New Vanilla Map ready to Play!!!

[Death-Destiny]

(I started rambling about Vanilla mapping and Dark Plutonia. If you don't care, skip the next two paragraphs.)

[Skippable]
OK, I've got another map ready for you guys who are bored at the moment. This time I decided to get back to the basics with a Vanilla-compatible map... in theory anyway. Doom2.exe doesn't work on my computer, but it works on Chocolate Doom, so that's the best I can do. I was going to finish up another Hellish Boom-compatible map I was working on, but it was getting to be a chore to detail everything and set up the voodoo scripts I like too much and what have you. So I went ahead and made this instead. With Vanilla compatibility, I don't have to worry about generalized linedef actions or voodoo scripts. And I don't have to fill the map with messy details that seem to be an obligation of mapping these days since I have a fairly modest SEG and Visplane rendering limit. This was quite a refreshing task, to be honest, so here's my contribution to the "Zdoom-is-taking-over-the-community!-Let's-all-get-back-to-the-basics." train or thought, If you will.

I was surprised, actually. I would have though Boom would have spoiled me, but the original version of the map only had a single place with a visplane error that was easily corrected. (I hear there's a program to help you test vanilla maps without crashing the engine, but I don't know where I could find such a thing.) I actually think it would be fun to make a Vanilla megaWAD some time in the future, since Vanilla maps are clean and efficient, IMO. But that'll have to wait until after I finish DP, speaking of which, I appear to have more time now, so I'll try to jump on that soon. I hope to get the remaining six maps all finished in sequence.
[/Skippable]

Anyway, back to the map. I think it turned out a pretty neat demo-running map. The demo I made is for PrBoom V2.4.8.3 -complevel 2 for the sake of compatibilty, but you guys should play in chocolate Doom to humor me and to get the full experience, or something. I don't think UV is as extreme as usual, but all the skill levels are there, though. UV's par time is about 15 minutes and the other's are about 10 minutes, so this map is probably quicker than Crimson Horizon.

Here's the map: DOWNLOAD

[Haloless0320]

Looking good...what web hosting site do you use if you don't mind me asking.

[gggmork]

God damn man, oblige can't generate maps this fast. I'm still trying to uv demo the last one :D. Will check out.

[esselfortium]

(I hear there's a program to help you test vanilla maps without crashing the engine, but I don't know where I could find such a thing.)

http://sl4.poned.com/chocorenderlimits.exe Here it is! GhostlyDeath made it for KDiKDiZD. In addition to the onscreen counters and flashing HOM/VPO warnings, it increases the visplane limit from 128 to 256 so that you can find VPOs without actually crashing.

I would also recommend either using ZenNode with the parameters "-n2 -nu -rf -bc" or BSP-w32 with the parameters "-picknode visplane -blockmap comp -factor 25", to get the most out of vanilla's renderer.

ZenNode does a better job than BSP does at generating nodes that use fewer visplanes, so you're less likely to experience VPOs with it, but it's picky about self-referencing sectors: with ZenNode they'll only be invisible if their sector number is higher than that of the sector surrounding them.

[Death-Destiny]

esselfortium said:

http://sl4.poned.com/chocorenderlimits.exe Here it is! GhostlyDeath made it for KDiKDiZD. In addition to the onscreen counters and flashing HOM/VPO warnings, it increases the visplane limit from 128 to 256 so that you can find VPOs without actually crashing.

Hey cool. Thanks a lot, Essel! I think I'm going to go try the map in this program if not just out of curiosity to see the interface. =)

[gggmork]

I really like this one, probably because I like shorter maps since you can line up ducks in a row with a better probability in that shorter time frame so can play more risky. And this has some opportunities to get one infight going while working elsewhere to try and save time, not that that worked very well for me.. I tried but the demo kinda seemed slow, but this was my first route anyway. I was hoping for like 11ish but it would have been 13:30 (but I died on the last 2 cybers).

http://www.sendspace.com/file/fmi6zq

one bug I found is you can warp in the arch column without triggering the below ground enemies, then warp behind them still without triggering them so could potentially fall in one of their pits with no way to escape.
Another weird thing is that column vile can warp back in his column. This should lead to that backpack cyber, but when the cyber is still there the vile instead warps near the end (seems he shouldn't warp at all if the cyber blocks him).

[Death-Destiny]

gggmork said:

one bug I found is you can warp in the arch column without triggering the below ground enemies, then warp behind them still without triggering them so could potentially fall in one of their pits with no way to escape.
Another weird thing is that column vile can warp back in his column. This should lead to that backpack cyber, but when the cyber is still there the vile instead warps near the end (seems he shouldn't warp at all if the cyber blocks him).

Hey, good call gggmork. I added a linedef action in the entrance to the area where you teleport if you fall in the hazard, so the enemies will raise now. Thanks!

I made the Archie able to teleport to the end so if the player fails to find the secret, then they have to fight 2 Archies for the BFG (I set up some control sectors so it can hear you from there). I guess he could wander off even if you find him, and that would create a Cyb/Archie setup similar to the one in the easternmost area of the map. I thought that was a neat option to have, so I left it in. =)

Anyways, I put the new map up now. That change didn't desynce either demo. Hey gggmork, the link to your demo doesn't work. Did you remove it?

Oh, and while this thread's been bumped, I might as well post some screenies of it in case anyone else might be curious about it:

[gggmork]

Oops, that link should work now. A faster route (that I only did with saves) seems to be to get the RL right at the start and infight less and shoot more. Oh, I see, that was a good idea to still get max if you miss that secret.

[Tango]

.png is a much better file format to use for Doom screenshots. Bmps take forever :[

[Death-Destiny]

Hmm... I saved those images as Bitmaps? I wonder why I did that. Oh, well, I fixed that now. (I think I can change those back to images now instead of URLs since the filesizes are one-fifth the size of the old ones... my bad guys.)

Also, while I'm here, hey gggmork, that demo of yours was really awesome. You had so many good ideas that I lost track. You did a good job of infighting so that you had enough ammo to get the red and blue keys without the RL. This is my favorite of your demos. It's a shame you couldn't squeeze by that last Cyb. =(

[gggmork]

I died with my face in an imp's ass :(