ARRIVAL (Now available on /idgames) - A limit-removing episode for Doom II

[pavera]

1 minute ago, dianghong said:

I feel guilty for writing so many critical stuff, I loved the wad :D

 

Never feel guilty for good faith criticism, your opinions are valued and highly appreciated!

 

Glad you had fun. I realize the snipers are not everyone's taste. I am not a max player, it just is what it is. I realize this is a pain for people who like to get max kills, but I really like the feeling of constantly having to watch for pressure from far off enemies. They're like artillery, keeps the pressure on. Ultimately, my measure of quality for a map is if I like playing it, and so the manc snipers in some of the maps never really bothered me.

 

I suppose the best thing to do here would be to have some sort of trigger in the exit room that insta-crushes all the snipers potentially left over, so UV-MAX didn't have to be so frustrating. I didn't do this, and tbh I probably am not going to bother fixing it in these maps. Going forward with maps, maybe I'll think more about this.

 

And yeh, some of the navigation could be better in these levels. Chalk it up as a lesson to me, haha.

 

Anyways, thanks again for the feedback.

[dosboot]

@Pavera I don't have any real feedback, but Xeogred and I exchanged a lot of our impressions about Arrival at the Hardcore Retro Gaming forum, and I'd thought I'd share.

[TeK (⌐■_■)]

Played through maps 1-6 pistol start on HMP, latest version of prboom+. Lots of tough traps and starts but ammo and health is plentiful which is nice, and as others have said, the archvile use is outstandingly sadistic and frequent. Love the layouts of most maps so far, very open yet often pushing/pulling the player forward. Map 4 is my favorite so far followed by 1 and 5.

 

Some random thoughts/nitpicks/salt spoilered

 

Spoiler

Ammo is super generous to the point of being overboard in some maps I think. By the end of maps 2, 3, and 5 I was practically drowning in bullets, shells, rockets and cells. I think some of the bigger boxes of ammo could be replaced by 2/3 smaller ammo drops and ammo would still remain plentiful.

 

Map 2 has so far been the only map that I didn't care much for. I like the start and the circular outdoor area, but the progression for the rest of the map ended up being awkward and confusing imho. The yellow key doors are easy to miss and I only found them from looking at the map. If you trigger the red key to lower but miss the lift the teleport doesn't take you back where you dropped down from but away to a new area, where you wander around killing everything and no way to get the red key from that side and having go back through the yellow key doors to get it. I ended up getting the plasma with only 4 monsters left this way. The soulsphere and megasphere also feel completely unnecessary.

 

 

I'll play the rest of the maps tonight and post some shit on them later.

[OpenRift]

I found a couple errors in RUDE/Doom32 due to certain sidedefs and walls not having textures, as well as some tutt-frutti in some places. Below is an updated version of the WAD with fixes for these issues. 

 

Also added a vanilla-compatible dehacked patch for the level names and story text. 

 

ARRIVAL_TEX_FIX.zip

Edited July 4, 2021 by OpenRift

[pavera]

Hi @OpenRift

 

I appreciate your fixes, but I request that instead of posting them as "1.0.2" you instead mark them more clearly as an unofficial fan patch specific to the problems they solve. I already have a list of planned map fixes and other changes that I want to make to the official set, and I want to maintain control over any official version numbering.

 

Thanks :)

[OpenRift]

2 minutes ago, Pavera said:

Hi @OpenRift

 

I appreciate your fixes, but I request that instead of posting them as "1.0.2" you instead mark them more clearly as an unofficial fan patch specific to the problems they solve. I already have a list of planned map fixes and other changes that I want to make to the official set, and I want to maintain control over any official version numbering.

  

Thanks :)

Done. 

[TeK (⌐■_■)]

Played through the rest of this, the last trilogy of maps is fucking killer stuff man (and the secret map). Map 9 and it's complimentary ending map are easily in my personal top maps of the year.

 

 

Spoiler

Loved the optional additional supplies behind the three key doors in map 8. Adds a lot to a feeling of exploration and that exploration being rewarding, more than just finding a simple secret.

 

[loveless]

oh man, how did i miss this thread?  had fun playing these ages ago, will have to revisit!

