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Bridgeburner56

The Slaughter Spectrum - RC1 Release

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Congratulations on putting this together. It was a pleasure seeing them come to life, and I’m more than happy to see them in an appropriate collection. It’s unfortunate that the frame rate issues are a consequence of the elaborate structure, but that’s just a bullet that needs to be bitten at this point. They’re still intricate, eye-catching, and difficult enough to keep coming back. I’ll gladly mention any other experiences I have after I’m done here.

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OK there should be a hotfix update to the pk3 later today. Adding in the lovely new title screen and hopefully have most the unused resources cleaned out.

*edit ok the texture thing might not happen (going slightly awry) but the new title screen works :D

Edited by Bridgeburner56

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Really amazing stuff Bridgeburner56, some of the maps are kinda laggy but thankfully more than playable for me. Had a lot of fun with map 01 and just briefly testing the others. Great job and thanks for putting this together as a separate release:)

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Beautiful, is jumping supposed to be enabled?, this would allow some hardcore map breaking.

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Yes jumping/crouching is allowed and people have tried to skip things (resulting in more blocklines etc). RJing I'm not too concerned about but if you find any obvious skips then let me know. Cheers!

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First of all, I would say I am not a professional in the area. I'm just an ordinary player, so my opinion is purely based on the experience of gameplay, without technical aspects. I loved the colors, the soundtrack and the difficulty (I played this in Ultraviolence). Congratulations, it's going great!

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Hotfix today with new MDoom and title pic by Insane Gazebo. GZDoom start up now correctly says The Slaughter Spectrum

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It's a little choppy at times, but damn is it beautiful! Played the first map on easy, difficulty seemed reasonable. Looking forward to trying a few weapons mods with RC2.

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I played through the whole thing, and I think this is an exceptional wad. I'd even say revolutionary. This grandiose style of map making has never been seen in GZDoom projects before (or at least I don't think so), so I can take a guess that it's going to become pretty influential.

 

The maps are beautifully designed and so gorgeous to look at, that barely anything else comes close. But the project is far from perfect. I'm only a bit into slaughter, so the gameplay style was just ''alright'' for me. I feel like the maps got consecutively worse as they went on. MAP01 is my absolute favourite, and I think that what came after it isn't as good. I don't really know how to explain it well, but MAP01 felt like an epic journey, while the others lacked that feel a bit. Each map got less and less grandiose, though not by that much. It's pretty unfortunate that the levels were stripped from Refracted Reality, since it's pretty clear to see that they were made for that project, and don't necessarily flow together that well as one wad. Especially the last two. Void Noir is very low key and gimmicky in comparison to the previous levels, and feels really anticlimactic. But that doesn't even come close to The Infinite Void, which is a hub map with no purpose in this wad, and ending your playthrough on it feels like a letdown.

Another drawback I noticed is that it's often difficult to find your way. Switches hidden in random places, that are not marked well, are a commonplace here. I got lost quite often, especially after the big fights.

One other thing that bothered me, was that you didn't change the invulnerability effect, which has always been too blinding for me, but when you combine it with particularly dark maps, it makes me want to die. But that's just a personal nitpick.

 

Still, even after some harsh words, I consider this to be an amazing project. It seems you have achieved mastery of GZDoom features, as well as setting the mood of your maps perfectly. The visuals, the music, and the gameplay compliment each other really well. I may not be the biggest fan of slaughter, but I can't really imagine these levels with a more low key style of combat. I had a lot of fun with this wad and I'm highly anticipating your future works :)

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As much as I like to see entry level slaughter maps, which is a "market" that rarely gets "satiated" overall - even less in recent days - I've gotta say I'm quite surprised about the state these maps are in, especially after taking a look at your lineup of playtesters (though I have no idea how much they were involved individually).

After coming to terms with the initial impact most of these fights have, which by itself is rather mild already, it quickly devolves into circle strafing many more times than my motivation is willing to endure over the course of a set.

 

It's not the lack of difficulty that I mind, but the lack of variety. It seems to me like these maps haven't been built to meet the requirements for orchestrated setpiece-fights as much as these maps have been built to look pretty - with combat being more of an afterthought to justify a room's existence in the map.

 

Yeah it's pretty, but I've played maps with better and more diverse combat, some of which created by the very people who tested your maps.

