[UPDATED] Umbra of Fate - v1.2 (8 Nov 2018)

Looks dope but won't load in latest GZDoom on my mac. Throws this error, funny because I don't think any wad/pk3 has ever thrown an error. Registered on my buddy's machine just to find out!:

Execution could not continue.

Compile Shader 'shaders/Desaturate.fp':

ERROR: 0:4: Invalid call of undeclared identifier 'texture2D'

ERROR: 0:5: Use of undeclared identifier 'screen'

ERROR: 0:7: Use of undeclared identifier 'screen'

ERROR: 0:7: Use of undeclared identifier 'ret'

3 minutes ago, I'm on Dialup said:

Looks dope but won't load in latest GZDoom on my mac. Throws this error, funny because I don't think any wad/pk3 has ever thrown an error. Registered on my buddy's machine just to find out!:

 

Execution could not continue.

Compile Shader 'shaders/Desaturate.fp':

ERROR: 0:4: Invalid call of undeclared identifier 'texture2D'

ERROR: 0:5: Use of undeclared identifier 'screen'

ERROR: 0:7: Use of undeclared identifier 'screen'

ERROR: 0:7: Use of undeclared identifier 'ret'

I don't have a Mac to test with, so if someone else that has one can confirm and help us both out...  Looks like something in the shader I wrote.

By latest, you mean GZDoom 3.3.2 and are using OpenGL, right?  That's what I used in Windows and Linux to test it out.

Yuppers, that's it. Searching around seems to lead to software developers having issues with their own code so I'm stumped.

Just now, I'm on Dialup said:

Yuppers, that's it. Searching around seems to lead to software developers having issues with their own code so I'm stumped.

Well dang :-/  Let me see if any of my friends have a Mac that can help out.  Otherwise I'm sorta stumped myself.

Sorry about this!

It seems this is a typical case of Mac being horribly broken and refusing to support OpenGL correctly because "derp we have metal hurr"

Just finished in 2 hours. Really nice in atmosphere with the purple fogs everywhere! Those Barons though... the speed of the projectile scares the crap out of me. I think they are more damaging than regular Hell Knight fireballs? Also, it seems the scale of the Cyberdemons is larger, which makes them more scary looking? BTW, probably I shouldn't eat meat balls recently...

^This asymmetric placement triggered my OCD so much ;P

Got to (what I assume is) the final boss and I'm frustrated enough that I'm thinking of just quitting.  I've got a decent read on all the different attack patterns of the boss and his minions, but I'm not the most technically flawless Doomer, so I'm inevitably going to get chunked for some damage now and then.  Even with nearly 200/200 going in, it doesn't take a lot of missteps to get chunked down low with the damage some of these attacks have on them, and there isn't enough health spawning into the arena to keep my ass alive.

Now, in theory I'm not unwilling to keep at it and slowly get better and better at the challenge.  That's a fair ask of the player, assuming that the difficulty ultimately isn't out of step with the rest of the wad.  The problem is that I have no indicator of how much progress I'm making, because the fight (so far) is just two phases repeated over and over again, and one of those phases isn't actually any sort of progress on the boss, it's just grinding through the massive amounts of additional HP represented by the spawning adds. 

Have I gotten close to killing the boss, and I only have to churn through this deadly yet ironically tedious-feeling cycle once or twice more before I win?  Or am I going to have to do it twenty times more because the boss is just that much of a fat sack of HP?  I don't know, because there's no boss health bar.  I'm not saying that a boss health bar is universally a great idea-- I'm sure it's a matter of taste and I've fought GZDoom bosses that feel fine without one-- but I think if the fight is going to go on for a long time then you need some sort of indicator of how the player is progressing, whether it's phases based on HP or a UI indicator like a health bar.