[galileo31dos01]

Hello, I just finnished this on UV/Crispy. Had a lot of fun from start to the end, with plenty variety going on weapon-wise, cool gameplay ideas, and excellent music, and of course the BTSX-ish geometry, ledges and intertwined rooms and such, all very nicely put together. My highlights definitely include the whole first map with barrel galleries, the crushers map in general had goofy fun moments, the final map was impressive thematically speaking (vines/flesh together, a combo I never thought of before), and pretty much how rich in pickups these maps were, good for me as I like collectibles.

 

I guess the only "minus" for me was the high number of cliff imps in the latter maps, but that's personal taste. The mancubi in general didn't bother me outside of a couple very high ones in the last part of m06 which tended to hide often making my rockets crash into the edges underneath them, maybe they could be closer to the edges and locked inside block lines? 

 

So, there were also a few extra things I noticed along the way:

 

- Misalgined tex in m03 (automap)

- Same map, noticed a monster block line here, not sure why it was there.

- This secret in m04 seems unreachable since the sector with the TP thing is untagged. 

- In m05, it's possible to jump from that ledge to this area (or av-jump if inclined so), not sure if this important or not since the YSK isn't accessible right away, maybe it's deliberate heh.

- Same map, the RK door is sealed off forever after getting inside and crossing the trigger, although progression isn't affected since you do get the YK one way or another. I guess it's like that so the soulsphere is one-time only, which is fair enough, but just mentioning in case it's unintentional.

- These two monsters never teleported anywhere because the lines don't have actions.

- In m32, this closet can't open in vanilla, it needs to have more space vertically. 

[dew]

Yo pav, I played the set, much fun was had. It's a fairly challenging wad, but like... doesn't fly off into really hard stuff, so the player can just feel kickass when all goes smoothly, but a moment of inattention can shred you. And digging the techbase aesthetic, it feels very... structural and proper, no paper-thin walls and silly sharp angles. Anyway...

 

...some more bugs:
- In map04, near the unreachable secret, linedef 2106 lacks a back sidedef, so watching the crusher from the small arena-facing window looks rather trippy.

- Same map, right at start some secret flags should be applied to linedefs to not spoil which walls lower.

 

- The map05 issues are definitely real. The skip to YK is technically not a big issue, since the YK itself has to be lowered first, however I'd probably mark the automap teleporter lines around that soulsphere sector (556) as secret so they don't shine on the automap.

- The one-time RK door actually can break map progression in multiplayer if just one player gets in and then dies before lowering the YK pillar. Should be a repeat action.

 

- In map06 chaingunners t. 498, 499 and 720 never teleport from their closets, because their sound sectors got disjoined from the collective.

- The sniper mancubi in the final arena, particularly t. 802 and 803 on the topmost perches, are absurdly hard to target without mouselook.

- This map allows a bunch of archvile jump shennanigans, like jumping early to YK, then also to RK, but they're just minor skips and they don't seem to break anything.

 

- It is possible to combine an archvile and a rocket boost to jump straight into the exit room in map07. It is ridiculously cool and hard, the timing and health requirement is brutal.

 

- In map08 the sniper mancos and imps behind the northern chasm ledge are again supremely annoying to take down, not very fun cleanup.

- One of the cliff sections (sectors 455-459, between red key and exit areas) is marked as corrosive. Only sector 459 is playable though.

- Is the pit in the exit area (s. 42/117) meant to be inescapable? I guess so, but that's a pretty mean spot, given one tends to fall right into it when jumping off the goodie rampart, heh. Nice.

 

- In map09 poor cyb t. 1712 can't port out, because the floors in his telecloset don't really work along all the other telecloset floors.

- There's an incredibly easy avjump using the start area's soulsphere archvile and just go straight to the finale. Even better, you can do all that without even firing a shot, which means the final arena won't have any monsters porting in. Even betterer, that's not even necessary if you quickly weave through the first monsters, because you can easily jump around linedef 4776 and the final teleporter won't raise. I even made a demo in a few attempts! Check attachment.

 

- In map32 there are some really hard to finish off mancos once you're out of radsuit.

ar09p053.zip

[pavera]

Hi all,

 

I've posted a new version of the WAD with some bugfixes and a few small changes. Originally the scope of 1.1 was going to be much larger, but after everything I considered for changes, I decided that I am basically happy with the product as is -- warts and all. Thanks for all the feedback, I'm glad everyone seemed to have a good time with this.

