ROOTPAIN Remake (New video added!)

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Old Forum Discussion > https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=36738

HISTORY
After a large amount of negative response my classic rivalry received, i took a step back to reevaluate. I needed to put myself back on the map with something new but broad.
so i came up with the idea to create the most disturbing but original mod i could think of, but first i needed something i could test the waters with so to speak. I needed to gain a reaction from the doom community to go ahead with this idea, so one evening i spent roughly 2 hours putting together a mod with as little effort as possible but riddled with hidden messages (13 in total).
A experiment to see how much controversy i could steer up in the doom community, as expected it received alot of bad attention.
People mistook the mod as a scare peace when I wanted to give the player a sense of discomfort, it was quite successful at that which was good news.
At that point i found a new job an was unable to continue through with it, then it was eventually forgotten..... until now.

PRESENT DAY
I recently started modding and working on a huge megawad named 
Its a atmospheric wad that explores different types of game play styles and locations.
And in this wad i will be featuring the infamous Rootpain level fully remastered with added context and more.
Please share your opinion on the idea and what you would love to see from your experience with the original.
Thanks for reading.

Zygo, you made something tears ago that is barely a half-step above a Terry wad, to judge purely in terms of playability and aesthetics; why bring it back? Subject matter is meh; maybe edgy if you live in a religious commune or are 13, but as an adult all I can say is that I've seen worse, I've played worse, and I've had little issue enjoying worse; try harder next time.

Here is a video to save people time downloading:

54 minutes ago, Fonze said:

Zygo, you made something tears ago that is barely a half-step above a Terry wad

 

Never heard of a terry wad before...

54 minutes ago, Fonze said:

why bring it back?

 

Simple, i think it holds much potential. My goal was to induce discomfort and it did for some, i feel confident i can achieve this more in the up coming iteration. The subject however is just a coincidence, actually fitting quite well with the story of the up coming version for that particular stage. Its obvious you have a distaste for the wad and it has been noted, but everything can be improved upon and thats what i intend to do.

*puts on tiny set Windsor-frame glasses and black beret, fake soul patch under bottom lip*

Sounds are piercing. Music is annoying. Graphics unnecessarily large. Blood spray kills engine performance. Resource budget unnecessarily leans towards high resolution graphics and music that don't need to be. No feeling of "I'm glad I played that" at the end.

The title, "RootPain" alludes to the pain of childbirth, however this piece has an elusive message. Can't tell whether it celebrates childbirth or is a stark commentary on it. Player pawn is called "Parasite" in code - projection of the author's feelings around concepts that cause him discomfort? Who knows. Further conversation around the work is unnecessary and moot due to how badly the piece does not want to be played.

Those who appreciate art will not find it here. Those who don't appreciate art will not start appreciating it via this piece. The Doom engine (or enhanced versions thereof) may not be the suitable medium for such a work.

*takes long drag from rolled cigarette placed in a slim, black dinner holder*

Author's time may be better spent figuring out how to meld both message and gameplay. Not the case here, for "RootPain".

Side note: Unicode character titles are not endearing or clever. They are a subtle warning for, "Don't play this."

59 minutes ago, Ermin said:

Simple, i think it holds much potential.

It doesn't, though. It's a silly idea. Move on. Make a real map.

I thought there already was a sequel???

If you'd taken a step back to re-evaluate you wouldn't have brought this pile of trash back from the dead.

So why where you banned on the ZDoom forums?

I guess I'll post my blind-play of this mod from way back. As a warning, I do talk way too darn much and take forever to figure the thing out. :P

Also how is this wad not about teeth

Your work in Solace Dreams is interesting. Don't listen too much to the haters, while they bring some good points I feel you could make something interesting out of this theme.

Just for the love of god, don't make it as annoying or edgy as the original. I feel this would work much better if the player only pieces what he did after he did it.

16 minutes ago, Albertoni said:

I feel this would work much better if the player only pieces what he did after he did it.

This is a concept I can get behind. Make it metaphorical, get the player invested in the goal/aim. Foreshadow some elements and then have a big reveal at the end.

Of course, you'd probably want to release it under a pseudonym, so best start mapping some other worthwhile standard maps to release under said pseudonym until you drop the new concept blind. :P

Welcome to the hospital ward...
On arrival your welcomed by complete silence & embraced by darkness, then in the distance you hear faint crying.
A women screaming in agony, you go to investigate...
You find a women restrained, chained and shackled... It is then you decide to...

