VALIS (32-Map Singleplayer Megawad)

[Galactic]

A journey that will take you from the present to a forgotten future, into space and a place far from reality...

 

 

[About]

 

VALIS is a 32 level singleplayer megawad for DOOM 2. 

 

All maps were designed with pistol start in mind, but continuous play works as well.

 

Freelook is not required, but recommended.

 

Turn off infinitely tall monsters.

 

Difficulties settings are available. 

 

 

[Sourceport]

 

I only tested with GZDoom (Compatibility mode: ZDOOM 2.0.63)

 

Maps are Doom 2 in Hexen format.

 

 

[Screenshots]

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Link]

 

Dropbox: VALIS

 

Files:

• INFO.txt
• Valis.wad

 

 

[Credits]

 

Most textures used are from CAGE'S TEXTURE PACK and DRDOCTOR'S TEXTURE PACK. 
Other texture packs, sprites, sounds and music are used in the wad as well.
Please look in the included INFO file for the complete credit list.

 

 

[Bugs]

 

Relaunching GZDoom before playing Episode 4 is still recomended.
(animated textures may still be desynced, but not as obvious as in the beta version)

 

Some switches will not work with comp mode set to DOOM/DOOM(STRICT)

Edited May 24, 2023 by Galactic

[NightFright]

Is there anything in this wad that would cause any bigger problems when not using GZDoom, e.g. a more vanilla-ish port like Woof?

[General Rainbow Bacon]

Wow! Screens look awesome.  I really like shots 6 and the last two. 

[Galactic]

21 minutes ago, NightFright said:

Is there anything in this wad that would cause any bigger problems when not using GZDoom, e.g. a more vanilla-ish port like Woof?

 

Some of the used textures are PNGs. I just tried to launch it with Woof and got this Message:

 

"Patch in PNG format detected: RP2_1"

 

So I guess there´s at least this problem.

[NightFright]

Well, that can be kinda fixed by converting those graphics with SLADE, I believe. Need to see if I get it running like that.

[Tango]

10 hours ago, NightFright said:

Is there anything in this wad that would cause any bigger problems when not using GZDoom, e.g. a more vanilla-ish port like Woof?

 

the OP mentions these maps are Doom in Hexen format, so I reckon that'd be the big showstopper

[Galactic]

On 11/23/2022 at 7:40 AM, NightFright said:

Well, that can be kinda fixed by converting those graphics with SLADE, I believe. Need to see if I get it running like that.

 

Technically yes, but there are 2 reasons why some graphics are PNGs

• I used a custom palette (OPAL by DiR) and certain textures just don´t work or look good with it
• some of the, mostly black, textures in episode 5 don´t look black anymore when they are really bright and in the Doom graphic format

 

On 11/23/2022 at 10:17 AM, Tango said:

 

the OP mentions these maps are Doom in Hexen format, so I reckon that'd be the big showstopper

 

guess that won´t help either then...

Edited June 2, 2023 by Galactic : added link to palette

[LadyMistDragon]

7 hours ago, Tango said:

 

the OP mentions these maps are Doom in Hexen format, so I reckon that'd be the big showstopper

the kiss of death for wads on Doomworld. (:

[Andrea Rovenski]

Looks really good!

[Stroggman]

Fun gameplay so far

[AtticTelephone]

haha funny Phillip K. Dick reference.

[kalensar]

DUUUDDDDEEEE! Full megawad drop usually gets my attention....Then I saw sceenies and about fell out of my chair. Those are awesome looking!

[grrfield]

Does not work with zandronum, which is .... meh. Pity.

[Stroggman]

This wad is tight on ammo, convoluted and puzzle oriented so I stopped playing it

[Death Bear]

I’ve played through the first two maps, and I’ve enjoyed it so far. I may spend sporadic time over the next month playing through, but I’m interested enough to play further. It feels like a lot of work went into this, and it looks awesome.