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These sure are some incredible, awe inspiring maps with a beautiful startup screen. Congratulations on the release! I've had a blast playing the first 2 maps so far. On my system I'm getting quite a fps range of 50-150 but the maps are beautifully presented, very playable and with no sluggish behaviour. I'm using gzdoom 4.1.1.

 

On startup there are slew of warnings and errors spit out onto the console log about unknown properties, textures self references, truncation of floating point constants, brightmap not found in texture, dynamic lights attached to non existent actors.  I'm assuming these warnings are associated with the unused resources referred to in @Bridgeburner56's last post and that they are mostly benign since the maps seem to play properly.

 

I ran into some trouble on map02. The portal trickery can be quite confusing when attempt to backtrack to find missing secrets, items and enemies. In fact not a lot of backtracking is possible due to irreversible environment changes (not a criticism, the dynamically map changes are brilliant). The first problem is that even after playing the map twice I was unable to spawn any of the 51 enemies tagged with TID:279. The second problem is that one of the soulsphere secrets (at the end of a trail of candles) appears to be duplicated. The secret is accessible early on but then in the final area to the north you can look and see a duplicate of the entire secret area where the soul sphere secret is but you cannot reach it without cheats to register the secret a second time.

 

The portal trickery does lead to some other odd but hilarious effects. After picking up the red key, my marine could see himself at the end of a long hallway and after shooting rockets at his evil image, watched in fascination as the rockets disappeared in the distance and mysteriously reappeared behind him and sailing harmlessly through him.

 

I look forward to playing the remaining maps soon.

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Thanks for the feedback eveyone, very much appreciated (bonus points to tmorrow for identifying bugs). I'll do a proper response once I get home from work because fuck typing more than 2 sentences on my phone. 

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An absolute artistic masterpiece and I'm only on Map01!

 

I tried UV and ran out of ammo at the first Archie, so I did an ammo cheat, but if you do that, you won't open the barrier that's triggered by grabbing the SSG, so I did a clipping cheat in order to progress. ;D

 

I died at the RL fight, and as a keyboarder with vastly less skill than SAV88 or gggmork, I decided UV wasn't for me and dropped to HNTR, which so far is a perfect fit. The setpieces -- especially the teleporting Cyb -- are still nice and hard for yours truly. Even on HNTR, I died several times to that Cyb before I figured out how to successfully cheese the battle. Yes, I admit to cheesing! :D

 

I can echo the complaint about progression and switches. Your switch textures are dark purples and such, and are in dark places, so you can barely see them. One easy fix would be to use the Switch2 version, so we can at least see whatever part is glowing. You could also put a 1-unit sector in front of them and set the light level very high, so they stand out, and in this way use the Switch1 textures to good effect.

 

I have a Core i7 machine with a 1060GTX 3GB card, and I did get some choppy moments here and there, especially on high platforms overlooking massive amounts of sectors and sidedefs. I've had no problems thus far in the actual playing portions, so I'm happy to suffer the occasional hiccup in order to enjoy all the beauty.

 

I'll post more as I go along. I'd also like to see what you can accomplish in a more flowy run 'n gun style map.

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Such a missed opportunity, you should have called this "The Slaughtism Spectrum".

 

I'll see myself out.

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43 minutes ago, Steve D said:

I did an ammo cheat, but if you do that, you won't open the barrier that's triggered by grabbing the SSG

Oof, I'm not a fan of non-essential pickups being required for progression. ("Hm, I don't think I need that soulsphere just yet." ::Wanders around for 10 minutes unable to figure out where to go next::)

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Well you don't have the ssg at that point unless you cheat so it's a guaranteed pick up. (and the berserk is there to alleviate ammo worries at the start) None of the power ups are linked to actions, just weapons which you will pick up because you don't have them in your inventory. I will be changing them all to line actions on rc2 however because continuous play can cause issues on map 2 with exactly that. 

An extra pass on the switches to brighten them up is on the rc2 list as well. 

 

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Being new to Doom bugs, is ghost monsters an intentional thing? After exploding some hell knights with a rocket launcher, an arch vile resurrected them into ghost monsters. I like to play with some Doom 64 and Bolognese gore patches, so I am not sure if that is introducing the bug, or if ghost monsters are a potential thing in this wad.

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Hi, the maps are beautiful and the gameplay intense but I have to wonder...

 

Quote

I get a minimum of 60 fps and the dedicated test team generally came back with no issues performance wise.

