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OpenMaw

[RELEASED] DOOM 2 - IN HELL, I RAGE

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"In Hell, I Rage" is a single map WAD for Doom II. Inspired by the writings of Mike "impie" Macdee. Particularly from his first Doom Novella "Knee Deep in the Dead" which describes the Hellish landscape, including a Castle whose peaks touch with another castle jutting out of the sky. This imagery in particular inspired the initial spark for this level.

 

Developed with the AMAZING Doom Builder, and tested solely in Zdoom. It should also work with GZDoom and PRBoom+ as well. I'm breaking the limits here to be sure.

 

My second map for Doom/II. My first was Comic.wad

 

Download link:

https://www.moddb.com/engines/zdoom/downloads/in-hell-i-rage

 

Special Thanks to:

Misty, Cage, Impie, Saad356, and Big Ol Billy for testing, creative contributes, and inspiring the work.

 

Also, thanks to id Software for DOOM. Happy 25th.

 

THE STORY SO FAR...

 

Spoiler

 

EARTH, BUT A BLUE-MARBLED DREAM...


Your sweaty palms white-knuckled the arm rests as the transport blasted off from the ground-based starport. Once the craft throttled over and reached Earth orbit, you felt the artificial gravity take hold. You could only just begin to contemplate relaxing.

 

As the transport's pressurized cabin cramped your inner ear, your overactive imagination filled your mind's eye with horrendous thoughts of decompression and death. Gasping for your last fleeting breath.

PHOBOS INBOUND

Your romanticism for the stars faded swiftly as the craft swept into an orbital approach on the giant muddy pebble known as Phobos. You had just enough time to second guess every major life choice on your way up and now here it was; The moment of truth. The craft VTOL'd down into the infamous Stickney Crater, with a loud metallic crack you were officially a resident.


Two weeks of card games, old movies from a century ago, and routine maintenance checks on life support systems, you finally received a shot at the big leagues. A fat paycheck and full benefits they said. 

There was just one insidious catch; Your new assignment was classified. Deep inside the Phobos Labs. In a place you had heard catatonic whispers about. "The Anomaly." The odd ball structure fused to the labs like a Siamese twin. Nobody knew for certain what went on in there. Only that a caravan of body bags routinely were marched out of there. 

THE ANOMALY

You arrived early in the morning. Sweat oiled your palms even as the atmospheric regulators kept the facility at an unpleasantly cool temperature. No doubt for the benefit of the infinite array of chattering, unfeeling, super computers. 

A geek in a lab coat that hadn't seen a wash in months scattered across the chamber, passing a hazmat jump suit to you. You were thankful for the accommodations after having stood in your skivvies for what seemed like an eternity as other pale-faced lab techs placed monitoring equipment on your chest. 

The science team began ushering you towards an alien device atop a raised platform. Cold steel, fused with unknowable alien devices. A deep vibrato felt in your chest cavity. Your questions were met with administrative, condescending, dismissal. You're told to step forward.

Your first foot forward never finds the floor. Your eyes are blinded in a sickly green light. 

The cold is gone. 

The smell of recycled air is replaced with the nauseating stench of rotting meat. 

Your skin burns from radiating heat.

Where the Hell are you...?

 

 

 

SCREENSHOTS

 

 

 


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Edited by OpenMaw : Release time.

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Nice visuals and cool backstory. Definitely interested in testing!

 

FYI it’s not so simple to determine compatibility if you’ve been testing in ZDoom (2.8.1, I assume?). Scripting would definitely put it in “(G)Zdoom-only” territory, so your intuition is right on that point, but vanilla has a complex set of limits and behavior to account for (and actually custom textures and DeHackEd patches don’t necessarily even rule out vanilla compatibility). Line specials—how you trigger sector actions and such—are a whole ‘nother can of worms. ZDoom and Boom-compatible ports have their own ways of adding to the standard set of vanilla actions, which will make a big difference in compatibility. Sky behavior can actually be really annoying to standardize across ports, too. Most likely your map could be made boom-compatible or limit-removing-compatible, though doing so might not be worth it at this point. 

