Boaty McBoatwad - /idgames

[SilverMiner]

@Ar_e_en

I know that this isn't a bug but cuz it's possible to actually make it solid even in vanilla and for Boom the process is somewhat easier, IMO this crate's ghostly behaviour could be avoided without much effort

 

Hint: use 242 action to make fake solid floor

[BMWAG65321]

I downloaded the beta on the 9th, and finally completed it. Some things may already have been fixed. I played through using Eternity and pistol starts.

 

MAP02 Getaway - I had no idea there was a shotgun until I opened the map in Slade. I assumed the box it was in was simply for decoration.

MAP04 Mutiny Machine - Misaligned texture on red skull pedestal [sector #240], texture would be aligned if it was aligned to the grid like the key on it is.

Spoiler

MAP06 Ship Ping - A lot of missing textures, and you might make the lines for the monster cages invisible on the automap.

Spoiler

MAP07 Doomed Harbor - Sector #1042 has a brightness of 192, should be 160. I assume this is why sector #1044 doesn't appear to flicker. Checked in Eternity 4.1, PrB+ 2.5.1.7um, and GZ 4.5 GL and SW.

Spoiler

MAP16 SS Lightbringer: Beacon of the Endless Piss Void - The music is too quiet.

Eternity complained about ZDoom nodes on maps 06, 11, 12, and 16.

[jerrysheppy]

10 hours ago, Ar_e_en said:

 

"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). 

 

 

The thing is I think map 13 could actually have been somewhat harder, for normal definitions of hard, and been fine.  For instance, the wall opening with the swarm of revenants in the latter half of the map; that fight could've easily been even more intense and still been reasonable on medium-to-high difficulty levels, or there could've been more such setpiece battles.  The cyberdemon pressuring you from the start of the map is also a fine, even good, design decision in itself.  A large expanse of damaging liquid is hardly unfair in itself (though making it blue water is still a dick move 99% of the time and I will die on this hill).  The path up a cliff being less than immediately obvious is not unfair or even especially frustrating in itself.  It's the unfortunate confluence of all of them that started to tip my 'the mapper is being a dick, and not in a good way' sensor.  Nothing personal.  

[A2Rob]

Update to fix ghost box.

[Scotty]

Now on idgames.

[KeaganDunn]

4 minutes ago, Scotty said:

Now on idgames.

 

Nice. It was great working with you, and everybody else who participated. Y'all did a great job.

 

 

[Egg Boy]

Congrats on the release! Fun project to map for.

 

 

[Biodegradable]

Great stuff everyone. These were some fun maps and lovely boat craftmanship.

[Ar_e_en]

@Scotty Thank you for making and leading this project! It was fun!

[jerrysheppy]

Still doing my playthrough commentary!  Just took several days off because of, you know, everything.

 

MAP14 - First map to really lean into this type of scroller-based illusion (I think MAP04 had it as well, but it didn't really make much difference to the theme of the level).  This is a type of special effect with a very old pedigree (dating back to at least Blood) but this map uses it extremely well.  The canal-bound convoy you make your way down starts with some fairly prosaic, if attractively made, cargo barges, and ends up with some... rather more interesting objects, including at least one non-watergoing vessel and one watergoing non-vessel.  It's all very nice and easy on the eyes. Gameplay is likewise quite enjoyable, though frankly a somewhat more difficult map might've suited the antepenultimate map slot a bit more; again this isn't something that the author can really be blamed for.  I might have used a simpler starry sky or even just a pitch-black void rather than the actual sky of choice, which, while attractive, looks odd on this map—the sky can't, of course, show parallax in Boom (I don't think?) so the eye concludes that those trees must be very far away, which in turn implies that they must be quite implausibly large even by the somewhat lax standards of Doom realism.

 

MAP15 - 

jerrysheppy: You know, some of these maps are pretty lightweight for being almost at the end of a megawad.

 

Scotty:

Spoiler

 

"Gangbang Galleon" proves aptly named; the monsters never actually got to have their way with me—not for lack of trying—but it's a welcome increase in intensity with a good dose of heavy baddies, some adrenaline-pumping ambushes, and most importantly a healthy supply of ammunition for dealing with all of them.  Equally importantly in this Doomer's book, the map is lovely to look at in concept and execution.  What we have here is a particularly large wooden dreadnought of some sort—I daresay it's the largest proper vessel in the entire mapset, though "Beezelboat"'s whale might have it beat out—docked at some sort of huge sea-cave port facility, perhaps the secret island lair of a demonic mastermind who wants to shake down the UAC for one meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeellion dollars.  The aesthetic occupies that sort of liminal existence that we see in much of Plutonia and other famous wads; not quite a full-on hell filled with fire, marble sigils, and torture chambers, but still a baroque and distinctly hostile otherworld, where the seas are corrosive blood and dark metal trim rubs elbows with ancient stone and wood.  

