Boaty McBoatwad - /idgames

[A2Rob]

4 hours ago, punch you in the face man said:

I got a softlock in this spot of MAP08, fell between the boxes instead of on the backpacks.

 

Quick fix.

[jerrysheppy]

Starting to play through these now—I haven't played any of the maps yet (other than my own obv) so these are fresh impressions.

 

MAP01: Nice light appetizer.  I really liked the Doomcute controls, especially since one of the buttons actually did something!  The main boat itself is nicely done, as is the dock and warehouse complex.  Length and difficulty are perfect for a MAP01.  I wouldn't change a thing.

 

MAP02: I seem to remember someone giving feedback on this map during development that went something along the lines of: neat concept, but wants to be part of a larger map.  Regardless of whether that actually happened or I'm imagining it, it's pretty much my take as well.  Some of the texturing clashed—in general the texturing wants me to think that it's a low-tech fishing camp of some sort, which I can dig, but then you have random techbase textures on the one hand, and skulls/candelabras on the other.  Also, the lower textures on the sides of the secret platform didn't make any sense for me.  OTOH, the dock, fence and firepit all looked really nice.

 

MAP03:  Oooh, baby.  I'd been looking forward to this since I saw the screenshots and video stills, and it didn't disappoint.  Aesthetically, of course, it's gorgeous; I have no idea whether ukiro ever envisioned someone putting together his olive-drab and orange ranges in quite this way, but it works perfectly to give that unsettling, unclean-feeling Nurgle vibe.  Gameplay-wise, all of the exploration and fights were great.  I could have done with a bit more health, and I also wouldn't have said no to a way back off the boat if I wanted to return to sweep the map for anything I'd missed. Speaking of, there seems to be an unintentional way off the boat, as due to the lack of impassable flags I'm able to walk up on the railing...

 

 

... and run off into the water, but then I seem to be stuck as there's no obvious way back.

[jerrysheppy]

MAP04: I had a bit of a preview of this from watching Biodegradable's video, but it was still fun to play through.  The interior of the ship was a little bit cramped and some of the areas were plain, but the imaginative touches like the spilling bottle and the piles of gold earn some points in my book.  The deck was nicely done, and the chain walkway was an imaginative use of that particular midtexture!  Nothing was too difficult despite the appearance of heavyweight enemies, but I'm not playing on UV either so there's that. 

[KeaganDunn]

I've enjoyed doing these with as many WADs as I can find, using DoomRetro's PLAYERSTATS console command to get the numbers of each enemy individually.

 

I'll update this when we get a MAP31 or any of the existing ones get changed.

 

Just a text file. Some stuff may not be tabbed correctly depending on your font.

Boatymcboatwad Enemy Counts.zip

[jerrysheppy]

Continuing my playthrough with commentary.

 

MAP05:  Sheer artistic genius.  This map pack deserves a Cacoward based on the strength of this one map alone.  What else is there to say, really?

 

;)

 

MAP06: This is a very nice little map, and I don't mean that in a demeaning way.  Very neatly put together, good compact playing field with the potential to set up some interesting fights.  I have no idea why this particular vessel has magma-filled cracks in its deck, but I'm willing to suspend disbelief!

 

But the actual delivery of the action was a severe anticlimax after the previous map slot.  As a MAP01, this would've been fine; as a MAP06, I really wanted to see the arena filled with some more medium-weight monsters in the teleporting waves.  Even an Arch-Vile towards the end might not have gone amiss.

 

Now, you may rightly say to me: "But, jerrysheppy, the map author had no idea what slot their map would end up in!"  Of course, and that's something that I think is a bit of a problem for this project, though through no fault of any one person's, not Scotty nor the individual mappers.  I've counted at least four maps so far (1, 2, 4, and 6) that all seem to want to be an intro map as far as their length and difficulty is concerned... of course, you can only have one first level per megawad, unless you're doing explicit episodes with enforced pistol-start resets, so it's not really a good situation for the one who has to put everything together. 

[KeaganDunn]

9 minutes ago, jerrysheppy said:

I've counted at least four maps so far (1, 2, 4, and 6) that all seem to want to be an intro map as far as their length and difficulty is concerned...

