FreeDoom 0.8 Beta

Should not release with this unfinished MAP19. Please a find a level that is finished to replace it.

MAP19
1. Not playable.
2. Map seems to be unfinished, and cannot exit.
3. map errors
Error: Linedef 2967 is missing sidedef2
Error: Linedef 2969 is missing sidedef2
Error: Linedef 2982 is missing sidedef2
Error: Linedef 2983 is missing sidedef2
Error: Linedef 2984 is missing sidedef2
Error: Linedef 2986 is missing sidedef2
Error: Linedef 2987 is missing sidedef2
Error: Linedef 2988 is missing sidedef2
4. Abrupt teleport entry to castle ruins the nice effect of leaving
previous level.
5. Top of the central tower is being cut off by low sky in the courtyard.
6. Falling off to the outside of the castle traps the player.
7. After getting all keys, still cannot get to inner areas.
Supplies red, blue, yellow skull keys, but doors do not respond to them, they are coded to respond to key cards.
8. Illegal object of type 32000 (in room with yellow skull key).
9. Entering the corridor off the 4'th teleport room, traps the player.
Inside of door is walkover to close the door, which does not work.
Door at far end of corridor requires blue key card, which is not
present.

MAP03
Took out many of the parts I liked.
Hit a trip line, so have multiple monsters before you while multiple
machine-gunners teleport in 15 feet behind you, which is not
very fair on the third map. And there is nothing the player can do
about it on any replay of the level.
Repeat same trap later, hit a trip line, and monsters are teleporting
in all around you.
Trivial items in damaging sectors were not worth getting. Cost me more in damage than any benefit was worth.

MAP04
This is not the new map04.

MAP24
Can see below the horizon out the windows.

wesleyjohnson said:

MAP03
Took out many of the parts I liked.

I wasn't aware this was a birthday map...

Hit a trip line, so have multiple monsters before you while multiple
machine-gunners teleport in 15 feet behind you, which is not
very fair on the third map. And there is nothing the player can do
about it on any replay of the level.

It's actually harder on HMP with the demons. ;)
Also, unless you are a crap shot, you should have plenty of ammo.
Strafing! Infighting!
Note to self: Replace all chaingunners with pistol zombies...

Repeat same trap later, hit a trip line, and monsters are teleporting
in all around you.
[/B]

Plenty of room to retreat into, plus a room not accessible by monsters.

Trivial items in damaging sectors were not worth getting. Cost me more in damage than any benefit was worth.

Yeah, I'll give that to you, it is a bit of a bad move there.

I just ran 4 test replays, I can only shrug. I may not be the creme de la creme of mappers, but a couple ambushes are hardly unfair.

Others should post their comments on the 0.8 beta here, so as to discover any fixable items before releasing it.

The project (you all) must decide what to do about MAP19. This project is well beyond the point where it should have any broken levels in it.
I could fix it, but I am sure some people would have problems with that, and I would probably fix more than necessary.
How long do we wait for the author to notice.

I have in PWADs, several dozen variations of the teleport-the-monsters-10-feet-behind-the-player trap, and I do not care for a single one of them, and I will save all from hearing more on that.
Several of the things that have disappeared were one-of-a-kind, no where
else in the wad, nor in other PWADs, and I consider that a loss.

wesleyjohnson said:

MAP19

8. Illegal object of type 32000 (in room with yellow skull key).

Would this be Legacy giving you problems ? This is DoomBuilder's camera Thing. Most ports have no problem with this and just ignore it.

Doom Builder shouldn't even have a camera thing, it's an awful idea. The camera position should be stored in the *.dbs file instead.

I echo the previous concerns re: MAP19, which is clearly not done.

Now for MAP29. Maybe I'm just missing something, but there appears to be no blue key for skill 1 & 2. I've used noclip and god mode to look through the entire level and the blue key is nowhere to be found even then.

skquinn said:

Now for MAP29. Maybe I'm just missing something, but there appears to be no blue key for skill 1 & 2.