Right now I'm 99% sure that the add phases are on a timer, rather than tied to boss HP, because at one point I tried not doing much damage to the boss (only a couple incidental shots from killing the cultists at the beginning) and he still phased to the nightmare realm a short while later.  I might suggest changing the minion spawns from a timer to a set % of the boss HP-- every 33%, 25% or 20%, etc.  That would kill two birds with one stone: the player would get some feedback as to their progress, and there'd be a fixed number of times that the player had to grind through those fiery bags of hitpoints before completing the fight.

Update: I hilariously enough ended up cheesing the fight by taking advantage of the "flaw" (the set timer for nightmare phases) and just point-blank BFG spamming the boss to death, skipping the minion spawns altogether.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@jerrysheppy haha, yeah I've done that myself during testing.  I don't consider it cheesing ^_^  But I also almost never have enough BFG shots saved up for him on hard, which is what I liked playing it on the most.  So I usually got like two or so out, then had to switch to rockets while hoping the cell charges would spawn (they're on a timer with a random chance that depends on the difficulty).  For the adds, I usually switched to a combination of the SSG and rockets.

My original design actually had him on a health-based system, where the adds would spawn at certain health percentages.  Later I remember consciously deciding to put the nightmare phase on a timer, but I don't remember the exact reason.  I think it was along the lines of keeping continuous pressure on the player so that they couldn't just stroll around and turtle the boss on their own time.  This made the fight a lot more tense for me - before, it was just too easy and anticlimatic.  Plus there's that dread of, "How much more punishment is this thing going to take?"  Putting in a health bar of some sort was something I considered, but ultimately decided against it for this reason.

Truth be told, the boss was partially inspired by the fight with Elegon in World of Warcraft.

The cyberdemon boss halfway through was also inspired by a few WoW raid bosses, but I don't remember which ones.  He was interesting because I was originally going to spawn some sort of translucent protective barrier around him.  I tried 3d models, sprites, and particles to do this, but sadly I never got the visuals to work, so I instead went with the "teleport to the middle" idea and placed a particle fountain to indicate where he'd reappear.

Ok, now I'm just rambling :-P

I can see that connection now that you mention it, heh.  Though if you had gone all the way with the Elegon inspiration and made each spawned wave of adds increase the boss's damage taken, it might have smoothed the fight out overall.  :D

There was one spot that very strongly reminded me of a location in WoW, namely the underground water cavern with the walkway that goes down below water level, which reminded me of a room in Blackfathom Deeps.  Aside from that, I didn't really spot anything as being WoW inspired.  The Cyberdemon fight did strike me as vaguely MMO-inspired, but "invulnerable phase with adds spawning" is generic enough that I didn't connect it to any WoW bosses-- I guess it could've been Noth the Plaguebringer, Ragnaros, Aggramar, really anything. :P

Since we're mentioning the cyberdemon, though, is it just me or is Cyberdemon missile speed and damage way increased?  Pretty sure his rockets would always oneshot me through high levels of health and blue armor.

11 minutes ago, jerrysheppy said:

Though if you had gone all the way with the Elegon inspiration and made each spawned wave of adds increase the boss's damage taken, it might have smoothed the fight out overall.  :D

I tried doing this, but couldn't get it to work properly.  If I had devoted more time to learning ZScript, I probably could have pulled it off, but I just wasn't interested since this was going to be my last Doom map and there isn't a lot of good documentation on it yet.

Now that I think about it, I'm sure the way I'm burned out on Doom mapping played into a lot of the design aspects of UoF...

12 minutes ago, jerrysheppy said:

There was one spot that very strongly reminded me of a location in WoW, namely the underground water cavern with the walkway that goes down below water level, which reminded me of a room in Blackfathom Deeps.

That is exactly where it's from XD

And yeah, that particular cyberdemon is bigger, has faster missiles, and they do more damage.  He also has his attack chance turned further down.  I suppose you could consider him a cyberdemon captain.  This was part of my experimentation with modifying certain classes for certain situations.

Great map, stunning visuals and very atmospheric music! Played it on hard and the boss proved a bit too much with 4 minions spawning in constantly... so I IDDQD'd it after a few tries and saving in the wrong place, unable to have a try to BFG him down right in the beginning. :D MDK was also found a good use there...

