Ogre Labs updated

[Russell_P]

An updated version of ogre labs is now available. The problems relating to the two final switches have hopefully been resolved and the rouge linedef effect on linedef 633 has been removed. Thanks to RjY and Grazza for routing out these bugs for me (see previous ogre labs thread).

This updated version is available from my site at http://www.duellist.net

This is my last doom level (for reasons explained in the text file). Thanks to everyone who has given me feedback or encouragement in the past :)

[Scuba Steve]

;_;

[Enjay]

Russell_P said:

This is my last doom level (for reasons explained in the text file). Thanks to everyone who has given me feedback or encouragement in the past :)

Whilst the reasons you give are certainly good and understandable ones, as a fan, they don't stop this being one of the saddest pieces of Doom related news I've heard in a long time. :(

Good luck with whatever you do in future and I'll hold out a little hope that, at some point, you may just get a bit of extra spare time and maybe feel the urge to dabble with Doom again.

Thanks for the hours of entertainment your work has given me.

[Siggi]

This map is really awesome. It's a pitty we won't get to see more like it.

[Vader]

No more Nullspace !? :(

This map is great btw, don't know how i could missed it before today...

[kristus]

That's really sad to hear. But I must say I am quite intrested in what you will come up with with a state of the art 3d engine.

[TheDarkArchon]

Talk about mixed news: The level is awesome but no more Doom stuff? D:

[Russkie]

First level I played by you was Nulspace. It was great, probably my favorite Doom level. Too bad you are leaving when I am starting. Good luck in the future though.

this is random but we share the same first name.

[EarthQuake]

I can't believe it... another great artist disappears?

Sorry Russell but it seemed like you had a passion for Doom, creating some of the most innovative wads... Death Skittles, Null Space, Blastem... All favorite wads of mine, and by the same author! Completely stopping your work with the game seems a bit stupid to me. I'm stuggling with real-life as well, but I plan to be playing Doom well into the final chapters of my life. It's not something I plan to put aside for good.

However, I have to respect your decision... as much as I hate it, and wish you good luck with your future endeavors. I know you'll make alot of people happy. :)

[deathbringer]

Bah, well all know what happens to most people that leave the Doom community...

[Russell_P]

heh yeah, never say never..

I'm not actually leaving the community, I'm just quiting classic doom mapping. I'll still be hanging around these forums (not that I post that much).

I do have a passion for Doom, which is why it's only now that I'm calling it a day. I was going to quit about 3 years ago, but it was a case of having 'just one more idea that I had to see to completion'..and then another..and then another. The truth is that if I don't quit doom mapping I'll never get around to working on a more modern engine and this is something I've been wanting to do for ages. If I have any outstanding doom projects stored on my hard drive I'll just keep coming back to them and as a result never move on.

It's probably inevitable that I'll make another doom map in the future, but it wont be for a long time (probably a few years), by which time there will be a hoard of new and superior mappers on the scene and my meagre attempts will be long forgotten....etc, etc, blah, blah.

Anyway, enough of this melodrama. Thanks for the comments guys.

[myk]

If this is your last map it's a great parting gift, from what I've played yet.

There are some visual glitches I've spotted. Will these be fixed, or...? I could provide some pointers or screen shots.

[RjY]

I must apologise, I said in another thread I didn't think it would ever get fixed, but here we are. So, I'm off to get some humble pie now :)

Many thanks for all your contributions over the years (especially Blastem2, I can still play that thing over and over again) and good luck with pastures new.

[myk]

I reached the place with the three Arch-viles surrounded by the pulsing and screaming faces, and killed everything after hitting all the switches. The wooden column made the lowering noise but nothing changed. Did I miss something...?

I was using PrBoom+ -complevel 2

[Enjay]

The column should have lowered, not just made a noise. It did for me in GZDoom, Zdoom (1.22 and 2.1.1), Risen3D, EDGE 1.29, Legacy and WinMBF. The line special concerned is a type 102 tagged to all the switch sectors and the column. The setup looks "legal" enough and I don't see anything obvious in the map that should prevent it lowering.

