Doom 2 In Name Only - Now (supsiciously) on a load of gaming articles

[_bruce_]

Will look into this - thanks Effingham.

[plums]

MAP15: Wow, what a doozy! I mean I liked it but it was quite long and elaborate, got lost several times. I'm not checking these maps for VPOs at all, I assume they're all fixed in that regard, but this one had me wondering at times.

Lots of tutti frutti on the STEP4 textures and maybe other steps. A bunch of screenshots here but it's by far not all of them. Y-offsets on these are a no-go if you want to avoid TF.












Some other TF on the secret switches key, though I don't recall any on the actual switches themselves.




Lastly I have no idea if this soulsphere is obtainable, couldn't find out how even after opening the map in DB.




edit: HAH, I didn't know who made this map while playing it, but the secret switches and especially the secret exit business reminded me of Cannonball's MAP15 in NOVA. No surprise as to why it seems!

[Xaser]

As a heads-up for plums and other folks playing through, MAP31 is broken in the latest beta in the OP. Load this version alongside the wad when you get to the appropriate spot:
http://static.angryscience.net/doom/xa-wolfy-v3.zip

[plums]

Xaser said:

As a heads-up for plums and other folks playing through, MAP31 is broken in the latest beta in the OP. Load this version alongside the wad when you get to the appropriate spot:
http://static.angryscience.net/doom/xa-wolfy-v3.zip

Appreciated, but I actually just finished it (using the one in D2INOB7b.wad) and it seemed ok? I know there are some things that were supposed to be tweaked/fixed but I didn't encounter any showstoppers or anything.

[cannonball]

Cheers Plums, managed to fix the tuti-frutti in all the places you spotted plus a couple of others (though no guarantees of all off them quashed in the map)
Also I decided to try and make the secret exit look a little less tacky. I thought I might replace the wolfenstein brickwork in the exit room with the brickwork used in Xaser's map. If that is fine with everyone I can simply upload the fixed version now, if people do have a problem then it shouldn't take more than half an hour to make another exit room which meets everyone's' preferences.

[EffinghamHuffnagel]

-------
MAP06
-------
I've run through this map a dozen times now. Forget what I said about MAP05 and being "way too tough". The Arch-Vile maze - Geez, Loueez! Wow. Great use of the map title. Keeping the rising/falling floors in the central area straight must have been maddening. Plums already mentioned the rockets in the central area getting stuck on the walls when they rise. Here's a brighter picture.

http://i.imgur.com/aqqHta7.png

I also found some shells with the same problem in the small crusher room.

http://i.imgur.com/Ikqg4Nn.png

I love the intricate overlap - having to re-cross the same areas from different directions and everything being different. Great design. I also love that you really only need the Red Key OR the Blue Key to get to the Maze, not both. However, I did find a way around something that was contrary to the author's intentions. The Red Key room - first I entered through the window,

http://i.imgur.com/b4kExon.png

then I tripped the switch raising the stairs to the Red Key without dropping to the floor.

http://imgur.com/wkpylu3.png

Staying on the same level, I was able to run across the space to the stairs

http://imgur.com/79TExez.png

and grab the Red Key without crossing linedef tag 8, W1 RaiseFloor24, which blocks off the main entrance.

http://imgur.com/VeCjIta.png

Basically, I came in by the side door and left by the front entrance. Did I break something? Don't know. But it was during this run that I somehow ended up here.

http://imgur.com/GNaekdp.png

No idea how. Couldn't repeat it. The author knows the level better than I ever could. If linedef tag 8 is really important, maybe it should be moved to line 554, the entrance to the alcove before the barrier that needs to be raised, and made an Instant-Up wall (W1 LowerFloorToHighestAdjacentFloor).

Oh, and surviving the Arch-Vile Maze and then running right into a horde of Revenants? That's just evil.

GREAT map.

[_bruce_]

Big thanks again Effington for your precise bug update - the fact that I overlooked the blue key dependance at the end is kinda hilarious.
No, the All Seeing Eye is a bonus but no secret. I thought it's kinda neat if there are additional hidden things which do not have the fanfare of a secret surrounding them.

