Zone 400 released! (beyond the absolute final bugfix version September 26)

oshit, nice!!! i'm gonna play this as soon as i can

I was looking for something to stream tonight!

Sheesh, could this year get any more stacked?  I played this earlier and had an absolute blast.  A lot of the maps kind of naturally promoted a run and gun style of play and that made it all the more enjoyable.   I played from a pistol start and some maps were a bit tight on ammo (perhaps missing some secrets that would have circumvented this) but nothing that I couldn't work around.  Great job overall!

Oh, a reason to play Doom again! Nice!

Nice wad man! Really enjoying playing through this wad, will be doing demos for this when final release :D

Thank you for still making Doom maps after all these years, Pcorf! You’re an inspiration to OS style mappers all around the community.. can’t wait to give this one a blast through.

7 hours ago, Deadwing said:

This year is crazy with new releases!

Congratz for the release!

Beat me to it! Super excited for this one. Lots of good memories playing Zone 300.

There really is no slowing down the talent of this amazing community, is there? Congratulations on your release, Pcorf!

Download links changed to https://

It was a sure challenge designing these maps especially when you are limiting them to 400 linedefs and for sure I would love to have some more secrets. If there is a Zone 500 it will give me more flexibility with that, just saying. But yeah I needed to reshape areas when I felt there was a need to add a secret. Also lots of triangular areas, pillars, sectors to keep the linedefs down. It was a massive challenge designing this and I relied almost entirely on my imagination with very little areas designed on paper. All levels (apart from MAP32) are strictly 400 linedefs and that includes monster teleport areas outside the map.

MAP32 has HOM due to segs overflow in Chocolate and Vanilla as seen from the big waterfall in the SE looking towards where the Cyberdemon is. The area is non essential. The highest I got the Visplanes to was about 118 in MAP23.

Some sprites can disappear in Chocolate and Vanilla due to the sprite limit (128 at once). At times you encounter a heck of a lot of monsters (a good example is in MAP17) because I know many players enjoy these kinds of battles.

Composing music was much more fun I must admit. I wanted to compose catchy tunes usually 2 to 3 minutes in length to suit the theme of the maps.

New version released which fixes a misaligned window texture in MAP16 and a typo in the .PDF, so re downloading this will be the updated version. Now time for me to upload this to idgames. Hope you all enjoyed this and I will be releasing a soundtrack album to Bandcamp and Youtube eventually.

great one, thanks!!

I've just uploaded Zone 400 to idgames. Fingers crossed!

16 hours ago, Astro X said:

Seems cool, but the link is not working for me :c

If you are using Chrome, it's probably not the link, it's the protection features being too aggressive. Check/change in Chrome settings:

chrome://settings/security

The combat in this wad is so much fun! The maps are small yet so violent :3

Definitely finishing it tonight!

Looks awesome!! Definitly the guy who once produced Twilight Zone II MAP 31 has grown alot as a mapper...

11 minutes ago, DSC said:

Looks awesome!! Definitly the guy who once produced Twilight Zone II MAP 31 has grown alot as a mapper...

Yes a few grey hairs since creating that crazy maze level.

44 minutes ago, Firedust said:

The combat in this wad is so much fun! The maps are small yet so violent :3

 

Definitely finishing it tonight!

That was the aim. Gameplay over looks. Hope you smash all those terrors into oblivion.

Played through the whole thing last night and today. Very enjoyable stuff and definitely a successful sequel to Zone 300! Maps are short but punchy and I agree with Vile that the design often feels like run & gun is encouraged, especially if you have some foreknowledge. Ammo is a bit tight at times but on the other hand secrets are typically extremely rewarding. At times the wad suffers a bit from One man megawad -itis, certainly not helped but the strict linedef limit, but you mixed things up nicely in the last episode especially with some abstract shapes and open arenas.

I recorded FDAs for all maps 01-33, they are in the attachment for anyone interested. Recorded on UV with glboom+ 2.5.1.3.

Highlights:

• Had a weird bug in map06 BK area where a Rev randomly fell neck deep into the ground
• Also in map06 somehow missed the SSG sitting right there in front of me and proceeded to play through the entire map
• The SMM in map26 was bested by a solitary Pinkie without any help from yours truly. I gave him a fist bump for his efforts and let the good boy live.

FDA_z400_01-33.zip

Wait, what?  A sequel to one of my favorite megawads? I didn't know this was in the works!

Thanks pcorf!

1 hour ago, RottingZombie said:

Wait, what?  A sequel to one of my favorite megawads? I didn't know this was in the works!

 

Thanks pcorf!

There is another sequel in the works. Could be a Whispers of Satan 2, Doom Odyssey 2, Space Wars 2 or Twilight Zone 3 and it is nearly complete and will be released roughly a year from now. But I cannot spoil all the fun.

As usual Paul you fail to disappoint. THIS WAS YET ANOTHER AWESOME PIECE OF WORK!! All killer no filler as usual and I had no trouble or bugs to report at all. Things were certainly much harder, those secrets really do help a lot. Though I do wanna ask. Is there any meaning behind the level titles?

Ive learned to play anything by pcorf so I guess Ill have to add this to my neverending list

Hey sorry to be a pain, but there is a bug that a found with the Soulsphere Secret on map 17 triggering twice in both PRBoom+ and DSDA-Doom source ports.

Found a bug on Map 6, Hell Knight got stuck in the floor, not sure how that happened

But otherwise great mapset so far.

3 minutes ago, Sena said:

Found a bug on Map 6, Hell Knight got stuck in the floor, not sure how that happened

But otherwise great mapset so far/

 

Oh yes I had this happen too, happened on DSDA-Doom source port didn't try replicate it on PRBOOM+ so don't know if that's a source port issue :)

5 minutes ago, Bob9001 said:

Oh yes I had this happen too, happened on DSDA-Doom source port didn't try replicate it on PRBOOM+ so don't know if that's a source port issue :)

I'm on LZDoom, so if it's occurring across two separate source ports, then I would presume it's a map issue.

I had an imp stuck in the same place too, and I was using zdoom. Most likely a map problem.

3 hours ago, Firedust said:

I had an imp stuck in the same place too, and I was using zdoom. Most likely a map problem.

I have never had this problem and tested it many times. Not sure what to do, maybe something to do with nodebuilding. Maybe I'll redesign the area, make it more 90 degree angled and reupload at a later date. At least you can probably kill the monsters.

5 hours ago, Bob9001 said:

Hey sorry to be a pain, but there is a bug that a found with the Soulsphere Secret on map 17 triggering twice in both PRBoom+ and DSDA-Doom source ports.

Nothing I can do about it. May be something to do with savegames. I have no clue. Maybe I'll move secret sector locations. Such a bitch when these things creep up behind your back. There are 2 ways you can get the BFG secret, that is intentional.

I will release a new version in a few weeks which will include a redesigned MAP06 to make the linedef angles more 90 degree (horizontal vertical) in the outdoor area. And yes the monsters can be killed but the player never falls through. I don't understand this and to be honest it is out of my control. I also once had an Imp fall through the floor in MAP05 (only once) where the firewall is so I may also redesign the large cavern area in that map and make it square instead of circular.

4 hours ago, pcorf said:

There are 2 ways you can get the BFG secret, that is intentional.

I used the wrong photo, but yeah the bfg secret only triggers once, the soulsphere secret is the one that triggers twice cause of the small triangle on the ground.