Well done!

Comepleted on Hard difficulty! Thank you for this wad. 12 purple shakes of 10!! 

Error message: 6 errors while parsing DECORATE scripts. I have Windows 10 and your last map set was flawless. Any ideas?

Korozive, what source-port and its version are you using?

33 minutes ago, DOOMGABR[RU] said:

Korozive, what source-port and its version are you using?

GZDOOM g2.4.0 and GZDOOM g3.0.0  same error with both. 

DOH! I just reread the initial post and will try it with 3.3. 

anddd it works. :o)

On 07.05.2018 at 11:35 PM, Kristian Nebula said:

MDK was also found a good use there...

Same situation. I can't kill last boss and MDKed him xD

37 minutes ago, DOOMGABR[RU] said:

Same situation. I can't kill last boss and MDKed him xD

What's "MDK" mean within the context of Doom?

8 minutes ago, YukiRaven said:

What's "MDK" mean within the context of Doom?

Try to type it in the console when facing towards any monster. It will kill them instantly :) M.D.K. = Murder Death Kill

5 minutes ago, Kristian Nebula said:

 

Try to type it in the console when facing towards any monster. It will kill them instantly :) M.D.K. = Murder Death Kill

OHHH!  I always forget about that command.  Hahaha thanks ^_^

I need to show everyone how it's done, I think XD

1 hour ago, DOOMGABR[RU] said:

Same situation. I can't kill last boss and MDKed him xD

I kept MDKing his minions instead until he was dead :D

2 minutes ago, YukiRaven said:

I need to show everyone how it's done, I think XD

I would think a simple explanation in terms of what is supposed to happen might suffice already. To be fair, it's possible to kill him even when player damage is nerfed to all hell with just good old fashioned point blank BFG play, it just takes a good while because ammo respawns are required, but it circumvents any and all phases and therefore kinda qualifies as "cheese" perhaps? I also killed him within a few seconds once, with a few BFG trick shots (basically getting several projectiles to "pop" at almost the exact same time, and flash frying the boss with the tracers) , but I'm somewhat sure that it's not the intended way of doing things.

Just now, Nine Inch Heels said:

I would think a simple explanation in terms of what is supposed to happen might suffice already. To be fair, it's possible to kill him even when player damage is nerfed to all hell with just good old fashioned point blank BFG play, it just takes a good while because ammo respawns are required, but it circumvents any and all phases and therefore kinda qualifies as "cheese" perhaps? I also killed him within a few seconds once, with a few BFG trick shots (basically getting several projectiles to "pop" at almost the exact same time, and flash frying the boss with the tracers) , but I'm somewhat sure that it's not the intended way of doing things.

Well, first keep in mind one thing: I freakin' love chewy fights.  And this was specifically designed to play to that love (note what I said in the first post).

The fight works like this: he wakes up and three timers start.  When the first timer fires, he "straddles the nightmare realm".  At this time he switches his attacks up slightly and takes 99% less damage.  That's when the minions spawn.  The boss stays within the nightmare realm until the minions are dead, at which time he returns to normal and the first timer cycle starts over.

The second timer is on a continuous loop and simply causes the platform in the middle to lower into the lava.

Both the first and second timers' durations are adjusted according to the difficulty, so they're shortest on hard, longest on easy.

The third timer is also on a continuous loop and is an ammo/health/armor spawner.  Rockets, health, and shells always spawn each iteration, while cells only have a chance of spawning.  This chance, as well as the timer's duration, is dependent on difficulty.  Additionally, it only spawns some items when the related stat is below a certain threshold (which is also dependent on difficulty).  So for example - I don't remember the exact numbers here, so bear with me - if you have more than 20 shells or something, it won't spawn more shells even if the spawn spot is empty.  I used this same system in SoTNR map04, as well as throughout other areas of UoF.

