The Realm of Z-Magic (Teaser Demo)

That looks really great so far. Just a quick question: Which lighting settings do you recommend (using GzDoom), since it looks quite bright.

Thanks :) It's lit for software rendering so, 'Doom' 'Software' or 'Vanilla' should work best.

More Urthar stuff is always a good thing

Pretty great stuff so far, nailed the aesthetic and style of an opening Quake level, decent enough challenge too.

Only minor issue I ran into was getting stuck on the first lift, I stayed on it long enough to have it go back up, and a spectre ran under it whilst I was bringing it back down, stopping the lift and causing me to get trapped, so I had to restart the level. Besides that though, no bugs that I noticed, and it was fun.

Texture on the rock ceilings looks weird at a certain angle, but other than that, i think everything looks tasteful. Slopes don't weird me out (being pretty unfamilliar with most of what gets mapped for (g)zdoom) and the static lightening on the vertical surfaces is something i didn't knew could've been done in zdoom, looks great. 

What bums me out with (g)zdoom wads is that sometimes it is never specified how the game should be configured in order to have the intended course through the levels. I'm surprised, though, that the game went pretty smooth and non-gzdoom-like without the mouselook, with slopes being this sublime. Jumping could maybe use a sound. The lift also got bugged for me.

Excited to see more maps and quad slaughter hordes!

Immediately on my Watchlist ! :D

EDIT: So I played the map. You forgot to add a blockmonster flag around the very first lift to avoid being stucked (almost) forever by that spectre. But I just had fun believing the secrets would act like in Quake (aka you shoot, and a secret place opens), but alas, it doesn't (except for that one little secret). :P

Also, I don't know, but the monster placement in the exit room feels extremely weird and random in such a small place.

Hell yes.  This immediately gets my seal of approval.  Great use of 3D floors, and I dig the addition of the Light Armor.

Do you plan to integrate this in with Dimension of the Boomed, or will it be its own standalone mod?

10 hours ago, Buildersith said:

Only minor issue I ran into was getting stuck on the first lift, I stayed on it long enough to have it go back up, and a spectre ran under it whilst I was bringing it back down, stopping the lift and causing me to get trapped, so I had to restart the level. Besides that though, no bugs that I noticed, and it was fun.

This particular case is ease to fix with a few monster block lines, but it does reinforce the notion that I need a more robust way of handling moving 3DFloors.

6 hours ago, JDR said:

What bums me out with (g)zdoom wads is that sometimes it is never specified how the game should be configured in order to have the intended course through the levels. I'm surprised, though, that the game went pretty smooth and non-gzdoom-like without the mouselook, with slopes being this sublime. Jumping could maybe use a sound.

 

Excited to see more maps and quad slaughter hordes!

It's sort of a side effect of me never using mouselook in software rendering, (the skewed perspective makes me slightly nauseous.)

I'm not sure I want to give Ranger's 'hur' jumping sfx to Doomguy, but perhaps there's a suitable alternative.

Mine eyes can but weep as they bear witness to the majesty of QUAD BFG, truly a thing of beauty ludicrous overkill.

Quote

Do you plan to integrate this in with Dimension of the Boomed, or will it be its own standalone mod?

 Z-Magic will be standalone. When it's fully complete I might look at porting the DotB maps into it.

Just so you know, this doesn't run on ZDoom because of the attenuate property assigned to a dynamic light in GLDEFS.

Beautiful work -- as expected after DOTB. I'm a big fan of relatively small, interconnected maps like this one. Nice work on the new gibs, too.

One of the sides of the crate near the chaingun is misaligned.

And I was going to say it would be helpful to know upfront that jumping is required, but I see you've added that to the OP in the mean time.

Can't wait for the rest!

24 minutes ago, -TDRR- said:

Just so you know, this doesn't run on ZDoom because of the attenuate property assigned to a dynamic light in GLDEFS.

Hmm, it runs on my copy of ZDoom 2.8.1 (I think ZDoom ignores GLDEFS ?)

