Phase 2, Maps 21-30 development thread

On 4/10/2017 at 6:45 AM, Angry Saint said:

Why remove it? It is a limit of the original vanilla engine.

Exactly. It is confusing. There is no reason to not just call it vanilla. Calling it  "vanilla-compatible, except for possible savegame buffer overflows of certain levels" makes it sounds like it is mostly vanilla except for this one issue.

Do the classic definitively vanilla megawads say "vanilla-compatible, except for possible savegame buffer overflows of certain levels?" They are just called vanilla. 

Megawads are typically played by Doom fans, and made by Doom fans. UV is typically considered the "normal" difficulty by us. Not to mention Doom fans like the ones here in Doomworld, ZDoom, Zandronum  etc. barely (if even) save their game. Or even play on Chocolate Doom/vanilla Doom.

Freedoom, on the other hand, is not just limited to Doomers. It's technically for everyone, given that it's an alternative to Doom and a game in its own right. That means people unfamiliar to Doom will most likely load up HMP or ITYTD, and save often. I did this with my first playthrough of Doom, and basically every other game I encountered.

Of course, the only ports that suffer from the savegame buffer overflow are Chocolate Doom and the original Doom exe. Chocolate Doom has an option to fix this, so that port is legible.

But the download page recommends three ports that don't suffer from this limitation, so it's safe to say that players will most likely download one of those ports to play, so no worries. But within the Doom community, we use Chocolate Doom for testing Freedoom. I suppose that means the savegame buffer overflow thing is something between us, and not the players.

TL;DR: For developers, playtesters and contributors, the savegame buffer overflow should be mentioned. For players, just say it's vanilla. It's not the '90s anymore.

I honestly didn't expect this post to be so long.

What an update!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bpuq6wth1u09tq2/FreedoomE3.wad?dl=1

This includes map 21 with a few more tiny changes & a now updated map 22. A new map 23 is currently in the works by Jimmy. All of the other maps will be moved up by one mapslot.

Also, question. The current map 23, soon to be map 24, uses the SS Nazi replacement as a standard monster, has it been decided what is going to become of these guys yet?

We could add raymoo's unfinished wolf ss as a placeholder until its finished.

2 hours ago, Jaws In Space said:

The current map 23, soon to be map 24, uses the SS Nazi replacement as a standard monster, has it been decided what is going to become of these guys yet?

Why use them when they are just a dumbed down version of the chaingunner? Not to mention that it might take a long time to finish raymoohawk's sprites. 

Probably best to avoiding using them until they get decent sprites and sounds.

As for map22, it's quite an escalation in difficulty. But since this is the E3 Phase 2, I guess that's alright.

Items, weapons, ammo, pickups, and all that are fairly balanced, if you play smart. 

The one thing that's annoying here are the Cacodemons the player encounters initially. It seems unfair, given the lack of proper weapons and the scarce ammo at first. Not to mention that the rest map is already satisfying in terms of difficulty. Removing those Cacos would be a nice start for the map.

Having to slightly explore for ammo while being chased is part of the gameplay.

I only meant for the Cacodemons that appear after the lift comes down. Everything else is alright.

it just seems too unfair.

edit: @Jaws In Space, you should try to use power-of-2 widths and heights for custom textures.

It is a map later in the game, I think its fine. Only affects pistol starters, and people pistol starting know they need more strategy.

Lucky its not one of those megawad maps that require you to run past hordes of enemies to grab the weapons. 

Hey everybody, it's been a very long time since I've touched any of the maps for Freedoom. I've been very busy with other stuff for awhile now & I don't see myself getting back into this anytime soon either. I think for now I'll drop out of managing these maps & let someone else take over.

So not a lot of progress has been made on the third episode of Freedoom: Phase 2? That's a bummer to hear but it's understandable. If I can ask, anything about Gothic's MAP30 submission? It's been quite some time since that was last mentioned.

ah not a progress for cluster 3? and i like jaws vision of cluster 3

i really like the aquatex version of map22

and map23 i really like that map