Doom Zero - launch (and celebrating 25 years of Doom II)

On 1/11/2020 at 4:40 AM, DASI-I said:

I must say: I'm diapointed that nobody so far has tried to run this on a real DOS machine 😋

I will fix this. No ETA on when, but I will :)

Loved it until I got to Map 20. After that, it just went downhill. 3 1/2 stars out of 5.

@DASI-I

After putting it on the backburner for a little bit, I've finally recorded the entire wad from start to finish being played in MS-DOS. You can check out the playlist here if you're interested in seeing how it looks. I played v1.2 because I didn't realize there was a newer version, and that maaay have caused some things, listed in the lines below.

THE GOOD: it runs quite well! Everything seemed to do what it was supposed to as I more-or-less remembered it from my first playthrough. The added layer of nostalgia from the retro PC really made me feel wistful for playing Doom II for the first time again, and that's always a good feeling. Great stuff.

THE BAD: I ran into a few hiccups during the playthrough. When I initially patched my v1.9 doom2.exe, I got "Line 380: Unmatchable text string." The patching continued as normal anyway, and this didn't seem to have any bearing on anything in the end, but I figured I would mention it. Aside from an actual system crash that just comes with the territory sometimes, I had two separate W_CacheLumpNum errors, 20881 and 18444 >= numlumps, respectively, on map20. I was still able to finish the map, and things were fine until map28, where I triggered the savegame buffer overrun. This might have been addressed in the thread already, but I'm just mentioning here for completeness. I could still beat it, just couldn't save. After completing map29, I get a venetian blinds crash when entering the teleport in map30, which led to me completing the wad in Chocolate Doom, where it does not occur. I'm not sure if these bugs are present in v1.2, and I'll check that version to see if they persist. I was playing v1.2 the whole time so yeah that bug is still there. Could not get it to crash in v1.5, but it's difficult to reproduce.

No other problems arose, so I was able to basically 99% complete it, only fully stopped by the map30 crash. Great wad! I had a lot of fun with this one.

Timestamps to buggy behavior in my recordings, for reference:

W_CacheLumpNum #1
W_CacheLumpNum #2
Venetian blinds

On 2/7/2020 at 6:07 AM, Bashe said:

@DASI-I

After putting it on the backburner for a little bit, I've finally recorded the entire wad from start to finish being played in MS-DOS.

 

NICE! Thanks Bashe. I was only able to test it with v1.666 and 1.9. I didn't know there was a 1.2. So yeah, probably a lot of bugs happened due to me not testing the 1.2 release. However I am aware of the map30 crash. It didn't happen in any source port or in DOSbox, I only found out about it when I ran it on my windows 98 machine. I've been messing around with the map so hopefully I can get this fixed.

Recently I got myself a real 486 machine. I still need to do a few things to get it working well enough to run Doom. I can't wait. And then I'll truly be able to see how stable Doom Zero will run on an era accurate system.

Cheers

This mod is awesome!
beautiful ambushes.

love the Echo Halls idea.

my hat is well and truly off for you my man.
most fun i've had in ages :)

Hey guys, I made a High Quality Music WAD for your enjoyment, try it out in conjunction with Doom Zero and tell me what you think.
PS: Updated Doom Zero again, now to version 1.6, modified according to feedback I received in the last few months.
DOWNLOAD: https://www.moddb.com/mods/doom-zero/downloads

I just finished playing through the entire WAD, and I just want to say I had a blast, great piece of work, I'd recommend it to anyone. Its exactly what I want in terms of Doom user content, thanks for your hard work, @DASI-I

I am a hardcore gamer that plays DOOM with the classic controls. Is there anyway to play this on DOSBox? Or more specifically, is there anyway to patch the DEH to the DOOM EXE?

EDIT: please don't call me an idiot. It was a long time since I played this on DOSBox. How do I delete comments?

1 hour ago, YeOldeFellerNoob said:

I am a hardcore gamer that plays DOOM with the classic controls. Is there anyway to play this on DOSBox? Or more specifically, is there anyway to patch the DEH to the DOOM EXE?

 

EDIT: please don't call me an idiot. It was a long time since I played this on DOSBox. How do I delete comments?

