Godless Night [GZDoom episode || RC1 11/29/2023]

[Tango]

 

>>>> DOWNLOAD GODLESS NIGHT RC1 <<<< (Google Drive mirror here)
^{(last updated 11/29/2023)}

 

Godless Night is a GZDoom episode built with the Supercharge gameplay mod. It features very light hub elements, loads of (mostly subtle) Castlevania inspiration, and plenty of secrets to find - especially for challenge-enthusiasts.

 

A Doom 2 IWAD (purchasable here on Steam) and GZDoom 4.0+ are required (no Zandronum compatibility yet, sorry D:). Hardware-accelerated rendering mode is strongly recommended, both for visual and performance reasons.

 

⚠️⚠️ Continuous play is required! ⚠️⚠️

 

 

HOW TO PLAY:

• With Doom 2 installed somewhere on your system, drag and drop the Godless Night pk3 file onto GZDOOM.exe, or use your favorite Doom launcher instead
• Jumping and crouching will break the maps and are disabled by default
• Mouselook/freelook is recommended, but not required

 

 

GENERAL INFO:

• Supercharge mod built in - featuring new enemies, reloading weapons, de-randomized monster and player damage, along with extra frills like bullet casings, terrain splashes, and more. Check the Supercharge thread for more details.
• A wide range of difficulty settings that should hopefully give all level of player a surmountable challenge. However, Godless Night does not pull punches from the start, so some Supercharge familiarity is very helpful. It is recommended to not start on the highest available difficulty (Extreme) for your first playthrough unless you are very confident in your skills (or patience).
• Includes guest maps from the excellent @reflex17, @RonnieJamesDiner, and @Aurelius!

 

SCREENSHOTS:

Spoiler

 

TODO:

Spoiler

• Automap cleanup in one map
• Finish some half-baked, not yet added goodies for Ruin mode
• Minor fixes and balance changes depending on feedback

 

CREDITS:

Spoiler

• @reflex17 for The Royal Chapel map, and writing the intro text crawl
• @Aurelius for Gardens of Mechanus map, playtesting, various resource tweaks and suggestions
• @RonnieJamesDiner for Tower of the Night Seer map
• @Helm, @Daerik, @EduardoAndFriends, @ShakarAtar, and @Breidr for playtesting
• naom for menu and HUD graphics
• Ultra 64 the new glove spritework across all weapons
• @Phoenyx for fixing the looping on several midis

 

For a full list of credits, see the CREDITS lumps inside the pk3.

 

 

VERSION HISTORY:

Spoiler

• 10/22/2023 beta 1
• 10/22/2023 beta 1b
  • fixed inaccessible secret in Gardens of Mechanus
• 10/29/2023 beta 2
  • Disallowed vertical rocket jumping
  • Buffed minigun by decreasing windup, and allowing action out of cooldown sooner
  • Fixed bugs across nearly all maps - 100% kills/secrets should be doable without cheats
  • Overhauled several fights in Ruin mode to be more distinct from their non-Ruin counterparts
  • Increased resources in a few places to reduce the chance of unwinnable situations
  • Added hub return portraits in what was previously a point of no return (including on Ruin mode)
• 11/29/2023
  • Cleaned up automap on all but 1 map
  • Made a slew of bugfixes across the maps, mainly to prevent easily cheesing some encounters
  • Added proper skill description to Ruin mode once unlocked
  • Slightly nerfed the strength of one super secret

Edited November 29, 2023 by Tango

[Firedust]

'ello what is this beauty

[OverflowingMocha]

Pardon me but, holy shit.

 

So much good stuff coming out this month, damn!! Super excited to try this, after all Paradise is the first ever mapset I've ever played... So seeing this makes me super happy.

[Bri]

I'm gonna play this a bit later. It looks incredible!

[lgdoomworld]

Here goes one more wad to my "to play" list!

The art looks amazing, clean and colorful :)

[Terminus]

Oh hell yeah brother.

Gonna play this as soon as possible.

[Sapfiar]

Hell, yes! How long have I been waiting for this, my friend. this is a great mapset. You guys have done an amazing job!

Edited October 22, 2023 by Sapfiar

[EduardoAndFriends]

YEEEEAH MAN! This was an absolute joy to playtest for you. Anyone who plays is in for an unreasonably good time. Yeeee! 😎

[Biodegradable]

Congratulations on finally finishing a beta, Tango! I know you've been working on this sucker for quite some time. I look forward to playing it! :^)

[Egg Boy]

Love to see it, been seeing screenshots of this forever.

[Tango]

thanks all :D

 

just updated the OP with beta1b, which contains a fix for an inaccessible secret in the first map

 

Spoiler

 

Edited December 1, 2023 by Tango : reinserted header image so this would hopefully be the thread preview instead of the one from Scuba Steve lol

[Breezeep]

Been looking forward to this one! Congrats on getting the beta out!

[Catpho]

Quote

Off-topic but reading this suddenly makes me think how awesome a Tango/Aurelius/RJD collab would be. Your styles synergize well, I feel :D

Hey, dreams come true!

I played through Aurelius's map (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) on the "Tough" setting. I only decided to record on a whim when I've already made some progress, but there should still be a substantial chunk of gameplay recorded. I do want to mention that in the Part 1 video during the soulsphere + baron crusher fight at around 9:34, I think I was cheesing the fight by camping in one corner considering how many moving parts there were. Otherwise badass stuff.

