Monument - an eps. 2 replacement - Released!

Update sept. 25: I have uploaded the final version to the archieves! Thanks to everyone who encouraged me and provided me with invaluable feedback in this thread! This community is awesome and it makes it all worth while!

Download Monument from /idgames!.

(If you haven't played the episode during the beta releases, then please note that there might be a lot of spoilers in this thread if you choose to start reading the replies).

Enjoy! :)

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I had a chat with a good friend and he agreed with me: Time to try something new! Instead of just using my usual band of testers (they are ofc still helping me), I have decided to also do a, sort of, open-beta test of my latest creation - Monument. I urge you to give it a whirl and leave some feedback here in this thread if you like. Any help, commentary or critism is greatly appreciated. Even if it's just to say that there's a spelling mistake in one of the map names or detailed critisism on each map. Or you can just download and play it, including bugs and all :)

So, what is Monument exactly? Well, as boring as it sounds, it's "just" an episode 2 replacement consisting of all my prior episode 2 pwads with maps ranging from 1998 to 2015. But I haven't just compiled them into one wad. Every map has been tweaked in some way. Right from minor adjustments to major revamping! I've gone through a lot of effort and many weeks of hard work to make sure that this is a quality release, that I can be proud of. There's a new statbar, music and color palette + more. Anyway, there's more information in the zip's text file if you care to read it.

I will try and answer your comments or questions as fast as I can, but since my girlfriend and I recently went from two to three people in this household, sparetime is in short supply! Depending on the bugs you find, I will wait as long as I can with compiling/releasing a new version with fixes. If there are critical bugs, then I will ofc upload a new version.

Vanilla? Nope, I don't think so. Limit removing is the way to go. And I've seen some weird stuff happening on complevel 2: If you use it and have any ideas on what is going on and how it can be fixed, then please, let me know. Demos are of course welcome!

Enough rambling! Here are some screens and a download link:

E2M1 FDA. I liked the map, but not really the dim filtered palette - I will probably remove it from my copy of the wad, hope it won't cause problems. I didn't find a way to the second secret, although I've been trying to. Anyway, nice, short and sweet level. :)

I knew I could count on you, Sci! :)

Thanks for the praise and the demo. You weren't or aren't the first one to have trouble finding a way into that second secret area. I must say, you've got the patience of a saint for having tried so long! Based on this demo and the moaning from SteveD, I should probably make it a little more obvious and not so obtuse ;)

I forgot to mention that there was an infinitely tall blocking hanging body in the crate room in E2M1.

Anyway, here are E2M2 + E2M3 FDAs. Both maps were great, IMO. E2M2 might have had too much ammo, but I liked its health balance. E2M3's balance and challenge was excellent, I just didn't finish it because I've got fed up of dying at that moment, but I think you should keep it just like that. Layouts, aesthetics and secrets were good everywhere.

Fdas for the first 4 maps.

This episode looks really cool for what I have seen so far. Layout, aesthetics, and gameplay. I like the new palette, maybe sometimes it's a bit too dark on low light (especially M2). The new sounds are a nice addition too, but the chaingun one is a bit odd. Very cool secrets. Imo in M2 there could some more rockets in the final cacos wave. M4 is really tough on pistol start, I died many times and gave up for now. I think some more health is needed. The sectors that close the area with the Plasmagun don't have the texture on the side facing the players causing homs, you will see this in the demo.
I will resume this later, I'll finish MAP4 and keep going on the other maps.

Nice-looking levels. For some reason the palette changes make me perceive everything pink as being bathed in red light. M1 music is very good -- source?

delete me

delete me

scifista42 said:

I forgot to mention that there was an infinitely tall blocking hanging body in the crate room in E2M1.

Anyway, here are E2M2 + E2M3 FDAs. Both maps were great, IMO. E2M2 might have had too much ammo, but I liked its health balance. E2M3's balance and challenge was excellent, I just didn't finish it because I've got fed up of dying at that moment, but I think you should keep it just like that. Layouts, aesthetics and secrets were good everywhere.

Thanks. I'll put the blocking hanging body on my to-do list along with all the other things you guys are mentioning!

Watched the demos, thanks again for those! I always get some hints to change some minor things just from watching you guys play the levels. Really useful!