Copy ALL the files into your doom2 folder and then just type DoomZero

I would never call anyone an idiot just because they asked for some help

Just finished playing the Wad last night, and really loved it a lot. One of the better homages to classic Doom, that really made me excited with each new map. Some of the switch puzzles got a little annoying to me, and I tried and tried to find the secrets in map 14 to no avail (I couldn't get that red key or to the large secret area on the right side of the map!) and finished a la TNT map 4 with less than 70% Kills sadly. The new enemy was hit and miss, but I believe only in Map 26 in the open area after the cave with the rocket launcher did it cause me a lot of grief, since I was trying to play with a pistol-start mindset and had a "terrible" arsenal and no way to strategically retreat (the previous map's use of mid-tiers and the SSG later was a little frustrating as well since it was very crowded in parts). I had some trouble with understanding what to do during the first IOS-style fight as well, and Echo Halls caused me endless deaths and suffering as I couldn't figure out the strategy to progressing on a pistol-start mindset there either with 3% Health, though I loved its redux in the final third of the game; the end of "Suspension" where you understand the map name made me smile and the floating structures looked amazing in that skybox. Those are all of the smaller gripes, but honestly the majority of this mapset with absolutely delightful to play, and I knew by the end of the third map there was something special here. I love the level variety and the shifts in architecture and style both within and out of levels. Map 31, MEAT, was a really great concept and a lot of fun to play, and the twist in Map 32 had me shaking when I saw that enemy count, since I knew it was something bad. I really liked the ending as well, since I didn't see it coming. Are you considering a sequel with that cliffhanger or where you just wanting to do a "what-if" prequel to Doom 2016? At any rate, really looking forward to playing more!

On 4/9/2020 at 4:42 AM, DASI-I said:

Hey guys, I made a High Quality Music WAD for your enjoyment, try it out in conjunction with Doom Zero and tell me what you think.
PS: Updated Doom Zero again, now to version 1.6, modified according to feedback I received in the last few months.
DOWNLOAD: https://www.moddb.com/mods/doom-zero/downloads

Thanks @DASI-I for this awesome music pack. It takes your masterfully made megawad to new heights. New music reeditions are pretty good and really enjoyable.
Hope you can made a workaround about the graphics inside the wad so you can upload it to Idgames. Your work of love needs to be archived for posterity.

4 minutes ago, P41R47 said:

Hope you can made a workaround about the graphics inside the wad so you can upload it to Idgames.

A workaround should be possible using DEHACKED. Specifically the sprites that are being replaced can have their prefixes changed in DEHACKED, and the weapons' different offsets can be compensated for by using the "parameters" or "unknown 1 & 2" field(s), although this only really works for firing frames and not WeaponReady.

11 hours ago, maxmanium said:

 

A workaround should be possible using DEHACKED. Specifically the sprites that are being replaced can have their prefixes changed in DEHACKED, and the weapons' different offsets can be compensated for by using the "parameters" or "unknown 1 & 2" field(s), although this only really works for firing frames and not WeaponReady.

I don't mind leaving out the weapons' different offsets if it allows there to be an idgames version of Doom Zero. I just haven't been able to figure out all the other workarounds...unless someone volunteers to do it for me :P
It's not that I don't want to put it on idgames, it's just for me it's paramount that this is vanilla compatible.

3 hours ago, DASI-I said:

I don't mind leaving out the weapons' different offsets if it allows there to be an idgames version of Doom Zero. I just haven't been able to figure out all the other workarounds...unless someone volunteers to do it for me :P
It's not that I don't want to put it on idgames, it's just for me it's paramount that this is vanilla compatible.

Hope there is a caritative soul who want to help the community to withstand the little trouble of uploading it to Idgames.

Me? no, please, i know nothing, i'm just an anonymous passer-by. 

I've finally gotten round to trying this out and played the first 7 maps. It's very enjoyable! Dense and quite puzzle-oriented, with a lot of secrets, but a lot of fun. I look forward to playing more!

Just a quick update: Thanks to maxmanium's efforts, it looks like there will be an idgames version of Doom Zero ^_^
Just need to double check that everything looks good. You guy's are the best

On 4/22/2020 at 4:12 PM, DASI-I said:

Just a quick update: Thanks to maxmanium's efforts, it looks like there will be an idgames version of Doom Zero ^_^
Just need to double check that everything looks good. You guy's are the best

Oh, we got a graphic cleanup! Good, thats better!
Hope this works out well without losing too much content in the process!

Please forgive the bump, but did this ever get an idgames release? It looks amazing.

