[NEW UPDATE - v1.6] 2048 Units of /vr/ - Boom Megawad for Doom II

[Angelwitch]

Looking forward to the next project, I missed out on the early stages this time around. Well done to everyone involved!

[Trueblade]

Finally got through the main WAD. Probably bit off more than I could chew doing pistol starts on UV here, but got through anyway. There's some quality jumps, which is unsurprising for a community project, but it's real solid overall. Especially in the aesthetics department. Very visually appealing maps from start to finish. Good job to everyone who contributed.

Some personal standouts were Roundabout Cliffside, Retirement Grease, Trifecta, Black Crest(beyond my skill level though.) and Tyrant's Starless Realms. Fantastic super secret level too. Gave me some Duke vibes. Well worth finding. Definitely gonna keep an eye out for future projects and lend a hand play-testing if time permits.

Also, those changes to Tiny Fragment turned the map right around for me. Loving it now.

[DavidN]

These are some really good starter maps and some interesting ones from people who are clearly experienced with the Doom environment as well :) It's interesting to see how people who might be a bit further away from the core Doom community do things, with their own sets of rules that haven't been hammered into them just by being around Doom for a long time. I've started a playthrough which I'll continue as time (and my preschooler) allows!

 

 

[Repugnus]

MINOR UPDATE:

-There was an edit made to the evil eye secret in MAP11 that made it inaccessible, this has now been fixed and you can now trigger it

-Rebuilt the nodes to MAP05 to hopefully fix a bug where the archvile sometimes falls through the floor at the end of the map. I haven't been able to replicate the error in any sourceport since the rebuild, so I do believe it is gone

 

The DL link in the OP is the same, but it contains the updates. 

[DavidN]

 

I've got up to the start of MAP17 now! I really loved some of the creative environments in this part, some of which I hadn't seen tried in Doom before :)

[WashingMachineEnthusiasts]

 

6 hours ago, DavidN said:

 

I've got up to the start of MAP17 now! I really loved some of the creative environments in this part, some of which I hadn't seen tried in Doom before :)

 

Thanks for the playthrough! Do you intend to go back and look for the secret exit in MAP15 or just warp to the secret levels?

 

To answer your comment on MAP15, the strategy I had in mind when making the central arena was to keep ammo thin on the ground to encourage infighting. Without freelook and with infinite monster height it's almost a necessity as these really constrain your ability to take shortcuts in the arena.

 

As an aside, "cauldron" here refers to the German military word meaning an encircled military force (the English equivalent is pocket). At the start of the map, you're encircled, and later on you encircle the monsters. You're jumping in and out of the cauldron to collect the keys and open the doors.

[Denim Destroyer]

Having played the previous /vr/ projects I am surprised by how consistently good the maps in 2048 /vr/ are. There were maps I like less than others but I would be lying if I said they were bad, even map29 the only one I could not finish played pretty well. Overall a pretty good set of 2048 maps and I hope the mappers come back for future projects.

Edited November 3, 2020 by Denim Destroyer

[DavidN]

Aha, that's a clever reference to "cauldron" - and the map works great. In community projects like these I always wonder if I'm missing out by playing with GZDoom settings, because everyone maps slightly differently.

 

Parts 3 and 4! This covers everything up to MAP30.

 

 

I try to avoid singling maps out in community projects like these... but I'm going to anyway, because For They Defiled Our Waters was absolutely beautiful, just trying to imagine the mental power needed to create Black Crest and all its transformations makes my head hurt, and Tyrant's Starless Realms is an incredible new take on a hellish climax :) Well done to everyone involved!

 

I'll post a video with the extra maps and secrets some time soon.

[Smite of Disrespect]

Defiled Waters and Black Crest were also my two favorites. Defiledwaters.wad was the very first map submitted as far as I know. The author of Black Crest, Brxyz, recorded a UV-Max demo for his map since it was kicking everyone's ass, but I can no longer get it to work since it was recorded on the MAP01 slot and his map now occupies MAP29. Based Brxyz pls record and post another demo

[lunchlunch]

On 9/16/2020 at 4:01 PM, RonnieColeman said:

 

@DavidN

Edited October 18, 2022 by lunchlunch

[Brxyz]

Good job to all the mappers, I've enjoyed testing, playing and making the maps for this project a lot.

 

@DavidN Thanks for playing the wad, it was fun watching your runs. I'll admit that unavoidable floor damage in Ghost Grotto might have been a bad decision. As a fun fact, I'll say that making the walls disappear in Black Crest was actually probably the easiest of the map's tricks to make.