[plums]

There's a strange bug with Mark Klem MIDIs (his fault, not yours) where the drum track is set to program 127 for some reason. I suspect when he composed it it didn't make a difference, but with some soundfonts (notably 8mbgmsfx.sf2 from Creative, which is recommended often) it ends up sounding quite bad. Perhaps it's worth changing, I'm sure it's not going against the author's intent.

[plums]

MAP16: despite having essentially beta-tested this before, I found some more stuff that I missed or has changed since.

These stall doors are initially off of the ground, but when they close, they close all the way to the ground, resulting in tuttis. You could fix this with some complicated see-through door type effects, making the door texture a midtex that is up off the ground. Or you could just have the doors stay open, or use a different texture.




It looks a little weird to have the window border peeking up out of the ground here.




This door still only opens from one side, the side in the screenshot does nothing. I can't see why this would be intentional.




One chaingunner never got raised in this ambush, making 100% kills impossible.




These doors are weird... they're one-use only from the outside, but repeatable from the inside? Not game breaking but you can get them stuck in weird places, or lock the player out. In this screenshot that door is not actually moving.

[plums]

MAP17: Perhaps the smallest tutti frutti yet.


MAP18: And the stealthiest tutti frutti, the step texture that covers the wall before the stairs actually rise here.

[Tristan]

Holy shit this all piled up D:
I'll start listing this in the OP, give me a year or two.

[mouldy]

Is Eris taking care of all these bits and pieces now? It looks like they are mostly fairly minor tweaks at least.

[Tristan]

I'll do them over the next few days, I've had no broadband since last Wednesday so couldn't fix them as they came through.

[mouldy]

Cool, I can smell the end of this project approaching...

[plums]

Eris Falling said:

Holy shit this all piled up D:
I'll start listing this in the OP, give me a year or two.

About 90% of what I'm reporting is just tutti frutti and other small visual quibbles, none of which is really essential. Don't feel overwhelmed.

MAP19: What a mad-genius elaborate map. Fantastic job. I think it took me close to 2 hours. Some of those secrets are pretty obscure, but many are entirely unnecessary.

Despite such a large map with so many intricate parts, I only found 2 minor visual things that might not even be problems at all. First, the step texture not being lined up with the support columns looks a bit off.


Second, the extra exit teleport uses the whole exit texture as a flat sign with no offsets.

[Xaser]

plums said:

Appreciated, but I actually just finished it (using the one in D2INOB7b.wad) and it seemed ok? I know there are some things that were supposed to be tweaked/fixed but I didn't encounter any showstoppers or anything.

My bad -- seems Eris hotfixed the one super-critical troublespot (extra playerstart in the exit room :P ), so all is well.

[plums]

MAP22: Interesting map, very thematic. I really liked it but combat seemed easier than many of the previous maps. Especially for players that find the tech-room ammo secret, I'm sure that made a big difference. Oh well! Besides, the ease in difficulty may have been due to bugs:

This is another map that suffers from the same savegame bug as in MAP09. Essentially, anywhere you want to have monsters from a closet teleport in, you need to make sure the monsters can be alerted from that area in addition to the start or wherever. Notable places that suffered are the opening chapel area after the door closes behind you, and the green-torch slime arena that is laughably easy without a ton of teleporting monsters.

Another vanilla-limited bug is that the pain elementals are entirely harmless until near the end, because of the 21 lost soul limit. Maybe replace them with more lost souls, or just cacodemons even.

Candles too close to the altar




Possible bug: the sectors right next to the bloodfalls are damaging (and none of the other blood is).

[scifista42]

plums said:

MAP19: What a mad-genius elaborate map. Fantastic job. I think it took me close to 2 hours. Some of those secrets are pretty obscure, but many are entirely unnecessary.

Thanks :p. And yes, I know what you mean by "obscure" and "unnecessary".

