D.Scratch Posted January 6, 2019 (edited) Discharge is a 9 Level Wad for ZDoom with a use of 3d Floors, Dynamic Lighting and other stuff, but aims to play like a tradition Doom 2 wad but with very long maps. Each map have a different ambient and style, starting on your common "UAC Base" Map going all the way to hell and to an old west inspired level. Some levels even have bosses at its end! Normal is the intended difficulty because i wanted to go crazy on Hard, the last few maps is the only ones that i can really say it's a slaughterfest. The weapons have been changed too to be faster and damaging, so don't be afraid when you see the enemy count of each map, you will probably kill them faster than normal anyways (The Wad is balanced with my weapons change in mind, while mods still work, prefer using weapon mods that at least overpowers you a bit more than the default weaponry) DOWNLOAD !DOWNLOAD! DOWNLOAD!http://www.mediafire.com/file/lk72lw8rhh85674/Discharge.wad/filehttp://www.mediafire.com/file/lk72lw8rhh85674/Discharge.wad/file ZDoom Forum Thread (For replyes and stuff) https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=63169&p=1086539#p1086539 This wad was actually a compilation of all my work on the past three years, i hope you enjoy because i dont think i'll ever map again! By D.Scratch Screenshots: (Size of the screenshot is too damn big) MORE PICS!https://imgur.com/a/1fd5Rb8 https://imgur.com/a/1fd5Rb8 https://imgur.com/a/1fd5Rb8 Additional Credits for realm 667 stuff, sounds and other: Eriance, Dreadopp, Ghastly Dragon, Keksdose, MagicWazard, Blue Shadow, Tormentor667, FuzzballFox, Enjay, EarthQuake, CaptainToenail, Gothic Team, Lobotomy Software Edited January 11, 2019 by D.Scratch 25 Share this post Link to post
Tango Posted January 7, 2019 (edited) looks awesome :D the shots of the final map look especially incredible. eager to try this out! Edited January 7, 2019 by Tango 1 Share this post Link to post
Gaia74 Posted January 7, 2019 Holy god!, looks very good!, gonna play now 1 Share this post Link to post
ketmar Posted January 7, 2019 the first map by itself is of a good episode size. and there are even more! i had to adjust my playing habits a little, but this is not a pwad flaw, i like it. didn't made it past the first map yet (spent ~30 minutes in it for now), so cannot say anything about others, but so far i like what i see (and playing). slightly claustrophobic sometimes, but i like it. ;-) thank you. 2 Share this post Link to post
Bryan T Posted January 8, 2019 (edited) I've played the first 2 levels so far. Insane attention to detail. Very difficult on UV due to clever enemy placement. Even though the levels are huge I'm not getting lost. I wish the levels had more room to move around in and the instant death pit near the end of map02 annoyed me. Make sure you save often when playing this one. It's clear a ton of work went into this and I hope it doesn't go unnoticed. Update: I'm now up to map06. The western theme of map03 was an interesting diversion. Map04 was quite laggy for some reason, at least in the beginning and it ended with me sidestepping into another instant death sector, this time a part of the floor that just decided to kill me. This was right near the end of the map. Very dickish indeed. Map05 took a while to beat due to waiting for more guys to spawn in. The end was pretty cool though, fighting 2 previous bosses at once. BTW, if you want your wad to be seen and played more you might want to start replying to people in your thread. Edited January 11, 2019 by Bryan T 1 Share this post Link to post
D.Scratch Posted January 11, 2019 On 1/8/2019 at 1:21 PM, Bryan T said: I've played the first 2 levels so far. Insane attention to detail. Very difficult on UV due to clever enemy placement. Even though the levels are huge I'm not getting lost. I wish the levels had more room to move around in and the instant death pit near the end of map02 annoyed me. Make sure you save often when playing this one. It's clear a ton of work went into this and I hope it doesn't go unnoticed. Update: I'm now up to map06. The western theme of map03 was an interesting diversion. Map04 was quite laggy for some reason, at least in the beginning and it ended with me sidestepping into another instant death sector, this time a part of the floor that just decided to kill me. This was right near the end of the map. Very dickish indeed. Map05 took a while to beat due to waiting for more guys to spawn in. The end was pretty cool though, fighting 2 previous bosses at once. BTW, if you want your wad to be seen and played more you might want to start replying to people in your thread. Sorry, i went on a trip almost a week ago and had no internet because of the bad region. Thanks for your feedback so far, you made me realize some simple mistakes that I could easily sort out as putting something like a fence at the end of the map 4 preventing you from dying instantly. I realize that there are parts of the maps that are really too tight, especially a good part of the first map, this is a problem because the maps have been made in very distant times, my design and mapping ability changes a lot from map to map. The problem is that fixing these spacing problems I would have to perhaps re-draw entire rooms of the maps, and as i said in the thread i no longer intend to create maps for a long time. I think the Map 4 lag comes from dynamic lighting, something that looks beautiful but also laggy, i've tried to make the entire first section only using them. Anyway, thanks for commenting and playing! You have come so far in the wad already and that makes me happy enough! 1 Share this post Link to post
Bryan T Posted January 11, 2019 Thanks for the response. I uploaded my journey if you want to check it out. After dying to yet another instakill pit I'm officially done with the wad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6PRoOrrXGY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNSY8qDCwkc 1 Share this post Link to post