 

@RonnieColeman Here it is :) BlackCrestv1.2demo.zip

It's a 100% UV demo, I also show how to get the Invulnerability before the first Cyberdemon fight in the demo.

 

[DavidN]

Here's part 5 - an utter embarrassment of a video where I play multiple maps that are completely above my station! (My station is apparently Scrub Central.) Again, these are some really good original maps - and if you're willing, I would love it if the new super shotgun were to be put on Realm667 or something for others to use!

 

 

[ChopBlock223]

The Super Shotgun sprites are already free to use, people can grab them as they feel like, the full sheet is up on the Spriting Carnival thread on the ZDoom forums, all the stuff I post there I'm letting anyone use.

I'm thinking that I maybe I want to adjust the sprites a little bit though, which would be incorporated into 2048GUNS.wad as well, we're probably doing one last update to v1.3, to fix a couple of problems (a missed softlock, a blockmap error, etc). I was thinking v1.2 was going to be final as well, so I'm probably jinxing the fuck out of myself now by saying this, but here's hoping it'll be true this time.

 

For difficulty, the .wad definitely went to tough places at many times, I just got finished with Black Crest myself, and I'm kind of in awe of that level, not just for the challenge, but for the way it reuses space and reshapes itself as new encounters are presented.

[WashingMachineEnthusiasts]

4 hours ago, DavidN said:

Here's part 5 - an utter embarrassment of a video where I play multiple maps that are completely above my station! (My station is apparently Scrub Central.) Again, these are some really good original maps - and if you're willing, I would love it if the new super shotgun were to be put on Realm667 or something for others to use!

 

I got asked on DB "why have the goggles at the end of a dark room in MAP15?" and my answer was "to make it easier to see the door opening midway through the room". I guess it's not easy enough, or maybe the green filter you had threw you off. Is that part of the lighting pack we included? I only play in Prboom so it never came up as an issue for me.

 

You're also the only player I've seen in MAP31 to spot that it's a noughts and crosses board immediately and play the right move. Well done! 

 

My thinking on tagging the yellow key to the invulnerability in MAP31 was that the player would grab it anyway, see the wall lowering, and keep going with the progression while hurrying along to keep the invulnerability. It lasts long enough to make it to the chessboard and on HNTR there's another invulnerability on the chessboard anyway. In retrospect I was probably being too galaxy brained for my own good.

 

On MAP32, clearly I haven't learned enough from the Sims - I should have had a ladder as well as the stairs! I wanted to have a diving board, but it's undoable with deep water below outside of GZDoom mapping.

[ChopBlock223]

When I looked at Tyrant's Starless Realm being listed as Very Hard, at first I kind of just thought "But is it really?", and I think that's because I had still very recently finished gameplay testing on it, and that was very fresh in my mind. Finally getting around to playing the set in full over the past week, and today finishing with Map 30, I guess it very much was, because the final section took me a number of tries.

 

Also, if you use a flashlight mod on this level, the framerate will drop like a rock, you wouldn't need one, and it otherwise plays fine in GzDoom anyway, but it's something to note. I tried to mitigate this with recent tweaks, but it barely worked.

[Repugnus]

Updated to v1.3! Check the OP for details-- this is definitely the version that's going to /idgames.

[Smite of Disrespect]

I tested the wad in MBF 2.04 (DOSBox) and every map works except map23; the game crashes with an error message reading "QFLAT02 not found." Is it possible to fix this before uploading to the idgames archive? If not, whatever, it seems I'm the only person who's tried it in DOSBox.

[ChopBlock223]

Are you playing on the right complevel? I recall there was a specific one necessary for MBF.

[P41R47]

1 hour ago, RonnieColeman said:

I tested the wad in MBF 2.04 (DOSBox) and every map works except map23; the game crashes with an error message reading "QFLAT02 not found." Is it possible to fix this before uploading to the idgames archive? If not, whatever, it seems I'm the only person who's tried it in DOSBox.

try it on woof!

It is a modern port of WinMBF that is a port of MBF.

Easiest solution is to open the builder and use the search option for that flat.

It is probably a remnant from previous version.

I experiment the same on Chocolat wihile vanillafying a megawad.

[Smite of Disrespect]

MBF doesn't have complevels; that's PrBoom. PrBoom's complevel 11 is meant to replicate the MBF source port, and 9 for Boom v2.02.