 

On to MAP16, which seems like an undertaking unto itself so I'll write that one up in my next post.

[CBM]

how to upload to idgames wad archive?

[Egg Boy]

8 minutes ago, CBM said:

how to upload to idgames wad archive?

 

[CBM]

39 minutes ago, Egg Boy said:

 

thanks

[jerrysheppy]

And here I am at MAP16!
 

This map was one I've seen billed as being a slaughtermap, or at least slaughtermap-adjacent (slaughtermap-lite?  I don't remember the exact terms that were used).  Anyway, I found to my pleasant surprise that it actually doesn't seem very slaughtermap-py, at least to my sensibilities and at least on the more tourist-friendly skill level where I played.  Don't get me wrong: the caliber and number of monsters are exactly what one would wish for from the grand finale of a megawad, and there are quite a few pleasantly adrenaline-rushing setpiece battles, but I never encountered the sort of negative experiences I've come to expect from the "slaughtermap" moniker, where fights are choreographed with the sadism of a Kaizo Mario stage, or you have to run around holding down the BFG trigger whilst scarfing up bulk cell packs like it's March 2020 and you're grabbing bundles of toilet paper off the store shelves.  I don't think this map even has a non-secret BFG, which probably speaks well to its character, insofar as the mapper (correctly) doesn't think you'll need it.

 

Aesthetically, it's great.  It manages to look elegant and clean (if "clean" is the appropriate descriptor for this love letter to OTEX's grungy concrete and metal ranges) while being admirably reserved with its use of actual fine detailing.  You're not really here for sector sightseeing (though I did a bit of it here and there); you're here to blast monsters, and the visuals never get in the way of that.  When you do actually stop and notice something, it's because it's especially cute and clever, like the pinky ambush that streams from the mouth of a furnace, or the boat's little journey.  On that note, while a couple of the maps in this project have used the venerable conveyor illusion to give us a boat or a convoy sailing perpetually down some sort of channel—like MAP14, which I just commented on—I do believe that this is the first and only one to have a ship start at one port, get underway for a while, and arrive at a destination.  I haven't yet cracked open the editor for this map but at first glance I'm honestly not sure how it was done; it may well be a commonly-known trick in Boom circles but it's arcane magick to me.

 

One note on a bug/possible hardlock, though it's either already been fixed for the release version or is too late to fix now.  On the Arch-Vile teleport ambush just before you go belowdecks, I "solved" the encounter by semi-intentionally doing an Arch-Vile jump back out of the area and onto the deck below.  But then, of course, I couldn't get back in, so I had to noclip to continue.  Maybe this is a consequence of GZDoom's archvile behavior and isn't a problem in the primary intended port?  I've heard that GZDoom buggers up archvile jumps somehow, but I don't know exactly how so.

Edited December 28, 2020 by jerrysheppy

[wydoomer]

3 hours ago, jerrysheppy said:

And here I am at MAP16!
 

This map was one I've seen billed as being a slaughtermap, or at least slaughtermap-adjacent (slaughtermap-lite?  I don't remember the exact terms that were used).  Anyway, I found to my pleasant surprise that it actually doesn't seem very slaughtermap-py, at least to my sensibilities and at least on the more tourist-friendly skill level where I played.  Don't get me wrong: the caliber and number of monsters are exactly what one would wish for from the grand finale of a megawad, and there are quite a few pleasantly adrenaline-rushing setpiece ...

 

I didn't catch any hard locks so it's probably in the final release unfortunately.

 

Slaughter-lite is a good description. I like the idea of slaughter but it takes a lot out of me, so I try to take some of those concepts and scale it way down to avoid the grind that can be associated with it.

 

I've never played a wad where you travel to another destination quite like this, but I wouldn't be surprised if they exist. If anybody knows of one lmk, I'd like to check it out. The trick is that the islands are behind large doors on both sides of the ship which open and close to reveal/hide the islands. You can actually catch them opening/closing if you're quick enough. I could have hid it better by triggering them while below deck, but I wanted the player to spend as much time on the moving ship as possible to make sure they notice it, plus it's cool watching the ship start to move while on it. The voodoo dolls that trigger those doors also trigger the wall/floor scrolling.

 

Thanks a lot for taking the time to play and for your comments