As a side note, I do wanna ask if I'm setting up the lighting correctly, especially concerning the Gallery map (you can see what it looks like on my end at 6:21 in my Part 3 vid). Always wanna be sure with levels that use a lot of darkness on GZ. I use the "Dark" lighting setting on GZ 4.10.

[Tango]

14 minutes ago, Catpho said:

Hey, dreams come true!

 

haha I've smirked each time I've gone back in that thread and seen that comment ;D

 

thanks so much for the videos!! re: the corner, I started doing basically that strategy early on, so I guess it's sort of intended? or permitted, at least, though I don't want to speak for Aurelius.

 

re: lighting, I don't think it looks remarkably different for me either - maybe bringing the brightness up on the map a bit would be warranted? I might have my gamma a bit higher than yours though. the lighting mode should be enforced to Vanilla via mapinfo, however

 

edit: lol @ the rev skull on a pillar in part 3

Edited October 22, 2023 by Tango

[A.K.]

Ahhh this looks beautiful. Ill be sure to download this and power up my desktop just to play this hopefully this week.

"What a horrible night for a curse..."

[Geniraul]

I love the preview text of the extreme difficulty 😂

From what I've seen so far, this mapset looks amazing and has some interesting gameplay features, will definitely check it out more!

[A.K.]

I had the quick opportunity to play the first map (Map lump name MAP03 - Gardens of Mechanus) on the MEDIUM difficulty. The 3D hardware rendering certainly allows the map to have more depth than what you would normally see in maps that aren't allowed to make stacked sectors. The 3D floors really allow a castle environment to come to life. The weapons mod is a nice new balance as well, I've never really messed with weapons mods before so this seems refreshing.

Map gameplay spoilers below.

Spoiler

I was stymied by the lesser cyberdemon in the center many times. That was a pretty good design choice in making the rocket lord turret be the center focus because as a player you're not sure if you should take out the cybie first or not since it could be used as a turret to destroy any oncoming enemies.

Anyway, when I have more time, Ill be sure to check out the rest of the set.

Cheers

[Scuba Steve]

Royal Chapel. Assuming the sprites aren't modified to use the new palette.

[Rex705]

Looks really cool can't wait to check it out.

[Velvetic]

Just completed my first playthrough on medium, excellent mapset throughout. Congratulations to everyone involved!

Here's some stuff that I noticed while playing (on GZDoom 4.11):

 

Spoiler

MAP04 - Iron Blue Intention:



Every single health bonus secret give a script unknown after picking them up.

-------------------------------------
MAP07 - Tower of the Night Seer:





This bit of the map has no projectile collision while looking like there is, which made me lose a bit of health after trying to use it to dodge a revenant missile.

-------------------------
MAP08 - Royal Chapel:





This small window is marked as a secret, which makes this map impossible to get a 100% without cheating.

---------------------------------------
MAP10 - Last Dance with the Devil:





This bookshelf is interactible from the outside after passing through the corridor for the first time.

I would also suggest either a way back to the hub from MAP10, or a text saying that MAP10 is a point of no return, since this could prevent the player from getting 100% without prior warning.

 

[TJG1289]

Man, I've been in a little bit of Doom burnout the last couple months, but this could bring me back in. Supercharge is a cool mod, the WAD description sounds interesting, and the screenshots look amazing! 

[Scuba Steve]

Quote

Credits:
@Helm [...] for playtesting

Not the same @Helm that used to frequent an old forum for pixel artists, is it?

[Fabricator]

Let's go! Been waiting for this project to drop for a minute now.
Big fan of Supercharge and more maps tailored specifically for it's brand of gameplay is always a good thing :-)

Diggin' the gothic / Castlevania vibes that these screenies are givin' off - looking forward to firing this one up and blasting thru when I have a spare moment!

[Matt Eldrydge]

Just got started playing this and I'm surprised by just how nice everything is. The textures are amazing, the maps are downright gorgeous and the casual difficulty feels perfectly balanced - I particularly like the touch of saying which WADs correlate with Godless Night's difficulty levels! I've played some pretty hard maps in my time, but I never actually beat Ancient Aliens, so Plutonia was the next best thing. :)

 

Great job, all in all! The team did a fantastic job with this project!

[Bridgeburner56]

Well, I think I've found the project that'll break me out of my Doom player drought.

[kalensar]

Pardon my Smurf, but... Smurf me! 

[Tango]

On 10/23/2023 at 8:21 AM, Scuba Steve said:

Royal Chapel. Assuming the sprites aren't modified to use the new palette.

 

lol how did you catch this. appreciate it though, fixed for the next version!

 

10 hours ago, Scuba Steve said:

Not the same @Helm that used to frequent an old forum for pixel artists, is it?

 

the very man himself!

 

On 10/23/2023 at 12:17 PM, Velvetic said:

Here's some stuff that I noticed while playing (on GZDoom 4.11):

 

thank you so much for all this! fixed a lot of these for the next version, which I will probably put out in the next day or two. I will also add a way back from the end like you suggested, dunno why it didn't occur to me before

 

thanks again all :D

[Scuba Steve]

You'll appreciate this; I saw them while running down the long hallway and they had a purple glow to them... at first, I thought they had a purple outline applied to them in order to resemble the player sprite in 'Harmony of Dissonance.' I had to noclip and fly over to them to confirm if this was true.

[Vile]

Amazing set, instantly became my favorite to utilize Supercharge and I'm tempted to give it yet another playthrough after finishing it twice.  The ruin mode felt like enough of a new experience to make it worth a second run as it is.  Excellent work!

[Jerem]

What I checked out last night of the first level was absolutely incredible. If I find more time before packing my computer for my flight I intend to really dive into this.