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

Completed Map 12 to Map 32 tonight. Meat was ingenius, but I didn't recognise the fourth segment at all. The first three references were amazing though. The secrets have generally been really fair so far, had to look up only a few, then facepalmed at an obvious solution. Been jumpscared several times by sudden archviles too.

Only real complaint was that there wasn't really anything to Map 32. Could have been more to it I think.

38 minutes ago, Devalaous said:

Meat was ingenius, but I didn't recognise the fourth segment at all.

It goes Floor 1 from Wolfenstein 3D -> Hangar from Doom -> Entryway from Doom II -> The Slipgate Complex from Quake -> Outer Base from Quake II.
 

I thought I saw Quake 2. Ive never really played Quake long enough to memorise it though, as the game never got a rerelease anywhere and never had a console port on anything I owned.

The Quake areas needed more chaotic lines though in my view, they were all straight lines unlike the twisting curving areas for the older levels. Still, this was a secret level that was actually real neat in its idea :p

map04 ... Apologies in advance if this has already been mentioned, but it seems impossible to

get a secret - sector 184.

Thanks P41R47. Reading earlier posts I worked it out

44 minutes ago, hawkwind said:

Apologies in advance if this has already been mentioned, but it seems impossible to

get a secret in map04 - sector 184

Emm, no.
It is actually pretty easy to grab.

You just have to make it open an move before it is completely open, so you don't activate the linedef that close it again.

It takes a few tries, but it is possible to grab without problems.

On 12/17/2020 at 1:25 PM, DASI-I said:

A pretty neat 100% walkthrough of Doom Zero with a similar format to BigMacDavis' videos. I think he deserves more views.
Here is the Playlist:

He also seems to be covering all the other official add-ons on his channel. Worth checking out. 

(EDIT):
And while I'm on the subject, David X Newton has a really entertaining let's play if you guys havn't seen it already:
 

 

Thanks for the shout out! Hopefully my guides will help some people out. Really loving these maps a lot. Glad that it was brought to my attention and it deserves all the recognition it gets. 

I made a Tool-Assisted Speedrun of Map02 NoMonsters in 23s!

The first barrel-boost took me a while to get right but it's fantastic in my opinion.

DZlv2ox2360.zip

I had a real good time with this wad. Did it have a few too many archvile traps? Yes. Did I die or nearly die from five different archvile traps at the end of their level? Yes. But I don't think it was egregious playing with no mid-level saves.

It was good. This wad has a very high ratio of memorable maps. Many of them have a very strong gimmick that doesn't outstay its welcome. 

For me running doomzero.bat with dosbox gave me no sound at all.

On 12/23/2020 at 8:57 AM, DASI-I said:

Look, I get it. I'm not saying you guys are stupid or you're not very observant. For many years face switches have been used just like any other switch in the game and I think those that have played a lot of Doom have been conditioned to not treat them any differently, but I really am stumped here. How does one get long time Doom players (with a generalized understanding of what you can and cannot do in vanilla Doom) to not have preconceptual expectations to a vanilla compatible mod that goes against those expectations? I really want to try and fix this problem. Any ideas?

Since you seemed a bit concerned about this, I'll make a detailed follow-up, now that I have played through all maps (I did only 1-16,31,32 or so when I commented before).  I played all maps pistol start + saveless, UV Max on nearly all but 100% on a few if I got to the exit with 100% kills and had only 2/8 secrets or something.

- Even though I saw your comment here about matching face buttons to doors when only halfway through the megawad, STILL I did not make use of it, namely I never memorized which doors had which faces.  The maps are small and I have to do monster cleanup and get ammo/health anyway, so I'd just sort of run around after pressing buttons.  Interestingly I do sort of automatically memorize key doors and colors.  The one time I did memorize something was in a late level where the BFG was on a pedestal with a glyph, I figured I'd want to go there; but in the end the glyph was on a teleporter, and I was going to check that teleporter anyway.

- The maps and secrets actually managed to get easier as I went on, as I sort of got a feel of your secret placement.  The later maps have tons of secret health, and personally I feel those invulnerabilities shouldn't be there on UV, just my taste.

- I UV-Maxed most of the last levels, and can recall one secret that was a real pain for me: there's an area with pieces of red damaging floor, where you need to touch one brown piece to open a door.  That one was pretty obscure.  Also I felt walk-through wells appeared a fair bit, though I got used to your placement of it?  Anyway I'm just commenting due to your concern about people making it through, not to complain, I think it's good as is especially since I'm not a good secret hunter.

