Switcheroom: Official Release (now on /idgames!)

[BaronOfStuff]

There's a tutti-frutti effect on E4M2 that I forgot to mention in an earlier post; the 'ladder' out of the lava by the secret exit doesn't display properly in Vanilla/Chocolate.

[Devalaous]

Its sad that Unruly Evil never gets a break, its always ExM1 material no matter what.

[Magnusblitz]

I'll fix the tutti-fruitis in E4M2 and E1M7 in the next update. Traversd has indicated he might be working on a reworked E1M8, after that, probably time to upload it to the archive and put a bow on it all.

Watched (or at least, skimmed) through the second part of Alfonzo's review. He definitely kept raising his disappointment with how the project goals were realized... something, I think, that was a side effect of how Death Egg was letting people into the project. Basically, it was "choose the slot you wanted", and so people would call something like "E3M4 in E2M4 slot" instead of just "E3M4 in E2 somewhere" which is why so many of the maps copied the aesthetics/texturing of the original map's slot it ended up in. Something to keep in mind, I think, for other community projects, I think it's a good reason why the "claim a map in an episode" is a better way to go, then deciding which maps should make the cut, rather than having a specific mapslot taken up.

[Alfonzo]

Thanks for the input there, Magnus. The second half of my review didn't bring much to the table on top of what was already mentioned in the first half, so I figured I'd forego linking it here to save folks the tedium of watching through what was, in effect, a bit of a rerun. Broken records and whatnot.

Anyway, I should stress that my experiences with the project, for all of its it shortcomings and for the strength of its concept, has me looking forward to the sequel quite a lot, albeit mostly to see if its potential has been better realised. Even if the mapset had not been fun to play through I'd find enough entertainment merely in singling out the execution of the project goal and what steps might have been taken to better the end result.

[BaronOfStuff]

A few more things I noticed on my Chocolate Doom adventure...
E3M6:
There's a hitscan issue near the start due to the map taking place in one giant sector:


E3M9:
Rocket box overlaps a sector and defies physics in vanilla/Choco, becoming completely unreachable from either side:


More tutti-frutti bullshit:



The good news is that this has all been fixed.

[Magnusblitz]

Thanks. For the E3M9 tutti, was the problem just that the stair texture had been unpegged? Or vertically displaced? Since I saw you kept the texture the same, and it's the right size...

[BaronOfStuff]

Unpegged, along with having a -8 offset for some reason.

[Magnusblitz]

Probably was originally marble skulls like the other stairs, and I didn't realize I needed to switch it back. I'll put your fixes in the next update, thanks again.

[SyntherAugustus]

I played the first few levels and I've got to say it's an improvement over the last release!

[mouldy]

Just finished playing through the whole thing, good stuff. Some maps work better than others, a few that stuck too closely to the originals, but also some really interesting interpretations. Dunno how well this concept will work with doom2, i guess you are already a way into that so we shall see.

[BaronOfStuff]

Okay, just finished things. Didn't find any more bugs or rendering issues to ruin my ChocoDoom fun along the way, although I didn't get 100% on all maps either so there might be the smallest of issues lurking to be discovered.

Seems good to go on /idgames once the next update's ready, overall a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

[Magnusblitz]

Alright, added in the last few bugfixes (thanks to BaronOfStuff) as well as NightFright's Zdoom MAPINFO, thanks.

Also, Traversd modified E1M8 a bit more, so it should feel a bit more like a map using E2M8's layout. (Also fixed up the intermission text to reflect the changes).

I think we're pretty much ready to upload, so, I'll give it a couple days and upload it to the archive. Thanks for all the last-minute bugfixes.

[NightFright]

I am deeply into ep.3 now and everything looks quite great. Some maps are too similar to the originals, e.g. E3M3, but I think it has been mentioned before and is nothing you can do anything about by now.

After all, these levels seem balanced and are fun to play, which is all that matters.

[Magnusblitz]

Switcheroom has now been uploaded to the /idgames archive, should show up on the Doomworld/idgames mirror when they sync.

[Magnusblitz]

Now on the /idgames mirror here. Hurrah!

[Jaws In Space]

Yay! Good work everyone, we couldn't have done it without you!

[BaronOfStuff]

And already some tedious prick has 0'd it.

[Devalaous]

Im going to download it and get greeted with a "Revision 952003" underway aren't I :(

[NightFright]

I rated it with four stars. The only thing that prevented me from giving the max rating was the fact that some maps just really stayed too close to the originals.

In general though, I think this is a really solid pack and should be especially enjoyable when being played with Chocolate Doom for making you feel a bit as if these maps were cut from the original game back in the days of its initial release.

[BaronOfStuff]

NightFright said:

I think this is a really solid pack and should be especially enjoyable when being played with Chocolate Doom

It really is. It almost feels like an official mapset.

