[FINAL RELEASE] Refracted Reality

[Decay]

The version in RC2 will be much easier, with power-ups and ammo top ups before the encounter.

 

When I designed that fight I had no real idea of what I was supposed to be doing (due to first SP map inexperience) and went with the general principle of "If I can do it, pretty much anybody can" because I am horrible at single-player Doom. Testers said nothing was unduly difficult. But this is okay, feedback is good, and as a result it is easier.

[Nine Inch Heels]

How does the last fight in ravage change from UV to HMP I wonder? I'm asking because, at least for me personally, this might be a matter of "maybe not everybody needs to have no issues when playing on UV". Just from my personal experience, I felt like the fight was very doable without getting the MS and cell ammo secret, especially if one was able to get the timing on the arch-viles right, which to me are things in the category of "If you wanna win, you're gonna have to learn". Granted, that's not everybody's cup of tea, but it's also not "wrong", methodically speaking.

[AkiraZXE]

I just went and did the final fight for a good 25 minutes to try to get a better idea of what was throwing me off, without using the secret. To make a long story short, I could make everything except the last two Archviles very consistent.

 

My route through the fight was pretty straightforward. Kill a Mastermind, try to kill two Pain Elementals as I cross the arena, kill the other Mastermind, try to cross again and kill two more Pain Elementals. At this point, I'd want to head back to the entrance and ambush the Archviles right as they spawn, but it's where I had the first hiccup. It usually wouldn't be a problem, but I found I had just enough time to get into trouble, but not enough time to really do anything productive before the Archviles spawned.

 

After I'd kill the first two, it fell apart and I couldn't figure out a consistent way through the fight. If the last two Archviles got crowded, especially if they were next to each other when it happened, I think I only managed to salvage it once. Their aggro would jump around too much, and either I'd be whittled down by the mobs, or one of them would eventually snipe me while dodging everything else.

 

I didn't actually notice much of a difference between HMP and UV. It really was just the last two Archviles. Personally, I think the main problem is that last Archvile spawn timer. If I had enough time to clear just a few more lesser enemies, the last two Archviles may not be the hard make or break of the fight. But I don't know that for sure.

 

Oh and I found this probably-incorrect flat, on the other side of the door leading to the final encounter.

 

Unrelated to Savage, on Under the Thulian Lights, this little floor decoration seems to be mistextured or misaligned. All the others have a cross.

Edited May 16, 2020 by AkiraZXE

[adamadam]

I've been playing through this and enjoying it a lot!

 

About half-way through the maps, came across just one bug in map 10, once right about where this screenshot was taken from, I was firing rockets into the room ahead when one rocket blew up immediately in my face after firing.  There are also occassional sound distortions making me wonder if gzdoom sometimes thinks there is a solid wall in front of me?

 

Spoiler

 

Otherwise, the gameplay has been good!  I have on the lower end of system specs, an Ivy Bridge i5 cpu & Geforce 1030 GT but the levels play well.  Map 9 has had the most frame rate loss of what i've played thus far, however gzdoom keeps the pacing spot on, and everything remains very playable

[adamadam]

I just played through the Ravage level on UV.  It wasn't all that bad difficulty-wise.  Most of the difficulty comes from just not knowing how the level is laid out, what is important and what is not.  For a first-time player with zero knowledge needing to explore & figure out the level, any hesitation to look around results in a bombardment of missiles, same with taking any wrong direction.  I too ended up slowly inching through things picking off what I could.  Another run through the level should be a good time :)

 

I was able to get past the last fight with maybe 20 deaths (and using a couple save points in between) having no armor at all - wasn't aware of the megasphere.  I did find one cheese, after pressing the switch I would go immediately to the right and prevent one of the spider masterminds from spawning in.

[leodoom85]

8 hours ago, adamadam said:

About half-way through the maps, came across just one bug in map 10, once right about where this screenshot was taken from, I was firing rockets into the room ahead when one rocket blew up immediately in my face after firing.  There are also occassional sound distortions making me wonder if gzdoom sometimes thinks there is a solid wall in front of me?

Guess that portals aren't much of an advantage in the sense that you can cheese that lil fight. I think you need to avoid doing that in the meantime. 

Also, I haven't used much space for the layout of the map, which can help a bit with the framerate (except if you keep the dynamic light option enabled heh)

[adamadam]

oh right!  i never checked the map, didn't realize that was a portal :)  makes sense

[TonynUBares]

I hope this is the proper place to write this.
My two cents on "Paradigma" by UV.
I played it at ultraviolence with Dusted's Pandemonia... It was probably the hardest thing ever tried, since the day I tried "Dante must die" difficulty for the first time :O (I put a 2 minute video on Pandemonia's discord, just to have an idea). I think it took 6 total hours to finish it and around 50 deaths or so, plus some viles punching XD.
The map overall is very nice and way less laggy then expected on an 11yo pc.
Might have found a few flaws. 