- If I think through what may have been a stumbling block for people that play less doom (e.g., the bethesda port), maybe the main thing is that one shootable demon face you use throughout?  and maybe some of the platforming.

Overall I found it a very unique and incredibly enjoyable wad; wonderfully done, doing so much with a relative scarcity of monsters, being more about little puzzles.  The boss was a nice surprise, especially since I really didn't expect her on map 29 (despite the foreshadowing on map 28), it was a shock when I teleported to that room and I died in a panic.  (On my second run, I was telefragged, which I thought impossible on a map 29?  Is this a dehacked thing, or do I just not know boom properly?)

Anyway, wonderful work; only given detailed comments due to your earlier concerns.

4 hours ago, siege cunt said:

(On my second run, I was telefragged, which I thought impossible on a map 29?  Is this a dehacked thing, or do I just not know boom properly?)

You can't die by telefrag from teleporters on any map except map30.

If you are on the spot a monster spawner cube lands, it will always telefrag you, no matter what map is it.

4 hours ago, P41R47 said:

If you are on the spot a monster spawner cube lands, it will always telefrag you, no matter what map is it.

Not in vanilla and I think not in Boom either, only in some advanced ports!

The whole point of the hack allowing telefragging by monsters in map30 was to "not have to think about" the situation where the cube landing point is occupied.

Cube's own code has no feature to directly check and kill player/whatever else is standing inside the target.

So I guess if you put spawner in MAPnon30 and stand at destination you may end up with monster stuck inside of you. And possibly clawed to death a moment after.

Here's an old post I made on the subject, if you forgive me using a famous quote and want source code references for proof. :)

5 hours ago, wrkq said:

So I guess if you put spawner in MAPnon30 and stand at destination you may end up with monster stuck inside of you. And possibly clawed to death a moment after.

Thats what happend, yes. I just tested on Chocolate and get clawed to death.

Sorry for my inacurracy.

But then i tested on DoomRetro and on it the cube just telefrag you.

So i think Boom/MBF may had changed the behaviour of mapnon30 cubefrag.

map19 ... could someone please tell me how to get to sector 219.

I'm at the switch at line 839, and using it to open sector 162, which seems impossible

to get to.

13 hours ago, P41R47 said:

Thats what happend, yes. I just tested on Chocolate and get clawed to death.

Sorry for my inacurracy.

 

But then i tested on DoomRetro and on it the cube just telefrag you.

So i think Boom/MBF may had changed the behaviour of mapnon30 cubefrag. 

Mmmyep, I never know where to look for Boom code online, but crosschecking with Woof it appears to be an MBF thing considering demoversion 203 and all the //killough comments.

A_SpawnFly calls P_TeleportMove with a new boolean parameter at the end:

    // telefrag anything in this spot
  P_TeleportMove(newmobj, newmobj->x, newmobj->y, true); // killough 8/9/98

P_TeleportMove uses that parameter to set up a staticglobal variable (beautiful decision):

// killough 8/9/98
boolean P_TeleportMove(mobj_t *thing, fixed_t x, fixed_t y, boolean boss)
{
  int xl, xh, yl, yh, bx, by;
  subsector_t *newsubsec;

  // killough 8/9/98: make telefragging more consistent, preserve compatibility
  telefrag = thing->player || 
    (comp[comp_telefrag] || demo_version < 203 ? gamemap==30 : boss);

PIT_StompThing telefrags if the gvar is set:

static boolean telefrag;   // killough 8/9/98: whether to telefrag at exit

static boolean PIT_StompThing (mobj_t *thing)
{

(...)
  
  // monsters don't stomp things except on boss level
  if (!telefrag)  // killough 8/9/98: make consistent across all levels
    return false;

  P_DamageMobj (thing, tmthing, tmthing, 10000); // Stomp!

  return true;
}

6 hours ago, hawkwind said:

map19 ... could someone please tell me how to get to sector 219.

I'm at the switch at line 839, and using it to open sector 162, which seems impossible

to get to.

When you use the switch, you have to jump down to the right and do a figure-8 run up the steps to run off the platform with the two Rockets and two Shells (sector 150) to land on sector 162 before the door closes. From there you can SR to sector 219. There is some brilliant design in these maps, but also some frustrating mechanics, even for long-time Doomers. Outstanding piece of work.