However, when I tried it in PRBoom+ (no extra parameters - straight "out of the box" settings), the switch sector floors all shot up instantly to the ceiling (or maybe higher) and the column only lowered a little bit. So, the problem certainly exists but seems port specific.

[Russell_P]

Thanks for that very thorough investigation Enjay. I don't know why it doesn't work in prboom. It should come as no surprise that, as this seems port specific, I won't be trying to rectify this. I don't have prboom on my pc and, as I think everyone is aware, I've had enough of this level. I'm sorry if this disappoints anyone.

[Grazza]

Prboom-plus's "straight-out-of-the-box" settings are not very similar to those of either vanilla or Boom (at all). You need to use -complevel 9 (either via the command line or via the cfg) if you want it to behave like Boom, and you need to use -complevel 2 to make it behave like Doom2.exe (with removal of limits).

From what people are saying, it sounds like the map needs Boom support (I'd guess for something like floor motion or linedef trigger behaviour, rather than for Boom specials), and not a purely limit-removing port/exe.

[Russkie]

I played the level through in zdoom it worked fine. I didn't see anything boom related unless its something minor and not a major visual effect. It was a great map. Big battles yet it moves through quick.

[myk]

Apparently it requires a Boom-compatible engine not due to mapping features but due to construction, thus it won't work with "vanilla settings". It works with PrBoom+ engine default settings and with Boom's standard settings, but fails with PrBoom -complevel 2 or with Boom with orig_doom_compatibility set to 1. Perhaps it's the comp_floors MBF setting? Haven't tested that far. That is, the "Advanced engine needed" line would properly be Yes (Boom compatible) instead of Yes (limit removing port with 'dehacked' lump support), although due to the many different engines available today, the best thing for clarity is using the updated template with the testing engines entry, in addition.

Enjay said:
However, when I tried it in PRBoom+ (no extra parameters - straight "out of the box" settings), the switch sector floors all shot up instantly to the ceiling (or maybe higher) and the column only lowered a little bit. So, the problem certainly exists but seems port specific.

Some versions of PrBoom+ come with a preinstalled prboom.cfg, perhaps with some MBF compatibility modes set on. Try with prboom -config blah.cfg and it'll clear all the config entries, creating a defaulted file.

[RjY]

Oh this is interesting :) I noticed in the previous version that there was this one place where the game would totally freeze up for some reason, but didn't work out why, until now:

When the player runs over linedef 3950 to pick up a berserk box he sets off some monster teleporters. Each of these have several teleporter lines to make the monsters teleport more reliably, but one of each of these lines doesn't have a tag number (linedefs 7012, 7025, 7038, 7051, 7064, 7078)

Now the teleporters work, you don't have monsters stuck in there or anything, because there are other teleporter lines in there which do have tag numbers. But when the monsters walk over the lines without a tag, the game searches for an exit point in every sector that also doesn't have a tag, all 1500-odd of them. Although this doesn't break the level or stop you finishing it, it does cause the game to freeze up quite horribly.

The fix is simply to set the tag numbers of the six linedefs to match the tag numbers of the other teleporter lines in the same holding area (e.g. linedef 7012 needs tag 111, the same tag as linedef 7016)

Now Boom/PrBoom disallows most linedef actions that don't have a tag number, unless in a compatibility mode, but there are some it explicitly lets through, manual doors and the like. The interesting part is, it explicitly allows teleporters with zero tags. I find this really odd!

[Russell_P]

Those teleporters with zero tags are whats left over from a wad author attempt to sabotage my level. I rectified most of the problems but obviously missed these linedefs. Actually that's not true, I was aware they were there but since they seemed to have no detremental effect (well, not in zdoom anyway) I left them as they were. Oh well...

It's strange. I've been using WA for years and never had a problem with it. Then all of a sudden it nearly ruins this level and completely wipes out most of decade2. That'll teach me to get lazy with backups!

[Bank]

A tear shed.