought this level would be tougher for first-time playthroughs than it was, so those demo's were much appreciated.

Phml said:

FDA. Plays cautiously for 20 minutes and then starts being forced to run around by ghost monsters, and ultimately dies. Baah. I'm never playing a Kyka map in complevel 2 again even if it is intended for vanilla, you love your archviles rezzing stuff too much. :P

Other than that, it was fun. :)

Edit: reading Grazza's comment, I just thought at times, I wished for *more* health actually, as it is I hid behind corners and abused infighting more than I would have liked to ; but then again I've never been all that good at regular maps.

Nice work dude. You would have finished it had it not been for those pesky ghosts. Looking at it, I probably overdid the archies. I was really trying to make a level where there was always a threat, monsters constantly appearing all around you. None of this 'clear one area and then it stays clear' nonsense. Prowling monsters all over the place. But there might have been a bit much rezzing going on.


Thanks for the playthrough. :)

Ok. I first opened the map in glboom when I got the error message and checked it out for a while. So posting an FDA wouldn't really be an FDA. So I tried a max for ya. But I failed, I couldn't stand looking for the last monsters and secrets.

Exits in exactly 30 mins using complevel 3 after seeing Phml's all ghost whine ;)

http://www.mediafire.com/?9k77bisgtpu23ba

Unless I misunderstand something about complevels (which is entirely possible), complevel 3 (and 4) should retain the ghost bug ; perhaps you just killed the archviles fast enough / didn't let them rez stuff crushed by the door.

I like complevel 9, all the gamebreaking bugs that happen relatively often are fixed and it seems the closest standard to vanilla.

I didn't mind the amount of archies myself, although everytime they came it did seem like a sudden difficulty bump compared to the rest of the map.

dannebubinga said:

complevel 3

Why 3? That's Ultimate Doom or Doom95, and can lead to desyncs with Doom2 wads. -complevel 2 is the one that emulates Doom2.exe (with extended limits).

As for using Boom (-complevel 9) to avoid ghosts, well yes, this works, but there are big differences between Doom2.exe and Boom, which can quite easily break maps that were designed and tested with the other exe/settings. There are some annoyances in Boom (-complevel 9) too: the lost soul limit is not adhered to, which could certainly be a nuisance in this map, and live monsters can get knocked off ledges, which can make a big difference in many maps (and can screw up a Max demo). I'd suggest just accepting ghost monsters as part of the game*, but if you really want to prevent them, you can try -complevel 7, though that has its share of oddities too, and I don't recommend it myself.

KiiiYiiiKiiiA said:

I just mostly just play levels on prboom and ZDoom, thereby avoiding such technicalities

You're not avoiding them; you are just ignoring them. Zdoom has many compatibility settings of its own, but let's put that to one side. If using Prboom(+), then you are always using a complevel of some sort. If you use the "default" (-1), then the behaviour depends precisely on a large number of individual compatibility settings, so it is a much less tightly controlled environment than using any of the complevels from 0-9. Depending on what cfg you used, or what settings you chose if you ever altered them, your settings might make the game very like vanilla, or like MBF, with all sorts of oddball monster AI (regular Prboom tended to be that way out of the box, but presumably everyone uses Prboom+ nowadays, in which case the out-of-the-box settings are more like vanilla).


-------------
* Or avoid monsters dying underneath doors or crushers, etc. :p

Jesus what the ffff... this is the biggest map I've ever played, must've taken an age. It's extremely non-linear aswell

So you gave me a present, that I playtested before, and then you covered it in a new box?! Cheap! :P

I'm just kidding man, thanks heaps for birthday wad!

Is this version much different than before? I'll play it once I can.

Be as it may, between two evils I would rather take the lesser one, and a monster falling down a hole is better to me than an invincible monster chasing me indefinitely. Sticking to specific rulesets despite infuriating showstoppers makes sense in a competitive mindset, but when the goal is entertainment through casual play it doesn't make sense to ruin my own gaming experience for the sake of compatibility purity ; and this failed run reminds me that all too often, my few forays into complevel 2 have ended up with some kind of no win situation due to engine quirks.

Nowadays, most people releasing vanilla or limit-removing are going to use ports, and the documentation is scattered and obscure enough that many will not use the base behavior and instead stick to whatever PrBoom+/ZDoom current default or tweaked settings ; whereas those who will will know enough to specify "plays in -complevel 2" or somesuch.

So really, I was quite stupid and pedantic to try this map in complevel 2 and should know better. My mistake.

A ghost monster is hardly a showstopper - they're neither invincible, nor is the chasing indefinite, as they don't handle height differences very well.

I'm playing this with TNT, enjoying it so far, recommend idmus 18.

I'm finding that it's not the size of the map, but the density of the opposition and number of monster closets that slow down the gameplay. If the monster population was tweaked and *maybe* the map itself condensed a bit it'd be perfect for TNT2.

The reason I chose cl3 is because I couldn't get passed the fact that this was intended for TNT2 wich most certainly will use cl3. I actually thought that the ghost bug was a cl2 issue only.

That demo was only so kyka could watch someone beat his map anyway. No need to discuss this further. I hope you enjoyed it kyka.