1 hour ago, EffinghamHuffnagel said:

When you use the switch, you have to jump down to the right and do a figure-8 run up the steps to run off the platform with the two Rockets and two Shells (sector 150) to land on sector 162 before the door closes. From there you can SR to sector 219. There is some brilliant design in these maps, but also some frustrating mechanics, even for long-time Doomers. Outstanding piece of work.

Thanks. That worked. Yes, some frustrating mechanics, as you say, and I am an old long time doomer !

21 hours ago, EffinghamHuffnagel said:

There is some brilliant design in these maps, but also some frustrating mechanics, even for long-time Doomers.

20 hours ago, hawkwind said:

...Yes, some frustrating mechanics...

I really don't know what to say...but Doom Zero has been play tested with mostly casual players that (after a few tries) all managed to solve these puzzles. Players that don't play much or haven't played any doom at all in their life time. But after release I've seen a lot of veteran players (of all people) struggle a hell of a lot more, which really surprises me. I'm not gonna tell you to "git gud" or some other patronizing comment, and I'm not gonna assume you're one of those guys that doesn't like retrying platforming sections more than twice. It's just kind of a funny situation. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 

On 12/29/2020 at 6:58 PM, Andrew said:

I made a Tool-Assisted Speedrun of Map02 NoMonsters in 23s!

The first barrel-boost took me a while to get right but it's fantastic in my opinion.

DZlv2ox2360.zip

Wow! That's nuts! I wonder if there's a human out there that can recreate these skips.
 

On 12/27/2020 at 8:25 PM, Devalaous said:

The Quake areas needed more chaotic lines though in my view, they were all straight lines unlike the twisting curving areas for the older levels.

I was going to do that also for the quake levels but then I ran out of visplanes. I had to keep them strictly orthogonal, doing otherwise requires an exponential amount of visplanes. I could've removed the curvy style of the Wolf3D and Doom sections for the sake of consistency but I wasn't in a mood to redo more than half the map.😋

On 12/31/2020 at 4:14 AM, hawkwind said:

For me running doomzero.bat with dosbox gave me no sound at all.

I sometimes have this problem with certain versions of DOSBox, both with and without the mod. Maybe try Chocolate doom

58 minutes ago, DASI-I said:

I was going to do that also for the quake levels but then I ran out of visplanes. I had to keep them strictly orthogonal, doing otherwise requires an exponential amount of visplanes. I could've removed the curvy style of the Wolf3D and Doom sections for the sake of consistency but I wasn't in a mood to redo more than half the map.😋

 

Ah, that makes sense. I only play limit-removing ports so I tend to forget about visplanes. Honestly, the curvy Wolfenstein part was great, felt organic and fleshy, and most importantly, it wasnt immediately obvious it was Wolf 3D's E1F1. Once the huge wall of baron meat was defeated and I went into the Doom E1M1 room, it suddenly clicked and I smiled.

2 hours ago, DASI-I said:

I sometimes have this problem with certain versions of DOSBox, both with and without the mod. Maybe try Chocolate doom

Since you have doomhack.exe and the .bat file, I thought to do a quick test with dosbox 74-3.

I'm actually playing this through Risen3D.

An interesting update ... I just now fired up doom2 using dosbox 74-3. Sound was fine. So I copied DEFAULT.CFG over

to the doomzero directory. Tried doomzero again through dosbox and the music and sound was fine.

It appears, at least to me, that doomhack.exe is creating an incompatible/bad DEFAULT.CFG file. Go figure ...

Excellent set of maps. I'm only on Map 4 and loving it.

@DASI-I, would you happen to be related to the Casali's by any chance? I ask because some of your traps were quite 'Plutonia-esque'. Specifically the ~5 or 6 Chaingunner trap in later Map 3. Quite enjoyable!

Just finished playing through this with PrBoom+ and loved it. One small question I had, and apologies if this has been mentioned somewhere I've missed, but at some point was the attack of the new lost soul enemies changed to a cacodemon's fireball? All the references to it I've seen (including YouTube videos) mention/show it being a hitscanner, but for me they were shooting caco fireballs...

10 minutes ago, blackthorn said:

Just finished playing through this with PrBoom+ and loved it. One small question I had, and apologies if this has been mentioned somewhere I've missed, but at some point was the attack of the new lost soul enemies changed to a cacodemon's fireball? All the references to it I've seen (including YouTube videos) mention/show it being a hitscanner, but for me they were shooting caco fireballs...