@jerrysheppy That was something I was worried about after making MAP02, and I wasn't looking at anybody else's maps until the project was finally compiled. Initially, I thought there weren't going to be very many small maps like mine, but now I wish I did something more complicated to begin with. That's partially why I made MAP10 as well.

 

On the contrary, Scotty said "keep it breezy". I guess some of us took that a bit too literally, but that's just a natural result of a community project like this. 

 

EDIT: Maybe for community projects like these one can have specified people make the first and last maps, and other mappers fill in the other slots.

[jerrysheppy]

Yeah, like I would say my own map is "breezy" despite having some high-octane monsters because the player should never really be at a shortage of health or ammo (especially if not pistol starting), never needs to kite 20+ revenants, etc.  It's actually very much the style of gameplay I enjoy, so it was nice to feel like I was being invited to submit that sort of a laid-back experience.  OTOH, you have map 16 which is per descriptions (I've not played nor watched a video of it yet) something like a slaughtermap-lite, and apparently didn't get rejected for it... certainly not saying it ought to have been, but just goes to show you the limitations of a relatively subjective mandate like that.

 

Compounding the problem is that per-mapslot difficulty is the sort of thing you literally can't give good feedback on without knowing where the map is going to end up in the WAD.  If I had playtested Ship Ping, I might've said "oh, this'll be a perfect intro level" but that wouldn't have ended up being useful feedback.  And if I said "this is balanced well for a MAP01, but might be too easy for after the first couple of maps" that's still not useful for the mapper because they don't know where exactly they'll end up.

 

Sorry for what feels like a derail into a discussion about community project balancing practices that probably deserves its own thread. :P  I'll play some more maps later, probably tomorrow, and have more to say about the actual boatwad!

[Ar_e_en]

I was curious about something and took a quick look at the "OTEX_1.1.TXT" file, it says that if you use the textures in a wad - you should credit the texture author "Ola Björling (ukiro)". Is Ola credited in the wad? I can't find their name anywhere. I know that this map pack is in beta currently and things are subject to change, but I hope that in any future update we could get a credits screen with all the map authors and the texture creator, or at least simple .txt file with the credits.

[jerrysheppy]

MAP07: Like MAP03, this stands out in terms of quality and would be right at home in any discerning community project, not just ones where a sector boat is the price of admission!  "Vanilla" bases generally aren't my favorite environments in Doom but this one puts OTEX's computer and industrial textures through their paces so nicely that it's hard to complain.  Difficulty is a little bit on the easy side but still much closer to an ideal balance than some of the maps; there's a steady flow of action but it's divvied up nicely between chaingun fodder and heavier monsters.

 

MAP08:  Took me all of a couple of seconds to discover that the water here was dangerously cold, which I tend to think is a bit of a dick move without some greater sort of signposting, but it's not as though it actually ended up making a meaningful difference here as there's no way to get yourself stuck in the water at the start here.  Like MAP07 before it this map boasts (boats?) both attractive texturing and pleasurable gameplay... in fact, if this were a more cohesively themed project these maps would still fit very well right next to one another as part of an industrial shipping episode, being so close in aesthetics and difficulty.  I tend to think there could have been a few more heavies in the Imp swarm at the end but the ease with which I was able to detract them didn't really take away from my experience.  The one real bone I have to pick with the visuals is at the edges of the level, where the horizon is too close to look good (especially with the icebergs being cut off suddenly) and the light levels taper off to blackness in a way that doesn't make any sense against the bright skybox.  

[Ar_e_en]

I just finished playing all the maps in the beta. Great set of maps! I especially liked "The Orca" and "Ferrytale".

 

Also, I may have found another bug? When transitioning to map 07 - the intermission screen say "Dead Simple", however - the auto-map screen displays the correct name. I tested it in both PrBoom-Plus and GZDoom.

[KeaganDunn]

@Ar_e_en I found out why, there is no CWILV06 graphic in the current beta.

@Scotty

I've been making little changes and fixes to the WAD here and there. Added usernames in each title in MAPINFO, reduced the volume of MAP06's MIDI, fixed all of the unconnected and no-first-side linedefs (such messages appear in the console in GZDoom). The maps themselves should be unchanged.

