Stardate 20x7 [/idgames]

So uh, I think I've found a bug in "The Other Side". Linedef 174 is marked as "S1 Teleport (also monsters)". Every single time I tried playing through the map (on HTNR difficulty), by the time I made it to the teleport switch, it'd already been triggered by a wayward Cacodemon and was unusable as a result, making the level unwinnable.

I tried playing both on Zdoom 2.8.1 (default compatibility settings) and prBoom 2.5.1.4 -complevel 9, and the bug appeared in both source ports.

EDIT: So I sat down and recorded a pr -cl 9 demo showing the bug. Actually, it doesn't always trigger; it took me three attempts (I played more or less the same way each time) to record a demo where the bug occurs.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/b8ah3a5411t4asd/sd20x7-bug.lmp

A little over week ago I made a thread asking for advice on beating the finale of Map07 from Stardate 20x6. The only person to reply told me that they don't have a consistent strategy for it either. I ended up discovering a little exploit which allowed me to successfully record a UV-Max demo of it. However my conclusion was that the fight was an RNG-fest because no reliable strategy for it apparently exists.

Right now the exact same situation occured during my playthrough of 20x7. I'm currently in Map05: Sphinx Rising. I've played through it with saves and practiced a bit on various encounters. The whole level appears to be perfectly beatable, maybe not on the first try but I'm confident I can get through it.

Except for the finale.

If you have played it then you know what I'm talking about. It's a tiny circular room with no supplies whatsoever that drops an army of Barons and Revenants at you followed by three waves of Archviles: first four, then another four and finally six at the time. As of right now I have attempted this one encounter a few hundred times. I've also watched 0xf00ba12 demo of it and read the authors comments under the video.

The feeling that I get from it is the same exact that I got from the finale of Magnus: it's an absolute bullshit. I can learn every other encounter given enough time. Even if I can't get it right after a few attempts I know it's beatable. But this? No. I do not see how this is supposed to be possible.

Throughout all the attempts I've beaten it I think 5 or 6 times so the success rate is astronomically low. As far as I can tell it's pure RNG: the frequency of warping, which enemies warp in which order. The waves happen so ridiculously fast that if even one thing goes wrong then it's game over - with zero supplies there's no room at all for any kind of improvisation.

So once again I'm just throwing this question into the void. Do you have any suggestions? Strategies? Tactics? Anything? Can you at least tell me if you think that this is a reasonable encounter and I just can't play? Or is it an RNG fest? As of right now I don't even feel like making attempts at the full level because without a good strategy for the finale there's just no point at all.

Anyway, I'm heading back to it. Will try to figure it out. If you have any advice on that nonsensical fight then please let me know.

1 hour ago, Touchdown said:

If you have played it then you know what I'm talking about. It's a tiny circular room with no supplies whatsoever that drops an army of Barons and Revenants at you followed by three waves of Archviles: first four, then another four and finally six at the time. As of right now I have attempted this one encounter a few hundred times. I've also watched 0xf00ba12 demo of it and read the authors comments under the video.

How much rocket ammo do you have going into that area? "I do not see how this is supposed to be possible" seems like a tip-off of having pretty few. Iirc you want 20+ (not counting the lone rocket pickups scattered around). 

22 hours ago, ‹rd› said:

 

How much rocket ammo do you have going into that area? "I do not see how this is supposed to be possible" seems like a tip-off of having pretty few. Iirc you want 20+ (not counting the lone rocket pickups scattered around). 

On the save that I was practicing on I had 67 rockets at the start of the fight. Because I almost always completely run out anyway I made it a rule to use as few rockets as possible during demo attempts to have even more than that (today I got up to that fight while recording and I had 70+ after grabbing everything). But even with 67 the issue is not so much the ammo but the fact that everything seems to depend on enemy movement which is random. I can try to mitigate that by staying close to the warp points but if a Baron or two feel like going around and flanking me, well, there's nothing I can do about it. I can try to spend cells to BFG them but then I'm wasting time not shooting the rest of the monsters and at this point Viles are already coming. Aaand in that situation one of two things might happen: 1. monsters are clumped together and they die as I BFG Viles (unlikely) or 2. I'm left with too many monsters and can't take control of the situation anymore because the second wave arrives.

The fight seems to be extremely dependant on rocket splash damage. If monsters play nicely then they die relatively quickly. But if they don't... there's no counter measure to that. I mean there's only so much you can do. It's not like there's either time or space to try to get them close to each other. Sometimes even when I don't take the finger off of fire button I still end up getting swarmed because monsters decided to move in this way and not the other.

By the way I call bullshit on not giving the player more rockets. If the fight is impossible without having at least 60 or so rockets then Ribbiks should have just let the player max them out just like we can max out cells. It's not like anyone's going to survive with those 32 or 36 rockets you get before the fight.

I think what you sort of have to do early on is spam rockets on one side while staying pretty close. Hugging them as much as reasonable minimizes the number that path behind your back. You should hardly care about what wanders around to the other side -- unless a chaingunner is literally shredding you. Revenants have the exploit where they will harmlessly melee you at a certain range. So if one paths around to that side, you let it hang around your butt while firing rockets the other way (as wacky as that feels to do). Stuff tends to infight if you ignore it.