 

No worries, though, this is one of those issues where the flexibility and rich community history of Doom, two of the game’s overall strongest aspects, sometime interfere with accessibility. Looks like you’re starting off with a nice project, so keep on truckin’ with the map in whatever way works best for you!

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Well, I would like to hear (or see) what mapping format you use, so it would be easier to tell compatible ports with it. 

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2 hours ago, OpenMaw said:

I see no reason why this wouldn't work in other ports as I stuck to stock Doom 2 artwork. There are no dehacked's or custom scripting at work.

 

Just using stock Doom 2 resources wouldn't necessarily determine the compatibility. Neither would the lack of scripting. Use Boom-only tags, for example, and you're out of the vanilla and limit-removing realms. Have ridiculously complicated rooms that exceed 128 visplanes and that knocks you out of vanilla. Dehacked is vanilla compatible, so not having it doesn't tell you anything, either.

 

So compatibility is more than just resources, dehacked, and scripting.

 

But the screenshots look quite nice.

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6 hours ago, Big Ol Billy said:

Nice visuals and cool backstory. Definitely interested in testing!

 

FYI it’s not so simple to determine compatibility if you’ve been testing in ZDoom (2.8.1, I assume?). Scripting would definitely put it in “(G)Zdoom-only” territory, so your intuition is right on that point, but vanilla has a complex set of limits and behavior to account for (and actually custom textures and DeHackEd patches don’t necessarily even rule out vanilla compatibility). Line specials—how you trigger sector actions and such—are a whole ‘nother can of worms. ZDoom and Boom-compatible ports have their own ways of adding to the standard set of vanilla actions, which will make a big difference in compatibility. Sky behavior can actually be really annoying to standardize across ports, too. Most likely your map could be made boom-compatible or limit-removing-compatible, though doing so might not be worth it at this point. 

 

No worries, though, this is one of those issues where the flexibility and rich community history of Doom, two of the game’s overall strongest aspects, sometime interfere with accessibility. Looks like you’re starting off with a nice project, so keep on truckin’ with the map in whatever way works best for you!

 

Sent you a PM, Billy.

 

Thank you for the information. Yes, i'm running the latest version of ZDoom. In Doom Builder I started with the basic "Doom 2" configuration. I didn't use any of the Boom/Zdoom specific configs. I'm not really sure if that actually puts a limit on sector/line limits in editor or not, though. 

 

I need to bust out my DOS exe's and see how it runs in plain-jane Doom 2. For curiosities sake if nothing else. :D

 

5 hours ago, Pegleg said:

 

Just using stock Doom 2 resources wouldn't necessarily determine the compatibility. Neither would the lack of scripting. Use Boom-only tags, for example, and you're out of the vanilla and limit-removing realms. Have ridiculously complicated rooms that exceed 128 visplanes and that knocks you out of vanilla. Dehacked is vanilla compatible, so not having it doesn't tell you anything, either.

 

So compatibility is more than just resources, dehacked, and scripting.

 

But the screenshots look quite nice.

 

Thank you for the information. I was just looking through the ZDoom wiki this afternoon and I can't seem to find anything on this particular inquiry... Is there a way to check the number of visplanes? I'm assuming there's some kind of a console command that spits out that kind of information.

 

5 hours ago, Misty said:

Well, I would like to hear (or see) what mapping format you use, so it would be easier to tell compatible ports with it. 

 

As far as I know i'm just using the stock Doom 2 map format. I didn't use any ZDoom-specific configurations, or Boom. 

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Well, I'm sure that your map at this point is limit removing. I recommend get chocorender limits to see how many visplanes it will count. Besides that, crispy doom or prboom+ for additional testing. 

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@OpenMaw

Misty is right. Chocorenderlimits is the best way to determine how many visplanes there will be on screen at any one time, and you can play through your map in chocorenderlimits, so you will see how the number of visplanes changes as you actually interact with things in your map (open doors, raise stairs, lower floors, archvile jump, etc.).