[Stroggman]

I should give it another chance then. If I was saying it's convoluted then I must be overlooking something then

[Misty]

I looked at the project and there are some things I need to tell you:

• Why your maps have such huge containment boxes? Few maps go between or even beyond 20,000-32,000 map units in total size, even if most of playable maps are quite small. This can make game logic to break or cause lag in builder or in game if looked at certain spots. Containment box if needed, needs to be appropriate and reasonable size. I also noticed that you put voodoo dolls, monsters closets in those containment boxes - those actually can be behind containment box or playable area. If you want create endless horizon, line action "line horizon" can take care of that effect.
• Your ANIMDEFS lump is really weird - some looks ok, but when they suddenly go: 

  texture LOADINM1
  	pic LOADINM1  tics 10
  	pic LOADINM2  tics 4240
  	pic LOADINM1  tics 20
  	pic LOADINM2  tics 2
  	pic LOADINM1  tics 2
  	pic LOADINM2  tics 6
  
  texture GAL4HE01
  	pic GAL4HE01  tics 8560
  	pic GAL4HE02  tics 4280
  
  texture GWATER1
  	pic GWATER1     tics 8
  	pic GWATER2     tics 8
  	pic GWATER3     tics 8
  	pic GWATER4     tics 8
  	pic GWATER1     tics 8
  	pic GWATER2     tics 8
  	pic GWATER3     tics 8
  	pic GWATER4     tics 8
  	pic GWATER1     tics 8
  	pic GWATER2     tics 8
  	pic GWATER3     tics 8
  	pic GWATER4     tics 8
  	pic GWATER1     tics 8
  	pic GWATER2     tics 8
  	pic GWATER3     tics 8
  	pic GWATER4     tics 8

  The best thing would be settle with 3/6/8/16/32 tics - it's within game logic. Also, you should clean up those repeating entries - not that difficult. Seems, you also have ANIMATED and SWITCHES lump, I'd choose one to keep in game. 

• If you're using doom builder 2 or other newer doom builder family program - you can simply join sectors by perssing "j" key. Especially, monster closets and their teleporter areas, you don't need those long sound tunnels to wake monsters up. In other hand - I'd reconsider to convert project in zdoom udmf. More freedom, hard to run out of tags and better compatibility with zdoom family ports. Last thing to add is why you didn't take advantage of scripting - it would saved you headache setting those voodoo scrollers to make things to work.

• OPal is quite dark palette, some areas look too dark with it - you should increase lighting a bit to make things visible in maps that supposed to be night. 

• Texture maintenance would be appreciated - I imagine plenty of textures remains unused, this would reduce entire size of the project. 

Spoiler

Leaving map01 screenshot in spoilers. 

Good luck with future projects!

[Galactic]

2 hours ago, Misty said:

I looked at the project and there are some things I need to tell you:

• Why your maps have such huge containment boxes? Few maps go between or even beyond 20,000-32,000 map units in total size, even if most of playable maps are quite small. This can make game logic to break or cause lag in builder or in game if looked at certain spots. Containment box if needed, needs to be appropriate and reasonable size. I also noticed that you put voodoo dolls, monsters closets in those containment boxes - those actually can be behind containment box or playable area. If you want create endless horizon, line action "line horizon" can take care of that effect.
• Your ANIMDEFS lump is really weird - some looks ok, but when they suddenly go: 

  
  texture LOADINM1
  	pic LOADINM1  tics 10
  	pic LOADINM2  tics 4240
  	pic LOADINM1  tics 20
  	pic LOADINM2  tics 2
  	pic LOADINM1  tics 2
  	pic LOADINM2  tics 6
  
  texture GAL4HE01
  	pic GAL4HE01  tics 8560
  	pic GAL4HE02  tics 4280
  
  texture GWATER1
  	pic GWATER1     tics 8
  	pic GWATER2     tics 8
  	pic GWATER3     tics 8
  	pic GWATER4     tics 8
  	pic GWATER1     tics 8
  	pic GWATER2     tics 8
  	pic GWATER3     tics 8
  	pic GWATER4     tics 8
  	pic GWATER1     tics 8
  	pic GWATER2     tics 8
  	pic GWATER3     tics 8
  	pic GWATER4     tics 8
  	pic GWATER1     tics 8
  	pic GWATER2     tics 8
  	pic GWATER3     tics 8
  	pic GWATER4     tics 8

  The best thing would be settle with 3/6/8/16/32 tics - it's within game logic. Also, you should clean up those repeating entries - not that difficult. Seems, you also have ANIMATED and SWITCHES lump, I'd choose one to keep in game. 