 

What computer do you have, and the test team? Because I have a i7 4770k at 4.0ghz and a gtx 1080 and in the first map there are some moments where the framerate tanked enough that affected gameplay (lower than 45 fps). Using last stable gzdoom.

 

edit: 20fps from this view in the last map (it lowered to 7fps the moment I captured it, never mind that)

https://i.imgur.com/yd8nyB6.jpg

 

Edited by Turin Turambar

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Ok wall of text time ;p

@Lorenz0 Due to the way this project came about (maps that were originally meant to be in with 10 others) there will always be a ... disjointed feel to them, especially with noir (which was meant to be the secret level) and the hub. Interesting that you feel that the hub actually detracts (I think it has a neutral impact, doesn't add a whole heap but people seem to like looking at it) and if more people say the same then I'll remove it. The maps have been ordered in rough order of difficulty which also happens to be the order in which they were made so I'm highly unlikely to change that at this point.
There's been a few people complain about the dark switches so I'll be doing my best to address that for RC2. Interestingly it wasn't a major issue raised by the test group but my maps are rather dark here. I also have a brighter than average monitor so getting a good volley of public feedback on this means that I'll take that into account a bit better going forward.
I've been given permission to use the invuln palette from 1K lines which is much less retina scorching so that'll be added in for RC2

@Nine Inch Heels I'd be awfully surprised if the first maps I release were judged to be better than maps made by far more experienced people than myself. One does not make Stardate 20x6 on their first release. And who better to critique them than highly experienced players and mappers. One thing I will point out is that when the vast majority of the work was done on this the sum total of people who had ever even tested one of my maps was zero and I'd only been back into mapping for 6 months (7 year hiatus) so there has been a steep learning curve over the last 3 months since testing started.
The gameplay issues arising from room design (yes I agree there are flaws) are not so much due to a lack of forethought so much as the original idea not working out, being mechanically difficult to implement or just being bad ideas to begin with (a well planned bad idea is still a bad idea). And yes changing the combat at that point was difficult due to the complexity or specificity of the architecture. Nirvana in particular was very helpful with early testing pointing out problematic/boring areas that have changed quite a bit since testing started. Would I build them differently if I was making them now with a year of mapping under the belt? For sure. Are they flawed? Absolutely. But I'm not going to spend energy ripping things apart and rebuilding them at this juncture. Far better to take the lessons learned and apply them to the next project. And the one after that etc etc. Thanks for playing them.

@tmorrow Yup I'll be aiming to clear out all the warnings for the final release. The vast majority are related to old, now unused assets in the pk3. Thanks for the bug hunting as well. I did do some max checks but that was a while ago and I'll be honest I can't remember how successful I was (lol). I'm considering adding in a teleporter at the end of each map that takes you back to the start (2 way) for the completionists because there are points of no return where you can't go back if you want. This doesn't bother me specifically but I'm guessing some people would appreciate it. Yeah portals do some quirky stuff, map 4 in particular.

@Steve D Ha, keyboard user ;p I admire your dedication. The berserk at the start to encourage you to go lay the smack down so I think ammo is fine. I'm gonna be changing weapon pick up scripts to line activation, mostly for continuous players, as the vast majority of the testing has been done for pistol starts which were enforced in RR as it is a hub set up and you can play the maps in any order you want.
Cheese is fine, the stinkier the better.
A combination of UDMF texture brightening and point lights will be the way I'll deal with the dark switches. There's also a handful that I'll make a bit bigger. Little eyes in marble texture looks cool but can be hard to find.

@Immorpher That does sound like a bug generated by the mods that you are using. It certainly hasn't been mentioned before and all of the monsters/weapons are completely vanilla. By ghost do you mean completely invisible?

@Turin Turambar I have a 1060 running in a brand new i7 8700 rig that I bought about a month ago. Before that I had an 7 year old i3 chip (with the same graphics card) and there was obviously a massive difference one the new machine.
There are bound to be areas that I haven't checked, I haven't done a 360 spin in every point in every map, more a general run to identify hot spots (and those that the testers found) and then implemented improvements, rechecked etc. Main focus being on gameplay centric areas as well. I have pointed out that the very end of noir is a problem spot due to infinite portal effects but surprisingly few complaints about that specifically. I'm expecting to have to reduce the number of portals there for the final release but if no one says anything then it'll stay as is.

OK I think that was everyone. Thanks again for playing and giving feedback. Generally people seem to be enjoying themselves, I'll admit to a fair amount of nerves releasing this but gotta take that first plunge at some point. I'll be aiming for an RC2 update around a week after RC1, end of next week at the latest.