D.Scratch Posted January 11, 2019 1 minute ago, Bryan T said: Thanks for the response. I uploaded my journey if you want to check it out. After dying to yet another instakill pit I'm officially done with the wad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6PRoOrrXGY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNSY8qDCwkc Thanks, this is going to be very usefull for feedback! 0 Share this post Link to post
ketmar Posted January 12, 2019 (edited) 20 hours ago, D.Scratch said: I think the Map 4 lag comes from dynamic lighting, something that looks beautiful but also laggy, i've tried to make the entire first section only using them. wow, there is where my k8vavoom... ahem... shines, i'd say: it maintains almost rock solid 60 FPS there, along with nice smooth lighting and shadows (in lightmapped lighting mode). and i am planning to make lighting system even faster (without degrading the performance, of course). eye candy! Spoiler Edited January 12, 2019 by ketmar 2 Share this post Link to post
Hellbent Posted January 12, 2019 (edited) This mapset doesn't include checkpoint autosaves does it? 0 Share this post Link to post
D.Scratch Posted January 12, 2019 (edited) 1 hour ago, Hellbent said: This mapset doesn't include checkpoint autosaves does it? While i thought adding autosaves in the past, the idea was discarded for a reason i dont remember. I suggest saving when entering a "suspicious room filled with ammo and stuff" or a big arena. And save where you can find floors with "sky texture" because these will mostly insta kill you. Just "dont fall on the sky"... 1 Share this post Link to post
D.Scratch Posted January 12, 2019 2 hours ago, ketmar said: wow, there is where my k8vavoom... ahem... shines, i'd say: it maintains almost rock solid 60 FPS there, along with nice smooth lighting and shadows (in lightmapped lighting mode). and i am planning to make lighting system even faster (without degrading the performance, of course). Could you test your fps on map 9 later? I had insane problems with performance on making that huge map, i went all crazy with detailing and scale that later i had to do a bunch of stuff to minimize the fps loss. I even suggested turning off dynamic lighting on that level on the map name. 0 Share this post Link to post
ketmar Posted January 12, 2019 map09 is a mixed bag: it has some rendering bugs in my engine, so sometimes clipper is unable to cull the geometry, and then FPS drops to 12-18. otherwise it is solid 50/60 (wow, i just redefined the meaning of "solid performance"! ;-). still, the rendering is mostly broken, so i have to find out what is wrong there. i think that i managed to break texture manager again. sigh. some textures are completely missing for some reason. 2 Share this post Link to post
ketmar Posted January 14, 2019 (edited) @D.Scratch i fixed bugs in texture loader (SLADE is fubared; how can i make people stop using it?!). now, i see that clipper is unable to clip geometry, which goes especially bad in the yard beyound the red door. this is why your map can be slow: engines are forced to process the things user will never see anyway. i.e. when you enter that yard, automap suddenly reveals ALOT of level you cannot even see directly -- and linedefs are marked on automap only when the engine has to render them. that is, engines are unable to clip vertically. you have lines which blocks the second yard vertically, but... but the engine is unable to use that info. that is, once you arrived in the first yard, the second one will be unconditionally rendered too, even if it looks like it is not really visible, and shouldn't be rendered at all. if you will separate those courtyards with solid walls instead, you will see a noticable FPS boost. p.s.: sadly, i am too late with that info, as you decided to stop mapping for some time. still, you may suddenly decide to return too, so maybe that info will be of some use for you. ;-) 1 Share this post Link to post
bemused Posted January 15, 2019 Just poking my head in here to say that screenshot is 10/10, looks ridiculously good! Just a minor thing, I can't help but read the title and get somewhat unpleasant mental imagery of uhh.... leaking genitalia (not sure if this was intentional or not), but the wad looks sick :D Will make an effort to squeeze this in between the mountains of shit i have in my backlog of stuff to try out :) 0 Share this post Link to post
D.Scratch Posted January 17, 2019 (edited) On 1/14/2019 at 9:44 PM, ketmar said: @D.Scratch that is, engines are unable to clip vertically. you have lines which blocks the second yard vertically, but... but the engine is unable to use that info. that is, once you arrived in the first yard, the second one will be unconditionally rendered too, even if it looks like it is not really visible, and shouldn't be rendered at all. if you will separate those courtyards with solid walls instead, you will see a noticable FPS boost. I've noticed the way the engine renders stuff, the map is divided in two parts, or two big rooms, but in the beginning was only a single one. I was inspired by the large and epic serious sam maps when making this one, so i wanted to make something big with big buildings to impress the player, but at the same time very detailed, and was that detail that started to destroy the fps on the making. Because if you make a very very big square room on the editor you will not lose much fps, but when you fill this space with lots of stuff the engine explodes. So i've cuted the map in half and removed some other detail stuff, and it helped alot (because it was even worse before) but of course the final product wasnt the best anyway. I didnt wanted to sacrifice completly the "epic view", so i had to deal with an unsatble fps. Thanks for the comment btw! 0 Share this post Link to post
