RELAX (Chillax 2) Updates thread

Hello everybody, here is the newest thread on RELAX, the spiritual successor to Chillax. Here are some important updates to note:

 

-We will now feature two gameplay modes, which are essentially just two difficulty levels: Classic Slaughter mode, which follows the likes of Chillax in monster count and difficulty. We suggest pairing this mode with your favorite Over Powered Weapons mod (we are building around eweps.wad) and hosting for online Coop. The other choice is a sort of "Campaign/Story" mode where the monster count is watered down for a more reasonable playing experience and can be beatable with vanilla weapons (Recommended when playing in Single Player). This was created to appeal to a wider audience and have different experiences to choose from.

 

-A Discord channel has been created where you can get more consistent updates: https://discord.gg/j3pvsKr UPDATE, USE THIS LINK INSTEAD: https://discord.gg/CSsUtex

 

-More mappers have joined the team (full list below)

 

-About 10 or so maps are finished, with many currently WIP

 

We are also still open to having more people join in on the project and submit maps if you'd like. You can inquire by commenting on this thread, posting in the discord, or messaging my inbox. 

 

UPDATE (11/24/2019): Hey guys, I never laid out some basic guidelines and want to save you guys (and myself) any potential headaches, especially since there are a lot of you on board now.

 

1. Use UDMF format but keep the maps Zandronum compatible so this game can be played multiplayer and coop. If you are not familiar with Zandronum, it is basically an older version of GZDoom, so you will have everything GZDoom has implemented, but about a year behind in features (lack of cone shaped dynamic lights and fully interactive portals are some of the limitations, nothing too serious)

 

2. Implement two different difficulties. One should be more appropriate for single play with vanilla weapons while another should be slaughter like as if you were making the map for coop play or an OP Weapons pack.

 

***This is the "gimmick" or "main feature" about RELAX: it is an indirect sequel to Chillax, but will also have a different gameplay mode available (really just a different difficultly) where it would be more enjoyable and beatable in vanilla single player.***

 

If you need to make a "Version B" of your map due to the large difficulty different, feel free to do so. But try to implement both in the same map to keep the total file size down, if possible...

 

3. Feel free to use whatever extra resources (ask just in case) but PLEASE: make your own pk3/WAD for the extra resources. DO NOT modify the main resource pack that I send you. This is important because several of you are using your own resources in addition to the main resource pack, and I don't want to be sent back 10 different versions, trying to figure out what was changed. Just send them in a seperate file and I will be the final compiler once everything is finished.

 

Current mappers are as follows:

@DavidRaven

@Van Daemon

Joseph Pinkston

@CaptainManiac

@wolfmcbeard

@Buckethell

Chris "bxn" Spaloss

Iain Lockhart

 

We all appreciate the continued interest. Stay tuned for more updates, and please tell us what you think about RELAX so far!

 

Screens of the current build:

 

Edited November 24, 2019 by Chris Moyer : Outdated Discord link

Hello, I'm one of the mappers of this project!
I'm bumping this topic with a few screenshots from my map.
 

Scenes from "Quarantine Catastrophe"

 

This have new weapons and new monsters?

On 6/9/2018 at 12:10 PM, Gaia74 said:

This have new weapons and new monsters?

New monsters, but the weapons are vanilla. We were testing it with eweps.wad, which is what we recommend if you play it in slaughter mode due to the difficulty and monster count. But the idea is you can pair it with any OP Weapons mod of your liking.

that is great

Looks very good. looking forward

On 6/12/2018 at 6:03 PM, Skrap Productions said:

New monsters, but the weapons are vanilla. We were testing it with eweps.wad, which is what we recommend if you play it in slaughter mode due to the difficulty and monster count. But the idea is you can pair it with any OP Weapons mod of your liking.

#RussianOverkill (Though eweps isn't bad either, besides the BFG replacement one-shotting literally everything)

Alternatively the weapons mod used in the Chillax + Master of Puppets online server (adds assault and quad shotgun, assault rifle, minigun, railgun, bfg10k, and yamato cannon from Russian Overkill (mini-nuke for hordes, nuke altfire annihilates everything in a large area), along with numerous altfire options) isn't a bad idea either.