@Gaspe: Haven't got the time now to watch your demos, so I'll do that later and get back to you :)

rdwpa said:

Nice-looking levels. For some reason the palette changes make me perceive everything pink as being bathed in red light. M1 music is very good -- source?

Thanks! It's Pipeline by Jimmy.

gaspe said:

Fdas for the first 4 maps.

This episode looks really cool for what I have seen so far. Layout, aesthetics, and gameplay. I like the new palette, maybe sometimes it's a bit too dark on low light (especially M2). The new sounds are a nice addition too, but the chaingun one is a bit odd. Very cool secrets. Imo in M2 there could some more rockets in the final cacos wave. M4 is really tough on pistol start, I died many times and gave up for now. I think some more health is needed. The sectors that close the area with the Plasmagun don't have the texture on the side facing the players causing homs, you will see this in the demo.
I will resume this later, I'll finish MAP4 and keep going on the other maps.

Thanks for the praise, glad you're liking it so far!

Yeah, that palette, hehe! If Sci's the only one who deletes it, then I call it a victory :) I won't be easily convinced into deleting it, but let's see. The chaingun sound on the other hand... well, I'm leaning more towards getting rid of it. Let's see if anyone else expresses a dislike for it.

I'll put more rockets into the Caco fight, which will probably be redesigned a bit based on feedback and the demos I've seen so far of it.

And thanks for finding the hom! I'll put that on my to-do list as well!

Unlike my first 3 demos, I will be recording on -complevel 3 from now on, because I've just realized that's the proper complevel for Doom 1 wads.

E2M4 FDA. So far, this was the best map gameplay-wise, with good balance and satisfying non-linearity, and almost everything else great as well - except the bugs. HOM-filled walls in the dark corridors near the plasmagun, sleeping imp on the outdoor ledge near the start, a shootable voodoo-doll near the exit room, and a shotgun room where I've eventually got stuck and had to abort the demo.

Just beat M2 and really enjoying it so far :) I really like the mood the palette sets - It's like looking at a photo from the 70's. Gives a very "old, abandoned" vibe that suits well to all the computer panels overgrown by vines and sections of base covered by the hell guts. Sadly I don't have sound at the moment but I was providing my own mental soundtrack that was slow, steady and eerie.

Looking forward to beating this one!

Fdas for MAPS 4,5 and 9

MAP4 was tough. I was able to reach the exit, but since I wanted to search for the other secrets I came back and I got stuck in the nukage pool near the exit, and I stopped to record there. I noticed the voodoo-doll too.
MAP5 was really interesting, lots of snipers to cover the ground. I wasn't able to find any key, and I couldn't find a way to get into the building I didn't explore. I was able to reach the secret exit though. Maybe I will have another run to see if I missed something to get to the normal exit.
MAP9 it's fine. A pretty cool more-slaughter level in Doom 1 style.

Right. So, I realised something based on the comments here. Yeah, it's bad :( But M4 is fucked. The starting point is not correct. That's a player1 start I put in for some testing and it's not supposed to be there! You're supposed to start in a completely different area. I'm so sorry about this, what a stupid mistake! :(

OP has been updated with a new version to beta3. Or click here!

Gonna come back to all with replies to your demos and comments. Better go have something to eat first.... yikes.

FDAs for M5-M7, still recorded on beta2!

I knew M5, it's good, just confusing for navigation sometimes. And there was another game-breaking bug: The 2 teleporters (just before getting the red key) didn't lower when I pressed the switch. This typically happens when there's a monster stuck inside ceiling somewhere in the map, for example when a random monster teleports into a teleport destination inside a sector with 0 ceiling height because it hasn't opened yet. Let me rephrase it: Zero ceiling height doesn't block monsters from teleporting in there, but then these monsters will block any floors in the whole map from moving.

M6 was another fun map. The killing teleporter was really bad, though.

M7 - another great one. Only the proper path to the yellow key was obscured a lot. And fights towards the exit were best to be skipped, it seemed very easy and advantageous, and I also did it because I thought I was too low on health.

I must also say, the music in this wad is awesome throughout.

I'm a big fan of oldschool wads and when I saw e2m2 before reading the first post, I thought you just stole it from 2002ado. :D
Awesome maps, I like them - both gameplay and design, but that palette and new sounds distracted me a bit. Music choice is pretty good as well. I also made some FDAs, but they're worthless.