• If you're using doom builder 2 or other newer doom builder family program - you can simply join sectors by perssing "j" key. Especially, monster closets and their teleporter areas, you don't need those long sound tunnels to wake monsters up. In other hand - I'd reconsider to convert project in zdoom udmf. More freedom, hard to run out of tags and better compatibility with zdoom family ports. Last thing to add is why you didn't take advantage of scripting - it would saved you headache setting those voodoo scrollers to make things to work.

• OPal is quite dark palette, some areas look too dark with it - you should increase lighting a bit to make things visible in maps that supposed to be night. 

• Texture maintenance would be appreciated - I imagine plenty of textures remains unused, this would reduce entire size of the project. 

  Reveal hidden contents

Leaving map01 screenshot in spoilers. 

Good luck with future projects!

 

Hey, thanks for your feedback.

 

As you can tell big n00b here. I didn´t know about many of those features, but I will keep them in mind for future projects. (and definitely won´t use Hexen format!!)

 

I saw that "remove unused textures" tool in Slade, but it also removes the 2nd, 3rd and so on textures from any animated textures as far as I can tell. Or am I missing something?

 

About the ANIMDEFS.

 

If you have 10 minutes to spare play the first map of episode 4. That´s just my caveman solution for what I was going for here.

 

If you don´t then read this:

(or anyone else that doesn´t mind spoilers)

Spoiler

The idea is that the level textures change every 4280 tics.

 

• 1st 4280 tics theme of episode 1
• 2nd 4280 tics theme of episode 2
• 3rd 4280 tics theme of episode 3

 

It´s kinda part of the overall "Story" of the wad.

At this point you finally came back from space to fight demons back on earth, but things are not how they are supposed to be... (entering the far from reality part)  Additionally to those glitching enemies you´re now dealing with glitching textures, the map theme might change mid fight etc

 

So I tried to make it work with those weird ANIMDEFS entries. If there is a better way of achieving this (and I guess there is) let me know.

 

 

Again, thanks for taking the time. Very much appreciated!

 

 

 

 

 

[Misty]

4 minutes ago, Galactic said:

I saw that "remove unused textures" tool in Slade, but it also removes the 2nd, 3rd and so on textures from any animated textures as far as I can tell. Or am I missing something?

You need unmark those frames if you want them to stay in map, it's rather time consuming, because you need unmark each frame for textures you used(or you could settle aside some secluded sector and plaster all animated texture frames you used in maps in it). Alternatively, you could use DoomTools program, it has maintenance mode and it should preserve animated textures in map. 

 

9 minutes ago, Galactic said:

About the ANIMDEFS.

A good start with animdefs would be removing repeating entries, you have a lot of them - you don't need that much glava or gwater entries in your animdefs lump. 4 of them is enough to work. As for spoilered solution, I'm going to ping @Bauul and @Bridgeburner56 they are both working on large gzdoom projects and animdefs lump shouldn't be huge problem for them. 

Also, please reduce those containment box sizes for the next version, your computer, builder, ports and everyone's computers will be happier. 

[Galactic]

9 minutes ago, Misty said:

You need unmark those frames if you want them to stay in map, it's rather time consuming, because you need unmark each frame for textures you used(or you could settle aside some secluded sector and plaster all animated texture frames you used in maps in it). Alternatively, you could use DoomTools program, it has maintenance mode and it should preserve animated textures in map. 

 

I see. makes sense! thx

 

10 minutes ago, Misty said:

A good start with animdefs would be removing repeating entries, you have a lot of them - you don't need that much glava or gwater entries in your animdefs lump. 4 of them is enough to work. As for spoilered solution, I'm going to ping @Bauul and @Bridgeburner56 they are both working on large gzdoom projects and animdefs lump shouldn't be huge problem for them. 

