demo release - The Realms Of Hate

yepp, I've been working on this wad for 2 years now, there has been some breaks, but now its time to release something. this is the first
wad I release, so this will all be very exiting.

recomended engine: GZDoom

style: PSX DOOM
features: new monsters, weapons, PSX soundtrack, 9 maps and new textures
REQUIRES: jump, crounch, mouselook

unfinished: complete credits list, maps, soundtrack order, complete level branch system.

in full version more maps will be added, maybe some new monsters.
also buggs will be taken care of
if you see any bugs, please report

the only work that is mine is the map, mapinfo, interpic and HUD changes and I did modify some decorate, the rest is made by the great DOOM community :)



story:
Shortly after the backup squad was sent to Triton your superior
officer recived a message telling about that the entire planet
had fallen into a great event of anomaly, energy patterns known as "demonic"
had turned all personel on the surface into what seems to the same as on the
moons on mars about 9 yeras ago - the undead.

The main faciliteis on Triton had gone through lockdown process to
save as much work as possible from this incident, the occupation of
what many would call Hell has obviously gone lost, and the urgent
search for artifacts had from now on halted.

Now its you who have to clean upp the mess, easy talk from your
superiors, hard work for you. Though this is not the first time you
are into this kind of job on the same spot, they also want you to
find the source of the hell leakage which the alpha squads used to do
when they were alive.

Your destination is the Triton Drill Labs which are divided into
several structures designed to limit an invasion such as this one,
the entry area was made to be easily cracked open by UAC troops to
counter any unathourized entry in the facility.

The last of your team head to the space bay to enter the dropships
and head to the Triton, as you leave orbit from Netpune you have
about minus 1.5 hours before you are at the fray.

DOWNLOAD WAD- http://musho.org/gargwads/The%20Realms%20Of%20Hate%20Demo%20V1%20(v20).wad
NOTE: file size may be a comlete bitch, for now
DOWNLOAD ENGINE-
http://www.osnanet.de/c.oelckers/gzdoom/download.html

Oh, sounds great. Did you take inspiration from TOP? Downloading this now.

Springy said:

Oh, sounds great. Did you take inspiration from TOP? Downloading this now.

yes I did, VERY much
I have played PSX DOOM myself when I was younger, and indeed its the best variant of DOOM there is :D

D_GARG said:

yes I did, VERY much
I have played PSX DOOM myself when I was younger, and indeed its the best variant of DOOM there is :D

Yes, it was the first version I played, music imo didn't really fit suited better in 64. The sounds were a lot more improved though and the extra maps were great. Good luck with this project.

... where in Smiths underwear is everybody? I thought people love PSX inspired maps :C

Springy said:

Yes, it was the first version I played, music imo didn't really fit suited better in 64. The sounds were a lot more improved though and the extra maps were great. Good luck with this project.

When you're spending an average of 15 minutes running around a single level, Slayer/Megadeth MIDIs tend to get on the nerves a bit. Gimme Hodges' beatless evil any day.

@D_GARG: Can't speak for anyone else, but I completely missed this. Grabbing now.

EDIT: Played the first 2 maps. Here's my 2p's worth so far:

- Liking that you're not afraid to merge vanilla and D64 textures, and interesting use of desaturated lighting along with the colour. Overall, good looking, but a bit bare in places.
- Check the DECORATE code for the Glock. The fire state still leaves an image of the pickup sprite in the corner of the screen.
- I spent most of the seconf half of MAP02 switching between the Glock and the Chainsaw. Just a touch more ammo would be nice.
- Your turbo doors close a bit too quickly.

I'll be carrying on with this during the week. I'll keep you posted if I come up with anything else.

aaah I thought you would show up :) thanks for the feedback, people should do as you as a best example C:

This isn't too bad... it looks pretty nice and has some good gameplay and challenge. The maps tend to drag on a bit though, imo. There's a "script 0" error in MAP08, seems to be related to monster teleports (I didn't open it in an editor to find out for sure though, so I could be wrong as to its origin).

Eponasoft said:

This isn't too bad... it looks pretty nice and has some good gameplay and challenge. The maps tend to drag on a bit though, imo. There's a "script 0" error in MAP08, seems to be related to monster teleports (I didn't open it in an editor to find out for sure though, so I could be wrong as to its origin).

hmmm I better check it out, and sting that script into place
this error is visible in console?

Yeah, and GZDOOM pops up messages about it repeatedly. It's in a part where a bunch of monsters teleport onto the map. I took a screenshot of it but it's so dark that I doubt it'll help much... GZDOOM just starts saying "P_STARTSCRIPT: UNKNOWN SCRIPT 0"

I read this as "The Realm of Hats"; I think I play too much TF2.

I'm not really liking this so far. I'm only on MAP02, but it just feels too switch-hunty. That's never fun. Unlike scalliano, I think the Doom 64 resources clash horribly against the stock Doom textures. The Glock makes zero sense from a function standpoint, and it pulls your view up even with mouselook off and never resets it to default. For its function, I'd recommend replacing it with one of the machine gun sprites from the alphas. Stealth monsters are about as fun as switch hunts.