 

I will say though usually the main problem with slaughtermaps is typically lack of ammo to handle what the game is throwing at you. I'd strongly suggest that all weapons have infinite ammo, except for BFG9000/10k class weapons (Or anything stronger than it)

Edited June 14, 2018 by Traysandor

I try to resist the urge to promote my OPWeapons, but this type of wad is exactly what I made them for. In fact, they are so OP, you might want to give the monsters some help, like, making them fast, give them 200% damage factor, multiply them and/or have them resurrect each other. The monsters will still have no chance.

On 6/14/2018 at 12:07 PM, Traysandor said:

#RussianOverkill (Though eweps isn't bad either, besides the BFG replacement one-shotting literally everything)

Alternatively the weapons mod used in the Chillax + Master of Puppets online server (adds assault and quad shotgun, assault rifle, minigun, railgun, bfg10k, and yamato cannon from Russian Overkill (mini-nuke for hordes, nuke altfire annihilates everything in a large area), along with numerous altfire options) isn't a bad idea either.

 

I will say though usually the main problem with slaughtermaps is typically lack of ammo to handle what the game is throwing at you. I'd strongly suggest that all weapons have infinite ammo, except for BFG9000/10k class weapons (Or anything stronger than it)

You are absolutely right and I have the same gripe with eweps. I love it's simplicity and ridiculousness, but the BFG is a bit cheap. I love your suggestion for fixing it; instead of changing the weapon itself, just make it with limited ammo, and leave the others as unlimited. We are designing the maps with ammo in case if someone is pairing the game with an ammo limited mod, or if they want to play the non-slaughter mode and use vanilla weapons.

20 hours ago, Empyre said:

I try to resist the urge to promote my OPWeapons, but this type of wad is exactly what I made them for. In fact, they are so OP, you might want to give the monsters some help, like, making them fast, give them 200% damage factor, multiply them and/or have them resurrect each other. The monsters will still have no chance.

Hey man, no worries at all, promote as much as you like. :) I believe we have talked about this one before, but I will take a look at them. I will also take your suggestions into consideration regarding the monsters. I don't think want to replace any of the vanilla monsters, just make changes to the ones that were added, perhaps.

 

Thanks for the input guys.

On 6/13/2018 at 3:06 PM, Marlamir said:

Looks very good. looking forward

Thank you :)

Oh yeah, you have custom monsters. In that case, if you are playing this with OPWeapons, all you can do is set the flag for fast monsters, and set the damage factor to 2.0 (or even higher).

5 hours ago, Skrap Productions said:

You are absolutely right and I have the same gripe with eweps. I love it's simplicity and ridiculousness, but the BFG is a bit cheap. I love your suggestion for fixing it; instead of changing the weapon itself, just make it with limited ammo, and leave the others as unlimited. We are designing the maps with ammo in case if someone is pairing the game with an ammo limited mod, or if they want to play the non-slaughter mode and use vanilla weapons.

That makes sense I suppose. Make a mode more standard to regular play, then have one where almost all ammo is infinite. Slaughtermaps are tedious as it is - I'd also enjoy it a little more if the Doom Marine had either more health to work with or better defense. For slaughter I usually just enable the old Resistance Rune or the Guardsphere from Skulltag ('give resistancerune / guardsphere(?)' in the console) if possible... Because 200/200 doesn't really cut it. Also, as a thought, the Doom '16 / D4D - style BFG would make an interesting compromise - one shot clears everything in the area except boss monsters (cyber, big spider, any mod monsters that are designed to be boss-level), but since it typically holds only a few shots maximum,  ammo could be stored in secrets or before big fights - but I'm unsure if the code could be implemented. The regular BFG could work and you spread plasma cell packs around the map (Leaving the plasma rifle to have infinite ammo).

