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Snakes

Unholy Realms Public Release Thread (/idgames link posted)

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Well, good news is that I did not encounter any "in-your-face" glitches again after MAP17, so as far as I am concerned, it's the only one that needs some significant review. I didn't use a completely unmodified GZDoom, I should add - I was loading a widescreen HUD (as you can see on the screenies) and Revenant100's Sprite Fixing Project 1.3. But since these only concern sprites and the statusbar, I don't think it has any impact on the bridge visuals. I also didn't use bilinear/trilinear filtering obviously, just "Nearest-neighbor with mipmapping" (I hate blurry textures and sprites in Doom, rather prefer pixellated look), if that helps anything with reproducing the glitch.

Gameplay-wise, I think everything is spot-on. And just for the record, I played it on ITYTD just to see if it's actually possible to beat for less skilled players (such as I am), and I think you found a good balance there, too. Difficulty is still increasing considerably after level 11, which is obviously more or less intended, so I am fine with that. Never ran into any serious problems until the final map, actually... mostly because it is unusually huge for a MAP30, and I was a bit lost with all the key searching and stuff. I will require to see a video in order to realize how it's done without dying, I guess. xD

At the end of the day, this is my third top favorite wad this year (besides Back to Saturn X and the ingenious Hellbound), and once you upload it on idgames, you will definitely get your well-earned five stars from me for sure. ^^

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So I played UR in Zdoom and Zdaemon, but in both ports, my rockets don't reach Romero's head in map30. They are always blocked by linedef 3812. Is there some other switch/trick/whatever which I need to do before I pump the rockets into that brain? Or is is some trick/hack that those two ports don't support?

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What the fffffuuuuuuuccccccckkkkkk?! Seriously, how the hell did that happen? That map is CURSED and some poltergeist keeps moving shit around. Just... wow.

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Good that you didn't upload on idgames yet. :P

And while we are at it... how are you supposed to beat Map30 anyway? I lost patience eventually and just cheated myself to the Romero head because there were too many mobs around and I couldnt figure out how to lower that crazy mini platform/pole/whatever.

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You have to open red and blue bars, then sprint and jump onto that wooden teleporter platform. That will teleport you to the top of the pole in front of Romero's head. It will start going down slowly and you have to time your rocket(s) to shoot into the exposed "brain". When you drop from the pole and use teleporter pad in the toxic hole around it, the bar will raise back up. But it is not very foolproof, because you have to wait until it comes down completely.

To the authors: shouldn't this be better addressed, BTW? Maybe some more pole-raising linedefs tactically placed on the the map, so the player is absolutely sure to raise it before trying to shoot the "brain" again?

Well, all that is theoretical right now, because the "brain" hole is blocked. It seems Snakes accidentaly clicked and moved some linedef. It happens to me too in various CAD programs...

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...and speaking of map17, there is still one nasty HOM on linedef 4208. Also, on HNTR difficulty, 4 monsters (including the cyberdemon) don't teleport into the play area and thus 100% kills are unobtainable. Strangely, they teleport in just fine on UV. Tested on Zdoom.

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Yes. The HOM in 17 and the teleporter bug should be fixed. The icon is most certainly shootable now.

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Having finally gotten around to playing through this I just wanted to say thanks for making this, Snakes. Pretty much every map was a blast to play. Gameplay was exactly the kind of thing I look for: fast action, lots of traps, and easy navigation. If I had to pick some highlights off the top of my head I'd got with 12, 14, 15 (probably my favorite!), 16, 17, 18, 23, 25(my other favorite!). That's not to belittle any of the other maps though, I enjoyed every map in the first episode quite a bit, and probably would have felt the same way about E3 if I had just turned the difficulty down a notch instead of forcing myself to play through death after death.

If I had any quibbles I'd say that a few of the more open maps (like 26) were very aimless feeling in their sense of objectives. Another minor complaint is that there were a handful of areas (mostly in E1, I think) that used pretty much every color in the palette. These would probably look better if the color usage was subdued a bit, IMO.

Anyways this is one of those wads that I'm surely going to revisit more than once. Congrats on the well earned cacoward.

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skillsaw said:

Having finally gotten around to playing through this I just wanted to say thanks for making this, Snakes. Pretty much every map was a blast to play. Gameplay was exactly the kind of thing I look for: fast action, lots of traps, and easy navigation. If I had to pick some highlights off the top of my head I'd got with 12, 14, 15 (probably my favorite!), 16, 17, 18, 23, 25(my other favorite!). That's not to belittle any of the other maps though, I enjoyed every map in the first episode quite a bit, and probably would have felt the same way about E3 if I had just turned the difficulty down a notch instead of forcing myself to play through death after death.