There's a few other adjustments depending on difficulty as well.  The MISSILEMORE and MISSILEEVENMORE flags are removed on lower difficulties from the minions (and I think the boss, too), the health of each minion is reduced, and I think I adjusted some of the more damaging minion attacks to happen less often on easy.  Basically, all part of my experimentation with using different methods to adjust difficulty, with varying degrees of success.  This fight was definitely not the only time in UoF where I did things like this.

Anyway, the overall idea behind this design was that you need to be aggressive when he takes normal damage, then use the time during the minions to renew your ammunition and health.  The lava platform was to both give you another way of temporarily containing the enemies, as well as something to watch out for yourself.  Since the time he's vulnerable is precious, it also rewards the player for getting the last minion in a favorable position where they can quickly switch to attacking the boss again.

My preferred way of approaching the fight is to use the BFG on the main boss and a combination of rockets and SSG on the minions.  Trapping and killing them in the lava also tends to make it easier since they have a harder time hitting you.  I do occasionally use a BFG blast or two to clear 2-3 minions, though.

I ran into the issue of close range BFG killing him a few times during testing, but only on easy and occasionally on normal.  This seemed to be due to the fact that I just didn't have enough cells by the time I got to him on hard to close range him, regardless of how I played earlier on.  I also almost never take that approach to a monster, so I considered this a corner case reserved for those who are very good at Doom and thus still valid.  Regardless, as you said, it still takes awhile.  Thus it still achieves my goal of making the fight chewy, and making the map push emphasize "...the type of gameplay that I personally enjoy to the limit rather than trying to include something for everyone."

I almost made it so that he was totally invulnerable when straddling the nightmare realm, but ultimately decided against that.  I honestly forget why.

15 minutes ago, YukiRaven said:

The fight works like this: he wakes up and three timers start.  When the first timer fires, he "straddles the nightmare realm".  At this time he switches his attacks up slightly and takes 99% less damage.  That's when the minions spawn.  The boss stays within the nightmare realm until the minions are dead, at which time he returns to normal and the first timer cycle starts over.

Here's the thing though, it's possible to kill him before he even nerfs player damage (which would basically be his "invul phase"), at least on UV it is, nightmare I'm not so sure if the damage can be tanked good enough on the player's end because there's a little more risk involved on NM, but it miiiiight be doable in practice. If you get this outcome, the fight is basically over within a matter of seconds. That actually surprised me quite a bit, because I personally thought the fight was more difficult (and therefore more fun) when he spawned stuff at least once or twice, or in other words I felt it rewarded agression a bit more than I expected it would, since "bumrushing" the boss seems a lot easier than dealing with the pyros, at least to me it does. Granted, rushing him requires having the resources available to begin with, but it surprised me nonetheless.

I think what the others here are referring to, though, and I've seen it happen as well, is that for some reason the boss seems to get stuck in his "invul phase" without spawning anything ever again. I had it happen once within, like, 6 fights or so, and I've also seen it happen once during Arlene's stream of the map as well. And I wonder why that is. In Arlene's case, the script ceased to cycle to the next phase after she used a resurrect command in the console (which I'm not sure if that's why it happened to her, but I'd suppose the scripts don't just stop working entirely when the player dies? I dunno...), and for me it happened quite literally out of the blue once (Played with GZDoom3.3.2). At first I thought that, maybe somehow I did something that the script didn't expect to happen, so I tried to reproduce it, but have failed to do so, unfortunately.

35 minutes ago, YukiRaven said:

My preferred way of approaching the fight is to use the BFG on the main boss and a combination of rockets and SSG on the minions.  Trapping and killing them in the lava also tends to make it easier since they have a harder time hitting you.  I do occasionally use a BFG blast or two to clear 2-3 minions, though

I only ever used BFG on minions when they spawned during the time the platform was down in the lava to quickly reserve some personal space to keep it less risky, basically. But overall rockets for minions seems ideal. I'm not sure if it's possible to accumulate enough cells on UV to get through the map smoothly, and have enough cells to spam both the boss and the minions, however.