Probably worth it to have that as the bottleneck. 

edit: yeah I got three tries in a row like this. (with 24 rockets going in.) they were all bad but that means you can do better by working out something precise.

edit 2: some other useful ideas...

- memorize vile spawn timings relative to available cues. it helps to have the first BFG ball out right as the viles come in. 

- kill as many barons as possible on one side and then prepare for the last two vile rushes by standing/being on the other side.

- you don't have to kill the PE. hide from it when the floor texture changes, luring it away from whichever side you elect to go after the viles. 

1 hour ago, ‹rd› said:

yeah I got three tries in a row like this. (with 24 rockets going in.) they were all bad but that means you can do better by working out something precise.

That's absolutely inconceivable to me. The best I got was 2 wins in a row. Followed by like a 100 failures. Just now I've been doing attempts for like 25min and only succeeded once and that's with 90+ rockets. Guess I just completely suck after all.

1 hour ago, ‹rd› said:

some other useful ideas...

 

- memorize vile spawn timings relative to available cues. it helps to have the first BFG ball out right as the viles come in. 

- kill as many barons as possible on one side and then prepare for the last two vile rushes by standing/being on the other side.

- you don't have to kill the PE. hide from it when the floor texture changes, luring it away from whichever side you elect to go after the viles. 

I generally get the first two AV rushes on time. I never know where to stand when they warp in though. 0xf00ba12 suggested shielding the corpses but I'm not sure if that doesn't just make Barons rise from the dead right in your face. Haven't tried leaving the Pain Elemental alive.

Thanks for the tips. But as of right now I doubt my ability to beat this level. Will keep trying for a while longer.

10 minutes ago, Touchdown said:

0xf00ba12 suggested shielding the corpses but I'm not sure if that doesn't just make Barons rise from the dead right in your face. Haven't tried leaving the Pain Elemental alive.

Shielding the corpses works (they don't rez at all if you're blocking them), but implementing that feels like more of an opportunistic tactic than a deliberate cog in the plan. Leaving the PE alive the right call when it arrives late or in an awkward position (or when I run out of rockets, which can happen); all those scenarios would allow the viles to catch you with your BFG in your pants. 

Here's a successful try that squeezes in a few of the nuances I mentioned. (I clipped here and gave myself the resources I'd normally have. I also made sure to wake up the two viles that otherwise wouldn't show up if you clip here in a straight line -- so it looks like everything works as it should.)

Also for the last vile wave, I like to have 240 cells. Planning that felt useful because it let me know if I could BFG a straggler baron (or even a revenant if that gets rezzed and somehow is the last thing remaining) before the viles show up. 

Thanks a lot for that video, it really helped me. I did a bunch of runs just to test things out... Might be too early to say, I'll have to play more. But I think my main mistake was not so much the strategy itself but rather the fact that I was too stationary. I guess subconsciously I thought that in such a small space moving around wouldn't really matter. Actually I thought it'd make things worse somehow. But once I started spazzing out a bit, running back and forth, left and right suddenly I got a lot more consistent. It might sound really stupid but hey, if it turns out that it helps me beat that fight then who cares.

5 hours ago, ‹rd› said:

Here's a successful try...

I don't quite recognize that UI. Is this recorded using a new build of the Eternity port? If so, any reason as opposed to the usual PRBoom+?

It's a EE dev build after version 4.00, yeah. EE is my port of choice these days for oldschool/classic play, and I haven't used prB+ much this year. 

Aaaand... success! It took me two days and "mere" 207 attempts but the first UV-Max exit on Sphinx Rising has been achieved.

I love this level. Well, except for the final encounter. I kept dying at the beginning and I've only really gotten better at dealing with the canyon fight after like 150 attempts but it wasn't frustrating because I enjoy those encounters and the atmosphere - serene but ominous, just like I like it.

So like with Magnus I'm posting the demo itself. Just as I expected the first exit was really messy. Generally a lot of things went wrong in this demo and I'm kind of embarrassed of how much I messed up at some points. But this was supposed to be the final attempt for today, wrapping up 3h of recording so I was pretty tired already.

I play like a coward in the canyon. I always look for an opportunity to stay there until everything is dead but it largely depends on the Cyber. If he's not willing to shoot then it's a problem. At this point I'm paranoid about rockets so I prefer to escape rather than blast Cacodemons with the Rocket Launcher. The Archvile secret didn't go too smoothly either and I completely messed up the Cyber by the BFG. Oh well. I use a very high risk strategy for the blood corridor. Going up the stairs might be more reliable for a better player but for me it seemed more reasonable to take a gamble with the Cyber and blast it quickly with the BFG to establish a safe haven in his monster closet. I almost lose too much health to escape (you have to run across the damaging sludge) but I end up having enough to get out.

And lastly the finale. Of course it had to go really badly. When the first Archvile rush was coming up there were still so many monsters that I basically resigned in my mind, accepting the defeat. Then I missed the final BFG shot and got completely stuck but somehow the next blast cleared the area rather nicely. The rest of the fight went pretty well. This was the SECOND time I got to the finale while recording. It's an absolute miracle that I survived considering how low my success rate was during practice. But hey, I've beaten it.