 

The thing with the gwater etc is, that it´s an animation within an animation if that makes sense.

 

The water texture changes every 4280 tics as well. But since it´s animated, the regular water animation (gwater1 - 4, changes every 8 tics) runs for 4280 tics and then changes to glava which is also just the regular lava animation (1 - 4, changes every 8 tics) and runs for another 4280 tics and changes again...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Misty]

I think, most of this animated texture thing could be relegated to looping script and it would reduce animdefs lump lines too. Some quick dirty example of script:
 

#include "zcommon.acs"

script 1 OPEN
{
changefloor(1,"fwater1");
delay(4280);
changefloor(1,"glava1");
delay(4280);
//Insert any animated texture you want here afterwards
Restart;
}

for the rest of scripting you should look up for zdoom wiki, good resource and lots of examples. 

Edited November 25, 2022 by Misty

[Galactic]

57 minutes ago, Misty said:

I think, most of this animated texture thing could be relegated to looping script and it would reduce animdefs lump lines too. Some quick dirty example of script:
 

#include "zcommon.acs"

script 1 OPEN
{
changefloor(1,"fwater1");
delay(4280);
changefloor(1,"glava1");
delay(4280);
//Insert any animated texture you want here afterwards
Restart;
}

for the rest of scripting you should look up for zdoom wiki, good resource and lots of examples. 

 

 

Alright. I´ll try to make it work with scripts and make that caveman get out of there.

 

Thanks a lot.

[Bridgeburner56]

8 hours ago, Galactic said:

The idea is that the level textures change every 4280 tics.

A much better way to do this would be using ACS. Just have a looping script that changes textures when you need it to.

https://zdoom.org/wiki/SetLineTexture

[Korozive]

Getting an error message when I try to unpack the rar. Windows says file is corrupt.

Edited November 25, 2022 by Korozive

[Galactic]

14 hours ago, Bridgeburner56 said:

A much better way to do this would be using ACS. Just have a looping script that changes textures when you need it to.

https://zdoom.org/wiki/SetLineTexture

 

I´ll look into it.

 

thanks a lot

[Akie]

I've played the 5 first maps of your WAD and i plan to continue since i'm having a lot of fun for now.
But before i keep going, i'd like to know if your mapset is intended to be played with infinitely high monsters.

[Galactic]

16 minutes ago, Akie said:

I've played the 5 first maps of your WAD and i plan to continue since i'm having a lot of fun for now.
But before i keep going, i'd like to know if your mapset is intended to be played with infinitely high monsters.

 

No it´s not. Please turn that off, if you´re playing with infinitely tall monsters.

 

Thanks for pointing that out. I´ll change that in the description as well.

[Galactic]

VALIS (betaV2)

 

So I found the time to fix some things and let me start off by saying, that my gamma correction was set to 1.3 the whole time while working on this wad. I don´t know why, but long story short, the wad wasn´t supposed to be this dark. Brightness should be at a normal level now.

 

Other major changes:

• added/changed some textures (deleted unused textures)
• got rid of a few softlocks (might still be some more that I´m not aware of right now)
• removed some cheese
• cleaned up the ANIMDEFS lump
• no more soundtunnels
• wad is overall a bit tamer than V1 (UV is still no walk in the park)

Other minor changes like texture alignment, monster/player blocking linedefs etc. have been made as well.

 

Download V2:

 

Dropbox: VALIS (or use link in the original post)

Edited May 17, 2023 by Galactic

[Rudolph]

Started playing this today. 

 

MAP01 is pretty good, but I could not figure out how to get the secret Green Armor and I have not found any playthrough on YouTube.

[Galactic]

Just uploaded a new version. 

 

Things I changed/fixed:

• added scripts to maps 14, 17 and 26
• removed a softlock in map 8
• changed Berserk pick up sound
• map 29 has 2 exits now. One that ends the game and one that brings you to map 30(a bonus map of some sort)
• other small adjustments like texture alignment, sector lighting etc.

 

Maybe i´ll add a titlepic in the future, if I can come up with something. But for now i´ll leave it as is.

 

Download:

 

Dropbox: VALIS (or use link in the original post)