FALSTAFF.WAD - Preliminarily complete

http://members.shaw.ca/cjwright79/falstaff.zip

FDA. 2 deaths, max on third attempt (if I recall correctly).

So far so good. :)

Good demo! Very fun to watch!

(fixed doortracks on first closest; fixed light blinking issue in middle room)

Now with more mappy goodness (160kb).

First attempt on new version. The cave was cool, I fired the chaingun to make light and find my way. I usually dislike dark areas, but here it fits just fine - it's large and there's no detail blocking your way, so the doomguy doesn't bump ackwardly into things.

My one complaint would be about the 2 revenants with a floor that goes up once you shoot the marble face thingy. I found it kind of obscure (and probably hit it randomly the first time, which is why I thought it was actually a walkover line somewhere that triggered the revenants), especially as that marble face can lower and be inaccessible later on. It might work better as a switch, or maybe a light glows/light blinks effect on its sector so it's a bit more obvious there's something to do here.

There was a HOM while being on sector 70, though I'm not sure if I was supposed to be here.

Phml said:

First attempt on new version. The cave was cool, I fired the chaingun to make light and find my way. I usually dislike dark areas, but here it fits just fine - it's large and there's no detail blocking your way, so the doomguy doesn't bump ackwardly into things.

My one complaint would be about the 2 revenants with a floor that goes up once you shoot the marble face thingy. I found it kind of obscure (and probably hit it randomly the first time, which is why I thought it was actually a walkover line somewhere that triggered the revenants), especially as that marble face can lower and be inaccessible later on. It might work better as a switch, or maybe a light glows/light blinks effect on its sector so it's a bit more obvious there's something to do here.

There was a HOM while being on sector 70, though I'm not sure if I was supposed to be here.

Yeah I didn't realize you could ride the door up to the top of the fence there, I'll have to fix that.

As for the revenant trap, the idea is that the curious player tries to open that door with the gun and the Revs then appear from behind. On the plus side he can get 100% kills, on the negative he might get killed for his curiosity, although the lift travels slow so he should be ok. EDIT -- made a later linedef trip up the same lift.

I'm wondering if the Mother Spider in the cave is defeatable, so I'm looking forward to seeing your demo! EDIT: Nice work on the infighting there, and another good demorun.

Stage 3 is now ready for testing. Less emphasis on detail, more on a fancy footbridge system that took hours to work the kinks out of.

Tried stage 3 (I use IDDT around the 11 minute mark to find the last monster).

The exit linedef seemed too close to the wall for it to work (or maybe I didn't hug the wall enough), though I suppose it doesn't matter if it's temp.

Excellent work, and sorry about the exit linedef.

I think I need to make the Cave Spider a little less likely to hit her offspring.

Stage Four complete.

Here's my demo http://members.shaw.ca/cjwright79/falstaff-cjwright79.lmp

As you can see, taking advantage of that very easy secret with the black door can have dire consequences.

Here's an attempt. I... errr... used IDDT again to find the SAME archvile, and forgot there was a light visor for the cave. My memory isn't the best. :)

Looked good, no bug that I could see. Odd thing in this demo : once I got the infighting set up, the 2 spider masterminds won against the 2 cyberdemons... Now that's something you don't see everyday. I suppose the cybies spent time fighting other monsters while the spider MMs were already attacking the cyberdemons.

Phml said:

Here's an attempt. I... errr... used IDDT again to find the SAME archvile, and forgot there was a light visor for the cave. My memory isn't the best. :)

Looked good, no bug that I could see. Odd thing in this demo : once I got the infighting set up, the 2 spider masterminds won against the 2 cyberdemons... Now that's something you don't see everyday. I suppose the cybies spent time fighting other monsters while the spider MMs were already attacking the cyberdemons.

Very cool! I kinda like the Masterminds more so I am delighted to hear that! On to watch your demo...

EDIT: Nice play as always. A few thoughts

1. I need to take about 500 plasma cells out of the map
2. The big room with the Cybers needs to be a lot tougher. You simply don't take much damage
3. Gotta take out the Blue Armors. All of em.

The above changes have been made. (no. 2 is yet to be proven)


Oh yeah, and I was pleased to see the Cave Spider take you down to 44%. She's supposed to be tough to take down. She's in her home territory.

Yay again. 100% kills, misses one secret, I decided to blow myself up instead. :p

You're not going to be pleased with the cave spider this time... Looks like she holds a grudge against her tiny ones - maybe I would too, if I got a chaingun while my kids had plasma guns.

I managed to kill 2 cybies and 1 spider MM with the same BFG shot which I thought was pretty cool.