 

Of course a lot also depends on how you want to present your slaughter and what tools you're willing to work with / implement. Is it meant to be balls-deep hard, do you want your Doom Marine to stand a fighting chance (infinite ammo, more HP/defense, inventory support options like turrets from Stronghold, marine reinforcements, etc), or do you want it to be pretty casual (more like eweps and RO where the Doom Marine is the one who's OP and little else stands a chance)?

Edited June 15, 2018 by Traysandor

19 hours ago, Traysandor said:

That makes sense I suppose. Make a mode more standard to regular play, then have one where almost all ammo is infinite. Slaughtermaps are tedious as it is - I'd also enjoy it a little more if the Doom Marine had either more health to work with or better defense. For slaughter I usually just enable the old Resistance Rune or the Guardsphere from Skulltag ('give resistancerune / guardsphere(?)' in the console) if possible... Because 200/200 doesn't really cut it. Also, as a thought, the Doom '16 / D4D - style BFG would make an interesting compromise - one shot clears everything in the area except boss monsters (cyber, big spider, any mod monsters that are designed to be boss-level), but since it typically holds only a few shots maximum,  ammo could be stored in secrets or before big fights - but I'm unsure if the code could be implemented. The regular BFG could work and you spread plasma cell packs around the map (Leaving the plasma rifle to have infinite ammo).

 

Of course a lot also depends on how you want to present your slaughter and what tools you're willing to work with / implement. Is it meant to be balls-deep hard, do you want your Doom Marine to stand a fighting chance (infinite ammo, more HP/defense, inventory support options like turrets from Stronghold, marine reinforcements, etc), or do you want it to be pretty casual (more like eweps and RO where the Doom Marine is the one who's OP and little else stands a chance)?

I like your suggestions. The good news is, we have some new power ups in this already. Nothing too crazy, but there a life sphere and an armor sphere which together would give you 300/300. There is also a haste/speed sphere which is actually very useful for slaughter maps, and a biosphere which is just a rad suit but with twice the duration.

 

And the two modes we are implementing are balls-deep hard/original Chillax style which we suggest using for online coop play, and then a more standard campaign mode which we recommend for more of an enjoyable single player experience. At first this project was just a Direct Chillax sequel, but we realized that some people (including myself) can get really annoyed with slaughter maps in single player, even though online people more often seem to prefer fighting huge waves of monsters with their buddies and a multiple life or unlimited re-spawn parameters. So, it was decided, why not design both into the game and let people choose depending on how they want play it?

Campaigns are interesting, but in slaughtermaps it gets old after the first couple of maps once you've found all the guns (And if using an upgrade system, after all the upgrades have been unlocked). An idea I floated around as a "Never gonna actually make it but sounded interesting" thing was basically along the lines of "design a map around the use of a specific weapon". Like map01 berserk fist/chainsaw/pistol, map02 shotgun, 03 chaingun, 04 ssg, 05 rocket launcher, 06 plasma gun... you get the idea. But in this instance it'd be more frantic and slaughter themed than whatever I may have had in mind. (Also, the idea was more or less in the form of a Classic Doom-esque episode, so that idea had like 8-10 levels with a bossmap at the end.)

 

There could be an alternative solution to the lives issue too. In the Chillax+MoP server, the MoP side uses a "Marine Reinforcement" counter, typically based on how many monsters are in the map. In the mod, Puppets win if they deplete all Marine reinforcements. Marines win if they either kill all the enemies on the map, or at least enough to trigger the level to be exitable (Typically around 75% of monsters killed). Of course, levels would also need to be designed to discourage players from dying on purpose to sequence break or cheat particularly hard encounters (Like after grabbing a key or triggering a switch/linedef/etc that progresses the map, but also unleashes a bunch of monsters). Either way though, anything that traps a player in a fight area has to be enterable from another location accessible from outside the area (Typically via one-way teleporter), because you always have to assume whomever triggers the trap may die, but in co-op servers also leaves the map unfinishable by other players

 

Or similar "X lives per player" ideas based on popular Survival servers, though most of the online ones people play also spice in Complex Doom, Brutal Doom, and sometimes Samsara.