5 hours ago, Doomkid said:

Please forgive the bump, but did this ever get an idgames release? It looks amazing.

While it is quite amazing, from what I understand, it can't be released on idgames in its current format because it contains some modified assets from the originating Doom 2 IWAD in order for it to function in Vanilla Doom. I know maxmanium has offered to make a dehacked to try to fix this, but nothing has come of it as of yet. If anyone wants to PM him about it, be my guest.

4 hours ago, Revved said:

While it is quite amazing, from what I understand, it can't be released on idgames in its current format because it contains some modified assets from the originating Doom 2 IWAD in order for it to function in Vanilla Doom. I know maxmanium has offered to make a dehacked to try to fix this, but nothing has come of it as of yet. If anyone wants to PM him about it, be my guest.

I did fix it. I PM'd it to @DASI-I. Looks like he hasn't been on in a week tho. I didn't initially post it here since it's technically not my content.

I made an idgames-friendly package back in January,  just in case you are looking for a version that doesn't have any id assets included. Did not get the author's blessing however, so it's just for those that want it.

Thank you all for the responses!

This got updated to a new version, @Doomkid!
i was wondering the same as you a few days back, and i found that the moddb page has another update.
https://www.moddb.com/mods/doom-zero

I think it is the curated and ready to /Idgames version because it doesn't has the sprites anymore. 

But strangely, @DASI-I didn't updated the thread here.
Hope he is well, this horrible times makes me worry really bad :(

8 minutes ago, P41R47 said:

This got updated to a new version, @Doomkid!
i was wondering the same as you a few days back, and i found that the moddb page has another update.
https://www.moddb.com/mods/doom-zero

I think it is the curated and ready to /Idgames version because it doesn't has the sprites anymore. 

But strangely, @DASI-I didn't updated the thread here.
Hope he is well, this horrible times makes me worry really bad :(

Yeah, that looks like the modified DEHACKED patch I made. Not sure why it wasn't put here.

On 6/22/2020 at 5:48 AM, maxmanium said:

 

Yeah, that looks like the modified DEHACKED patch I made. Not sure why it wasn't put here.

Because I'm an idiot! I thought I did put an update here in Doomworld, but my brain was lying to me. XD
YES, it is idgames ready thanks again to maxmanium. However the change did break some things in the mod and so I spent the next few days trying to understand how maxmanium did it so that I could fix the problems without reversing the work that had been done by him. I havn't uploaded it to idgames but the moddb link does have a download to this vertsion. The reason why I havn't uploaded it yet is because every once in a while new bugs are discovered and its easier to fix it now with moddb before I can be confident enough to achive it on idgames.

thanks for your patience and also I am healthy, I'm just a bit funny in the head. Stay safe everyone.

What kind of bugs?

7 hours ago, DASI-I said:

Because I'm an idiot! I thought I did put an update here in Doomworld, but my brain was lying to me. XD
YES, it is idgames ready thanks again to maxmanium. However the change did break some things in the mod and so I spent the next few days trying to understand how maxmanium did it so that I could fix the problems without reversing the work that had been done by him. I havn't uploaded it to idgames but the moddb link does have a download to this vertsion. The reason why I havn't uploaded it yet is because every once in a while new bugs are discovered and its easier to fix it now with moddb before I can be confident enough to achive it on idgames.

thanks for your patience and also I am healthy, I'm just a bit funny in the head. Stay safe everyone.

Glad to know you are well, pal!
I recently replayed v1.7 it on DoomRetro and i didn't find any kind of bug. Maybe a slime trail somewhere only spotable while moving, but nothing bad.
Your maps flow like water and its easy to see something thats not right, so i think that probably there are no more bugs hidden on them.
 

I really enjoyed and still enjoy DOOM Zero a lot! Thanks for creating such a nice piece of art to play! 

From me 5 / 5 stars.

On 7/11/2020 at 7:49 PM, maxmanium said:

What kind of bugs?

It was a while ago, don't remember all of it, but it was nothing major. I do remember in some source ports the plasma pickup was invisible for some reason. Really bizarre XD

Really liked the mod, thanks for making it. 

I did not encounter any bugs (GZDoom 4.4.2)

But following secrets were difficult to trigger consistently (they use the same trick which requires you to run over a linedef and return fast enough to prevent it from closing again)

- beginning of map05, opening the panel to access the invisibility sphere

- in the blue key area of map25, opening the door to the bfg room