I put in Google Drive considering the file size.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Oh3Pnk2UaLJWUupeOhwlFYrn52F8IMZo/view?usp=sharing

 

As much as I want to try my hand at the 50 Shades of Graytall secret level, I've already done two entries for the project, so...

[Scotty]

Yeah the whole secret map thing never happened, such is life - it is too late for new submissions now. I will implement your fixes into the wad (which i had already updated) and post a release candidate shortly... want to get this one sent to idgames soon and move on.

 

Also yes, a full text file will be included with relevant credits, i have it written already. :)

[grrfield]

Thought this was going to be "yet another blue Monday project", but there is really awesome stuff in there.

[jerrysheppy]

MAP09:  You, sir (madam?), are some kind of mad genius.  Take my figurative upvote and please use your powers for good instead of evil from now on.

[KeaganDunn]

2 hours ago, jerrysheppy said:

MAP09:  You, sir (madam?), are some kind of mad genius.  Take my figurative upvote and please use your powers for good instead of evil from now on.

 

You're playing on HMP, right? Well, it appears you got the intended experience on that difficulty with MAP09. On UV it's a Tyson map. :D

[Ar_e_en]

4 hours ago, jerrysheppy said:

MAP09:  You, sir (madam?), are some kind of mad genius.  Take my figurative upvote and please use your powers for good instead of evil from now on.

Now I'm just wondering what evil me would do in future maps.

[jerrysheppy]

MAP10: Excellent, atmospheric start with the long fall into some caverns that have been redecorated just a little bit by the demons.  I admit it took me a few moments to realize that what my brain initially parsed as some sort of weird staircase was, in fact, an ancient shipwreck embedded in the earth at an angle.  This is a gimmick that really, really wanted UDMF to allow for a properly sloping structure, but since that unfortunately wasn't an option here, I still give it an A for creativity and effort.  Otherwise, the map was a nice romp, with a good array of surprises to keep me pleasurably on my toes.  Definitely feels like it earns its keep as a proper level rather than "just" being a cute vignette like MAP02.

 

MAP11: Our first Boot of the Untersee variety!  The interior area is quite nice, with good sectorwork and texturing, and manages to convincingly give the feeling of the confined environs of a submarine without actually being realistically cramped , which would probably be atrociously bad for gameplay.  I'm not sure reinforced concrete is actually the medium of choice for bulkheads on a submarine, but no one ever accused the UAC of having good engineering practices.  There's neat little touches like the window onto an underwater vista with the bottoms of icebergs floating silently in the dark, which helps establish early on that we're not just in some sort of landbased bunker complex (as which, incidentally, this would still work very well).  Once you step out onto the deck, the execution stumbles just a little bit through no fault of the mapper's; the icy cliffs and caves are still great but like the map before it, even a very basic set of slopes in UDMF would've helped realize the concept far more nicely.  C'est la vie.  Difficulty is pretty much pitch-perfect for a "breezy" MAP11.  I didn't find the yellow key after a moderate amount of searching, but it's cool that there's apparently that sort of optional exploration for those more perspicacious than me.  I did find the chainsaw, which I was surprised wasn't tagged as a secret.

 

[KeaganDunn]

14 minutes ago, jerrysheppy said:

MAP10: Excellent, atmospheric start with the long fall into some caverns that have been redecorated just a little bit by the demons.  I admit it took me a few moments to realize that what my brain initially parsed as some sort of weird staircase was, in fact, an ancient shipwreck embedded in the earth at an angle.  This is a gimmick that really, really wanted UDMF to allow for a properly sloping structure, but since that unfortunately wasn't an option here, I still give it an A for creativity and effort.  Otherwise, the map was a nice romp, with a good array of surprises to keep me pleasurably on my toes.  Definitely feels like it earns its keep as a proper level rather than "just" being a cute vignette like MAP02.

Thanks a lot! I tried with that underground shipwreck. XD

These two maps are my first usage of OTEX, so they are more and less experimental with the base, rock, metal, and pipe textures. Glad you liked it too.

