Brigandine [RC2, updated 2017-05-13]

Dragonfly: Alright, if rocket jumps are okay then have a sub 20 seconds.

You made my day, lol

Deadwing: The song itself is really good, though I would be expecting something atmospheric. Not really like this, but that gave a similar feel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2llS87avh2w

Imagine this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27mB8verLK8 as the theme track. Inspired by not only speedruns...

Anyway, brigandine music is memorable. I like part with distorted guitar riff the most

Viggles said:

I've fired off a new version to those who offered to test, so check your PMs.

Good stuff, good update. The map felt actually slightly harder for me, because I played faster and way more aggressive, trying to abuse my knowledge into getting all the important things quickly. That bit me in the ass and I died several embarrassing deaths within the first minute, heh. Here's a (prboom+) demo that exits the map after I wise up and survive the start onslaught, haha. I relent in the frenetic pace eventually cause it was too risky to keep up and I started forgetting what to do next, but hopefully it will be at least half as entertaining to watch as it was to play! Spoilers, there's a glorious face-rocket at ~13:40.

Anyway, the big worry: I think you tackled the final battle issue with flying colours. I kinda destroyed it anyway in the demo because I kept a big stash of cells for the BFG, but upon replay without using it, it's way more challenging, the spiders do a good job and the vile is where he should be reviving monsters nonstop. The exit-blockers also contribute.

Nitpick about hover items: https://imgur.com/a/ttSkX
The shellbox (t.798)/medkit (t. 139) by the RK still float awkwardly. There's no way to make it look, um, proper on those steep stairs, but moving both items 4 units south makes them look at least being propped by something.
The pool of giblets (t. 267 I believe?) jumps into the air like this after the eye switch in the SSG arena gets pressed, prompting the bars to lower. Moving it 4 units to the west should fix the issue.
Don't bother with the armor bonuses, it'd be very annoying to get all of them right on those tiny stairs... and the way they all consistently hover looks cute and kind of Quake-ish, haha.
This effect is really annoying, quite unpredictable and sometimes reeeeally stupid looking (like the pile of giblets), so I specifically check for it, heh.

Also this is just an interesting factoid since you require strong limit removing ports to run the map, but you've got a spechit overflow risk on the RK stand. The overflow happens when the player or a monster triggers more than 8 action lines at once. In effect the overflow trashes demos being recorded for replay in vanilla/choco. If you aimed for those, I'd tell you to remove the actions from the little split tilted linedefs, but in this project you don't have to worry about it.

Most monster fights are easily avoidable by triggering then running. Monsters do not wake up until player shoots, so can grab ssg then leave area pretty easily.

Catoptromancy said:

Most monster fights are easily avoidable by triggering then running. Monsters do not wake up until player shoots, so can grab ssg then leave area pretty easily.

Hmmm. Viggles already uses the cat ears method of carrying sound to the teleclosets from several different map sections, but there should be one more connection from the SSG section itself - if one runs there silently and starts shooting there, the closet monsters don't wake up/teleport in.

However, I'm not sure what more can viggles do about this if the player remains entirely silent. Mandatory gun switches on start are a cheesy crutch and it'd damage the setup of the first room, imo. Shooting the eye switch in the SSG room would be kinda "in canon", but there's no G action for lower to lowest floor, heh. I dunno, keep the exploit in for all the smart speedrunning girls and boys?

Catoptromancy said:

What's the matter, cat got your tongue?

In boom you can use some tricks to teleport silent monsters, but this is -cl 2, so I've no idea haha

Deadwing said:

In boom you can use some tricks to teleport silent monsters, but this is -cl 2, so I've no idea haha

The only way I know of to teleport an unalerted monster in a vanilla-ish map is by pushing them with the explosion from a crushed barrel. I used this for the mancs that appear after the red door soulsphere, though not for any good reason. Crushers aren't an option for the SSG trap though, without needlessly complicating the linework even further.

Honestly, being able to avoid the SSG trap if you never shoot is the sort of thing I don't see any point in fixing or in designing defensively against. A player is never going to run into this situation inadvertently, only if they're actively trying to break the scripting of the level; in which case you're welcome to whatever exploits you can find.

This was fucking great :D

Tested this on Zandronum 3.0 alpha build. Worked really well with cooperative. I'm definitely returning to this again with single player mode as three secrets remained uncovered after exit. But that's obviously not the only reason to return to this map. Holy fucking shit what quality this was! I was planning a trip to enjoy some beautiful architecture around Europe, now I can cancel that and just play Brigandine instead. I'd kill to have a Megawad full of levels like these!

@SP_FACE1 Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you liked it so much and I'm really pleased to hear it played well in coop - I never even tested multiplayer (you might be the first person who has??), let alone balanced it. How many players were you, and did you find any scripting oddities or balance issues while playing?

Oodles of fun. Beautiful map. Great combat.

Hmm...still have to try this one.
Is this wad recommended to play it? :P

Yes. It's gorgeous. You'll have fun.

Just now, everennui said:

Yes. It's gorgeous. You'll have fun.

Thanks. Noted for next gameplay.

2 hours ago, Viggles said:

@SP_FACE1 Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you liked it so much and I'm really pleased to hear it played well in coop - I never even tested multiplayer (you might be the first person who has??), let alone balanced it. How many players were you, and did you find any scripting oddities or balance issues while playing?

Just two players. Didn't notice any balance nor scripting issues. I'll be most definitely replaying this map with more friends later this year and will report if I encounter any coop issues then. Keep up with the good work!