[Devalaous]

I played it as if it was when I tested E1 ages back, and gave feedback accordingly. One map (E1M3) felt like it was designed to showcase the chainsaw weapon with only three monsters not easily chainsawable and felt completely official

[AD_79]

Small problem here, when I loaded up E1M8 in CNDoom, I get the map on the left. However, when I loaded it up in ZDoom and PRBoom+, I got the map on the right. Doom Builder and SLADE show me the map on the right, so I wonder why the left map shows up in CNDoom.

[Magnusblitz]

No idea, I kept overwriting the maps using DB2 to merge the WADs, not sure if that's why. The proper E1M8 (on the right) appeared for me when I tested it in Chocolate, not sure why CNDoom doesn't like it.

[ducon]

AD_79 said:

Small problem here, when I loaded up E1M8 in CNDoom, I get the map on the left. However, when I loaded it up in ZDoom and PRBoom+, I got the map on the right. Doom Builder and SLADE show me the map on the right, so I wonder why the left map shows up in CNDoom.

What are you complaining about? That’s the TRUE switcheroom gimmick. ;-)

[RjY]

AD_79 said:

Small problem here, when I loaded up E1M8 in CNDoom, I get the map on the left. However, when I loaded it up in ZDoom and PRBoom+, I got the map on the right. Doom Builder and SLADE show me the map on the right, so I wonder why the left map shows up in CNDoom.

I can't reproduce this. I downloaded cndoom-2.0.3.1.tar.gz linked from http://www.chocolate-doom.org/wiki/index.php/Cndoom-branch and built it (I first tried to build from git, but it's broken). I then loaded switcheroom with "./src/cndoom -iwad doomu.wad -file ~/doom/W/swtchrm/swtchrm.wad -warp 1 8" and it loaded traversd's E1M8/E2M8 as expected (your picture, right hand).

Also having examined the contents of the wad I can find no evidence of the other map (although I didn't look very hard, I just made sure there weren't more than one E1M8s lurking around).

I therefore surmise that you have a previous version of switcheroom somewhere else on your hard drive, and cndoom is configured to look in the wrong directory first.

[AD_79]

Well, someone sent me their CNDoom and swtchrm.wad files, so the normal E1M8 loads up now.

[Andrea Rovenski]

shoutouts to someone for helping fix the issue. E1M8 is a good map to play.

[Never_Again]

I did a nonstop FDA run of Episode 1 and here are my thoughts.

An interesting community project, this. The idea was to remake the original DOOM levels to what they might have looked like if they had appeared in different episodes. IMO, you exceeded that goal, and the final product is something quite different. That's a good thing, in case you're wondering: throughout this run not even once was I tempted to say "hey, that's a rip off ExMy".

Well done, guys. Already a few speedruns are appearing on DW, and there's bound to be more in the months to come. I tried my hand at speedrunning through the first five levels, too; and even though I didn't uncover any shortcuts (like vdgg, I'm an anti-trickaholic), from what I can see these are very fun to push for speed.

A couple of the maps seemed familiar in a different way: while their overall theme fit in with the Knee Deep in the Dead aesthetics, the style and the gameplay were distinctly non-Romeroian (whew, is that a neologism? ;). After looking through the WAD's authors.txt I was not surprised to see that traversd did E1M2 (and three others) - the same Travers who co-authored T_DUNN01.WAD I demoed a couple of years ago. Good job, Mr. Dunne, it's good to see you keeping it up after 17 years.

However, unless the project rules specifically called for the levels' difficulty to match that of the original counterparts, it might seem as if you have slowed down some over the years, man. :P

Spoiler

- unlike T_DUNN01's E2M3, none of the maps managed to kick my ass the first time through. Although as you can see E1M8 came pretty close.

A few of the levels took too long as I couldn't stop trying to get the elusive secrets sitting right in front of me. IMO if you are recording an FDA you usually must proceed to the exit once everything in sight is dead; but damn, that supercharge on E1M2 was maddening. After checking the map in DB later I cannot understand the purpose of that secret (and the one with the chainsaw nearby): what use to the player are items that become accessible only when you reach the exit?
Although that supercharge would not have hurt in this particular movie run. :D

My thanks to you guys for bringing out a whole DOOM1 megawad and exceeding your design targets.

[Never_Again]

A question for the megawad's authors, in particular Jaws In Space, traversd and Death Egg.

>> Was any of the three major shortcuts used in this run something you guys intentionally incorporated into your maps when you designed them? <<

The maps in question are E1M3, E1M6 and E1M8. I'd tell you what to look for as well, but don't want to spoil any possible surprises, heh.
Tip: while the demo is playing you can skip forward to the desired level with the PgDn key in Prboom-plus. It won't take much of your time, each of the three maps was done in under a minute. You can use Chocolate DOOM and probably Eternity, too, but then you'll have to watch the whole ten minutes. ;)

[Jaws In Space]

Wow that was cool, that was completely unintentional on my part, I was really confused as to why you were going toward the secret exit at first. Man I love it when speed runners find these cool tricks in maps that I don't even think about.