[RELEASED!] The Bikini Bottom Massacre

[ContrastSaturation]

1 minute ago, lokbustam257 said:

So this is the WAD I've seen in "What are you working on" thread last year. Glad to see you didn't abandon this!

I'm glad too, I lost momentum a couple of times but recently I've felt a lot of drive to get it finished. I started back in early 2020 and within the last few weeks I've managed to develop almost the entire second half of the WAD!

[ContrastSaturation]

Now released!

[maxmanium]

FYI, the big ammo pickup still says that you picked up a box of bullets.

[ContrastSaturation]

4 minutes ago, maxmanium said:

FYI, the big ammo pickup still says that you picked up a box of bullets.

Huh, I was sure I redefined that. Not sure how I missed it, thanks

[xvertigox]

Fuck man, this looks so god damn mint. I'm a sucker for licensed games and spend an inordinate amount of time play roms of such games so I'm fucking buzzin to play this! The work on the sprites looks fantastic, I'm gonna go check them out now.

 

I'm jotting down some feedback while I play, hope you don't mind the unsolicited feedback.

 

Spoiler

• You could look at replacing the console GRNROCK background and default GZDoom mouse cursors to complete the TC look.
• The intro cinematic is fantastic! The sprites look so good, you did a great job tracing. They look like they come from a lost Spongebob GBA game
• The big yellow font is a bit hard to read, I would recommend putting a light colored bordered around each letter/number, maybe white or light yellow?
• Yeah, the STBAR still has GRNROCK on the sides, you could change it to any appropriate FLAT you have.
• I think the intro cutscene should be skippable but that's a very minor qualm as it's quite short.
• The player starts with the pistol selected but starts with no pistol. The starting weapon could be the tentacles/fist so the player doesn't need to swap from an empty slot to a usable weap at the start of map01.
• The health and armor bonuses glow blue and green like they normally do. You can set custom glow colors via GLDEFS, I can help with this if you'd like to change them but aren't sure how.
• It may be worth making the hitscanners fire projectiles similar to WW's Nazi's mod. You could even try making a bubble trail or something? I wouldn't say this is strictly necessary but it may be a nice QoL feature (I haven't finished the mod so I don't know if it'd break balancing)
• Wall textures are misaligned in bottom floor of Squidward's house.
• Squidward's front door could use a bit of tweaking. If you wanted to get super fancy you could make the door actually swing open as a poly object but I've never done this so I don't know how difficult it is or how to do it.
• The enemy sprites look so good! The gore looks so fucked up in Spongebob lol
• Since you're targeting GZDoom you can use slopes to make Patrick's house look more like a rock.
• Bullet puffs are same as vanilla, you could replace them with a bubble burst or something? You could also make the bubbles fire actual bubbles that pop which would also help fix this
• Yeah, I think the hitscan should be replaced with projectiles, esp for player weaps like weenie gun

 

@ContrastSaturation I hope you don't mind but I tried a few tweaks and I think they are beneficial. Feel free to use them if you'd like.

 

• I just checked the wad and you do have a dark yellow edge on the STTNUM*sprites. I tried changing it to a lighter shade to see if helped legibility and I think it does.
• I just tested using one of your custom flats to replace GRNROCK and I think it suits it pretty dang well.

 

 

Edited February 24, 2022 by xvertigox

[Shulbocka]

Oh friggidy frick yeah! This looks awesome and I'll definitely be checking it out as soon as immediately.

[maxmanium]

So, I'm at a loss. What is the player meant to do in the spongebob area in MAP09? Every floor hurts you and you're not supposed to jump, right? Standing on the corpses prevents damage but it seems inevitable that you'll take too much damage before you reach the end.

 

Also, is there meant to be an exit trigger at the end of the road heading right ahead of the "fake" Krusty Krab?

[Dubbag]

 

[Lizardcommando]

That was pretty crazy, but I liked it! It was much tougher than I would have imagined a Spongebob mod to be like. The levels looked quite nice (especially the city levels), although there were a few spots I got pretty lost in. I was not expecting such a cinematic experience with this mod. It would be nice to be able to skip cutscenes.

[ContrastSaturation]

10 hours ago, maxmanium said:

So, I'm at a loss. What is the player meant to do in the spongebob area in MAP09? Every floor hurts you and you're not supposed to jump, right? Standing on the corpses prevents damage but it seems inevitable that you'll take too much damage before you reach the end.

 

Also, is there meant to be an exit trigger at the end of the road heading right ahead of the "fake" Krusty Krab?

 

13 hours ago, xvertigox said:

Fuck man, this looks so god damn mint. I'm a sucker for licensed games and spend an inordinate amount of time play roms of such games so I'm fucking buzzin to play this! The work on the sprites looks fantastic, I'm gonna go check them out now.