The blue key is there, just hidden behind/under a large health pack (medkit). As it turns out I was not in a position to take a large health pack until I had ventured around the level a few more times and I didn't stumble upon it until later. Keys should not be hidden behind or under other objects.

Started work on modified Map19. It is worse than I previous stated. The lower levels have switches and lifts and doors that are not connected with tag values, so I will have to guess some.
Gave the castle a decent entrance though, it really needed that for appearance sake. Has a second yellow skull key deep in the level, with no clue what it was going to open.

Will leave that thing 32000. It only bothers yadexx, DoomLegacy ignores it. Yadexx is my modified version of Yadex.

Anything I do can be used or removed by the author, if and when he reappears.

I beat this no problem on skill 1 but on skill 2 I'm running into ammo issues, so it needs more ammo and/or slightly fewer monsters. No matter what I do I wind up running out of ammo before the end of the map and I'm maybe 3/4 of the way through the map right now (the big red room). In particular there are too many orb monsters and globe fiends (cacodemon and pain elemental for those used to the normal Doom names) in the red room near the end. I also think a flamebringer (arch-vile) with all those monsters in the cage crosses into unfairness; firing the SKAG (BFG) into the cage works to kill the flamebringer but that eats up too much ammo needed later (so you can see it goes back to a lack of ammo). There also seem to be a few too many undead servants (revenants) and no easy way to take refuge from them especially at the very beginning. I know 0.7 was like this too so maybe this has been brought up before.

In general, the number of monsters in the later levels starts to get out of hand even on the lower skill levels. I'm not expecting a cake walk but it should be at least possible to kill everything given the ammo on hand. If some of the ammo needs to be hidden in secret rooms that's fine. It's good that we have enough health given adequate ammo but resorting to the angle grinder (chainsaw) to kill monsters is not pleasant, and this is what I've had to do to try to conserve ammo (and even then it's often not enough).

I have a save file from my game at the end of MAP26 on skill 2 so I can use that as a reference point to test a new MAP27 and/or give you my stats from it if anyone is interested.

Lower skill levels have not been fully tested, or have had any testing. If you can please make notes about which levels and what skill was used. Pistol starting the map is important.

Catoptromancy said:

Lower skill levels have not been fully tested, or have had any testing. If you can please make notes about which levels and what skill was used. Pistol starting the map is important.

Noted. I have not pistol start tested MAP27 yet, but it almost goes without saying if I run out of ammo with whatever ammo/items I had playing the first 26 maps, a pistol start just means I will run out that much sooner.

I finished a fixed version of MAP19, which has been submitted to incoming.
I await your comments, or hate mail (whatever).

This is the castle that was not finished, and was left unplayable.
Incoming: johnson_map19_06.zip

SpeedyShare: http://speedy.sh/wR9Wf/johnson-map19-06.zip

If this is acceptable, someone needs to commit it before it disappears from SpeedyShare. Unclear where the repository is anymore.

Update:

As of Aug 7, it is still on SpeedyShare, but no sign that anyone has committed it to FreeDoom. Must be on vacation !

SpeedyShare reports 29K "Like" on facebook, and 1,579 Tweets.
I have to expect that these are mentions of SpeedyShare, not my Map19.
With a dial-up modem, I am not going investigating. It has 5 stars !

Has anyone here uploaded it and liked it, or hated it ??

Freedoom is a seriously flawed game, it's impossible to finish at some levels and doors can't be opened without giving a clue about why. Keys can't be found and the only way to be able to move on is to cheat with cheat codes...

As it is now, is it just barely playable and not even nearly as polished as the commercial alternatives.

mikaellq said:

Freedoom is a seriously flawed game, it's impossible to finish at some levels and doors can't be opened without giving a clue about why. Keys can't be found and the only way to be able to move on is to cheat with cheat codes...

As it is now, is it just barely playable and not even nearly as polished as the commercial alternatives.