Spoiler

1) If jumping is allowed, I could get to the last secret area with only 7/8 secrets.
2) Those 3 viles in that last area stayed still. I could not alert them at all. (maybe because I got here with 1 secret less?)

3) The rev spawn right above here was a bit fucked up. I don't know if they are timed, but they kinda spawned altogether almost, so some of them were blocked because like 3 revs spawned in the same place and at the same time.
4) This elevator was tooooooo quick: it goes up after half second

 

These problems might have been caused by me jump/cheating and by Pandemonia.
 

Spoiler

This instead is something that maybe was done on purpose:

Are you really supposed to simply jump down to get back from there?

What I really missed in the map were teleports to go back to the previous areas. Like, unless I'm blind, I couldn't find a way to get back to the starting zone; moreover once you pass the "bfg corridor(?)" you can't go back and look for the secrets you missed.

Last thing, but this may apply to all maps: is there a way to avoid you rocket/bfg pushing an enemy out of bounds? Like when you jump into the void, you get teleported back somewhere, but this doesn't apply to enemies too.
 

 

[Turin Turambar]

I'm still waiting RC2 to play it!

[killerkouhai]

On 6/18/2020 at 2:35 AM, Turin Turambar said:

I'm still waiting RC2 to play it!

It will be a while yet until RC2, since there's going to be (at least) one entire new map

[ludicrous_peridot]

Thanks a lot for producing something that original and colorful that has zombiemen, imps and cacodemons in it. One thing I wanted to ask about - an please excuse me for bumping the thread for it if that's found unappropriate - is which source port/hardware configuration the wad aims for? I was trying this with various GZDoom versions and ended up using the latest stable releas (4.4.something at the time of writing) as I found no considerable difference in performance with comparable settings. However I was able to enjoy fluent play on a GTX1060 card and not on RX570. Am I doing something wrong, or is this aimed at high end PCs only? See - I came here to discover Refracted Reality from another mod's forum page, where your excellent map pack was characterized as aiming for more conservative set ups, so I'm confused.

[leodoom85]

6 hours ago, ludicrous_peridot said:

Thanks a lot for producing something that original and colorful that has zombiemen, imps and cacodemons in it. One thing I wanted to ask about - an please excuse me for bumping the thread for it if that's found unappropriate - is which source port/hardware configuration the wad aims for? I was trying this with various GZDoom versions and ended up using the latest stable releas (4.4.something at the time of writing) as I found no considerable difference in performance with comparable settings. However I was able to enjoy fluent play on a GTX1060 card and not on RX570. Am I doing something wrong, or is this aimed at high end PCs only? See - I came here to discover Refracted Reality from another mod's forum page, where your excellent map pack was characterized as aiming for more conservative set ups, so I'm confused.

I heard that AMD cards performs not as good as Nvidia cards for this port...

That's probably why it runs a bit worse.

[Bryan T]

If you're using AMD, use Vulkan.

[ludicrous_peridot]

Thanks, folks. Switching to Vulkan has really helped. GZDoom is the only port his pack will run on, correct?

[Bryan T]

Correct.

 

Edit: I managed to screw up the end of map12. I killed the archvile then backed out. The yellow switch that teleported me in there couldn't be activated again.

 

I have 3 maps left but I can say that this is among the best wads I've ever played. 

Edited July 24, 2020 by Bryan T

[leodoom85]

5 hours ago, Bryan T said:

Correct.

 

Edit: I managed to screw up the end of map12. I killed the archvile then backed out. The yellow switch that teleported me in there couldn't be activated again.

 

I have 3 maps left but I can say that this is among the best wads I've ever played. 

Exactly where? since I'm the owner of map 12, I need to know.

[Bryan T]

46 minutes ago, leodoom85 said:

Exactly where? since I'm the owner of map 12, I need to know.

 

At the very end. I pressed the yellow switch and it teleported me in a small hallway with an archvile (HMP). After killing him I somehow backed out of the room and ended up outside of the portal that sits on the island next to the yellow switch. I couldn't find a way back in.

[leodoom85]

OH.
You might know that for RC2, the way to get there is slightly changed. Now an additional teleporter (sealed first with a barrier and gone when you press that switch) was added at the left of the switch, providing the player the option to decide to take the shortcut or not. I need to check the teleportation from the void as well in those sectors.