The overall level design seems good, but this just isn't doing it for me. I'd also recommend removing the music from future versions and using the gameinfo lump to load the music pk3 from the PSX TC if it's present, rather than inflating the size of the wad.

I tried it out but to be honest I really dislike using GZDoom to play Doom I think it looks terrible when you go close to a wall fast and it looks like everything gets rendered on an angle. The lighting could definitely use more gradient transitions for instance on the second map you have a light level of 240 and the surrounding sector is at 144 this just a real ugly use of lighting I think. I also think the music and sound effects are simply novelty there is no need for them considering the inflation they cause.

Ok, that would be the bad things the good things, I really enjoyed the layouts they're pretty interesting and when you have good layouts and good texture choices you generate detail without the need for extra linedefs.

Recommendations:

- Make this compatible with Zandronum I don't know about you but for me if I want to play with myself i'd jerk off! But really for me Doom has always been entirely a multi-player experience (ya I'm 31 and played Doom MP off my 14.4 modem heh) and I really get turned off playing a WAD that is meant only for single player it couldn't get any more boring than that!

- Improve the lighting with lots of gradients between light levels this will really enhance the overall look even in the first Map first area you can really see the mono-luminous feel which to me makes Maps look flat and kills perspective.

- There are some areas that don't match the overall level of detail with the rest of the Map and to me that is a sign you just didn't care or simply too lazy to bother with any detail.

It's pretty good overall don't get me wrong but I think you really need to address some of the issues I've listed here if you want to your Wad to really shine.

Pottus said:

- Make this compatible with Zandronum I don't know about you but for me if I want to play with myself i'd jerk off! But really for me Doom has always been entirely a multi-player experience (ya I'm 31 and played Doom MP off my 14.4 modem heh) and I really get turned off playing a WAD that is meant only for single player it couldn't get any more boring than that!

duuuuuuude...

What? You think I making that up? I never play Doom on my own unless I'm doing testing it's pretty damn boring!

But where are the screenshots?

@pottus

yeah, I think I can enable this wad for multiplayer, (almost) all great wads do have multiplayer

But, the lack of gradient lightning is actually a part of the design, I know its wierd, but when you think about it, PSX DOOM did have some characteristic ugliness that made it all so magical, if dont remember wrong scalliano did have some gradient lightning lack but he did have less defference between ligning levels for example he didnt have 2 sectors which had 240 vs 144, as I recall he had more like 176vs144, visually there is a major difference there.

I can do something about it, but those small details will do major difference, I feel that its a choice between classic feeling and actual map development.

I could talk about the way ID did, but that story I can wait with,

thanks for the feedback :D I will do something about the akward lightning.


@gemini09

you're right, I should have some, I can fix that too.

@Eponasoft

I suspect you have a version that do not support the script, but to be honnest I dont know why you get the error, my guess is that you try the latest version of GZDoom, when I think about it, I should link to the correct engine.

@Dragonsbrethren

the glock do have a function, but its a very short one, its not fun if you find chaingun or machinegun in the very first map, but if you have a somehow faster veapon than shotgun, you also can play the map in different styles, I wanted that glock to remove stiffness, but I agree it can be a pain even for me, I suck at code, thats not too much fun either :/ I think that in the end I will do something about the glock.
I should have mentioned the need for jump, crounch and mouselook, but hey, its GZDoom you can for sure find issues like this in any wad made for this engine, muahaha :F

about the sounds I didnt even think about that I could have mapinfo requesting sounds from a separate file, thanks for the hint :)
but one thing I find really amusing is how conserned many DOOMers are when it comes to file size, for the sake of peoples patience I will pack it into a .rar so the download becomes faster, but these days there are harddrives aeons above any remark for 60mb of space, especially if you have a passion for windows7 (I prefeer windowsXP) and what really saves my ass is that the soundtrack is in .ogg format.
I think its worth to try to load the sounds from thp PSX .pk3, I just better find a tutorial or just wait for someone to explain the process to me.

So wait, there is a machine gun too? I must've missed that, I just suggested it since it seemed like the Glock was intended to be one. It seems ridiculous to have a pistol that fires that fast.

I wouldn't worry about the gradient lighting. I don't think it does much for visuals and it makes pretty much every sector lighting effect fail, so you miss out on blinking, glowing and flickering lights. That and I just prefer hard edges to lights; I personally think they look a lot better than gradients in most situations.

As for the music, add this to a GAMEINFO lump (not the gameinfo section in MAPINFO, its own lump):

LOAD = "PSXTCMUS.PK3"

As long as the pk3 is somewhere GZDoom can find it, it'll autoload. Granted, being concerned about file size is a bit silly nowadays, but I figure other players can also appreciate just having to have one copy of this music that other projects can utilize, rather than every PSX-style project including copies of the same oggs/mp3s.

Dragonsbrethren said:

Unlike scalliano, I think the Doom 64 resources clash horribly against the stock Doom textures.

Not necessarily. In some areas the combination seems pretty coherent to me:

Other areas are less than optimal, but then texture-clash is possible with no custom resources at all. My only gripe from a visual standpoint is that many areas are a bit plain.