 

Unless any new gamebreaking bugs are discovered, I am considering this the final version of the WAD.

 

The original post has been updated, but here are some links:

 

DOWNLOAD 1.1: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gzkvj2n9svhfggx/arrival.zip?dl=0

CHANGES: https://pastebin.com/pr44Stqx

Edited September 1, 2021 by Pavera : hotfix missing textures

[OpenRift]

4 hours ago, Pavera said:

Unless any new gamebreaking bugs are discovered, I am considering this the final version of the WAD.

There's still an issue where RUDE will get an error stating that there are flats that are missing textures on MAP01 (which seem to be in the boxes where those spawn-in shotgunners are, adding them fixes the issue).

 

Also, what nodebuilder are you using for MAP09? It gives me an error that says "R_TextureNumForName:  not found". It just doesn't say a texture name at all. I've tried replacing one missing texture in the WAD to see what it would do. The game would load up, but the moment I fire my weapon, the whole thing just locks up, MIDI and all. There's no error window when it crashes, the game just closes and the MIDI hangs. I suspect that it might be that I'm saving my edits with a different node builder, so that's why I ask.

[pavera]

@OpenRift So I had a look myself, and it seems like somehow some of my "untextured" sidedefs and flats were bugged into the node builder recognizing them as missing textures. Really not sure how that happened, haha. Very strange.

 

Either way, I went ahead and fixed them, and I no longer see the missing texture errors on the console in MAP01, MAP08, and MAP09. Thanks for pointing it out again, it slipping my mind to incorporate the fix you made previously.

 

I've updated my last post and the OP with a hotfixed version. Let me know if it loads in your ports.

[dew]

On 4/17/2021 at 1:52 PM, Veinen said:

One other thing I noticed though is that the new sky textures didn't work at all with cl2, instead I had the default skies. Tested both glboom+ and prboom+ 2.5.1.3 as well as glboom+ 2.5.1.4 and had default skies in all. With complevel 9 (and default complevel -1 if you don't specify any) the skies work fine though so looks like a complevel issue. I don't know how I missed to report this initially since the new skies are way different. They look really nice too and contribute to the atmosphere big time especially in the more outdoorsy maps.

The sky transfer support has been extended over all complevels in (I believe) pr+ 2.5.1.5, so this is an issue of you staying on an outdated version. Both the current pr+ and the dsda-doom fork should have no issues with showing the new skies on complevel 2. I'd say cl9 shouldn't be recommended for general use, because it'd force different game mechanics on what is a mere limit-removing port. Don't want those monsters sliding over edges and PEs filling the skies with endless lost souls... Of course if one wants to see the fancy skies on an older pr+, it is a valid choice.

[OpenRift]

24 minutes ago, Pavera said:

@OpenRift So I had a look myself, and it seems like somehow some of my "untextured" sidedefs and flats were bugged into the node builder recognizing them as missing textures. Really not sure how that happened, haha. Very strange.

 

Either way, I went ahead and fixed them, and I no longer see the missing texture errors on the console in MAP01, MAP08, and MAP09. Thanks for pointing it out again, it slipping my mind to incorporate the fix you made previously.

 

I've updated my last post and the OP with a hotfixed version. Let me know if it loads in your ports.

Nice, most of these seemed to be fixed, but a new problem with MAP09 has come up, which I also encountered when trying make fixes a while back.

 

For some reason, when I cross this line right seen below, I get a venetian blinds crash while testing with Doom32 (vanilla EXE but with raised limits).

This seems to affect all sectors north of that point as well. For some reason, I can noclip into said areas without issue, but as soon as I turn off IDCLIP it crashes in the same manner. This is why I was asking about what nodebuilder you were using, because it's really strange behavior. 

[Veinen]

@dew Alright, that's my bad then. That's what I get for sticking with an ancient version of the port. Learn something new every day...

[OpenRift]

14 minutes ago, OpenRift said:

Nice, most of these seemed to be fixed, but a new problem with MAP09 has come up, which I also encountered when trying make fixes a while back.

 

For some reason, when I cross this line right seen below, I get a venetian blinds crash while testing with Doom32 (vanilla EXE but with raised limits).