I only found 2 minor visual things that might not even be problems at all. First, the step texture not being lined up with the support columns looks a bit off.
http://i.imgur.com/vMvec2Y.png

Second, the extra exit teleport uses the whole exit texture as a flat sign with no offsets.
http://i.imgur.com/Ga40kBA.png

To be honest, both of these were intentions. That's the obscure-ness too. My state of mind allows me to think that such choices might look or function good, or at least allowed when I've been working on the map back then. Are they really correction-worthy faults?

[plums]

They looked like they might have been unintentional, I wasn't sure. If they're by design, then that's perfectly fine I think.

[plums]

MAP23: I saw the barrels; where was the fun? Mostly joking, but there were some really frustrating spots, mostly involving teleporters, that weren't done in a fun way at all. Oh well.

I had problems with monsters not teleporting but I'm unsure if it's due to vanilla savegame problems or something else.

The monsters in the rightmost window here just stood still and didn't attack.




The barrels poke through the wall when the player is on the red key area. (Unsure if this is the same in vanilla/chocolate doom, since I'm using a port with a higher resolution.)




Wrong METAL texture on the left of this screenshot, it's nowhere else in this room.




Tutti-frutti.




The spiderdemon crusher sectors are weird, some of them look unclosed.




BTW Eris if you want help fixing this map (or any others) I don't mind doing that. Joseph Lord's last post in this thread made it sound like he had other things to worry about at the time, and he seems generally OK with people fixing up his maps.

[EffinghamHuffnagel]

-----
MAP07
-----
Love the homage to the original MAP07 - the "obvious sector in the middle of the room that you have to enter to finish the level, but is unnecessarily tagged as secret." Nice touch.

----
Also very nice making a linedef S1 Red Key OpenFast so it looks like a W1 EndLevel linedef on the Automap. "That was fun. A short and simple MAP07, just like the original. Wait. What just happened? Where am I? Revenants? AAAAAHHH!"

----
There are some energy cells by the Yellow Key that look odd if you don't grab them before the stairs rise.

http://i.imgur.com/r8fk59K.png

Suggest moving them slightly so they are completely centered on the top step.

----
Can't get 100%. The last two Arch-Viles (things 543 and 544) did not teleport into the last room.

http://i.imgur.com/5lwwZ62.png

Not sure why, but it's probably a good thing. When I figured out what I hadn't killed, I clipped off-map so they could see me and teleport in. When I got back to the last room, they had resurrected some Mancubi. So when I killed them the exit stairs rose again and I couldn't exit the level.

http://i.imgur.com/zYlW4s9.png

I suppose, theoretically, the same thing could happen with the three Arch-Viles in the last room's central area if you don't kill them before the sector rises all the way to the top, but I don't think it's possible to hit all three switches and survive long enough to get out of the sector without being killed. Suggest deleting these last two off-map Arch-Viles. There's enough of them already.

And using Arch-Viles to "spawn" more Mancubi and Arachnos after the original ones are all dead so you can use tag 666 and 667 again in the same map? I've never seen that before. That's genius.

[plums]

EffinghamHuffnagel said:

Can't get 100%. The last two Arch-Viles (things 543 and 544) did not teleport into the last room.

I'm not positive at all, but I don't think I experienced this. It could be a ZDoom specific problem, or even just a fluke. I'll give it another run later and see.

Also while I'm talking about MAP07, I forgot to say before that I was sad to see the platforming gone entirely. Too bad, but I guess people are really divided on platforming in general.

[mouldy]

EffinghamHuffnagel said:

-----
MAP07
-----

When I got back to the last room, they had resurrected some Mancubi. So when I killed them the exit stairs rose again and I couldn't exit the level.

I suggested making the linedefs of the exit steps lift-switches so you can still get out if this happens, dunno if that was implemented or not.

plums said:

Also while I'm talking about MAP07, I forgot to say before that I was sad to see the platforming gone entirely.

heh. There was no way I was ever going to be able to do that bit.

[EffinghamHuffnagel]

plums said:

It could be a ZDoom specific problem, or even just a fluke. I'll give it another run later and see.

Not a fluke. It happened 3 times under ZDoom and just now I tested under vanilla. Same problem. Let me open it up.

