Rawnwood.wad (1994 tune up)

[MajorRawne]

Hi, I am creating a thread about this map as I need a lot of help and don't want to dominate the 1994 tune up thread.

I am having a few technical issues regarding this map and need someone to look at it for me. Currently the map is unplayable, purely because of a few start room issues:

* Someone has triggered the door to open once all the Mancubi are dead, but this doesn't work (I playtest the maps in ZDoom).
* A number of starting room height issues which leave some Mancs floating in mid-air, and appear to make the Mancs ignore the player, unless seriously provoked (ie attacked).

The rest of the map after the start room is (mostly) playable.

I have made some gameplay tweaks:

* Changed the ammo balance towards a greater amount of shotgun shells and bullets.
* Changed the starting shotgun back to a super shotty, since killing eight Mancs with a single shotty and <20 rockets is a pain in the arse.
* Removed some of the Lost Souls and tagged more of the monsters as Hard difficulty only.

Finally there have been a number of visual tweaks:

* Reduced the candle pillar height and width in the starting room.
* Created damaged areas of ceiling in the crusher tunnel, and changed the wall and floor textures in this area.
* Changed more of the trap rooms into blood-soaked areas in accordance with my "hidden hell behind the wood" idea.

The map is here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?flrbzv2aip96hwj

Unless someone is able to help me get my head round this map, I won't be able to submit it!

[NoneeLlama]

MajorRawne said:

* Someone has triggered the door to open once all the Mancubi are dead, but this doesn't work (I playtest the maps in ZDoom).

That only works on map07.

[MajorRawne]

They used some sort of voodoo doll arrangement, I am not up on voodoo dolls at all.

[Mithran Denizen]

I didn't look too closely, so I might be missing some of the intent behind the way the map works, but I may be able to shed some light on the two problems you mentioned.

Firstly, I don't see much indication that any door has been triggered to open after all the mancubi are dead; no sectors use tag 666, and the voodoo doll setup that's there opens the door (among doing a couple other things) a few seconds after you cross the lines surrounding the shotgun. When checking it in ZDoom, I did encounter an odd visual bug after all the mancubi had been killed, in that the ceiling above them lowered to the ground for some reason (causing HOM) but I didn't check to see why that happened, and I doubt it was an attempt to make the door open upon their deaths.

It looks like the second problem is due to botched/overlapping sectors (sectors 0 and 550, specifically, which overlap with sector 108). I assume that the mancubi are supposed to see you as soon as you enter the room--if this is the case, you should be able to fix it by fixing the outer sectors.

If you use Doom Builder 2, this can be done by using the 'Make Sectors Mode'; clicking once each within the confines of sectors 0 and 550, but not within sector 108. (If that's too unclear, then just try clicking between lines 3 and 1002, and then again between lines 8 and 648.)

Without DB2's mode, you can do the same thing manually; you'd just have to select the lines of sector 108 and change their back sides to the sector index that is supposed to be surrounding the area; the lines on the west side of the hall would need their back sector to be sector 0, and the lines on the east side of the hall would need their back sector to be sector 550.

It's good that you're working on fixing it up, as the version you posted has a ton of HOMs and missing textures, but I assume that you know that. I might be wrong, but it also looks like the voodoo doll scroller area is set up poorly, with an unused teleporter destination and an overly complex shape.

[traversd]

MajorRawne said:

* Someone has triggered the door to open once all the Mancubi are dead, but this doesn't work (I playtest the maps in ZDoom).
* A number of starting room height issues which leave some Mancs floating in mid-air, and appear to make the Mancs ignore the player, unless seriously provoked (ie attacked).

I made that change. I'll fix it for you tonight when I get home from work. Just looking at it quicky you've changed the height of the mancubus platform but not the trigger sector and it's associated conveyor (voodoo doll) setup. Thats OK. All fixable as it just means the height variation is stopping the voodoo doll from passing the required linedefs, also I think it's probably stopping the trigger sector from activating too.

Don't worry MR, we'll get the ship righted and this map will be in the pack no worries ;o)

Edit: Thinking about how the "on death" trigger was done and what I've done since this map has me seeing a much easier way to this using the scroll on sector height change instead of using the door itself as the switch. Will look at it tonight.

-t

[traversd]

http://t.underworldgamers.com/wp-content/uploads/rawnwoodhelp-td1.zip

I've corrected all the height variations going on in the first room and adjacent rooms. (MR: I might have missed you rationale but I'd strongly suggest you keep to 8units in terms of sector heights as it makes texturing easier and everything generally "fits" together better).

So what I did was raise the starting room and the first room to 64units and made some stairs for attached doors.

I re-did the "on-death" trigger as I mentioned this morning. It's much cleaner now I think, and yeh the manc's get angry straight away ;o)

I also had to fix up the starting room a touch. You removed the teleporter from the outside which was put there for co-op games. I changed one of the hanging body parts in the rocket launcher alcove too as it blocked player movement. Its now got one that the player can walk thru/under.

So all yours now mate. I have one suggestion and that is the "barrels" you have added feel a little out of place, but I noticed when playing they "flicker" between the barrel and the item. If you want to keep them I'd suggest placing the item 2units offset from the barrel so the engine doesn't fight over drawing them.

EDIT: PS. Come back to the main 1994 thread ;o)

-t

[MajorRawne]

Mithran - thanks for the feedback, it was invaluable! The botched sectors are possibly something that happened when I started messing with sector heights etc, or maybe it was just something I missed from the beginning and didn't know how to identify.

The map is designed in ZDoom but I did check it in PrBoom (last year). At this moment my priority is making sure the map works at all. Does the voodoo doll thing only work in Boom?

The HOMS you and others have mentioned don't show up when I playtest the map on my computer and that makes it nearly impossible for me to identify issues. I am having trouble inserting new textures, skies and music into the map and that's where the prominent HOMs seem to come from.

Traversd - Thanks mate, you are a lifeline! Your edit of my map might have taken you a few minutes but it could have taken me hours. I *think* the original sector heights were weird, and I got too caught up in extreme detail and making the level work in an intricate fashion, rather than simply prettifying the map and making it tougher.

How does the voodoo doll work - I have almost know knowledge of what to use them for, other than killing the player after a specific time with a crusher or barrels or something.

This map turned into a project that was too big for me, but with the help of my fellow Doomers I'm sure Rawnwood will be competitive against the other maps in the collection. :)

[traversd]

Mapping isn't "quick" for me either so a couple of hours.

A voodoo doll as u probably know is an additional player start. How these generally work is by using a boom linedef type that moves the player start along the floor and across linedefs which it will trigger on the players behalf.

The voodoo setup for this map is near the revenants on the lefthand side of the first room. Essentially it works by putting the mancs in a sector that closes like a door. This action causes the sector height to change which then causes the voodoo doll to move along the floor. The mancs stop the door closing and so the voodoo doll won't cross the linedefs to open the first room door until they are all killed and the door sector they are in can close completely. I then re-open that door so the player should be none the wiser. However you may note that the mancs corpses are the squished type because the door squashes them.

Should work in zdoom as well as boom.

Hope that made sense. I'll make an example map and post it in my original "on death" thread later this week.

-t