E2M8 + M9 FDAs, still on beta2.

The maps were kinda similar to each other. I could definitely feel the epicness, but in the end, I thought these maps were the weakest and least replayable of the whole episode. They were symmetrical arenas, and involved too much running around and trivial slaughter, instead of direct combat in various environments like it was before. I'm not sure how the conclusion and the secret level could have looked like to be better, though. But truth is, when I died in the end of E2M8 with 3 Cyberdemons left alive, I thought replaying the map and the fight would be nothing but waste of time.

All right! Back from dinner and from watching your interesting and fun demos! Here are some much deserved replies to your kind and useful comments! Got a good long list of things that need fixing or tweaking thanks to you guys! And there's probaly more to come, so I better get cracking! :)

scifista42 said:

Unlike my first 3 demos, I will be recording on -complevel 3 from now on, because I've just realized that's the proper complevel for Doom 1 wads.

E2M4. So far, this was the best map gameplay-wise, with good balance and satisfying non-linearity, and almost everything else great as well - except the bugs. HOM-filled walls in the dark corridors near the plasmagun, sleeping imp on the outdoor ledge near the start, a shootable voodoo-doll near the exit room, and a shotgun room where I've eventually got stuck and had to abort the demo.

As you have probably already figured out, all this weird stuff was because of the wrong/extra player spawn point. But thanks for telling me ofc! :)

Doomkid said:

Just beat M2 and really enjoying it so far :) I really like the mood the palette sets - It's like looking at a photo from the 70's. Gives a very "old, abandoned" vibe that suits well to all the computer panels overgrown by vines and sections of base covered by the hell guts. Sadly I don't have sound at the moment but I was providing my own mental soundtrack that was slow, steady and eerie.

Looking forward to beating this one!

What a good way to describe the color palette! I hadn't thought of it exactly like that, but I definitely see what you mean.

gaspe said:

MAP4 was tough. I was able to reach the exit, but since I wanted to search for the other secrets I came back and I got stuck in the nukage pool near the exit, and I stopped to record there. I noticed the voodoo-doll too.
MAP5 was really interesting, lots of snipers to cover the ground. I wasn't able to find any key, and I couldn't find a way to get into the building I didn't explore. I was able to reach the secret exit though. Maybe I will have another run to see if I missed something to get to the normal exit.
MAP9 it's fine. A pretty cool more-slaughter level in Doom 1 style.

As above with Scifista42 for an explanation to all the weird stuff. All fixed in beta3.

As for M5... well, you would have fared a lot better if you had just taken the other teleport in the big building you enter about a million times! And where you choose to consistently only enter the left teleport! Try the right one :D

Thank you for the demos so far! It gives me ideas for further tweaking watching them!

scifista42 said:

I knew M5, it's good, just confusing for navigation sometimes. And there was another game-breaking bug: The 2 teleporters (just before getting the red key) didn't lower when I pressed the switch. This typically happens when there's a monster stuck inside ceiling somewhere in the map, for example when a random monster teleports into a teleport destination inside a sector with 0 ceiling height because it hasn't opened yet. Let me rephrase it: Zero ceiling height doesn't block monsters from teleporting in there, but then these monsters will block any floors in the whole map from moving.

M6 was another fun map. The killing teleporter was really bad, though.

M7 - another great one. Only the proper path to the yellow key was obscured a lot. And fights towards the exit were best to be skipped, it seemed very easy and advantageous, and I also did it because I thought I was too low on health.

I must also say, the music in this wad is awesome throughout.

Hmm, that teleport thing in M5... it's probably because of the low complevel you're using. I've experienced this as well. Maybe I should try and fix it. It would be a shame to have people not use complevel 2 or 3 just because of this bug. There are at least one more bug in this map that doesn't occur on higher complevels.

Sorry about the killer teleport. It's been trolling people since 2004, so I feel kinda bad removing it ;) But on the other hand: There is a warning sign :P

Sorry that you feel the path to the yellow key is obscured. I kinda see what you mean, because it's been critized before through the years in various reviews. I should probably just admit defeat and face the fact, that although people dig many of my puzzles, this one falls flat because of its needless switch hunt theme. I'll put it on the to-do list :)

ClumsyDoomer said:

I'm a big fan of oldschool wads and when I saw e2m2 before reading the first post, I thought you just stole it from 2002ado. :D
Awesome maps, I like them - both gameplay and design, but that palette and new sounds distracted me a bit. Music choice is pretty good as well. I also made some FDAs, but they're worthless.