30 minutes ago, Urthar said:

Hmm, it runs on my copy of ZDoom 2.8.1 (I think ZDoom ignores GLDEFS ?)

That might have to do with it, but then i can't run it in my favorite ZDoom derivative, ZDoom LE. Eh don't worry about it i can just edit the GLDEFS file.

As for the mod itself, it is really fantastic and i loved every bit of it. But maybe it's way too hard for me.

2 minutes ago, -TDRR- said:

As for the mod itself, it is really fantastic and i loved every bit of it. But maybe it's way too hard for me. 

There's 2 quad damages in that map, one is very simple to notice ... It makes the whole "big fights" much easier :P

I liked it a lot, it had some good fights.

Did you intend for the player to take 5 to 9 points of damage at the start on purpose?

50 minutes ago, Korozive said:

5 to 9 points of damage at the start

I thought it was a clever and effective way of letting the player know that you take fall damage in this mod.

Ran twice through the map. Absolutely awesome teaser! Haven't encountered any glitches or bugs and feedback that I can provide are more of an insignificant nitpicks type. Like, maybe first Mancubus platform should stay lowered just one second longer and also the button that raises two Mancubus platforms in the next room is higher than eye level height and maybe should be lowered? But anyway, as this project is still young and very, very, very far from being finished, I'm not sure if the above should even matter at this point.

Anyway, DOTB was super awesome and I'm excited to play its sequel whenever it'll get released!

visually very impressive, just like your other projects. gameplay needs a lot of work though. in the room with the two mancubi i didn't find the minigun initially. would've missed it entirely if i hadn't enabled god mode there. there's also too many pain elementals/lost souls. with the shotgun only i ran out of ammo almost immediately. but even with the minigun it was too many i think. rocketlauncher not very useful there. maybe even too small of an area to have three different weapons in there.

i also didn't read your description properly, so i missed that jumping is required. i nocliped my way up where i had to use jump i guess. pointing to the area with the two mancubi. one suggestion maybe: have a trigger that activates when you kill both mancubi. have a platform lower a bit so you can progress through. them being on platforms just screams for a trigger like that.

looking forward to the full thing. i suppose it's going to take quite a while for you to release it.

also, just out of curiosity: why don't you build maps for quake? you're ignoring all the engine limitations by doom. so why not use the actual thing? i heard trenchbroom is a fantastic tool for quake mapping. 

Here's a playthrough! I did run short on ammo initially, until I realized that there were bullets (nails) down one of the Pain Elemental alcoves. :D

20 hours ago, Urthar said:

If you stepped back a foot or two, the imp would be standing on the "Doom Ϙ" box. :)

one thing i forgot about: you have this large room with lot's of enemies inside. however, the player is able to basically run away from that encounter, into a small hallway where it is a lot easier to funnel the enemies to. basically, what i'm trying to say is, if you have large rooms with combat encounters inside them, close the doors if possible. if you have escape routes, the player can almost sort of exploit the encounters and marginalize them. 

doom 2016 did something similar. you entered a room which then is locked until you've killed a couple of enemy waves. so you have a room designed for that specific encounter. some say it was a bit overdone in 2016 and it doesn't work for every single encounter. but if you have a big room, i'd try to incorporate it into the encounter design as a whole and shut it down until the combat encounter is complete. if the player has ways to escape, he can completely change how you intended the encounter to be.

51 minutes ago, zzzornbringer said:

... basically, what i'm trying to say is, if you have large rooms with combat encounters inside them, close the doors if possible. ...

... shut it down until the combat encounter is complete.

While this is a well-argued point, I just want to say that it is also a matter of taste. My view for one is pretty much the diametric opposite. As a player, I like having escape routes and being able to choose how I approach an encounter. The kind of approach described above, where the player is locked in and forced to deal with an encounter "as intended", often feels very artificial to me. All of the things zzzornbringer lists as negatives, namely

51 minutes ago, zzzornbringer said:

... the player is able to basically run away from that encounter, into a small hallway where it is a lot easier to funnel the enemies to.