[Caleb13]

I'm just popping in to report two minor bugs:

 

MAP09: for some reason, cacodemon 49 took very long to teleport out. In fact, it did teleport just before I hit the exit switch and I had to go back down to kill it.

 

MAP13: sector 1288 shouldn't be damaging.

 

I played on UV in GZdoom 4.5.0.

[Ar_e_en]

That caco on map 09 is a bit stubborn, but when I was originally testing the map - It was far worse, sometimes not even the lost souls or pinkies appeared when they were supposed to. In order to fix it originally - I just added more separate teleporters with their own tags for each square of the 2 big teleporters, that fixed the problem "well enough" in my eyes so I'm not going mess around with it. I just need to get better at creating monster teleporter rooms in the future.

 

That sector on map 13 is a rather quick fix so I did it, the fix shouldn't break anything big or important on the map. Granted - whether or not the fix will appear in the final release is up to @Scotty

 

 

TheBloodTrailer_fix.zip

[Scotty]

^^ it is far quicker for me to just do any minor fixes like this myself :)

 

Anyway, here is rc1. All unused textures have been trimmed from the pack. Will put this on idgames barring any major gamebreaking problems encountered in the next 2-3 days.

[KeaganDunn]

Played through the WAD again, on GZDoom 4.4.something on UV. Only noticed this in MAP06 (and the console says a lot of textures are missing, but I don't see the rest of them), and we gotta implement A2Rob's quick fix for MAP08. You can get stuck behind boxes going for the backpacks there. I kinda breezed through the maps, didn't go for all secrets in most of them. So I'd say, aside from these two things, we are finished.

 

Well done, ya drunken sailors.

[waciej]

2 minutes ago, Dunn & Dunn said:

Played through the WAD again, on GZDoom 4.4.something on UV. Only noticed this in MAP06 (and the console says a lot of textures are missing, but I don't see the rest of them), and we gotta implement A2Rob's quick fix for MAP08. You can get stuck behind boxes going for the backpacks there. I kinda breezed through the maps, didn't go for all secrets in most of them. So I'd say, aside from these two things, we are finished.

 

Well done, ya drunken sailors.

oh this is my map, probally others textures are in "portal sector" :p Fixing timeeeee

[KeaganDunn]

Just now, waciej said:

oh this is my map, probally others textures are in "portal sector" :p Fixing timeeeee

@waciej I believe this has just showed up, Scotty probably just got rid of a texture that was actually used. I don't think it's anything for you to fix. :P

[waciej]

Just now, Dunn & Dunn said:

I believe this has just showed up, Scotty probably just got rid of a texture that was actually used. I don't think it's anything for you to fix. :P

Probally yeah, just replace "old" textures with correct new textures!

[Scotty]

All the texture errors in map 6 are because the original texturing was done from the patches and not the actual textures. I will fix anything that is visible i guess.

[jerrysheppy]

MAP12: Finally a proper Hell map (besides yours truly's) and it's a boat, er, beaut!  Probably the most creative definition of boat to make its appearance so far, as it resembles a gigantic infernal whale rather than anything you or I would recognize as a seagoing vessel, but there's no denying that Doom's hell shows us flesh and machine blurred in every other respect—so why not have a demonic leviathan plying the lightless blood seas in lieu of a hull of wood or metal?  Few details are spared in the ingenious sectorwork construction, from the eyes that "blink", to the rotting brown peg-teeth, to the spine running aft from the head.  Even the less immediately identifiable anatomy—like some sort of strange organ that invites uncomfortable comparisons to the infamous visuals of the lotus seed pod—is perfectly, creepily evocative.  The anatomy gets less realist (whatever that means here) at the end, where some sort of skyward-gazing skull occupies the whale's posterior with torrents of blood pouring from its eye sockets, and I'm not really sure what the actual exit is supposed to be.  But it still looks great, and that's what counts!  Gameplay is an afterthought in this review, but not, I should stress, to the level itself: the mapper knows how to provide a steadily engaging series of encounters without letting the level as a whole wear out its welcome.

 

 

MAP13:  This map has some fantastic visuals and an interesting progression path, and on paper the combat should've been right up my alley given the types and distributions of monsters. 