This is a serious stuff. I will not find many words to express admiration for the architecture of this map. Simply, I sincerely envy the author's skill. For me, this is another evidence of the power of standard textures. I feel that it is not the last.
Special thanks for the tip-off on the talented composer.

  First Demo Attempt GZDoom 2.4.0, 18 min

In my collection:

- Visuals (5 / 5)
- Detailing (5 / 5)
- Gameplay (4 / 5)
- Atmosphere (5 / 5)
- Difficulty (4 / 5)

- Overall Rating (5 / 5)

@Viggles Have you published more besides Breach and Brigandine? Would love to play more from you. I've added you now on my top WAD artists list to follow.

On 8/27/2017 at 9:07 AM, SP_FACE1 said:

@Viggles Have you published more besides Breach and Brigandine? Would love to play more from you. I've added you now on my top WAD artists list to follow.

Those are the only two I've released in the last 20 years; I made a few lousy deathmatch levels back in the mid-90s, that are only of archaeological interest by now.

On 8/27/2017 at 3:33 AM, StormCatcher.77 said:

This is a serious stuff. I will not find many words to express admiration for the architecture of this map. Simply, I sincerely envy the author's skill. For me, this is another evidence of the power of standard textures. I feel that it is not the last.
Special thanks for the tip-off on the talented composer.

 

  First Demo Attempt GZDoom 2.4.0, 18 min

Hey thanks for the demo, that was a lot of fun to watch! It was interesting to see how missing the RL secret impacted the gameplay and ammo balance later on.

@Viggles Many congratulations on the Cacoward!  Extremely well deserved, Brigandine was an absolute highlight of the year!

Now that it's a Cacoward winner we could really use a stable long term host for it (HINT HINT).

Awwwwwww yiss 😎 This year's Cacoward was a great xmas present, and I'm glad Brigandine found a place in such fine company! 

59 minutes ago, Linguica said:

Now that it's a Cacoward winner we could really use a stable long term host for it (HINT HINT).

For sure, I've been sluggishly working on final releases of Brigandine and Breach to put up on idgames. Brigandine's will add a new difficulty level that'll need some betatesting first, so it'll probably land in the new year. 

On 05/02/2017 at 3:20 AM, Viggles said:

This is still a beta: it's been playtested mostly in (G)ZDoom, and while I've checked for egregious failures in PrBoom+ and others, I haven't done a proper playthrough in a more vanilla-y port. It looks and plays best in a port with mouselook and monster-over-monster; there are likely to be traffic jams in ports with infinite-height monsters.

Many had remarked that Breach was a breeze, so I tried for a more Doomworldy level of difficulty; hopefully the result is suitably vicious in parts and manages to backfoot the player. Let me know of any encounters that felt too hard or too easy or didn't gel for you, and any spots where you died an unfair death or ran out of ammo in an unfun way.

I also wanted to make a singleplayer level that would have a deathmatch flow and connectivity, with areas overlooking and feeding back into each other, and plenty of ways to get up and down between levels. I'm curious whether it's worth trying to make it work as an actual deathmatch level too, or if it's too large and unwieldy for that.

Loads and sort of plays on vanilla Doomsday - *but* load time is agonisingly slow and gameplay has severe lag which makes it unplayable.

^^^
Lo and behold, the revelation and, dare I say it, the long-anticipated appearance of a reviewer extraordinaire and a genius of exquisite rhetoric, finally leaving the bleak confines of file reviewing routine and gracing these boards with his radiant presence. Welcome, welcome, the wordsmith of immaturity, the righteous assassin of objectivity, the vindicator of crass trolling and dubious pretense! Please, enjoy your stay, and verily, do think of posting again, for that surely was the one thing needful after all the divine meisterwerks we were lucky to bear witness in the files section prior to this very moment. I believe there will be prying eyes waiting eagerly for more words of the prophet.

==================

I sincerely apologize for bringing this up in this particular thread, Viggles, I am to abscond right away. Take care.

9 hours ago, felgro said:

Loads and sort of plays on vanilla Doomsday - *but* load time is agonisingly slow and gameplay has severe lag which makes it unplayable.

So, yes. I gave up on Doomsday after Breach, when it became clear that infuriating load times and sub-10fps rendering were a simple consequence of level detail and not an indicator that the level itself was broken.

I really should have noted this in Brigandine’s readme, but felt awkward saying “ayo don’t use Doomsday” in case it stopped being true in some future version. But in the three years since Breach I’ve only seen Doomsday’s performance get worse, not better, and I don’t have any faith that it’ll improve.

Heres the thing: every other modern port can load levels like Breach and Brigandine in seconds and play them at perfectly decent frame rates. Modern GZDoom even has post-process effects like ambient occlusion and bloom that are purty and have a modest constant FPS cost.

TL;DR: play detailed levels in something other than Doomsday.

21 hours ago, felgro said:

Loads and sort of plays on vanilla Doomsday - *but* load time is agonisingly slow and gameplay has severe lag which makes it unplayable.

Put this disgraceful cadavre of a sourceport to its well earned rest, and finally start playing with PrBoom+ like the rest of the civilized world does, if what you want is vanilla feel. Thanks!

I need maps  that are like this please :)

Woo ! Your map design looks so good ! It's ... rock solid I can't believe it !

This is what I call map design skills :) (I should know it, I ain't got any)

Great job !

Excellent. 

7 hours ago, ValeriyPipick said:

Excellent. 

Let's start the new year with a good one!