Ammo seemed tighter, I definitely couldn't spam the BFG like I did before ; still more than enough to be fun so that's cool. I'd say if you want to make the big room harder, maybe adding pillars or some kind of structure blocking the view would help. As it is, it's easy to tell at a quick glance where the cyberdemons and spider masterminds are - and on such a large open area, getting them to infight is trivial (to be honest I don't especially try for it, I just pick up the megasphere and keys and they do it by themselves).

Excellent. I have some ideas of how to get the Spider Cave and the Magma Courtyard to be more challenging...

Stage 5 is ready. Now 240kb.

http://members.shaw.ca/cjwright79/falstaff.wad

Addressed the fact that the Spider Cave and the Magma Courtyard are not challenging enough. We'll see how you fare now, in extracting the Rocket Launcher from the cave, and the two keys from the courtyard.

EDIT: My demo -- http://members.shaw.ca/cjwright79/cjw-fal.lmp ; The Spider Queen ended my run. I now remember my MO for putting it in -- somewhere where the player shouldn't go, but they can anyway. The darkness and the fact you've already seen one big spider come out of there is supposed to dissuade you.

EDIT: Second demo - http://members.shaw.ca/cjwright79/cjw-fal2.lmp -- a cautionary tale of playing on UV when you can't handle it.

EDIT: Third demo - http://members.shaw.ca/cjwright79/cjw-fal3.lmp -- a whirlwind spiral of drugs, alcohol, violence, and escaping with my life a few times on Very Easy. I bagged my loot and got to the doors that lead nowhere though.

Here's my attempt on the new version. I didn't watch your demos before as not to spoil the changes (and my reactions).

I went in playing a bit randomly like usual and got in trouble fast. Ammo is very tight now, and while health is still commonplace I now had to plan for which powerups I'd get and when, rather than just pick up whatever I saw whenever I ran near it. Not much more to say than that, I liked the changes. :)

Demo is acting funny -- would it be an imposition to wonder if you might zip the wad in with the demo?

Wad and demo in same link. Recorded in PrBoom+ 2.5.0.6 (-complevel 2), so should play back correctly with limit-removing ports emulating Doom compatibility.

Hey did you ever play Bad Bethlehem? Needs GZDoom. http://members.shaw.ca/cjwright79/Badbeth-wad-and-demo-CJW.zip

Ahh just watched the demo, that was great stuff. At one point I thought that I must put in another 200 cells and 20 rockets, but by the end it all worked out perfectly. Anyway the latest version in on my webspace; it does not warrant a Stage 6 tag, but just in case you are interested. It's about 20kb larger.

PS - there is a secret in the long hall area that wasn't working before, so you may want to try any walls that look unusual again.

EDIT: wad updated (7:45am PST)

I made an odd demo on the latest falstaff (2 deaths before the complete run)... Wad included in zip in case you already updated it since then.

Things I spotted : the GR linedefs need a tag (and so does the door), back linedef 1278 is missing a texture, linedef 2075 should be action 27 (yellow key) rather than action 1, somehow a monster opened it on my first run through.

I tried Bad Bethlehem too, strange map ! Nonetheless, I had fun jumping from building to building with rocket jumps.

Excellent, thanks!

The basic concept of Bethlehem is a wide open tiered city where you can go anywhere at any time. The exit requires all three keys and a big arsenal though, so you can't just breeze through without a care for killing monsters. :) So it's a departure from the usual wads where stuff is quite linear. Is that what you meant by strange though?

Falstaff is now finished and ready for final playtesting. 304kb. More screenshots available upon request.

http://members.shaw.ca/cjwright79/falstaff.zip

Demo for the final.

Things I've noticed : linedef 1189 is still missing a tag. It might be better to either remove the linedef effect or add tag 20 to it - even if the door opens from the other side, if the player punches air while coming out it'll screw up the whole level like in my previous demo.

I saw a HOM in the complicated bridge area, what caused it exactly I'm not sure. An easy fix could be to just put corresponding upper/lower textures on front and back of every linedef (save for the 1-sided walls) in that section, if the corresponding part doesn't show up it won't have any ill effect and if it does you won't get HOMs.

As for balance itself, I went at it kind of randomly and eventually forced things to infight, but that was more because of sloppy aiming/ammo management rather than a necessity. No issue here as far as I'm concerned.

Bad Bethlehem : I don't know. I just find it strange. :p

I'll fix this stuff up soon but right now I'm taking a brief breather from Falstaff.

Here's what's on deck though:



http://members.shaw.ca/cjwright79/putridhd.wad

I present.... Putrid Head! No exit of course.

That was quite the epic adventure Phml, nice work. Again I started to worry about ammo being too scarce but you found another cache by backtracking.