Edited June 17, 2018 by Traysandor

41 minutes ago, Traysandor said:

anything that traps a player in a fight area has to be enterable from another location accessible from outside the area (Typically via one-way teleporter), because you always have to assume whomever triggers the trap may die, but in co-op servers also leaves the map unfinishable by other players

Quoted for emphasis. This is important.

12 hours ago, Traysandor said:

Campaigns are interesting, but in slaughtermaps it gets old after the first couple of maps once you've found all the guns (And if using an upgrade system, after all the upgrades have been unlocked). An idea I floated around as a "Never gonna actually make it but sounded interesting" thing was basically along the lines of "design a map around the use of a specific weapon". Like map01 berserk fist/chainsaw/pistol, map02 shotgun, 03 chaingun, 04 ssg, 05 rocket launcher, 06 plasma gun... you get the idea. But in this instance it'd be more frantic and slaughter themed than whatever I may have had in mind. (Also, the idea was more or less in the form of a Classic Doom-esque episode, so that idea had like 8-10 levels with a bossmap at the end.)

 

There could be an alternative solution to the lives issue too. In the Chillax+MoP server, the MoP side uses a "Marine Reinforcement" counter, typically based on how many monsters are in the map. In the mod, Puppets win if they deplete all Marine reinforcements. Marines win if they either kill all the enemies on the map, or at least enough to trigger the level to be exitable (Typically around 75% of monsters killed). Of course, levels would also need to be designed to discourage players from dying on purpose to sequence break or cheat particularly hard encounters (Like after grabbing a key or triggering a switch/linedef/etc that progresses the map, but also unleashes a bunch of monsters). Either way though, anything that traps a player in a fight area has to be enterable from another location accessible from outside the area (Typically via one-way teleporter), because you always have to assume whomever triggers the trap may die, but in co-op servers also leaves the map unfinishable by other players

 

Or similar "X lives per player" ideas based on popular Survival servers, though most of the online ones people play also spice in Complex Doom, Brutal Doom, and sometimes Samsara.

 

11 hours ago, Empyre said:

Quoted for emphasis. This is important.

I'm totally on board with both of you guys. We are definitely trying to keep it interesting and use a lot of different gimmicks. For example, one map has no health, but instead has this basin/pad thing where you can get slowly healed as you stay in it, which will force a different strategy for the players that particular map. And yeah, absolutely Empyre, we have played plenty of Chillax 1 online and are play testing the maps to make sure there is a possible one way re-entry in case if everyone dies in that room, so it doesn't break the map when playing online.

Ahh shite I am so late and irresponsible

If you want to post a wad, we can give it a run through on ZDawmon also to check for any multiplayer issues.

On 8/7/2018 at 6:08 AM, damo2k said:

If you want to post a wad, we can give it a run through on ZDawmon also to check for any multiplayer issues.

Ok! Updates are a little off until then, but I will keep this in mind!

On 8/6/2018 at 4:26 PM, CaptainManiac said:

Ahh shite I am so late and irresponsible

Nah, You're fine haha

Follow the project:
https://discord.gg/CSsUtex (Discord)

Dynamic strobe lights, animated walls and phased sector lighting.

looks really detailed; keep up the good work. i particularly like the radio antenna shot.

16 hours ago, Pure Hellspawn said:

looks really detailed; keep up the good work. i particularly like the radio antenna shot.

Thanks! Progress is steady :)

Could we get an updated Discord link at all? Seems the one in the original post is broken. I would very much like to keep up with this project. I absolutely loved Chillax so I'm super exited for a sequel of sorts! 

Just now, DivineWaffle said:

Could we get an updated Discord link at all? Seems the one in the original post is broken. I would very much like to keep up with this project. I absolutely loved Chillax so I'm super exited for a sequel of sorts! 

Hmm weird it should work. Let me look into real quick.

2 minutes ago, DivineWaffle said:

Could we get an updated Discord link at all? Seems the one in the original post is broken. I would very much like to keep up with this project. I absolutely loved Chillax so I'm super exited for a sequel of sorts! 

https://discord.gg/CSsUtex

1 minute ago, Chris Moyer said:

https://discord.gg/CSsUtex

Thank you sir, I appreciate it!