Now for the bad news! At the moment I'm still trying to get out of MAP03, and the sheer number of stealth enemies is really beginning to fray my temper. They are fucking everywhere, and the number of times I've been flattened by small-fry that I just couldn't see is well into double-figures.

Also, the Dark Vile in this level is in a really cheap spot. Given that he can still hurt you when you're behind cover it's really easy to get pinned to the elevator. Swap the regular Archie out for him in this area.

On the subject of Archies, this map is getting on for Jade Earth levels of spammage in that department. I'm all for difficulty, but this is MAP03. How many maps are you planning?

Regarding lighting, it's fine. No real need for gradients as DB said. Also, the map layouts so far are fine, and ammo balance is picking up too.

Finally, the filesize. I'm on a 20Mb pipe, so I have no problem with it, but others aren't so fortunate. It's good practice to .zip/.rar your files anyway, so it's recommended.

D_GARG said:

I suspect you have a version that do not support the script, but to be honnest I dont know why you get the error, my guess is that you try the latest version of GZDoom, when I think about it, I should link to the correct engine.

Updated to the latest build to see if it would happen again... and it did.





I looked at the relevant SCRIPTS file and there's nothing there that suggests a problem. So I took a look at your MAP08 in DB1... and you have a bunch of enemies in sector 16 that have 80 as their special but do not define any parameters.

@epanosoft

UUUUUUH SNAPP! thanks for this specific pointing, else I've gone lost of finding the suorce of that error :P
next is to fix that mistake.


@scalliano

I see there is far too much stealth monsters, I could switch most of them to transulent instead, I wanted them to do nasty things but since I am the one who makes these maps I set it all to my level and thats, just not good for others :/

I will also spoil the number of maps planned: 16 normal maps, and 5 secret maps, total 21 maps.

the darkvile can be placed elsewere, I want it in map03, just wait for more cluster fuck, map03 is huge :F

@DB

I think that specifying which .ogg file in the pk3 is what to do, the raw mechanics is something I can do without any difficulty, perhaps I might need some help, but if, I post about it here :)

Dragonsbrethren said:

Stealth monsters are about as fun as switch hunts.

This is generally true. Not unlike Cyberdemons, stealth monsters should be used in moderation and with a specific purpose, not spammed all over the level. Being spanked repeatedly by hoardes of stealth zombiemen is just plain bad placement, but a pair of stealth Barons in a medium-sized room or a platoon of stealth Cacodaemons in an open space is both practical and memorable. Being swarmed by stealth low-lifes in tight spaces just pisses off the player and gives a negative impression of the map, and doing it on more than one map ruins the whole experience. Using translucent monsters is probably a better idea in this case.

No need to ditch the Dark Vile completely, my suggestion is that there's a regular Archie around the corner. Ditch the regular Archie and put the Dark Vile in his place. Or, better still, the middle of that arena would be perfect.

actually, about the darkvile

I dont remember where I found them, and I have not been searching much for the source, which I will have to do, but I do remember that the source had many intresting things to add, for what ever DOOM related.
have anyone seen darkviels anyhere?

Only place I've seen them is in Scoredoom.

okay this project is going awfully slow, no new maps added so far , though some enhancement.

expect this to be ready in 2013 or if worse 2014.

any major change or new map will be announced and demo uploaded

Man, this wad has some potential.

I like it, I only wish that there weren't any new weapons. It could be played with Brutal Doom then, and that would be a good answer for some of the questionable weapon choices (plus, I'm just really into Brutal Doom).

Level atmosphere is really good, and I like that. I also love the fiery background every time I see it in a wad.

Great Job!

VylePhinder said:

Man, this wad has some potential.

I like it, I only wish that there weren't any new weapons. It could be played with Brutal Doom then, and that would be a good answer for some of the questionable weapon choices (plus, I'm just really into Brutal Doom).

Level atmosphere is really good, and I like that. I also love the fiery background every time I see it in a wad.

Great Job!

thank you :D

some weapons just have to be ignored in this wad, sometimes they are handy, and sometimes, they suck.

Okay it was a long time since anything was either said or done with this , how ever I can say that it is possible that I will ahve one more map ready before thi summer, and I think that its better that I release map by map along with the rest of the wad, you guys who are on a slow line can ask me to upload the new maps separately but only if anyone gives a request here.

this new map is so far in my opinion something unique to me, I havent made any map like this before and I am exited about what you will think of it when its done.

I made a change to the glock18: most of the original DECORATE script is used, so the sprite glitch is probably not there anymore and therefore fixed.

Okay boys and girls, I will release DEMO2 which is kinda the same as the first but we have

ONE MAP MORE

and

SOME NICE DECORATE FIXES AND MODIFICATIONS

I will upload it one the same spot so hit this link: http://musho.org/gargwads/The%20Realms%20Of%20Hate%20Demo2%20V21.wad

and have a comfortable download
no secret levels are yet added.

give some feedback c: you who already have tested these maps, I can spoil that in map03 is alot of newstuff

Rise from the dead
https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/105021-testing-sequence/