I have only ever had to use cheat codes on MAP30, MAP27, and the new MAP19. The "invisible maze" in MAP30 is an annoyance, and arguably a quite unnecessary one, but does not specifically need cheat codes to complete. The only reasons I had for using cheat codes there are the sheer quantity of monsters and the lack of health powerups in portions of the level. (Hint: we need a place we can run to to dodge the fireballs from the undead servants; running around and around the "invisible maze" portion in the center only delays getting hit.)

On MAP27, at least as it was, the level was nearly impossible to complete due to, again, too many monsters and not enough health and ammo. I think it's been improved a bit in the beta, though.

MAP19 in the beta, I agree, has no place in FreeDoom as is, and needs a lot of work.

I have adjusted MAP27 awhile ago. Forgot what I did but its in beta.

I have done a fair bit of work on top of wesleyjohnson's map 19. Mainly fixed a potential showstopper when the player entered sector 586. Also, all the silent teleports are seamless, no "shifting floors" or "moving textures" now.

Download link ...

http://speedy.sh/HFFSV/freedoom19.zip

changelog included.

Got Hawkwind version of Map19.

I had been getting itches to fix more on that Map but was trying to resist.

Annoyances that I had left unfinished:
1. Those covers over the teleports that clip the view of the tower.
Thought about moving the river guard tower up-river just enough to
remove that view alignment.
2. Hidden door in blue room that is too wide.
3. Hidden door in blue room that needs backside. Whole wall opens.
4. Towers should be a man height taller than walls. There should be a small set of steps from each wall to the top of the towers.
5. Hidden passage to river tower should not use so much of the wall space. Mostly due to keeping hidden room from original map19.

Don't know if I mentioned this before, but on some maps the music doesn't play in chocolate-doom. I think those tracks are MIDI lumps instead of MUS lumps. I don't know if this affects any other ports...

A couple of Hawkwind's changes wrecked some design decisions in Map19.
I mention these because if I submit any update (not likely right now), I will probably re-redo these areas.

1. Filled in a hole in unfinished stairway that was put there to keep jumpers from bypassing the teleport line.
The change does not break level. I assume that Hawkwind saw it as a place for player to get trapped. My tests showed that it was too small to fall into.
Currently it just 'looks' too solid (opinion).

2. Lower levels where Floor and wall open to get to secret.
This changed tag numbers such that the switch does not move anymore.
This was arranged so that the switch was an extension of the floor that moved down. When the floor moved down the switch moved down with it. The change broke this.
Would be better to just provide a higher floor (maybe, another little block) in secret area so can get out by same method that got in.
Either that or move the little block away from the wall.

wesleyjohnson said:

A couple of Hawkwind's changes wrecked some design decisions in Map19.

1. Filled in a hole in unfinished stairway that was put there to keep jumpers from bypassing the teleport line.
The change does not break level. I assume that Hawkwind saw it as a place for player to get trapped. My tests showed that it was too small to fall into.
Currently it just 'looks' too solid (opinion).

If you mean sector 769, having it at a floor height of 520 ( I think it was 520 ) just looked daft and unrealistic. I changed it to a floor height of 594. Just looks and "feels" better. It had nothing to do with the player being trapped as it couldn't happen anyway.

wesleyjohnson said:

2. Lower levels where Floor and wall open to get to secret.
This changed tag numbers such that the switch does not move anymore.
This was arranged so that the switch was an extension of the floor that moved down. When the floor moved down the switch moved down with it. The change broke this.
Would be better to just provide a higher floor (maybe, another little block) in secret area so can get out by same method that got in.
Either that or move the little block away from the wall.

Fair enough. Just make sure that the player cannot get trapped at sector 586.

Hello (Doom)World!

After I spotted 0.8-beta and the call for testing, I gave Freedoom another playthrough and I have these remarks about the levels. I use Debian's prboom 2.5.0 and played on difficulty 'Bring on the Pain'.

*Spoiler alert* in case someone cares.