Grazza said:

Why 3? That's Ultimate Doom or Doom95, and can lead to desyncs with Doom2 wads. -complevel 2 is the one that emulates Doom2.exe (with extended limits).

dannebubinga said:

The reason I chose cl3 is because I couldn't get passed the fact that this was intended for TNT2 wich most certainly will use cl3. I actually thought that the ghost bug was a cl2 issue only.

You're both wrong! :p

CL3 is 1.9 Ultimate Doom.
CL4 is 1.9 Final Doom/Doom95.

wtf. I suck.

dannebubinga said:

wtf. I suck.

Regarding your demo, dude, you do not suck. You played that level with a confidence that even I myself don't have when playing that level. And I made the damn level. Boldly wading through hordes of monsters, without hesitation. A fine demo, thanks heaps dude.

In fact the demos I have watched so far have made the level look easier than I thought it would be, and Grazza mentions that he finished it first go also. Damn you skilful Doomworlders!

I am glad that it seemed an enjoyable level anyway to people.

Gez said:

You're both wrong! :p
CL3 is 1.9 Ultimate Doom.
CL4 is 1.9 Final Doom/Doom95.

No, you're wrong. Doom95 behaves like Ultimate Doom in matters that affect demo playback (same lost soul behaviour, no Final Doom teleporter bug). You really thought I'd screw up something as simple as that, after testing many thousands of demos for compatibility?

link another link

Nice work! However, I think that you haven't managed to maintain the same level of difficulty. The first 20 minutes or so were very challenging, but at some point I began to feel overpowered. Also, many traps were dissapointing because I could simply run away and then kill everyone from the safe spots. I guess I'm just spoiled by PL2/PRCP/etc. :)

My FDA - http://www.mediafire.com/?3yu41237p6qfn5i

btw ghost monsters were hilarious. :)

Grazza said:

Playing cautiously, I took a little over 50 minutes to exit (first attempt, no deaths).

Have you recorded it? I would like to see how you play on FDAs. :)

No, I didn't record. Actually, it would have been kind of amusing, as I spent a chunk of the first few minutes seeing if I could get into the void. And there was a lot of unnecessary ammo conservation and so on. I doubt it would have been very entertaining, but since you ask, next time I play an unknown wad, I'll record. :)

Memfis said:

Also, many traps were dissapointing because I could simply run away and then kill everyone from the safe spots.

Actually, I liked that, as it rewarded those who think and plan, rather than just run in guns blazing. But maybe it was too easy to avoid a fair fight in many cases.

Grazza said:

No, you're wrong. Doom95 behaves like Ultimate Doom in matters that affect demo playback (same lost soul behaviour, no Final Doom teleporter bug). You really thought I'd screw up something as simple as that, after testing many thousands of demos for compatibility?

Then the PrBoom documentation is erroneous and nobody bothered to fix it.

PrBoom compatibility options
============================

Some of this is a bit dry. You might want to skip to the bottom and read the
examples.

Internally, PrBoom maintains a "compatibility level" which it uses to
determine how to behave in various circumstances. The supported levels are
currently:

Number	Name			Description
0	doom_12_compatibility	Emulate Doom v1.2 game details where possible
1	doom_1666_compatibility	Behave like Doom v1.666 as far as possible
2	doom2_19_compatibility	As compatible as possible for playing original 
				Doom demos
3	ultdoom_compatibility	Ultimate Doom made a few changes
4	finaldoom_compatibility	Compatible with Final Doom & Doom95 - needed
				for some demos recorded with Final Doom doom2.exe
5 	dosdoom_compatibility	Emulate early dosdoom versions
				(some TASdoom demos work with this)
6	tasdoom_compatibility	unused
7 	boom_compatibility_compatibility	Emulates Boom's compatibility mode
8	boom_201_compatibility	Emulates Boom v2.01
9	boom_202_compatibility	Emulates Boom v2.02
10	lxdoom_1_compatibility	Emulates LxDoom v1.4.x
11	mbf_compatibility	Emulates MBF
12	prboom_1_compatibility	Emulates PrBoom v2.03beta
13	prboom_2_compatibility	PrBoom v2.1.0
14	prboom_3_compatibility	PrBoom v2.1.1-2.2.6
15	prboom_4_compatibility	PrBoom v2.3.x
16	prboom_5_compatibility	PrBoom v2.4.0
17	prboom_6_compatibility	Current PrBoom

At least the source comments (in doomtype.h) are accurate; but they're harder to find. Well, I'll update the wikipage at least, its info was based on the doc.

FDA

Gez said:

Then the PrBoom documentation is erroneous and nobody bothered to fix it.

Yes, there are plenty of errors, especially with respect to complevels, in the old Prboom documentation. Fixed in Prboom-plus (see usage.txt).

Prboom-plus has also implemented the behaviours promised in complevels 0 and 6, and improved/completed(?) the compatibility in many others, including Boom and MBF.

There is only single difference (for emulating overflow of heightlist in P_FindNextHighestFloor):

// there is no separate complevel for doom95 :(
MAX_ADJOINING_SECTORS = M_CheckParm("-doom95") ? 500 : 20;