 

AH, and it's repeatable as well.

[Caleb13]

Oh wow, these maps are visually amazing, it's hard to believe it's still Doom engine. I started playing on UV, but got tired of the endless archvile grind, so in the end I did just a quick sightseeing run on HNTR. And there was another thing that irked me: some maps have metal bars and railings that look like normal 2-sided linedefs, but actually block projectiles. In practice, the player can shoot through them with hitscan weapons, but then kill himself with rocket launcher. The problem is, there is no way to tell which one is the blocking one. I listed some of them below, and also some other RC1 problems I encountered in GZdoom 4.4.2:

 

MAP02: masterminds 984 and 999 were stuck. Also, these errors appear at map start:

 

AimingCamera 6020: Can't find TID 0
AimingCamera 6021: Can't find TID 0
AimingCamera 6019: Can't find TID 0
AimingCamera 7016: Can't find TID 0

 

MAP06: if you jump into void sector 2162, you won't get teleported back to start. It's possible this bug affects other sectors, too. The railings all around the blue key area allow hitscan shots, but block rockets.

 

MAP09: the scripted messages don't get flushed into console, there is no way to read them once they disappear.

 

MAP08: most (if not all) bars/railings block rockets.

 

MAP10: there are two annoying areas where player can kill himself with a rocket launcher. First is portal corridor ending with sector 622, I had two rockets explode mid-air there. The portal should be in less combat-intensive place. The second is top floor railing around sectors 664, 739 etc., they block rockets when shooting in slightly low angle.

 

MAP11: the player is supposed to land onto invulnerability in the center mastermind arena, right? Well, it didn't work, the mastermind teleported right under my feet and I fell from its head/brain into the revenant pit below.

 

MAP32: ammo box 194 or 195 is down in the void, not on the path.

 

RRHUB: when you finish all maps, MAP32 will unlock (bars will lower). But when you return from MAP32, the bars are up again and you can't replay it.

 

Edit: music files ARBTx and RAWINDxx are identical. And the SOUND directory has even more copies of them. In all, I found about 30 various duplicate files in the PK3.

Edited July 25, 2020 by Caleb13

[leodoom85]

4 hours ago, Caleb13 said:

MAP10: there are two annoying areas where player can kill himself with a rocket launcher. First is portal corridor ending with sector 622, I had two rockets explode mid-air there. The portal should be in less combat-intensive place. The second is top floor railing around sectors 664, 739 etc., they block rockets when shooting in slightly low angle.

That rail in top floor sector man.........

Also, the portal type is currently set on visual+teleporter way. Changing it to static fixes that problem.

 

EDIT: All those issues are fixed and ready to implement for RC2 anytime.

Edited July 25, 2020 by leodoom85

[Enterim]

Bumping this thread because I finally got around to playing this (at least the first 5 maps so far). I'm playing on HMP and have been doing the maps in ascending difficulty order. I took some notes but wouldn't really consider the following formal feedback or a review or anything. The only bug I have to report (besides traveling between two particular sectors in Elysium's Void choking off the sound effects) is on Duplicity (the yellow/blue map): on the yellow half, I ran through to the trapped switch that spawns 2 arch-viles too fast and the arch-viles failed to spawn, softlocking me in that room because the trap-bars never raised.

 

My notes are below, in spoiler tag to condense space:

Spoiler

Cyan Umbra by killerkouhai:
(cyan.) one of the best songs. great pacing and aesthetics -- the crumbly, floating geometry and cool skybox and cyan haze were very neat. good warm-up map. I didn't realize the hub map would make me pistol-start each map so I finished with 200/200 and 120 cells, etc.

 

Elysium's Void by leodoom85:
(yellow.): Knowing I would be pistol-starting the following maps, I was more loose with ammo usage and taking hits, but the way monsters were spawned in made the monster count on the automap constantly fool me into thinking I was done fighting. the yellow key arena fight was very cool and a nice pick-up of the pace; I like it as a contrast to the claustrophobic elevator fight. I liked how the floating platforms had a subtle up-and-down hover. the ending portal had a great visual trick -- the screen is flashing yellow from picking up a bunch of hp/armor and it fades to yellow as you portal out.