*Map05: I accidentally opened the switch at (x=-468,y=269), but I don't know how. Does it have multiple triggers?
*Map09: got stuck near the birthday cake (2510,2783).
*Map10: is obviously not finished, but for what it's worth there's a missing wall at (-4261,529).
*Map11: there's an unreachable secret at about (2577,-431), different from the secret room right next to it. The secret at the end containing the yellow skeleton key is quite evil to trigger, is that OK?
*Map12: the top of the rail at (2394,4426) is missing a texture to close it. That last part of the level seems a bit unfinished, with an apparently useless piece of machinery near that rail and other not-quite-finished ideas.
*Map14 has an invisible column at (1085,-3081) and offers a peek into an unused corridor at (1263,-2449). Also the timing of the door to the not-secret room is quite evil, I couldn't get in after several tries.
*Map15 displays glitches at (1075,-559) and the other lattices.
*Map20 has similar glitches under the bridge at (-1740,1429) and the balcony at (3375,-1486) shows no floor.
*Map23 has an unreachable room with a secret (-588,4198) and other stuff.
*Map24 contains two enemies that didn't spawn, they're kept at (1094,-1161). And how do I open the secret at (367,-490)?
*Map25 has a large unused area, and also three coward monsters around (1239,999).
*Map27 got me stuck at (927,4386), I fell between the crates and the wall. It also has an unreachable exit at the north edge of the centre court (-438,3507). How do I open the pillar at (-84,-152)?
*Map28 shows a narrow glitch at (221,1334).
*Map30 glitches when you reopen the door at (-2248,1609) after you went through.

General remarks:
*I sometimes underestimate the monsters' bounding box, thinking I can get past them but being blocked anyhow. Is that an engine limitation or does Freedoom have narrow sprites?
*The demo player kinda sucks. Is that a feature or a bug?
*The 'blue armor' is actually red.
*As I'm no native English speaker, I'm not very sure but I think there's too many hyphens in the text. E.g. Extreme-carnage, slither-beast, mini-gun.
*An idea for better integration between the levels: provide consistency in which floor types are damaging and which are not (lava, blood, biohazard, ...). The sight of the ooze in map14 made me reluctant to jump into it, remembering map05, but apparently this one was harmless. Also: some levels start with immediate action, which I find a bit annoying as it leaves me no chance to save the game quietly.
*Last question: are the 'Freedoom I' levels released as a WAD? At any rate they don't seem to be included in the Debian package.

Overall, I agree that the levels vary in quality and difficulty, but I certainly enjoyed Freedoom. Thank you for it!

Addendum: map27 also has a narrow piece of floor at (-1713,131) over the canyon, protruding from the platform under the secret switch.

Monster physical size is determined by the engine.
The sprites drawn are supposed to match the physical size, some did not,
and some have been fixed (revenant).
They should be normal sized as the sprites are intended to be used in PWAD.

skquinn said:

The "invisible maze" in MAP30 is an annoyance, and arguably a quite unnecessary one, but does not specifically need cheat codes to complete.

Ah, that was an "invisible maze", I see. To me it was WTF?! and then idclip...

The "unreachable exit" on map27 is for deathmatch. In DM, you're restricted to that central marble arena, so the regular exit is not accessible.

It's not reachable in single player or coop, nor is it meant to be. It's like that bit in the corner on DOOM2.WAD map07 with the BFG and exit switch, that also can't be reached in SP :)

Yeah, I missed the mark with the difficulty balance on MAP27 for sure it seems; I'm glad that Cato has made adjustments (for a long while I had not really had access to DOOM editing tools, as not too long after I made this map I switched to Linux for an extended period, found IIRC that DB didn't seem to like me in Wine, and that Yadex was no longer available in a usable form, so I had no real chance to fix them myself unless I was going to go back to Windows, which while I eventually did for gaming's sake I sought to avoid as long as possible :P).

I will admit part of the reason for that was an intentional design decision. So many DOOM maps, especially PWAD maps (not so much the IWAD generally, although Episode I tended to do it a lot simply because of how many sarges there were and the lack of the more powerful enemies leaving you with a large surplus of shells), seem like they're designed to let the player use mostly one or a favourite weapon throughout, with plenty of ammo for that specific weapon, so you get "an SSG map" or "a plasma gun map" or such.