If I had any quibbles I'd say that a few of the more open maps (like 26) were very aimless feeling in their sense of objectives. Another minor complaint is that there were a handful of areas (mostly in E1, I think) that used pretty much every color in the palette. These would probably look better if the color usage was subdued a bit, IMO.

Anyways this is one of those wads that I'm surely going to revisit more than once. Congrats on the well earned cacoward.

Very much appreciate the kind words. Thank you :)

I've said it before and I'll say it again - E1's "palette shock" sort of design stems from the fact that I was still a pretty green mapper at that point in time. One of the more interesting things about the wad is that you can really see growth from one map to the next. If you look for the right things (and it isn't hard to find out what), you could probably guess which map was built in which year of production (17, 28 being very recent for example).

Hopefully with this out of the way I can start getting back into the community and return to the sanity that I once knew.

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MAP08 (Research Point Beta):

How the hell did you make this "dipping" tentacle (sector 134)? Great effect! Is that a widely known quirk, activating a repetitive door action twice?
__

MAP31 (Destructive Infinity):

Missing textures above and below the tele-pod target in the small secret area.


__

Might be related to the source port, Risen3D. The previous one will be hardly noticed. But there is a much more obvious one in MAP16 (Dockside). I hope Abbs and co. can find a reason; I would guess a GL node issue because there are no map lines where the floor breaks.

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Never noticed that myself haha, that area was designed by Valkiriforce, so I'm not sure if it's intentional or not. Looks pretty cool if you ask me though, adds to the abstract surreal feeling of the area IMO.

And it looks like the message I sent to Snakes that contained inspiration and development info about Map31 didn't arrive to it's target audience. Oh well, it doesn't matter.

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LigH said:

MAP08 (Research Point Beta):

How the hell did you make this "dipping" tentacle (sector 134)? Great effect! Is that a widely known quirk, activating a repetitive door action twice?

I'm not sure how widely-known the effect is, but I myself first stumbled across it in Espi's brilliant Suspended in Dusk. If you're looking for a wad that stretches vanilla to the absolute limit, try that out. A lot of really neat tricks in there and some that still boggle my mind.

Also, good catch on Map31. I kinda do like that 'elevated light' look though. Alien looking.

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Hmm, is this still a Public Beta Release Thread if it's got an /idgames link? :P

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I have this downloaded, after reading the review for it, I was pretty sold on the E1 to E2 transition alone. No idea when I'll have time to play it though.

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Another little issue with Risen3D:

In MAP17 (Mising Gamma Sector ... is that a typo?), the fake 3D bridge (sector 580) passes the limits of the render engine. When it raises to allow passing above, it uses the water texture on the bridge. If you manage to fall off, you can see the sky through the water below the bridge.

I wonder if that can be fixed at all (with exception files, if necessary), or if DoomsDay is just not a suitable engine family for this map.

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LigH said:

In MAP17 (Mising Gamma Sector ... is that a typo?), the fake 3D bridge (sector 580) passes the limits of the render engine. When it raises to allow passing above, it uses the water texture on the bridge.

I had this exact same issue in GZDoom 1.8.0.

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Liking it so far, although I got stuck for a good amount of time in map03 right after getting the blue keycard. Eventually I found out that you could shoot the switch in the windowed room with the locked yellow door. Generally I don't like usage of this method in Doom, since there's no visual language to set those switches apart from normal ones.

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GeckoYamori said:

Liking it so far, although I got stuck for a good amount of time in map03 right after getting the blue keycard. Eventually I found out that you could shoot the switch in the windowed room with the locked yellow door. Generally I don't like usage of this method in Doom, since there's no visual language to set those switches apart from normal ones.


I just made a habit out of shooting unreachable switches. Usually doesn't work but occasionally it works x)

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Stuck on Map11 now. I killed the teleporting Cyberdemon, but now I seem to be locked in that room without any way of progressing. I'm assuming the portucullis should be triggered to open once the Cyberdemon is dead? Could be a bug or something which ignored that part.

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Yeah, same thing happened to me right now. I killed the cyberdemon but the bars did not rise. I was playing in Gzdoom. using perkistan animations and sounds mod. Also some autosave mod. What am I supposed to do? give up? gg.... or no clip like a cheater? Well, it were fun a nice levels so far.

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The Cyberdemon was altered via DEHACKED so that he opens doors tagged 666 upon his death, and obviously, any gameplay mods that mess with monsters will spoil it.

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