My final thoughts on that encounter are that it's really stupid. It's not as much of a complete bullshit that I thought it was and it's really satisfying to beat... But it's way too ridiculous for me to be enjoyable. If the waves were coming a bit slower and if there were at least some supplies then maybe. As it is it's unlikely I'll ever attempt to UV-Max this level in the future because I just don't want to play that part ever again. Maybe with saves.

Thanks again to ‹rd› for sticking around and providing tips and advice!

Now it's time to continue and head to The Other Side.

sd20x7_map05_uv-max_by_touchdown.zip

I don't really have time to sit down with this right now, but I did download it........so it will happen soon. I will post a comment.

Hey guys, Ive been searching everywhere and I cannot figure out how to make the slime floor at the end of map 4 into a normal floor where I can run full speed. I lost a demo bc of it. :( I have a save where I could run on it fine and cheese the two purple guys but idk how I did it

There is a problem in prboom+ - if you are using that port - where if you save and reload all friction effects are removed in cl9. So if you are recording a demo and not saving etc then you will have to deal with the friction effects. So you will have to deal with the genies.

oof ok then. Thanks 

On 4/5/2018 at 9:04 PM, Havoc Crow said:

So uh, I think I've found a bug in "The Other Side". Linedef 174 is marked as "S1 Teleport (also monsters)". Every single time I tried playing through the map (on HTNR difficulty), by the time I made it to the teleport switch, it'd already been triggered by a wayward Cacodemon and was unusable as a result, making the level unwinnable.

 

I tried playing both on Zdoom 2.8.1 (default compatibility settings) and prBoom 2.5.1.4 -complevel 9, and the bug appeared in both source ports.

 

EDIT: So I sat down and recorded a pr -cl 9 demo showing the bug. Actually, it doesn't always trigger; it took me three attempts (I played more or less the same way each time) to record a demo where the bug occurs.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/b8ah3a5411t4asd/sd20x7-bug.lmp

Sorry for the necrobump, but this happened to me as well: I was playing MAP06 on HNTR, on complevel 9 and DSDA v0.26, and when I reached the staircase part the switch at the top had already been pressed. I figured (after watching Decino run) the HNTR was just made different somehow, but then again: there's apparently no way to leave the place, either. In any case, in the first big fight I heard an extra switch press that wasn't triggered by me, so I should have guessed by then, I suppose.

Is this a lower difficulty thing only? (in other words: should one always play on UV, no matter what D:). One would think that if the issue is a S1 switch, then the problem would persist on higher difficulties as well, but I would have thought Decino would have mentioned this if this was a common thing...

EDIT: Yeah. I guess Havoc Crow already said it, but the problem are the cacos and pain elementals that are released behind the problematic switch on ITYTD-HMP instead of non-flying revenants on UV. The bug occured for me two times in a row, and quite easily on the third time when I used cheats to observe this is actually what happens. It's UV or bust, guys.

Huh, interesting - I don't recall that ever happening to me, guess I was just lucky.

It turns out I still have my demo + explanation of the bug.

On lower skill levels, the monsters in the holding area (sector 435, by
line 6070) include cacodemons and pain elementals. Once awoken by the
first shot they mingle in the crowd until reaching the front. The gap
to sector 472 over lines 6091-2 is too large to prevent them floating
over it. They teleport out early, into sectors 316, 321, 471 or 474.

The cacodemons and pain elementals float around the stairs, come into
contact with line 6095, a single-use teleporter switch, and use it up.
The map now cannot be finished.

This happens at 3:39.xx if you want to skipsec there. The process is
the same as doom2 map27's speed exit - a monster movement attempt is
blocked by a two-sided special line, so it tries to activate it, even
the wrong side of it. In Doom, only type 1 DR manual doors are usable
by monsters, but Boom teleport switches are monster-activatable.

There had been little reason to post at the time as the wad was already old when I came to it. But here we are.

In this gif made from the demo we see a pain elemental appear briefly at bottom left, before using up the teleporter line and re-appearing in the tunnel at top right.

On 10/8/2023 at 12:22 PM, RHhe82 said:

It's UV or bust, guys.

Since @RjY posted, I might as well advise other HNTR players: play MAP06 as a pacifist, you can relatively easily head straight for the staircase and activate the switch yourself. After that, it's up to you when to fire a weapon and alert everyone.

On 10/19/2023 at 8:47 PM, RHhe82 said:

Since RjY posted, I might as well advise other HNTR players: play MAP06 as a pacifist, you can relatively easily head straight for the staircase and activate the switch yourself. After that, it's up to you when to fire a weapon and alert everyone.

For the sake of completeness and my own edification here is a skill 2 exit.

I suppose since the original bug illustration demo was named "broken.lmp" this one should be called "fixed.lmp".
Thanks to RHhe82 for the "stay quiet and don't wake the pain elementals" trick which avoids the teleporter bug, and rd whose idea it was originally.

https://0x0.st/Hy_Y.zip/sd20x7-06-fixed.zip