Vanilla Map Progression

[ApprihensivSoul]

Is it possible to abuse Dehacked or some other feature of the Vanilla doom engine to expand the amount of maps or episodes present in the vanilla game? I assume Episodes is not out the gate, but I'm super curious about ideas like 10 map episodes.

[Vermil]

There is no way to expand or add episodes to Vanilla Doom 1.

 

On a related note, you can fudge shorter episodes in Vanilla Doom1 by taking map progression through the secret map earlier than the original vanilla maps.

[ApprihensivSoul]

That's cooky as heck, I like it. Theoretically then, you could also force every episode to be 9 maps, though obviously if you were to put the secret exit too late in the episode you could create a loop, I assume?

[Pegleg]

4 minutes ago, ApprihensivSoul said:

That's cooky as heck, I like it. Theoretically then, you could also force every episode to be 9 maps, though obviously if you were to put the secret exit too late in the episode you could create a loop, I assume?

 

Having the secret exit later wouldn't necessarily create a loop, depending on the map where you put the secret exit.

 

According to the wiki entry on secret levels:

 

Quote

 

Doom has four secret levels:

• E1M9: Military Base, accessed from E1M3: Toxin Refinery.
• E2M9: Fortress of Mystery, accessed from E2M5: Command Center
• E3M9: Warrens, accessed from E3M6: Mt. Erebus
• E4M9: Fear, accessed from E4M2: Perfect Hatred

 

The actions of the secret level linedef types have been hard-coded into the engine. If the player activates a secret exit elsewhere than in one of the four aforementioned levels, the player will go to the secret level as usual. However, upon completing it, the player will be taken to the level immediately following the one they were meant to access it from. Depending on the specific episode and level this occurs on, the player may end up either skipping several maps, repeating the level they just left, or being sent back to an earlier level.

 

For example, MOUNTAIN.WAD reaches E3M9 from E3M5, and continues on to E3M7, skipping E3M6 entirely. Inversely, DARKHELL.WAD reaches E2M9 from E2M6, and loops back to it when exiting the secret level. As a corollary, activating a secret exit within a secret level resets the level (following the usual intermission screen). EP.WAD contains an example of this. This allows to revisit the secret level an unlimited number of time, a quirk that permitted to demonstrate the armor percentage rollover bug.

 

 

Which raises the question in my mind as to what would happen if you had the secret exit on ExM7? Would that just take you to the ending screen for that episode (i..e, ExM7, ExM9, skip ExM8, end screen)? If so, that provides an interesting possibility of effectively giving the player a choice in their final boss encounter.

[Gez]

1 hour ago, ApprihensivSoul said:

Is it possible to abuse Dehacked or some other feature of the Vanilla doom engine to expand the amount of maps or episodes present in the vanilla game?

DeHackEd cannot do that, and is not a feature of the vanilla Doom engine anyway. (Rather, it's limited editing of the vanilla Doom engine that is a feature of DeHackEd.)

 

The only real way to do what you want is to use MAPINFO.

20 minutes ago, Pegleg said:

Which raises the question in my mind as to what would happen if you had the secret exit on ExM7? Would that just take you to the ending screen for that episode (i..e, ExM7, ExM9, skip ExM8, end screen)?

Of course not. Exiting ExM7 in itself doesn't do anything special; and neither does exiting ExM9. It's ExM8, and ExM8 only, that ends the episode. (Disclaimer: if you use the Chex Quest exe, you'll end the episode on ExM5. This is one of the CQ changes that cannot be replicated in DeHackEd.)

 

The fact you reached ExM9 from ExM7 does not make it an ersatz ExM8 as far as the game is concerned; once you're in a level it doesn't matter anymore what level you reached it from.

[ApprihensivSoul]

I'm familiar with MAPINFO, of course, my goal is to find ways to abuse the original tech to make it do things it was never intended to do in the first place, without explicitly rewriting the software writ large (which crosses into what I would call an alternate EXE or Source mod situation.)