12 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

I think what the others here are referring to, though, and I've seen it happen as well, is that for some reason the boss seems to get stuck in his "invul phase" without spawning anything ever again. I had it happen once within, like, 6 fights or so, and I've also seen it happen once during Arlene's stream of the map as well. And I wonder why that is. In Arlene's case, the script ceased to cycle to the next phase after she used a resurrect command in the console (which I'm not sure if that's why it happened to her, but I'd suppose the scripts don't just stop working entirely when the player dies? I dunno...), and for me it happened quite literally out of the blue once (Played with GZDoom3.3.2). At first I thought that, maybe somehow I did something that the script didn't expect to happen, so I tried to reproduce it, but have failed to do so, unfortunately.

That happened to me once during testing, and I thought I had squashed that bug since I never saw it again despite how many times I tested it.  Dang bug :-P

If you look at @Major Arlene's stream carefully, it's when one of the minion tubes gets stuck in the open position that he's stuck in the nightmare phase.  Using the resurrect command might have messed it up as well, but I'm more willing to bet that the tube being stuck is a bigger hint as to what's wrong.  What might be happening is that not all of the minions are spawning because some script gets stuck or terminates unexpectedly.  Should I ever patch UoF, I'll probably redesign that segment so that such a thing can't happen.

I also noticed she somehow got the boss stuck in one of the tubes, something I had never seen before.  This might have also been the cause if the minion failed to spawn due to the boss being in the way.  Normally I'd have taken a failed spawn into account, though.

Figures, the fight I tested the most is the one that breaks XD

12 minutes ago, YukiRaven said:

I also noticed she somehow got the boss stuck in one of the tubes, something I had never seen before.  This might have also been the cause if the minion failed to spawn due to the boss being in the way.  Normally I'd have taken a failed spawn into account, though

I am certain that I had this happen with 4 minions spawning prior, so if that blocked spawn was the reason it happened to Arlene, then it would seem there is something else that may also malfunction in rare cases.... Gotta admit, I never really paid much attention whether or not the boss even has a pain chance, but if it does, would there be a slight chance the boss does not cycle properly when the next cycle tries to start during a pain-state?

If you end up doing bugfixes, it's worth noting that the cyberdemon boss fight can also be broken so that the cyber is never able to return to the arena. I'm pretty sure this happened because I was standing on his teleport destination when he tried to port in, but it broke the battle permanently until I reloaded a savegame and restarted it.

9 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

I am certain that I had this happen with 4 minions spawning prior, so if that blocked spawn was the reason it happened to Arlene, then it would seem there is something else that may also malfunction in rare cases.... Gotta admit, I never really paid much attention whether or not the boss even has a pain chance, but if it does, would there be a slight chance the boss does not cycle properly when the next cycle tries to start during a pain-state?

I thought about this and disabled the pain chance during the transition.  Actually, I encountered that XD

4 minutes ago, Not Jabba said:

If you end up doing bugfixes, it's worth noting that the cyberdemon boss fight can also be broken so that the cyber is never able to return to the arena. I'm pretty sure this happened because I was standing on his teleport destination when he tried to port in, but it broke the battle permanently until I reloaded a savegame and restarted it.

Good to know!  I might have been thinking in Quake terms then and figured the player would be telefragged.  I obviously had Quake on the brain while making this thing....

I just retried it and got telefragged, presumably by a script or something ("player killed himself")? So that must not have been it. Maybe just some odd little script glitch, I dunno.

10 minutes ago, Not Jabba said:

I just retried it and got telefragged, presumably by a script or something ("player killed himself")? So that must not have been it. Maybe just some odd little script glitch, I dunno.

Uhh.... I'm going to blame it on *looks up excuse* a microelectronic Riemannian curved-space fault in write-only file system.

Yeah.  That's what happened.

I'll take a look at the two boss scripts in the next few days.