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Phobus

[ZDoom] Persephone - The Best of Phobus vol. 1

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Download Persephone

(Requires ZDoom 2.8.1 Final or later child ports)

 

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Times keep on changing. The present swiftly becomes the past and that in turn becomes history. Doom has been out for almost 25 years and has had thousands of levels made for it. You'll probably never play them all, or even attempt to. Going after random files on the archives (or the local Downloads beta service on here) can be a bit of a minefield and even a good author doesn't exclusively make good maps.

 

So, as I've been around a long time and made a lot of maps, I figured I'd breathe fresh life into some of the best and brightest by compiling them together in this map set, making them easily available for you to try out. There's stuff here from the last 14 years or so, in 9 playable maps and 1 interactive display as a final topping. If you've been around a while, you may recognise some of these, but hey, why not revisit them and see what else there is?

 

Screenshots:

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I wish I had time to give this more of a look as I've enjoyed your levels in the past. :) It turns out that of what you've put in here I've only ever played #7 and #9 with both being quite some time ago so I don't recall them too well. Including a level even from Scourge surprised me too.

 

I will say I've enjoyed your maps in the past from what I remember, including some that are not in here, like two ZPack levels, Warpzone, and one that was essentially several separate levels in one map but I can't remember its name (ph_quik02 maybe?). Plus there were contributions to CChest3/4 & another to Mayhem 2012 that all looked interesting.

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I see you know your (or my) stuff! Sounds like you must've been pretty involved with ZDoom back in the late 2000s to be that familiar with my works. Were you ever on the ZDoom forums back then? I've earmarked Coils of the Twisted Tale (which was indeed ph_quik2, you're right) for a later collection episode, plus some of the other maps you've mentioned. I've got my fingers crossed that, if I release three 10-map episodes (although this one is really only 9), the whole collection might get picked up by the DWMC at some point.

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I remember "Vigilance" was a great opener. Thanks for the compilation, so i don't have to dig through a bunch of links.

Edited by Catpho

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I've been at least passively following releases more on than off for a while. But I can also search /idgames for it. The three episode idea sounds cool! I might only include the better maps out of Scourge though.

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Oh yeah, definitely. I've earmarked another one map for inclusion, as most of that WAD isn't actually much good. Hopefully I can meet the thirty without resorting to padding!

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I don't know off the top of my head exactly how many good (non-ASS)maps I've seen from you (and also leaving Virus out in terms of normal levels presumably), but if there's only one more off Scourge, my instinct would be closer to 20-25. That's just a guess though and might be an underestimate. You'd still get at least two one more good longer episode or two somewhat shorter (6-7 level) ones though.

 

A couple other thoughts that popped into my mind:

-Escalation I: Breach and one of your other small maps of choice (like from Tiny Chances or a birthday map) would serve as good Level 1's.

-The other secret levels could maybe be White Light, ZPack E2M10, and/or one level picked from Virus. You might have to add secret exits though as I can't find a level suspect to have one apart from Depths (because it was in as E3M6).

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And BTW, as for what other map in Scourge you marked, I've picked out my top three guesses after looking through the whole wad. The sum of the map slot numbers for my top three guesses, as to which one it may be, is greater than 70.

 

If you're good enough, you'll be able to determine precisely what slot numbers my top three guesses are.

Edited by FrancisT18

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I managed to work out what I'd include in later episodes now. They won't have secret exits, as the only other level I ever made with a secret exit is Scourge MAP15 which is... Well, it's not one of my best. Incidentally, neither was the one I had in mind! Doing your maths, you'll be glad to know that "The Leak" is MAP20... But I wouldn't count MAP31 as a good map, as it doesn't play very well, even if it did have a lot of time put into the visuals. MAP21 could be a boss map, but I don't think I'd include that, either! I guess Scourge has given all it can.

 

You are right that it was a bit difficult to go past about 25. Partially because there's a few ones that contend pretty evenly for the last slots and partially because I've got some good stuff that's seen limited releases so far. White Light (either version), Justice - Infernal Mechanics, Warpzone and For The Hell Of It (the infamous E2M0 from ZPack) have all been counted out as they're ambitious, possibly even iconic as far as my works go, but not actually that strong from a game play perspective, I think.

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I looked up what map The Leak is before giving that math and also saw it naturally while looking through all the maps included in Scourge; indeed The Leak is 20 so two of my three guesses were 21 and 31. The third was 19, which you didn't mention. The sum is 71 (greater than 70!).

 

Counting out what doesn't play very well in your opinion is probably a good idea, I would think. As for the part "partially because I've got some good stuff that's seen limited releases so far", however, I don't see how that should be a deterrant - this could be a chance to shine those in a bit brighter light! Anything in the Pre-'13 Grab Bag you think is good enough - should be fair game, as well as circa 2014 stuff and I noticed you even have a 2017 map in Revilution!

 

It's your choice about secret levels, but if you have any contenders for levels to go in secret slots, then adding a small extra secret exit room to a few levels you did would only improve the levels if anything IMO - without taking anything away from the original levels' gameplay.

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Well, I'm glad you guys are giving it a go... Can you give me a little more to go on? Are you getting any sort of useful messages with the crashes? I've never tried it with Zandronum and I don't know what the code base is like there. Likewise, I had no issues with Twisted Joke on ZDoom 2.8.1, although I had to make some minor alterations from the original, 12-year-old version.

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Just crashed to desktop. No errors. Upon further testing, I think it was because I had turned on idbehold L in a dark area. Crashed in random locations after that. This happened to me once before. Last time it was a truecolor png sky with idbehold L causing the crashes. No pngs here.

 

Hey wait. Wasn't that one of your maps last time too?

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@Walter confetti That error is because I've used the standard Doom(2) SpawnIDs +2000 to get the scripts with Thing_Spawn() in working in Twisted Joke using the DECORATE Christmas versions of the enemies featured there. This is in order to avoid conflict with any other maps that use Thing_Spawn() in this or any later compilation, so I may have to recommend against Zandronum. I've been told that code base isn't caught up with ZDoom 2.8.1 yet, so for the time being the first suggestion is using a different source port. I'll experiment this evening with using SpawnIDs within that cited range, in case I can get it not conflicting with the standard Doom(2) things.

 

@EffinghamHuffnagel I'd recommend you take your error to the ZDoom forums, as I've yet to be able to find a reason for Twisted Joke to cause crashes like that! It sounds more like your ZDoom installation may have some kind of fault, if you're getting random crashes with the light amplification visor active.

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