A. Put her out of her misery, skipping the entire stage but earning no reward. (for those of you who are offended by the concept)
B. Help her.. kill the parasite living inside her.

This is whats planned so far...
I hope this has helped some of you that have doubted the idea.

p.s. this image is a W.I.P
p.s.s This is considered a Tier 2 stage and is unlocked after completing the other 4 main areas of the game.

<snip>

Crikey.

23 hours ago, Ermin said:

A women screaming in agony, you go to investigate...
You find a women restrained, chained and shackled... It is then you decide to...

A. Put her out of her misery, skipping the entire stage but earning no reward. (for those of you who are offended by the concept)
B. Help her.. kill the parasite living inside her.

Okay, so let me get this straight. You'll be adding rootpain as an optional level in your megawad. At some point I'll meet a captive woman in birthing pains and I'll have to decide whether to execute her or personally travel into her womb to abort the fetus. Because duh, what else would I do, use the rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle on her?

Oh dear, choosing between two violent, immoral actions will sure shake my prudish Judeo-Christian sensibilities to their core. I'd be outraged if I wasn't so shocked!

Its being done, those are the choices. Get used to it.

Or I will just not waist my time with such trash. That sounds like the most optimal option.

I Don't know why but the menu and the Red type of letters used make's me remember of Postal 1 type of Menu and images

30 minutes ago, Ermin said:

Its being done, those are the choices. Get used to it.

There's nothing wrong with making edgy stuff. The thing is, it has to be, y'know, good.

And it will, give it time.
But i wont reveal any more until its finaly complete.

During the time that we give it, can you not do voxel textures?

Voxel textures? You mean for walls right? Like make a stone wall out of voxels and use that as a "line" so to speak.

9 minutes ago, Ermin said:

Voxel textures? You mean for walls right? Like make a stone wall out of voxels and use that as a "line" so to speak.

Walls and sprites. I'm talking about this stuff here:

You need to realize that GZDoom renders every single voxel in that shot as its own 1x1x1 box model, which slows performance down on most machines to the point of being unplayable. GZDoom's dynamic light system also does not handle voxels well, and if you have dynamic lights in a scene with a bunch of voxel objects, the entire object will be illuminated because voxels are treated like sprites.

If you want to keep this as a GZDoom project, the voxels have to be the first thing to go unless you want to switch engines.

EDIT:

You have a lot of artistic ability, which I commend you on, but that doesn't mean anything if you don't also know how to work with the engine in addition to having a firm grasp on the principles of good level design and storytelling.

i remember someone mentioning that in another post of mine. The method of voxel to model does seem peculiar.
To be honest with everyone i never knew the engine did it this way, Is there a specific reason why the engine needs to do it like this? 

But to answer your question, i used voxels simply to be rid of the model and texture folder. When the project does finaly come to a end i hope to release it as a single wad file.

But i understand your point, can your computer run the game ok, is it clocking in a max fps?

oh and another thing, voxels support BRIGHT and transparency which models dont to my knowledge.

I get less than one frame per second on the first map (MAP03) and have to CTRL+ALT+DEL out of GZDoom. 

Also, voxels supporting those is all well and good, but you have to ask yourself if the tradeoffs are really reasonable to be able to get those things. I think it's more than reasonable to say that they're not.

less than one frame a second? shit!
it runs perfectly fine on my system minus a slight stutter at the start even with maxed out settings, but i do agree level 3 is over the top and i have made changes since then to improve performance quite a bit.

What cpu and gpu do you have in your rig if you dont mind me asking?

My specs are crap and irrelevant, the point is that if this thing can run Half-Life, it follows that it should be able to run something that's at or below the same visual fidelity as Half-Life without problems. Having everything be made out of voxels gets in the way of that.

I understand what your saying and i sympathise with anyone with a depressing rig.
But unfortunately theres nothing much i can do about that now being 50% done with it, i will just have to write it off as experience and learn from this mistake.

Because what your basically telling me to do is scrap the whole thing and start again, which aint happening.
To go back, reconvert ever frame on every model, redo all textures to look GOOD is a mission impossible and isnt worth the time no matter how good or bad the mod turns out to be. 

You have to ask yourself, are you doing it to make something that others could play? Or are you just doing this for artistic masturbation purposes?

If it's the latter, then go right ahead and use Voxel everything. Although you're much better off using UE4 in this case. If it's the former, then yes, you do need to scrap everything and start over. You can't have it both ways.