/wall of text
 

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I may have felt so negatively about the hub due to the fact that I stumbled onto the exit within a minute, so I didn't really take in the view. I don't really think it should be removed. I think that a map like this deserves to be seen.

And I think that the map order is fine enough, since I agree that the difficulty curve is important to keep in mind.

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On 5/16/2019 at 8:37 PM, Salt-Man Z said:

Oof, I'm not a fan of non-essential pickups being required for progression. ("Hm, I don't think I need that soulsphere just yet." ::Wanders around for 10 minutes unable to figure out where to go next::)

 

This is one of the very few things in Doom I feel strongly about too. I fairly recently played a WAD where I could make no progress because I didn't realise for a long time that the BFG was an essential pickup, but I already had one and 600 Cells, so I was unable to do that. Simply having a trigger that you just have to run over is a lot better, and triggers like that on consumable pickups is even worse. I'm not sure I've ever seen the stylistic need to do this, and it's just something that at best allows normal map progression, and at worst frustrates players, which really makes me feel it has almost no use.

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The ghost monsters (yes invisible) does seem to be a bug with one of my add ons. It might not be playing well with Brutal Bolognese Gore Mod v2, as when I prevent gibbing it fixes the problem.

Edited by Immorpher

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This might be the wrong thread to ask, I didn't want to bump a months old thread, but is this a taste of what's to come in Age Of Hell? I was hyped for Refracted Reality and the screenshots you provided and was not at all disappointed, can't wait to see how your next project turns out:)

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WHY IS THIS MAPSET SO GLORIOUS WHAT THE HELL

 

eDIT:

TRY THIS WITH TRAILBLAZER.  (i have a 1050 in my system, project brutaility was a complete mess. trailblzaer ran great getting me at least 60 fps) PPS: I THINK SMOOTH DOOM RUNS GREAT TOO

Edited by zaszthedestroyer

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Congrats On The Release Bridge! Absolutely gorgeous maps!

Slaughter levels are not my style of gameplay, I prefer the classic). But it is worth noting architecture in these maps is stunning)) Map01 55+fps, in some places 20-30fps, map02 60+fps, map03 60+fps it's not completed(location after the bridge(from it is still under the impression))

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so I actually finally got around to downloading THIS version of the maps, pk3 whatever, and I'd like to point out the following.

 

When you separate maps from a project, typically you build new pk3 from the ground up. This pk3 is basically a bastardized version of the last RR build,  including ACS, sound, graphics, text files, and other unused resources, resulting in a flood of console errors (even just opening console in map01 returns errors), contributing to an incredibly sloppy "release candidate" that was clearly rushed out the door. Funnily enough you couldn't even be bothered to give the hub map music, and it's missing the titlemus. I know the previous version had that stuff in because it was a direct rip from RR, which is humourous enough in itself, because I know you have strong opinions about "tarnished" and "buggy" releases.

 

The credits file is a sloppy edit of the RR one and doesn't specify what RR resources are being used here and who made them, or update the credits file (I see the light colour edits from NeonDM are in the pk3, which were a recent addition and I'm sure are not used, but still requires crediting the original texture source and the person who recoloured them). Hell it even says 17 colourful maps, last I checked this was 5 *hits blunt*

 

Quote

Thanks to the Refracted Reality team for letting the resources be used for this mapset.

 

Saying this is cool and all, but you don't cover everything with broad strokes like that.
 

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BB your maps are astounding, they're a tier of their own- but the playablity doesnt fit with what i wanted from this project. feel free to release them on your own, you have my full permission to use any and all assets used in your maps, i'm not one to hog resources

 

This was the quote removing you from the team. This means assets used specifically in your maps. It doesn't mean menu graphics/pointer, text files, the boss ACS, etc. Anything else would require direct permission and attribution. You should also consider replacing any shader textures used or get permission from serious_mood for this project, since that permission is not RR's to extend.

 

I understand the grievances between you and RR but this lacks integrity, and I can't tell if you were just being enthusiastic wanting to release these or just wanted to be slightly vindictive about how things went by rushing something out the door to beat RR to the punch. If you really want to do a good job of making a separate release, start by making a new pk3 instead of abducting and molesting the existing one, so you actually only use what you've been given permission to use and what you actually use.

 

 

Edited by Decay

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