 

I'm jotting down some feedback while I play, hope you don't mind the unsolicited feedback.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

• You could look at replacing the console GRNROCK background and default GZDoom mouse cursors to complete the TC look.
• The intro cinematic is fantastic! The sprites look so good, you did a great job tracing. They look like they come from a lost Spongebob GBA game
• The big yellow font is a bit hard to read, I would recommend putting a light colored bordered around each letter/number, maybe white or light yellow?
• Yeah, the STBAR still has GRNROCK on the sides, you could change it to any appropriate FLAT you have.
• I think the intro cutscene should be skippable but that's a very minor qualm as it's quite short.
• The player starts with the pistol selected but starts with no pistol. The starting weapon could be the tentacles/fist so the player doesn't need to swap from an empty slot to a usable weap at the start of map01.
• The health and armor bonuses glow blue and green like they normally do. You can set custom glow colors via GLDEFS, I can help with this if you'd like to change them but aren't sure how.
• It may be worth making the hitscanners fire projectiles similar to WW's Nazi's mod. You could even try making a bubble trail or something? I wouldn't say this is strictly necessary but it may be a nice QoL feature (I haven't finished the mod so I don't know if it'd break balancing)
• Wall textures are misaligned in bottom floor of Squidward's house.
• Squidward's front door could use a bit of tweaking. If you wanted to get super fancy you could make the door actually swing open as a poly object but I've never done this so I don't know how difficult it is or how to do it.
• The enemy sprites look so good! The gore looks so fucked up in Spongebob lol
• Since you're targeting GZDoom you can use slopes to make Patrick's house look more like a rock.
• Bullet puffs are same as vanilla, you could replace them with a bubble burst or something? You could also make the bubbles fire actual bubbles that pop which would also help fix this
• Yeah, I think the hitscan should be replaced with projectiles, esp for player weaps like weenie gun

 

@ContrastSaturation I hope you don't mind but I tried a few tweaks and I think they are beneficial. Feel free to use them if you'd like.

 

• I just checked the wad and you do have a dark yellow edge on the STTNUM*sprites. I tried changing it to a lighter shade to see if helped legibility and I think it does.
• I just tested using one of your custom flats to replace GRNROCK and I think it suits it pretty dang well.

 

 

 

Thank you both for the feedback :), I've released update 1.1, it should address some of your concerns

[Pistoolkip]

Really impressive work! 

I'm sure I missed some of the references but here's the first couple of levels

 

 

[Goat-Avenger]

Holy carp, lol.  Wow.  I'm not sure I'd want my spongebob and my doom mixed together; but, that's quite an impressive feat.

[Doomdude89]

Hamburgers should give more than 1hp. Ended up with playing with cheats.

Very ambitious. I think balance needs work. Other than that played it trough and laughed hard about the senseless story. Also some great gags from the show. 

 

[Sena]

Caught this missing texture on the start of Jellyfish Fields

 

Apart from that, I liked it. I played on UV, so I don't know how much of this was my fault, but I thought it was way too stingy with the health and ammo, even if you doubled the amount I'd still have to think about playing extra carefully, especially when they forced me to pistol start, but kept my health from the previous maps.

 

[ContrastSaturation]

3 minutes ago, Sena said:

Caught this missing texture on the start of Jellyfish Fields

 

Apart from that, I liked it. I played on UV, so I don't know how much of this was my fault, but I thought it was way too stingy with the health and ammo, even if you doubled the amount I'd still have to think about playing extra carefully, especially when they forced me to pistol start, but kept my health from the previous maps.

 

I'm 99% sure that effect is a rendering issue rather than a missing texture (try changing your settings?), I'll continue to look into balancing though, thanks for the feedback

[Murdoch]

3 hours ago, ContrastSaturation said:

I'll continue to look into balancing though

 

Always add more resources than you think you need (within reason of course). As the author who knows where everything is, you are the worst person to judge how much is enough. Give the player the chance to approach things differently and make mistakes. A fun map that ends with too much ammo will always be more fondly remembered than one with not enough.

[Zulk RS]

*Phineas Voice* Hey Ferb! I know what we're going to do today!

 

[Pistoolkip]

Holy shit dude, your TC was featured on IGN!

 

 

[ContrastSaturation]

3 minutes ago, Pistoolkip said:

Holy shit dude, your TC was featured on IGN!

 

 

I know, I just saw that, 81k views wtf! I mean I thought this wad would get some attention but Jesus christ

[thiccyosh]

You can go out of bounds in Map06. Right next to the first Bikini Bottom dump sign there is a missing impassible linedef. Sadly you cannot break the map when outside.

[RetroAkaMe]

I'm fucking playing this.

[Dubium]

I love how one of the status bar faces references the red mist episode. Funny and creepy at the same time

 

Anyway, I'm glad your stuff is featured on IGN. Does it mean IGN staff has been secretly browsing through DoomWorld this whole time?

 

[xvertigox]

16 hours ago, ContrastSaturation said:

I know, I just saw that, 81k views wtf! I mean I thought this wad would get some attention but Jesus christ

 

The thing is to post it on r/games. I've found that after posting cool Doom mods there they get media attention. This will be the third one I've posted that got articles written subsequently. It could be they found it elsewhere (moddb probably), who knows.