For all usage purpose, of course, DeHackEd is essentially a "Vanilla Mod", even though it doesn't work as such, because the end user can run it's mods on the Vanilla exe as simply as they would run a map pack. Though I certainly see and acknowledge your point.

I'm hoping to see how many "Modern Modding Options" can be recreated through whatever black magic PWAD hackery exists to allow the mod to be played on DOSbox without any source ports. Of course, this rambling explanation might simply over`complicate things, but it is good to know that hard limitations to Map progression are built into the Source. 

Out of curiousity, perhaps using Voodoo dolls, is it plausible to direct the player to different starting points at different attempts on a map? Similar to HeXen's hub system, though obviously it wouldn't work the same way. My thought being: Perhaps you could do something like that to re-use a map slot in a single play-through where the player starts somewhere else the second time they visit it using a Secret Exit loop?

[SuperGiantNinjaYeti]

1 hour ago, ApprihensivSoul said:

Out of curiousity, perhaps using Voodoo dolls, is it plausible to direct the player to different starting points at different attempts on a map? Similar to HeXen's hub system, though obviously it wouldn't work the same way. My thought being: Perhaps you could do something like that to re-use a map slot in a single play-through where the player starts somewhere else the second time they visit it using a Secret Exit loop?

I don't know about changing the starting point, but maybe you could have alternate paths.

For example, let's say the regular exit of your ExM9 is blocked by a similar setup to MAP01 of Not Even Remotely Fair where you need rockets to clear some barrels out of the way. However, there are no rocket launchers anywhere prior to that point, so in your first playthrough you are forced to take another path, one that ends in a secret exit and won't let you backtrack to the start, but you can get a rocket launcher there. Then, on your second start on ExM9 you'll be able to blow up the barrels and reach the normal exit.

[Pegleg]

16 hours ago, Gez said:

16 hours ago, Pegleg said:

Which raises the question in my mind as to what would happen if you had the secret exit on ExM7? Would that just take you to the ending screen for that episode (i..e, ExM7, ExM9, skip ExM8, end screen)?

Of course not. Exiting ExM7 in itself doesn't do anything special; and neither does exiting ExM9. It's ExM8, and ExM8 only, that ends the episode. (Disclaimer: if you use the Chex Quest exe, you'll end the episode on ExM5. This is one of the CQ changes that cannot be replicated in DeHackEd.)

 

The fact you reached ExM9 from ExM7 does not make it an ersatz ExM8 as far as the game is concerned; once you're in a level it doesn't matter anymore what level you reached it from.

 

My question stemmed from a misreading of the statement on the wiki. I was prepared to launch into a lengthy defense of what I was saying, but having read it more carefully, I now see that I was incorrect.

Initially, I read the wiki as saying that you skipped the next map, so by that logic, going to the secret map from ExM7 would skip ExM8. However, that is clearly incorrect. Going to the secret map from E1M7 would end up taking you to E1M4, from E2M7 would eventually take you back to E2M6, from E3M7 would take you back to E3M7 (again), and E4M7 would take you back to E4M3.

 

Oh well. I even had a scheme set up in my mind to test giving the player the option to "choose" which boss map they wanted. But it was not to be...

 

 

 

16 hours ago, ApprihensivSoul said:

Out of curiousity, perhaps using Voodoo dolls, is it plausible to direct the player to different starting points at different attempts on a map? Similar to HeXen's hub system, though obviously it wouldn't work the same way. My thought being: Perhaps you could do something like that to re-use a map slot in a single play-through where the player starts somewhere else the second time they visit it using a Secret Exit loop?

 

As you're likely aware, when there are multiple player starts, the map starts you on the Player Start that is the highest numbered object. I don't know if that means that it you had something blocking the player start (like a pillar or something), would that prevent you from starting at that spot and the game would simply default to the next Player Start. However, that would require the map to load the second time with the new object blocking the original player start, which can't happen. So, I don't think there's a way to do what you're talking about in non-UDMF ports. I say that because there may be some way to do that with ACS scripting, so upon subsequent visits to the map, you started on a different Player Start, but I am not very familiar with ACS, so someone else would have to comment on that.