Stole it!? But... but... it's my own creation! ;) Thanks for liking the maps. Duely noted about the sounds. But again, the palette stays... so far.

scifista42 said:

E2M8 + M9. The maps were kinda similar to each other. I could definitely feel the epicness, but in the end, I thought these maps were the weakest and least replayable of the whole episode. They were symmetrical arenas, and involved too much running around and trivial slaughter, instead of direct combat in various environments like it was before. I'm not sure how the conclusion and the secret level could have looked like to be better, though. But truth is, when I died in the end of E2M8 with 3 Cyberdemons left alive, I thought replaying the map and the fight would be nothing but waste of time.

I see what you mean. And well M9 is the end fight from The Wailing Horde, so I guess there's a good reason why they might feel alike. But I reallly, really tried to make an omnious looking and original map for M8. I can see that there are similarietes in the gameplay department, but still... Anyway, your comments are duely noted and I hope you'll perhaps give M8 another chance sometime. Thank you so much for playing and for providing me with inspiring demos!

Chris Hansen said:

As for M5... well, you would have fared a lot better if you had just taken the other teleport in the big building you enter about a million times! And where you choose to consistently only enter the left teleport! Try the right one :D

D: I thought that I took both, and than that they take to the same place. I guess I will give it a proper go then.

Fdas for M6,7,8 and I re-do a run on M4; I used the beta3

M4: with this start the traps have more sense, and the progression is better I think.
M6: really cool map. In my first try I took the instant death teleport. This is more like a normal demo until that point. I noticed that on the ceiling of a sector of the ending corridor there are like 2 different flats overlapped.
M7: this one was really good too. I liked the baron that returns at the ending cave.
M8: location is cool. Interesting to give more high-ground to the cyberdemons but how they are disposed they don't encourage you to fight them. Idk, maybe put 2 of them in the outdoor area and make this bigger.

Overall the maps are awesome, both visuals and gameplay was really good. Also nice music selection! And I guess I will look at how to get all the secrets I missed :)

gaspe said:

M4: with this start the traps have more sense, and the progression is better I think.
M6: really cool map. In my first try I took the instant death teleport. This is more like a normal demo until that point. I noticed that on the ceiling of a sector of the ending corridor there are like 2 different flats overlapped.
M7: this one was really good too. I liked the baron that returns at the ending cave.
M8: location is cool. Interesting to give more high-ground to the cyberdemons but how they are disposed they don't encourage you to fight them. Idk, maybe put 2 of them in the outdoor area and make this bigger.

Overall the maps are awesome, both visuals and gameplay was really good. Also nice music selection! And I guess I will look at how to get all the secrets I missed :)

I'll look into the issues you mention and some I noticed in two of your demos (yeah, still need to watch two of them, but I'm getting sleepy, will do that tomorrow). Thanks again for playing and I'm glad you overall liked the episode! :)

And to the writers of the music: I hope you're reading all these positive comments! Jimmy, Paul and Xaser: You rock and we love you! :D

Just finished M1 and M2. Nice. I've always liked your stuff. No issues with M1. In M2, missing linedef tag 4 which prevents some Pinkies and Skulls teleporting out of a closet. Also, I went back down the lift out of the last room to get some ammo and I couldn't figure out how to make the lift lower again. The ammo was along the sides of the room and I never crossed linedef tag 31 in the middle of the room. Actually, I did, but that was while the lift was still going back up. When I crossed it again, I was surprised because I didn't know what I had done. Maybe make linedef tag 31 stretch across the room like linedef tag 27.

Onward.

LOVE the music!

Edit: Forgot. At first I thought there might be too many Bullet Boxes in M2, then I hit the Caco swarm in the last room and drained my Chaingun.

Never mind.

Edit2: Titlepic has Doom Player with one really bright green shoulder. Looks odd.