[Zulk RS]

Alright so I just finished playing through it and... it was an experience.

 

So the bad stuff about this are some GZDoom Floor rendering issues. I think some nodes in the map need tweaking. The weapon re-skins were neat though I don't know what it was about the sprites but it was kinda hard to tell where exactly I was pointing with most of the weapons. The Plasma Rifle replacement didn't have this problem though. Also most of the weapons weren't too satisfying to fire. This was mostly a sound issue. The shotgun and SSG firing animations were a bit off. I think having a "Muzzle flash" instead of having it fire hot dogs as part of the firing animation would have been better. It is a hitscan weapon and the first time I used it, I was really confused because I thought it was a projectile weapon. The balance is the biggest problem in this wad. There is a severe lack of Health, Armor and ammo. Especially Ammo. I think the OP understood this because ammo is abundant in the last few levels.

 

Now for the good stuff. I liked the story. I liked the adventure it took the player on. I liked the levels and the boss fights were honestly pretty unique. I loved all the call-backs and references scattered throughout the wad. "Skin Theory is True", "Squidward's Suicide", "Mr. Krab's Ketamine Addiction"... even the locations themselves were very faithful to the show. Loved it.

 

Here's what really stuck to me about this wad though. While on MAP04 I felt like there was something about this wad. Not something bad, mind you, like something very familiar about it. I couldn't place my finger on what it was. Then around MAP07 it hit me! This game is what you would expect a poorly written spongebob themed Creepypasta to be like. Like some kind of Lost Episode or Haunted Spongebob game. This isn't a bad thing mind you. While a poorly written creepypasta is bad because it fails at being creepy and instead becomes funny; this wad's plot is great. Because I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be nonsensical and funny. So it actually succeeds. This wad feels like the type of made-up game that some one would write a Creepypasta about. This is a playable bad creepypasta and it's amazing. Awesome job OP.

[maxmanium]

One thing I'd suggest is that, if you're going to clear the player's inventory upon each new level, you should probably reset their health and armor as well.

[Tony_Danza_the_boss]

Great Wad! Just finished it. You really nailed the feel of the show and it definitely shows through. Biggest hurdle was definitely the lack of ammo in some maps, especially Jellyfish Fields and Rock Bottom. Was completely out on both and had to resort to cheats on those (and the Spongebob nightmare portion of the level with the damaging floor needed a rad suit or 2). Later levels were great downtown Bikini Bottom was def my fav level of the wad and lots of hp and ammo there. Looks like you dropped a 1.1 version so I bet some of this has already been rebalanced but fantastic job felt like I played through a very dark Spongebob episode.

 

Edit: Also the absolute nightmare fuel that was the revenant sound replacement was great

[DeathwingDuck]

Hey so I played this mod and was actually quite impressed with it. I'll eventually Highlight it but you can find the broadcast playback here: 
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1410317633

 

Overall really enjoyed it. Just a few criticisms which I outline near the end of the stream if you would rather skip to that. At 4:30:41 is where I outline it.

Played it on Tartar Sauce difficulty.

 

[ContrastSaturation]

14 hours ago, DeathwingDuck said:

Hey so I played this mod and was actually quite impressed with it. I'll eventually Highlight it but you can find the broadcast playback here: 
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1410317633

 

Overall really enjoyed it. Just a few criticisms which I outline near the end of the stream if you would rather skip to that. At 4:30:41 is where I outline it.

Played it on Tartar Sauce difficulty.

 

Thanks a lot for the playthrough and criticism, it's very useful to me! I've tried to make some changes based on it already, but I'll continue to make adjustments as necessary. I definitely agree that the Squidward boss fight was too much, although maybe the final boss should be harder?

[Renbot]

Amazing map, really blew me away. I was expecting something less serious like that other spongebob wad, but instead this could easily pass as a full game release. The story was really good, the sprites fit very well, and the sound effects on the revenants were some crazy shit. Excellent stuff.

Some feedback I can give:

Spoiler

I was playing on version 1.2 on UV (tartar sauce). I ran into ammo issues on map05, it felt like there wasn't enough pickups to compensate for all the jellyfish. The boss fight didn't have this problem though. I had to cheat on map09 because the damaging floor kept killing me, I don't know if that was a bug or what. Map10 felt like it had a lack of ammo pick ups as well, and instead had too many health/armor shards.

 

For nitpicks, I think some enemies still have their default kill messages https://i.imgur.com/bIFoVML.png. I'm also a bit daft so it took me a long while to realise the bubble machines on this level weren't arachnotrons.

I think the stairway for the first teleporter on map01 could've been made dark so the snapping into position could be less disorienting when the player first goes through it.

Finally, on the opening of map09 it says "It was over for Squidward. There is only one thing for it". The second sentence is a bit wonky, you probably meant something like "There was only one thing left for him to do".

 

Thanks for the great mod.

[BabyGiggles]

Your mod is on IGN's TY channel, make of that what you will but I think it's cool your mod is getting some attention.