Doh! I should have checked more carefully in the editor. I originally checked that their teleport linedefs are tagged to valid sectors. They are, but the sectors in front of them that are supposed to drop so they can teleport out are tagged to linedef tag 104, which is missing.

EDIT: Hey wait, if the sectors never drop, how was I able to let them see me and teleport in when I clipped that last time through.

Doh2! The sectors they are standing in are tagged to linedef tag 98, S1 RaiseFloorToMatchNextHigherFloor. So they can use the teleport linedef, they just never hear me to activate. Shooting in the first room activates all off-map AVs except those two. Their activation must be tied to hearing a sound in some other sector, like with the Spiderbosses.

I suppose the fastest fix would be to put a 4-unit high and wide "sound tunnel" between the two and another one to the AV just south of them.

EDIT2: OR - the sectors in front of the AVs are merged to each other, but not to the other sectors in front of the other AVs even though all of them have the same ceiling and floor heights. Merging them all should fix it.

EDIT3: So yeah, merging sector 767 with sector 40 does fix the problem. Just blazed through it on iddqd, killing only what I needed to. The last two AVs do get activated. And my other original concern about the exit stairs rising more than once could never happen now. Assuming you kill the first AV when you teleport into the last room, and then the two that teleport in on top of the switches, when you hit the last switch, the last two teleport in. If either of them are still alive when the room gets to the top they are in a crossfire between Arachnos, Mancubi and the Spiderboss. And the Arachnos and Mancubi teleport in slowly. It's a one-in-a-million chance either one outlives all of one type of the other monsters and is then able to resurrect one.

Geez, this is a long post. I have to learn to write my thoughts out before I post.

Question: I don't know what normal posting convention is. Should I leave the post as it is, with all my thought processes, or delete everything except the answer to the problem?

[ella guro]

just playing this through for the first time in awhile. both the Map 06 and 07 remakes are kind of genius and totally different from the last time i played this! one thing about the big archvile crusher part in map 06 - how exactly do you get out of the maze once the crushers are turned on?

[Tristan]

I was wondering if you still followed this :P
For MAP06 I think you can just go back the way you came. I've never had any trouble getting out.

I've done about half of the things reported since B7b. Left 15 as I think Cannonball is fixing them.
I don't think I fixed the MAP06 rockets, as I couldn't get them to a suitable position. I may have a look again later.

I fixed that thin non-damaging sector in MAP05, but the secret itself still doesn't damage. I left it due to preference, I like secrets to be safe to some extent, but if everyone complains I'll change that.
On MAP13, those TF's seemed to be only fixable by completely changing the texture on the sides. It's a minor difference, but it does the job.

This afternoon, I'll continue. I'm up to Effingham's MAP06 report (not sure how many of those I can fix without breaking anything), and plum's MAP16. Thanks a lot, both of you :D

[duh]

At first I was like meh, now I am like wow.

An original mapset under non original names. Both the looks and the gameplay impressed me (the lava part on the focus was genius), and hey, no abuse of brown here! Also, dem traps. :)

I also loved map09! Open areas FTW (how come this thing works in vanilla?)!

[CorSair]

Aargh the amount of pages *drowns*


Anyways, snapping out from apathy, I'll be ready to do some fixes on my maps.

As for the light fix on MAP09, well...

Eris Falling said:

It's not like the entire map was changed.

So no harm done, on my part. And generally, I am quite lenient with some changes. (And to told truth, I couldn't make it any better without VPOs or Segs banging out from safe zone.)

As I said weeks ago, I did few demos, up to MAP15 for third beta (or was it second?), but file is lost somewhere on this piece of turd I am typing from. In any case, are there folks interested on these, or shall I do batch of new demos?

[Tristan]

CorSair! :D
I've done the changes to your maps already, and I don't think there was anything I could've broken, so no need to worry there :)

EDIT:

XCOPY said:

no abuse of brown here!

I take it you haven't got to my map yet? :P

[CorSair]

Well, I show in really inconvenient times when it comes to fixing, do I? :P

Also, out of curiosity, what's the status on about the par times, seen on to-do-list in OP?