EffinghamHuffnagel said:

Just finished M1 and M2. Nice. I've always liked your stuff. No issues with M1. In M2, missing linedef tag 4 which prevents some Pinkies and Skulls teleporting out of a closet. Also, I went back down the lift out of the last room to get some ammo and I couldn't figure out how to make the lift lower again. The ammo was along the sides of the room and I never crossed linedef tag 31 in the middle of the room. Actually, I did, but that was while the lift was still going back up. When I crossed it again, I was surprised because I didn't know what I had done. Maybe make linedef tag 31 stretch across the room like linedef tag 27.

Onward.

LOVE the music!

Edit: Forgot. At first I thought there might be too many Bullet Boxes in M2, then I hit the Caco swarm in the last room and drained my Chaingun.

Never mind.

Edit2: Titlepic has Doom Player with one really bright green shoulder. Looks odd.

I'll take a look at the lift and see if I can make it a bit more fool proof :D There are other issues with that lift and the end fight, so expect a lot of changes to those two final rooms! I'll take a look at Doomguys armor and see if we can't camouflage him slightly better. Thanks for commenting!

OP updated with download link to beta4. Lots of changes, especially to M2 end area and M7 yellow key area. I'd be really grateful if someone could comment whether it has improved or not. I really hope so, because I really tried my best to address the issues.

Here's the full list of changes from beta3 (big thanks to you guys for having helped me find all those bugs!):

If I forgot something, then please let me know so we can move on :)

Just downloaded beta4 and gave it a whirl in GZDoom. Ran right through M1 and UV maxed it: what a blast! It don't know if it was just me or what, but the pacing was nonstop and so much fun. Music was great, and I love the dingy palette, too.

Thank you Sal-Man Z! I'm glad you're liking it so far! Let's hope the rest of the episode continues to impress :)

New version available for download. More problems have been fixed and addressed. This will be very close to the final release (I hope).

Here's the list of the more important changes:

Download link to beta5 can be found in OP.

Also: If someone can explain why the sky is completely fucked up in Eternity, I'd love to hear what can be done about it. As far as I can see, this is the only port it happens in. At some point I ran WCleaner on the wad file, and maybe something got deleted that Eternity doesn't like. The sky is replaced by a SP_DUDE texture :P

Good to hear about the M2 ending. The fight itself was fine, it was just very easily avoided.

I also feel the need to say that the secrets in M2 were a lot of fun.

Found the problem. I think the TEXTURE2 lump from DOOM.WAD was overriding yours, which was causing glitches because it was overriding textures with different patch numbers than what's in your PNAMES lump.

I added a dummy TEXTURE2 lump to your wad, with only one entry in it, and that fixed the problem.

Before I had another run on beta4. I don't see updates on M6 in the beta5, so I guess this is still there (taken on glBoom):


Just right to the hanging legs you can see the 2 overlapping flats.

It looks like it caused by this self-referecing sector:


On the other maps I didn't found problems.

Salt-Man Z said:

Good to hear about the M2 ending. The fight itself was fine, it was just very easily avoided.

I also feel the need to say that the secrets in M2 were a lot of fun.

Thank you! I guess it is still perfectly posible to avoid them, but I think I managed to design the fight, so that it, at least, puts more pressure on the player.

esselfortium said:

Found the problem. I think the TEXTURE2 lump from DOOM.WAD was overriding yours, which was causing glitches because it was overriding textures with different patch numbers than what's in your PNAMES lump.

I added a dummy TEXTURE2 lump to your wad, with only one entry in it, and that fixed the problem.

Thanks a lot! I think I managed to fix it based on what you said :)

gaspe said:

Before I had another run on beta4. I don't see updates on M6 in the beta5, so I guess this is still there (taken on glBoom):
http://imgur.com/qM0UPkt

Just right to the hanging legs you can see the 2 overlapping flats.

It looks like it caused by this self-referecing sector:
http://imgur.com/2xyQQtL

On the other maps I didn't found problems.

Ohh! So that was the flat you mentioned! I thought you ment something else in the earlier post of yours. I can totally see what you mean now! Thanks for spotting it and letting me know. I've fixed it now :)

Playing M3 using the new Beta5, so I had to pistol-start, and wow that was a ride. By the end I was already low on health, and then after I (eventually) survived the final ambush, I was down to precisely 1%! I did eventually figure out the soulsphere secret, which was one those solutions you feel oddly proud of accomplishing; kudos for that one. Oh, and the new palette on the plasma bursts is gorgeous.