I'd *intended* for there to be enough ammo, but for you to not be able to use your favourite weapon whenever you like, instead having to switch regularly. Health is another matter; I try to play it by feel, as I'm not a good enough DOOM II player to test a suitably challenging skill 4 myself, and thus frequently rely on god mode (which is decent for testing ammo balance but of course means health and armour can't be gauged experimentally at all) to test my maps.

As for the getting stuck behind crates, that's a new one to me. I know last time I tried the map that Cato had shifted some architecture slightly, so I'm now not sure if it's an error introduced in the revisions or if it was always there (I thought I had tested the crate-jumping room so that you could not get stuck behind something, though ...)

It's been a while since I've tried Freedoom, so I'm foggy on specific coordinates - thus, I am not 100% sure which pillar you mean on map27 and which switch on map05.

I edit maps in Linux using my version of Yadex, which has some fixes and is extended for DoomLegacy. You can have a copy of source, if you want.
There is also xwadtools, and a couple other new editors (Slade, and Eureka) for Linux.

Hey Amarande, thanks for the answer.

The switch on map05 I mean is the one that lowers the pillar with the missile launcher on it. The switch itself is near the pillar, and it's covered until you do some unknown action.

The pillar on map27 is near the start, visible after you open the first door. It's wooden and contains a backpack.

In the crate room, it's near the switch that I got trapped, specifically between the crate that switch lowers and the wall (a segment that looks like a gate). There's a wooden crate blocking my way out.

I didn't pistol-start that map, but if I did I think I'd be annoyed by the late availability of the double-barreled shotgun. It's an efficient weapon, always a welcome sight, and may be able to make up for some ammo shortage if found earlier. I do like that the player needs to conserve ammo and must switch weapons for that. And also good opportunities to let the infighting monsters do the work for you.

Apparently on Extreme-Carnage, there are two Large Technospiders in the first courtyard instead of the one I faced on Bring on the Pain. Maybe it's easier with two, in that case you can get one to kill the other, which by then is severely weakened. Works easily in god mode!

On map05: Two of the torches in the slime tunnels blink in a different way to the others, if you are observant. Both are secret switches; one of them has an obvious function when you hit it, while the other doesn't have an immediately visible function. This second switch is the one that opens the wall in front of the rocket launcher switch.

On map27: One of the nearby wooden mine struts has scratches on one side; pushing on the scratched side lowers the strut with the hidden backpack. (Resource fault, primarily - when I originally created map27, the Freedoom IWAD was still not really up to snuff, particularly with some important monster sprites still being missing, so I used DOOM2.WAD to test the level with. Unfortunately, the scratches are MUCH more visible on DOOM2.WAD's version of the same wood texture than they are in FREEDOOM.WAD's, making it a lot harder to see a possible secret trigger in the latter. *sigh*)

Yup, sadly it does look like you can get stuck between the crates mentioned. Quick and easy fix: I have no objections to the small wooden crate near the offending location being removed for 0.8. (The other crates do need to stay for the level to work as intended but that particular small crate had only cosmetic purpose and seems to indeed cause a potential problem with the level.)

And yes, there are 2 spiders on UV and you're expected to get them fighting one another, much like the cybie+spider on DOOM2 MAP20, or the two spiders on MM1 MAP22 :)

I have a general difficulty with a blinking light as a secret indicator, with all levels that try this... (so this reply is general, not specific to level 5).
It was not a good idea when id did it on one of their levels.

I treat the blinking light as part of the ambiance (when playing).
There are two kinds of blinking light because two blinking lights would sync otherwise. As a player, am I really expected to nose grind and shoot at every bit of odd decoration? I am not going to do that for very long.

The only time a blinking light would be an decent indicator (in my opinion) is if the player was hard stuck and the blinking light was a good first place to nose grind the level for the secret switch.
I do hate nose grinding a level to find the secrets.

Now, a texture difference is much better, or a portion of misaligned wall, just like a secret door might be.

Why is a secret switch supposed to be blinking the lights anyway ??