 

Chromabyss by killerkouhai:
(rainbow). I like the slow, translucent lift at the beginning up to the action. really cool floor texture. the opening fights were fine, however I went off-course and ammo management got extremely tight, to the point where I had to punch out an arch-vile in the maze. 80% of the monsters were dead before I got the plasma rifle and BFG. Then I got very lost looking for the exit, occasionally hitting switches that didn't seem to do anything. took a ridiculous amount of time switch-hunting, like 30+ minutes. finished with 600 plasma :P

 

Aeturnus by killerkouhai, decay
(red/blue.) great artful use of FIREBLU texture. I kept taking a surprising amount of damage in the opening area with the cacodemons despite how it was all projectile monsters. not enough ammo to deal with the HKs/barons in the long perpendicular hallway area (red key area) so I just ran past them. I initially didn't see the red and blue switches in the final area so upon receiving the "complete the red and blue trials" message I went back to the areas where the keys were, thinking I missed a trigger. at the end I hit the two switches, ran back for the invuln, hit the final switch, and then RJ'd to the exit, skipping the whole fight.

 

Duplexity by leodoom85
(yellow/blue.) cool dark hallway conveyor belt at the beginning. I ran through to the trapped switch that spawns 2 arch-viles too fast and the arch-viles failed to spawn, softlocking me in that room; I had to reload and try again more slowly. yellow key arena had a very cool gimmick to quickly raise and lower the walls before spawning the arena monsters. blue key arena fight was pretty cool. the script to deem you "unworthy" of your BFG was a funny wrinkle, and it was quite satisfying getting it back at the end for the final fight. first long map (>30 minutes without getting lost at any point) of the set (going in difficulty order, not map order).

 

So far it's been a blast, I'm looking forward to playing the rest of the maps, and of course RC2 adding new maps!

[Turin Turambar]

I'm still waiting for RC2 to play it!

[killerkouhai]

RC2 is still being worked on, progress is just slow since we are adding new maps

By @StormCatcher.77

and @UltraViolenceX

[Turin Turambar]

looking great!

 

Although it's strange to increase the scope in the middle of a RC. That's not what RC means! :P I guess you had new mappers wanted to contribute the project?

[Kachakeño]

I've tested on LZDoom 3.86a. Some maps works without any problem, but others (especially map03, map09 and map11) have performance issues making the game drops fps.

Playing with gameplay mods like EOA, PB and ZRift doesn't make much trouble, but can affect performance and monsters' position. 

[Doomkid]

Those screenshots are just so beautiful. I love seeing so many colors!

[Zillah]

Feels like I'm in a virtual realm filled with Gothic circuitry. Reminds me of other rainbow-themed games like Broken Reality, or Jazzpunk.
As for the maps, I've played a few so far. Loved them, as part of the fun is seeing the design and details, but the combat is still the same old DOOM we know and love. It's alright.

Here's some screenies of the first map I played.



(here I was able to cheese the master mind through this crack, hehehe, I couldn't get a good angle from the front so I went all around it instead)

[TonynUBares]

Mr. Decay, you won.
Currently playing with a mod called Dusted's Pandemonia, at a difficulty I made by myself (with the approval of Killer Kouhai for posting videos on YT). Basically it's Nightmare with AmmoFactor 1.5 instead of 2 and DamageFactor 1.0 instead of 0.7.
Just here to say: congratulations, I can't max your map at my difficulty (not even at simple Nightmare). This is the first time I really lost :(
Considering that the only way to barely win the map was to have a good RNG, to do all kills I'd need am ultra good RNG (i.e. hundreds of attempts that I won't do). I played it at UV difficulty, all kills and secrets, including those horrible marines, but Nightmare and my difficulty are literally impossible to max.

Edited extra note: yes, I also took that megasphere by rocket-jumping (I had enough health to rocket jump and the Soulsphere gave me the health to do a second jump)

Edited November 5, 2020 by TonynUBares

[adamastor]

Awesome project. It has some of the most visually impressive maps I've laid my eyes on as of yet.

I'm also a big fan of the "fractured reality" and surrealistic themes. Not enough wads go there and succeed.

Thanks for all the hard work.

[seed]

Just finally got to RR this week and having a blast so far (let's play here if interested).

 

That being said, it's not the main reason why I'm bumping this. I wanted to leave a little suggestion first and foremost. While playing I came to realize some maps were quite darker than others, which I initially thought was by design, and to an extent I guess this holds true.

 

However I noticed something like the sector light mode also plays a big role in this. My mode of choice is Doom, and it made some maps quite dark, I'm suspecting only Standard was tried out when the maps were built. What I'm hinting at, is that, to my knowledge, the sector light mode can also be overridden via a ZMAPINFO lump.

 

For RC2, I'd like to suggest enforcing it that way to prevent some cases where the players (such as myself) may use a different mode which can make the maps way darker than they were intended to be.