This seems to affect all sectors north of that point as well. For some reason, I can noclip into said areas without issue, but as soon as I turn off IDCLIP it crashes in the same manner. This is why I was asking about what nodebuilder you were using, because it's really strange behavior. 

ACTUALLY, I think I fixed it! I changed the nodebuilder to glBSP and saved it, and that seemed to fix it! Here's the updated MAP09.

MAP09_FIX.zip

[pavera]

Interesting discovery for sure. I'll see about merging this into the main set later.

[OpenRift]

Update: Found another weird thing in Map03. For some reason there is are a bunch of linedef triggers linked to another linedef with the action 271, which does not exist in vanilla Doom format and therefore crashing the game. Any idea what it was supposed to do?

[Misty]

Those are sky transfers, set was build with Crispy Doom in mind, which supports plenty of external things, like sky transfers and animated with switches lump from boom. 

[Keyboard_Doomer]

Hello there,

we're going to play the wad for Thursday Night Survival today. Session starts at 19:00 BST / 14:00 EDT and you can expect it to be fairly active for 4+ hours.

 

In case coop in vanilla-compatible source ports is a consideration it's of note that MAP01, MAP03 and MAP32 have missing player 2-4 starts.
Regarding the sky transfers in <9 complevels - that's only been added in the UMAPINFO fork relatively recently so the recommended version of PrBoom+ should be 2.6um or higher.
 

[pavera]

6 hours ago, OpenRift said:

Update: Found another weird thing in Map03. For some reason there is are a bunch of linedef triggers linked to another linedef with the action 271, which does not exist in vanilla Doom format and therefore crashing the game. Any idea what it was supposed to do?

 

All of the maps are using sky transfers for the skies. TBH I am surprised you only ran into this problem on MAP03 :)

[OpenRift]

Okay so, new bug has come up with the glBSP compile, for some reason this section of sectors (south-west part of the map) has no collision. From my testing, it has to do with the blockmap size. Which is adjustable in the compiler, but raising the -maxblock above 17645 (which is the minimum valueto fix the issue) in glBSP will crash RUDE and Doom32. I've been trying stuff all day and I still got nothin. :/

[dew]

I don't think trusting a rarely used, long-abandoned nodebuilder is the correct course of action anyway. I'd say maybe pavera could give it a try with one of the economical modes of zokumbsp to lower the blockmap size a little and see how that goes, since map09 is only a tiny bit in excess over the limit, but otherwise I'd say this is thin ice and may cause even more unexpected issues.

 

@OpenRift you could try it yourself, I'm going to repost Xaser's (that's who I saw post it) zokumbsp config for DBX/UDB using the subset compression. Test whether such a node build helps with the ports you're using.

zokumbsp_subset.zip

[OpenRift]

17 hours ago, dew said:

I don't think trusting a rarely used, long-abandoned nodebuilder is the correct course of action anyway. I'd say maybe pavera could give it a try with one of the economical modes of zokumbsp to lower the blockmap size a little and see how that goes, since map09 is only a tiny bit in excess over the limit, but otherwise I'd say this is thin ice and may cause even more unexpected issues.

  

@OpenRift you could try it yourself, I'm going to repost Xaser's (that's who I saw post it) zokumbsp config for DBX/UDB using the subset compression. Test whether such a node build helps with the ports you're using.

zokumbsp_subset.zip

Well god-damn, that just worked. Thanks a lot dude.

 

UPDATED ZIP: MAP09_FIX.zip

[kain967]

Excellent mapset, thank you very much. Some of the best artistic design I've seen in a while.

[pavera]

Beep

 

Arrival is now officially available on the Unity port! Thanks so much everyone for all your love and support for Arrival. This means so much to me.

 

[OpenRift]

33 minutes ago, Pavera said:

Beep

 

Arrival is now officially available on the Unity port! Thanks so much everyone for all your love and support for Arrival. This means so much to me.

 

Can't say I didn't see that one coming. Congrats, man.

[Rymante]

That's really cool to see!  I played Arrival some months back & I really enjoyed it!  Props to AD_79 for that soundtrack too!

[Captain Ventris]

So cool. The Unity port HAS to be a big driver for people becoming community members after getting their feet wet playing the add ons. I’ll have to play this for sure!