I think the error is simply related to MBF being old and lacking bugfixes of modern ports. The maps work fine in the Woof source port, and Woof is derived from WinMBF which is derived from MBF. From the WinMBF article in the doomwiki:
>WinMBF is a source port project by Team Eternity. It is a direct port of MBF by Lee Killough to operating systems that support the SDL library.

>Changes in WinMBF include numerous bug fixes to fatal errors that were in contained in the Boom and MBF codebases
I'm guessing the error I encountered is one of the errors fixed in WinMBF

@P41R47 You literally posted that seconds before me

[Smite of Disrespect]

Just for fun, here is a video of the megawad + the guns mod working flawlessly in DOSBox

The MIDI on this map is so good.

 

Good job @ChopBlock223 on the sprites and the guns mod and @hackfraud  on the dehacked version of the guns mod. I would not be opposed to the idgames version of the megawad containing the dehacked guns mod because it'd look sweet seeing these guns in DSDArchive demos, but it'd probably be wiser to leave the megawad Boom-compatible and let players use whatever gun mods they desire (such as Vanilla Doom Smooth Weapons)

[ChopBlock223]

Couldn't we just leave the DeHacked version of the guns as a separate .wad next to the .wads with the levels though? I'm sure some speedrunners would be fine with loading that up.

[Valboom]

Wow! I've played six maps so far, great, congratulations!

[Smite of Disrespect]

Just wait 'til you get to the final levels; they saved the best for last

>I've played six maps so far

Prepare to get filtered by map07

 

>Couldn't we just leave the DeHacked version of the guns as a separate .wad

Yeah ultimately I think that's the wisest decision; I'm just saying, it'd be cool if the megawad contained the guns mod because it'd be cool to see the guns in DSDArchive demos. The demos in the archives contain the wads as-is so you will always see Valiant's custom monsters/weapons in its demos for example

[ChopBlock223]

Would most speedrunners just opt to not use the DeHacked mod or what?

[Smite of Disrespect]

You can't use mods when submitting demos because the demos will de-sync when played without the mods. All demos posted are of the wad being played without mods

 

https://dsdarchive.com/

[ChopBlock223]

Even if the .wad comes with a gameplay modifier as an accessory designed for it?

[Smite of Disrespect]

If it's not a part of the wad itself then it's not used in demo recording. For example, the demos that come with 2048 Units of /vr/ will desync when you load the map with the gun mod (GZDoom can't play non-GZDoom demos, or any start-up demos AFAIK, so load the megawad with PrBoom or Woof etc to see the demos). That's why I thought it'd be cool if the dehacked guns were inside of the wad already, so that the wad itself contained the guns (and so /vr/ would have its very own MBF-compatible megawad)

Edited October 9, 2020 by RonnieColeman

[P41R47]

18 minutes ago, RonnieColeman said:

If it's not a part of the wad itself then it's not used in demo recording. For example, the demos that come with 2048 Units of /vr/ will desync when you load the map with the gun mod (GZDoom can't play non-GZDoom demos so load the megawad with PrBoom or Woof etc to see the demos). That's why I thought it'd be cool if the dehacked guns were inside of the wad already, so that the wad itself contained the guns (and so /vr/ would have its very own MBF-compatible megawad)

I second this!
The non dehacked edition could be released later, like Valiant: Vaccinated Edition designed to be playable with gameplay mods.
For certain, everyone here played 2048 Units of /vr/ with the dehacked or the weapon mod, so its kinda redundant to play it without the dehacked work :/
 

[ChopBlock223]

24 minutes ago, RonnieColeman said:

If it's not a part of the wad itself then it's not used in demo recording. For example, the demos that come with 2048 Units of /vr/ will desync when you load the map with the gun mod (GZDoom can't play non-GZDoom demos, or any start-up demos AFAIK, so load the megawad with PrBoom or Woof etc to see the demos). That's why I thought it'd be cool if the dehacked guns were inside of the wad already, so that the wad itself contained the guns (and so /vr/ would have its very own MBF-compatible megawad)

I know that part about desyncing and what not, and GzDoom, but when I think about it, I guess DSDA wouldn't want to create a bunch of separate categories for the few megawads which do this stuff.

 

3 minutes ago, P41R47 said:

The non dehacked edition could be released later, like Valiant: Vaccinated Edition designed to be playable with gameplay mods.

I guess that could work, but I'd really like to hear from the other guys who were part of making it what they think about doing that.