D.Scratch Posted January 17, 2019 On 1/15/2019 at 6:38 AM, bemused said: Just poking my head in here to say that screenshot is 10/10, looks ridiculously good! Just a minor thing, I can't help but read the title and get somewhat unpleasant mental imagery of uhh.... leaking genitalia (not sure if this was intentional or not), but the wad looks sick :D Will make an effort to squeeze this in between the mountains of shit i have in my backlog of stuff to try out :) Damn haha wtf When i think of the name "Discharge" what comes on my mind is electrical discharges, like thunders and stuff... Still, thx for your comment! 1 Share this post Link to post
ketmar Posted January 17, 2019 (edited) 3 hours ago, D.Scratch said: I didnt wanted to sacrifice completly the "epic view", so i had to deal with an unsatble fps. yeah, the map looks great, and it is still playable. anyway, i think that in next 10 years or so hardware will be able to render it with silk-smooth 60 FPS anyway, so it is better to have nice-looking one today, with some FPS drop. ;-) it is still possible to do some heavy trickery (make a solid wall with sky toptexture, and use ACS triggers to remove it when the player is close or something), but meh... the map is still perfectly playable in its current form. we, engine authors, should optimise our code instead. ;-) 0 Share this post Link to post
D.Scratch Posted January 20, 2019 On 1/17/2019 at 5:31 PM, ketmar said: it is still possible to do some heavy trickery (make a solid wall with sky toptexture, and use ACS triggers to remove it when the player is close or something), but meh... the map is still perfectly playable in its current form. we, engine authors, should optimise our code instead. ;-) That's something that i had never thought before. Since it was my first time being limited by fps when making a map, because i've never done something like map 9 before, it come in my mind that i could try any kind of visual tricks, just the usual "remove stuff" to make it better. But anyway, you made me realise a limitation on the engine in a more precise way, thanks for commenting and helping me with the fps thing at the start of the thread! In fact, dosn't the Source engine renders stuff similar to gzdoom? I mean the with room stuff 0 Share this post Link to post
ketmar Posted January 20, 2019 (edited) 1 hour ago, D.Scratch said: In fact, dosn't the Source engine renders stuff similar to gzdoom? I mean the with room stuff with Quake (and Source is based on Quake), things are even worser, actually. while doom engines are able to do clipping when the wall is solid (they are using 1D clipper for that; yes, 1D -- that's why vertical clipping is not there ;-), Quake is unable to dynamically clip based on geometry at all. that's why Quake tools precomputes PVS (potential visibility set), which indicates subsectors (in doom terminology) that are visible from the given one. kinda like reject table, actually, but it is used not only to speedup line traces, but in renderer too. still, due to "real 3d" nature of the engine, "subsectors" are 3d too, and tools are able to determine that most of the second yard is not visible from the first one even if there is a "leak" from one to another, and clip statically with PVS. (of course, real implementation is much more complex, and quite different for software and hardware renderers, but the basics is like what i wrote.) when building a complex doom map, it is always good to remember that doom does only 1D clipping. so if there is some vertical leak, renderer will do more work. also, clippers are smart enough to clip with (most) closed doors, so strategically placing doors in your map can help too. 0 Share this post Link to post
D.Scratch Posted January 23, 2019 (edited) On 1/20/2019 at 8:32 PM, ketmar said: with Quake (and Source is based on Quake), things are even worser, actually. while doom engines are able to do clipping when the wall is solid (they are using 1D clipper for that; yes, 1D -- that's why vertical clipping is not there ;-), Quake is unable to dynamically clip based on geometry at all. that's why Quake tools precomputes PVS (potential visibility set), which indicates subsectors (in doom terminology) that are visible from the given one. kinda like reject table, actually, but it is used not only to speedup line traces, but in renderer too. still, due to "real 3d" nature of the engine, "subsectors" are 3d too, and tools are able to determine that most of the second yard is not visible from the first one even if there is a "leak" from one to another, and clip statically with PVS. Damn that's interesting and kinda confused, really making me think Carmack was a real magic wizard time traveler. That's explain why we don't have many big open maps on source and a lots of loading in half life games. Actually this subject remembered me about the newest "battle royale" csgo map wich found weird ways to "abuse" the old engine limitations while still being huge for its game. 3kliksphilip made a video about it and can explain way better than me: Edited January 24, 2019 by D.Scratch 1 Share this post Link to post
ketmar Posted January 23, 2019 yeah, great video. they used virtually all tricks in the book to make it work. really impressive. 1 Share this post Link to post
DoubleCakes Posted January 27, 2019 Slowly making my way through this wad (with a weapon mod) and I'm continually impressed with how good the level and room design is. 2 Share this post Link to post
D.Scratch Posted January 30, 2019 On 1/26/2019 at 11:08 PM, DoubleCakes said: Slowly making my way through this wad (with a weapon mod) and I'm continually impressed with how good the level and room design is. Thanks for the compliment! I've hear about many people playing with weapon mods, i wonder if someone tried with Hideous Destructor yet... 0 Share this post Link to post