Yeah, it was changed at some point. Quoting from Doom Wiki:

Quote

The alpha soul, which replaces the Wolfenstein SS, uses the early graphics of the lost soul from the Doom press release beta, has 100 hit points and attacks by shooting cacodemon projectiles. (In early versions of the mod, it was referred to as "soul droid" and had kept the hitscan attack.)

11 hours ago, blackthorn said:

Just finished playing through this with PrBoom+ and loved it. One small question I had, and apologies if this has been mentioned somewhere I've missed, but at some point was the attack of the new lost soul enemies changed to a cacodemon's fireball? All the references to it I've seen (including YouTube videos) mention/show it being a hitscanner, but for me they were shooting caco fireballs...

Yeah, it was changed from v1.7 to v1.8, the last version to this day, and the one the official add-on is based on.
 

A flaying hitscanner was interesting
And the new one is cool. Not bad per ce, but maybe being something a little more annoying and threating would be cool.

Don't know, something like a hitscanner and a projectile at the same time, maybe increased movement speed so it is even annoyier.

EDIT: Ninja'ed by the reincarnation of Hades.

Thanks both - that explains it!

On 1/6/2021 at 4:23 AM, Rytrik said:

would you happen to be related to the Casali's by any chance?

I don't think so? :P

23 hours ago, blackthorn said:

Just finished playing through this with PrBoom+ and loved it. One small question I had, and apologies if this has been mentioned somewhere I've missed, but at some point was the attack of the new lost soul enemies changed to a cacodemon's fireball? All the references to it I've seen (including YouTube videos) mention/show it being a hitscanner, but for me they were shooting caco fireballs...

I probably should've explained this earlier. I didn't initially want the Alpha Soul (previously called the Soul Droid) to be yet another hitscan enemy simply because I couldn't figure out on how to change it at the time since it was using the SS enemy as a base. But once I understood dehack better I made it more of bullet hell inspired monster, a game mechanic I'm very fond of in games like Radiant Silvergun or Ikaruga. Hitscanners are fine in some situations but I think it's more fun to kill monsters while weaving between fireballs in the middle of the action rather than snipe them from a distance. The Imps, cacos, barons and hell knights' firing rate is too slow to really be in that zone, and arachnotrons are too rapid for players to consistently try to cross through a stream of plasma balls. The Alpha Soul is a nice middle ground and once you learn how to tango with them, so to speak, it's so satisfying, especially in large groups.

 

I've uploaded a test version of Doom Zero 1.9. As far as I'm concerned, it is the final version but it hasn't been play tested all the way through, so I don't know for sure if it's perfectly fine and glitchless. 1.9 is based on the officially licensed version, and will be the one that will be uploaded to the idgames archive once I know for sure that it's ready.

Some of the changes include:

-Replacing many of the Revenants with Hell Knights and added more rocket pickups in map14.
-Coop sound effects are back to normal (ie: item respawn sound effect).
-Added/replaced all the various elements that was unique to the officially licensed version, including a 4:3 version of all artwork. The 16:9 versions will get a release sometime in the future after 1.9 is out of the testing phase.

Download:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/doom-zero/downloads/doom-zero-1-9-test-version/edit/#downloadsform

53 minutes ago, DASI-I said:

I've uploaded a test version of Doom Zero 1.9. As far as I'm concerned, it is the final version but it hasn't been play tested all the way through, so I don't know for sure if it's perfectly fine and glitchless. 1.9 is based on the officially licensed version, and will be the one that will be uploaded to the idgames archive once I know for sure that it's ready.

Some of the changes include:

-Replacing many of the Revenants with Hell Knights and added more rocket pickups in map14.
-Coop sound effects are back to normal (ie: item respawn sound effect).
-Added/replaced all the various elements that was unique to the officially licensed version, including a 4:3 version of all artwork. The 16:9 versions will get a release sometime in the future after 1.9 is out of the testing phase.

Download:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/doom-zero/downloads/doom-zero-1-9-test-version/edit/#downloadsform

you read my mind, pal!

i wanted to re re replay DZ, and you gifted this new year present.

Thanks as always for your hard efforts ;)

Gonna check and blaze throught it asap.

7 hours ago, DASI-I said:

I don't think so? :P

You certainly embody their spirit :) 

Fantastic WAD. I'm at Map 9, and this is a phenomenal journey!
 

By the way, I'd found a bug. It's in the spoiler