 

For a quick estimate, you can use Visplane Explorer (here for the standalone program or here for the Doom Builder 2 plugin). I assume that Doom Builder 2 plugins will work with GZDoom Builder (and its forks), but, if not, someone else can correct me. Visplane Explorer will calculate the number of visplanes, drawsegs, and seg splits visible in 8 directions from any point in a map. You can analyze a map with all doors open or with all doors closed, so it's not as accurate as chocorenderlimits, but it will give you a good idea of where you're at it terms of the number at any point in a map.

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Updated the first post with "The Story So Far..."

 

After looking at it in those programs and getting some feedback from Misty via PM I realized that first area alone basically blows out the lines. Oops. It's a shame there isn't some way to enable a limiter in Doom Builder for that kind of thing. Alas.

 

Some testing has been done so far and i'm working on the balance and improving the game flow in a few spots. 

 

 

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This looks fuckin' dope, man. I'm glad my writing inspired somebody's mapping ventures. I'll def give this a whirl later and post what I think.

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I found the entry he was referring to.

 

Spoiler

Saw it again. Same dream inside the realm of blood. There’s no horizon there. The whole realm is a sphere of molten chaos and the landscape lines the inner-wall of the sphere. The ground is fleshy and raw, and boiling rivers of blood and magma flow endlessly in every direction. Dead twisted trees and spikes of black rock thrust obscenely upward out of the fleshy ground and make it bleed. Rock formations float in the air like space debris, but never drift, some the size of Mt. Everest, some no bigger than basketballs. Rock spires tower overhead with demonic castles at their peaks built from infernal red bricks and bile green marble. Thick red mist swirling in the sphere’s belly almost gives the impression of a sky except I see more spires and buildings piercing through from the other hemisphere. Some spires are so tall that the castles on top meet at the center with their roofs inches from locking with each other.

 

Dream so vivid it frightens me. I smell things in it. Sulfur and charcoal. I taste flesh and sweat in the air. I hear the disembodied whispers of broken human beings.

 

Something carries me to a great roofless temple atop a mountain of human skulls. Incredible sight I can hardly describe. Great green pillars a mile high. Scores of humanoid things amassed in the great hall. A hundred form a circle at the center, half of them man-goat gods. Titan creatures, the smallest standing ten feet tall. The rest, bulldogs and shit-imps, keep at a distance out of fear and reverence, many clinging to the walls and pillars to watch. I stand among them, so close I can smell and feel them, but I don’t move or make a sound because I’m terrified they’ll notice me.

 

The demigods snarl and argue like in a senate hearing, passing a large skull back and forth to designate the speaker, but often snatching it from one another like children or speaking out of turn. I don’t understand them. It’s all animal sounds, grunts and howls and hisses. Whatever the discussion is, they can’t seem to agree.

 

One of the goat-gods bellows long and loud, silences the lot and frightens off some of the spectators. He has the floor, but not the skull. The goat-god who does shakes it at him angrily. They exchange snarls and brays. The first grabs the second’s throat, digs his claws through his jaw. The head comes clean off with a crackle and pop. He presents the trophy to the spectators with a victorious howl as it burns in his hands. He's got the skull now, doesn't he?

 

I recognize the infernal eyes. He’s the Devil of Phobos. The Great Hell Baron.

 

He sneers and holds another object. Sleek, metallic, alien to that realm of flesh and stone and fire. The other creatures are curious and amazed. They’ve never seen anything like it before.

 

The Baron brays and bellows like a drill instructor, his eyes flaring into green starbursts. When he finishes, he tosses the object on the floor at the center of the ring, and the congregation erupts into another argument. I expect more heads to roll, but the bloody goat-god stands tall and proud, monolith-like, and never speaks again. Thousands of demon voices fill my ears until my skull begins to crack. The sea of writhing, clawing bodies covering the temple walls sends tremors across my skin. For a moment I can’t tell if it’s a dream or not.

 

I’m torn away from this “civilized” scene and subjected to countless others so vile and soul-curdling that I wake up screaming. I never remember any of them. I refuse to.

 

The barrel goes in my mouth but I can’t squeeze the trigger. Something stops me.

 

The video shows it's a nice mix of modern sensibilities and old school aesthetic. I really dig it.

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