 

Unfortunately, the gameplay left an extremely bad taste in my mouth early on, from which my impression of the map never fully recovered.  The route at the start was just non-obvious enough that it took me a frustratingly long time to find it while under rocket fire from the Cyberdemon.  Making matters worse, I ended up seeing the shootable switches and assuming they were in some way related to the progression path since it wasn't immediately obvious that they were opening secrets, so I chased that red herring for a while.  I really think that even slightly non-obvious progression paths and (effectively) unkillable monster turrets are not two great tastes that taste great together; either one of them would've been fine in isolation, but together they're just a recipe for frustration. 

 

To this gets added the fact that the "pure" blue water was inexplicably damaging; I thought at first that this was the sector 1288 that Caleb13 was referring to a few posts above, since it seemed so illogical... but I cracked it open in the editor and nope, it's sector 1204.  Having the visually uncontaminated water (as opposed to the demonic blood beginning to leak into it) damage me was, as I said, so unintuitive that it immediately felt like I was being punished by a bug or oversight, whether or not that was actually the case, and that just compounded my frustration. 

 

If I hadn't been able to IDDQD so that I could look around and work things out without either having my health drained away by the pristine blue water or eating a rocket, I probably would've just skipped to the next map after the first couple of minutes or so.  Which is a shame since this is such a finely crafted map otherwise.

 

 

 

Just to clarify since I know new versions have been posted since: I am playing beta1b here.

[Ar_e_en]

4 hours ago, jerrysheppy said:

MAP13:  This map has some fantastic visuals and an interesting progression path, and on paper the combat should've been right up my alley given the types and distributions of monsters. 

 

Unfortunately, the gameplay left an extremely bad taste in my mouth early on, from which my impression of the map never fully recovered.  The route at the start was just non-obvious enough that it took me a frustratingly long time to find it while under rocket fire from the Cyberdemon.  Making matters worse, I ended up seeing the shootable switches and assuming they were in some way related to the progression path since it wasn't immediately obvious that they were opening secrets, so I chased that red herring for a while.  I really think that even slightly non-obvious progression paths and (effectively) unkillable monster turrets are not two great tastes that taste great together; either one of them would've been fine in isolation, but together they're just a recipe for frustration. 

 

To this gets added the fact that the "pure" blue water was inexplicably damaging; I thought at first that this was the sector 1288 that Caleb13 was referring to a few posts above, since it seemed so illogical... but I cracked it open in the editor and nope, it's sector 1204.  Having the visually uncontaminated water (as opposed to the demonic blood beginning to leak into it) damage me was, as I said, so unintuitive that it immediately felt like I was being punished by a bug or oversight, whether or not that was actually the case, and that just compounded my frustration. 

 

If I hadn't been able to IDDQD so that I could look around and work things out without either having my health drained away by the pristine blue water or eating a rocket, I probably would've just skipped to the next map after the first couple of minutes or so.  Which is a shame since this is such a finely crafted map otherwise.

 

 

 

Just to clarify since I know new versions have been posted since: I am playing beta1b here.

 

"I may have gone too far in a few places." - George Lucas

 

The sector 1288 problem was a very tiny part in the map that damaged you even tho it shouldn't have (it's fixed now). The water on the other hand is supposed to damage you, otherwise the map would have been a bit too easy in my eyes and one of my main fears with that map was that it would have been seen to be too easy for most people, so I focused on making the map harder.

 

Map 09 on the other hand - my goal with that map was to make a melee only map. I compromised by making Ultra Violence to be melee only, because I thought that people on other difficulties didn't want to do a melee only map and making a difficult map wasn't my intention with map 09 (unlike map 13 - which I wanted to be a hard map). 

 

[SilverMiner]

The crate is a ghost

[Ar_e_en]

1 hour ago, SilverMiner said:

The crate is a ghost

That's not really a bug, just a limitation of Vanilla and Boom type engines - the box is made from mid textures with impassible flags set to "on". You can't walk through it without noclip, but projectiles still pass through it as if it were a transparent bar or gate texture.

 

The wonders of the DOOM engine~