... if you have escape routes, the player can almost sort of exploit the encounters

... the player ... can completely change how you intended the encounter to be.

are things I see as positive. To me, there is a lot to be said for taking a step back and allowing the player to experience your map as they choose, instead of forcing them to play as you "intended" them to.

26 minutes ago, hedgehog said:

While this is a well-argued point, I just want to say that it is also a matter of taste...

like i said, it doesn't always work. it can also make your map feel artificial. but i also think having these types of rooms besides regular rooms is an evolutionary step forward from the classic doom design. it gives the designers more control over how he wants the player to engage in an encounter. of course, depending on how you design a room, you can still allow the player to have different approaches, to a degree.

i also don't know if i'm a fan of this escape route idea. i don't think it's how the designer intended the encounter and i don't think it's fun to just hide in a narrow hallway waiting for the enemies to stick their head in one by one so you can kill them easily, while also keeping the enemies that can't reach you in that room that you ran away from. i'm not sure if i'd call that a good example of player freedom. to me it's more like exploiting the map design and poor enemy ai. i personally avoid doing stuff like that and if i do it, i don't feel good doing it, because i know that's not how the encounter was supposed to be completed and i know how the ai works and how stupid it can be. it's save and efficient but i don't think it's fun. if you have to use tactics like that, i think it's a more fundamental design issue. imbalanced combat encounters. or maybe the difficulty the player chose is to high. in an optimal world, you should never even consider what i'd call cheese tactics.

Updated the download link to direct to ModDB. I did a couple of quick fixes, and implemented difficulty settings, but otherwise it's identical to the initial version.

Some interesting points raised, and thank you kindly for the demo @ShadesMaster!

@zzzornbringer As Hedgehog mentioned, these things are often a matter of style. Basically Romero built all the Techbase openers in Quake, which is what I'm sort of emulating here, and he's fairly restained with his use of lock-ins. That said, the visibility of the Minigun and Rocket Launcher might be something I need to look at.

I have dabbled a bit in Trenchbroom, but I tend to prefer the gameplay of Doom.

Maybe I'll finish this one day, if I get a bad case of mapper's block working on ZMagic.

@Korozive As Hedgehog mentioned, it's neat trick (from the first map of Dark Forces,) to show the player that falling damage is a thing.

19 hours ago, Urthar said:

On 2/22/2019 at 6:44 AM, Buildersith said:

Only minor issue I ran into was getting stuck on the first lift, I stayed on it long enough to have it go back up, and a spectre ran under it whilst I was bringing it back down, stopping the lift and causing me to get trapped, so I had to restart the level. Besides that though, no bugs that I noticed, and it was fun.

 

This particular case is ease to fix with a few monster block lines, but it does reinforce the notion that I need a more robust way of handling moving 3DFloors.

One solution to that is using an invisible 3D floor to fill the hole below the elevator. Downside to that is that things will seem to hover in the air slightly if running below the elevator.

On 2/23/2019 at 9:51 AM, boris said:

One solution to that is using an invisible 3D floor to fill the hole below the elevator. Downside to that is that things will seem to hover in the air slightly if running below the elevator.

I tried using a door rather than an elevator dummy sector to drive the primary motion and that seems to give better results. The 3D lift will reverse direction like a door if it encounters a blockage instead just of stopping. (For a really big lift I might try using a lethal crusher to just kill anything caught under it.)

Interesting. How did you keep the floor/ceiling to go out of sync? Sector_SetLink?

Yeah, I had to use sector-setlinks anyway for the multi-part lifts, so it's just an extension of that.

Amazing map, waiting for the final product! A great way to tease us!

Very solid teaser that was released, already a massive improvement from DOTB. Very watery flow, managed to find a lot of the secrets easily as well because of this. The Airtunnel automatically became my favourite "stare at" eye candy (Really hope we get some Wind Tunnels esque mechanic in TROZM)

Just a final, quick side note, will we be seeing the Thunderbolt in TROZM? :D