Cool Skies - mini-episode 1 release!

IWAD: Doom 2

Compatibility: GZDoom/Zandronum for now (see below)

Length: 5 relatively short, action-packed maps (MAP01-MAP05)

Difficulty levels are taken care of. MAP05 is especially fun when played with pistol start. Has tiny built-in DECORATE mod, should not cause problems with other gameplay mods if map is loaded before them. Health warning: extremely cheesy soundtrack, may not be suitable for lactose intolerant.

Story so far: company that supplies damaging floors to UAC has suddenly discontinued everyone's favorite flavor, NUKAGE. Now it's up to you to investigate the reason behind it and find out whether it has anything to do with recently appointed CEO, Cyril Bertran D'Moine.

More screenshots:

Credits:

Palm trees from Necrodome (or maybe Powerslave), ripped by CaptainToenail.

DN3D pistol sound taken from Samsara.

Some textures from Freedoom.

About compatibility: I aim for eventual Boom compatibility, but so far PNAMES lump causes Signal 11 error in PRBoom+ for some reason. I will be extremely grateful if someone will help me fix this.

DOWNLOAD: coolskies.zip

Old version:

Download: coolskies_v091b.zip

After getting some responses from playtesters, I had to make some fixes and adjustments to the WAD.

- fixed some textures in MAP03

- God-awful silent teleports at MAP03 and MAP04 are no longer god-awful

- Music in MAP04 loops a bit better

- Serious encounter rebalance in MAP04

This looks really nice, where's the download link?

It's in the OP now.

With the addition of the fifth map, mini-episode 1 is now complete! Along with it came some minor changes:

- Title music was improperly cropped, turning guitars into piano somehow. This is fixed now.

-  I got my hands on warning stripe textures and it turns out I cannot be trusted with such power, because now everything is covered in them.

- Tiny DECORATE mod that makes pistol more useful.

On 3/25/2020 at 12:23 PM, Khodoque said:

About compatibility: I aim for eventual Boom compatibility, but so far PNAMES lump causes Signal 11 error in PRBoom+ for some reason. I will be extremely grateful if someone will help me fix this.

I think you need to merge the texture definitions from the IWAD into those in your PWAD.

You currently only have a TEXTURE2 lump which defines the new textures in your wad, and a corresponding PNAMES lookup which only contains your new textures' patch names. Unfortunately this overrides and shadows the PNAMES lump in the IWAD -- in Boom that's just how the lump manager works, Boom will only look at the last TEXTURE1/TEXTURE2/PNAMES across all wads loaded. So when the engine is resolving the textures in the IWAD's TEXTURE1 lump it looks in your wad's PNAMES lump which completely doesn't match. It reads garbage data and crashes.

It looks like you are using SLADE. I am sure SLADE has the required function to import/merge texture definitions from the IWAD, but as I don't use SLADE myself I can't tell you exactly what it is called or where to look, sorry.

Ah, big thanks, I see now. Considering I have imported some textures and patches from DOOM.WAD, boy I am gonna have a great time sorting this out.

Thanks for playing, dude! I've no idea how you got stuck on that elevator, I'll investigate that (there's actually two elevators with silent teleport in there, they probably got desynced somehow).

Those COMP texture trucks are awesome, I'll definitely have to check this out when I get a bit more time! Downloaded for later.

I played it in two sittings today, as other things didn't seem as interesting. Really fun and "feel good" map set - nice work! I noticed there's some kind of error in MAP05, where a wall is missing. Doesn't look too bad from the outside in GZDoom, but it's easy to hop in, and then you can see this:

Great stuff, though. Enjoyable little plot and lots of fun "doom cute" sector constructions.

Yep, this wall indeed misses a texture. There was a secret in there, but I decided that it's too boring, and I guess I screwed up when I was removing it. I will probably release an update some time later.

Paradigm is shifting. Stay tuned.