Valiant.wad - now on /idgames!

[Memfis]

Apparently streaming is good for mapping because you can't alt+tab every 5 minutes to facebook or something. So yeah, try it. :)

[Degree23]

skillsaw said:

I'm extremely happy with how Valiant turned out, I feel like I've made something I can be proud of and can enjoy, and I'm glad that others enjoy it as much as I do, even with the conscious effort I made to throw in some goofy/gimicky/silly maps that I was pretty sure wouldn't be up anyone else's alley.

I'm going to co-op this with my brother soon and I'm very much looking forward to it having played Map 1.

ArmouredBlood said:

Do iiiiiit. I'd love to see how something like Valiant was made. I don't have the best setup, but I did some streams making some of ng2. I haven't been back to it for a while because I haven't started the next map, but it's fun.

Woah, you're working on a New Gothic Movement 2?!

[skillsaw]

Final version? Yeah, right. I spoke too soon.

The MBF 3-key door bug is way worse than I realized, so I've updated MAP05, MAP09, MAP11, MAP19, MAP29, and MAP32 so that they can't be cheated so easily. Coincidentally the 3 key door in MAP27 is not affected by the bug due to the required yellow key pickup earlier in the map.

AFAIK these should be all the maps that have 3-key doors. Please yell at me if I missed one.

Thanks to MD922 for finding this bug and posting demos so quickly.

Download link is the same as above... or just click here:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/77yq6ppm3rjt50o

[Memfis]

Noticed a little oddity on the status bar, not intentional perhaps: http://i.imgur.com/q6ldlMZ.png

Also on Map07 it's kinda ugly how the rising bridge doesn't change its flat until it reaches the very top.

[Aqfaq]

This is easily one of the best wads ever. Thank you.

[printz]

Wait - before you submit this to /idgames.

You didn't include an OPTIONS lump in the wad. This means that for users with different settings, the game might break. This includes stuff like floor motion or friend monster behaviour.

Check the MBF config file and paste into OPTIONS the settings with asterisk (*) in the comment. But only paste the ones that matter in the gameplay.

Unfortunately, unless entryway changed something for the better, PrBoom+ doesn't support OPTIONS, so users of that port might have to be lucky. I don't know if ZDoom reads it either.

[skillsaw]

Memfis said:

Noticed a little oddity on the status bar, not intentional perhaps: http://i.imgur.com/q6ldlMZ.png

Also on Map07 it's kinda ugly how the rising bridge doesn't change its flat until it reaches the very top.

Hm, those lighter pixels on the status bar do look like an accident. Anyways, thanks for letting me know but this is the kind of minor stuff that I'm just going to leave in at this point.

printz said:

Wait - before you submit this to /idgames.

You didn't include an OPTIONS lump in the wad. This means that for users with different settings, the game might break. This includes stuff like floor motion or friend monster behaviour.

Check the MBF config file and paste into OPTIONS the settings with asterisk (*) in the comment. But only paste the ones that matter in the gameplay.

Unfortunately, unless entryway changed something for the better, PrBoom+ doesn't support OPTIONS, so users of that port might have to be lucky. I don't know if ZDoom reads it either.

I'm not sure this is critical, then - it sounds like the OPTIONS lump is only read in MBF.exe and Eternity Engine then? MBF.exe isn't even one of the supported ports.

[UglyStru]

Skillsaw, you are the Bin Laden of hiding these damn secrets. I've spent a good 60-90 minutes looking for these secrets. I've found out how to get 2 of them: the chaingun on the center platform at the start, and the room with the rockets and medikits when using the orange-ish light by it. The rest of them have me stumped... you tricky motherfucker

[skillsaw]

http://i.imgur.com/6SWgAvT.png

1 - Minigun you jump to
2 - Orange light secret with medikits and rockets
3 - There is a hidden shootable switch on the back side of this pillar. Shoot it and follow the arrow I drew to the room that opens. You'll have to be quick.
4 - You can drop to this ledge from above for an SSG.
5 - Take the teleporter at 5 to get to the berserk.

[UglyStru]

Thanks, dude I appreciate it. You're still a tricky motherfucker though. :)

[zinkai]

Loving this was playing on uv, getting pawned but get there in the end, up to lvl 7 I think.

Very well presented nice tweaks on the enemies. Awsome awesome awesome

[killer2]

Hi. Is it possible to add support for Perkristian's smooth animations wad or just implement the animations for the old weapons? I find the contrast of old and new animation quality to be a bit jarring.

[skillsaw]

killer2 said:

Hi. Is it possible to add support for Perkristian's smooth animations wad or just implement the animations for the old weapons? I find the contrast of old and new animation quality to be a bit jarring.

I can't actually find a download link for Perkristian's mod, (the link seems broken on his website and on the Doomworld thread) but if it only changes the weapons, you can make it work with Valiant by commenting out his new pistol and his new chaingun in the DECORATE lump of his wad/pk3 file. You'll probably have to get rid of his sprite and sound replacements for those weapons, too.

Mods that change monsters are basically impossible to support without also modifying Valiant itself. In that case, If you want to use those wads with Valiant, you are welcome to make changes to your local copy to make it function correctly, but I will not be attempting to support individual mods - it would be an impossibly huge task given the number of mods and the lack of a general solution for mod compatibility with DeHackEd.

The only way I could see supporting mods is by releasing a separate version of Valiant that removed all the DeHackEd stuff and modified each map with new thing numbers that do not replace existing entities.

[killer2]

skillsaw said:

I can't actually find a download link for Perkristian's mod, (the link seems broken on his website and on the Doomworld thread) but if it only changes the weapons, you can make it work with Valiant by commenting out his new pistol and his new chaingun in the DECORATE lump of his wad/pk3 file. You'll probably have to get rid of his sprite and sound replacements for those weapons, too.

Mods that change monsters are basically impossible to support without also modifying Valiant itself. In that case, If you want to use those wads with Valiant, you are welcome to make changes to your local copy to make it function correctly, but I will not be attempting to support individual mods - it would be an impossibly huge task given the number of mods and the lack of a general solution for mod compatibility with DeHackEd.

The only way I could see supporting mods is by releasing a separate version of Valiant that removed all the DeHackEd stuff and modified each map with new thing numbers that do not replace existing entities.

Ok, thanks for the answer. I should probably avoid making demands like this when I don't even know how this coding stuff works.

[40oz]

Just played the first four levels of this for the first time last night. Sorry I took so long to catch up. I jotted down some thoughts.

- a megawad is a tremendous feat, wish I had known about this before you laid it on us!!

- the pistol is better but still feels like a pistol. As in "I can't wait to get rid of this thing" type weapon. The first couple rooms in the first level kinda made me use it when I didn't want to.

- the new chaingun is sweet. I felt compelled to completely empty my bullet inventory everytime I pick up a bullet box. Thank you for making bullet boxes give 75 :)

- I had trouble adjusting to many of the new monsters and weapons. Even though most stuff was mostly intact, I had trouble adjusting to it at first. I'm a really traditionalist player though, I haven't touched a wad that used new dehacked or decorate monsters in a loooong time. It's a personal preference I think. It reminded me of playing heretic. You feel like your playing doom and then things start happening and then you realize its not quite doom.

- the gameplay was super hectic. In a way it reminded me of Doom 3 except with 5x the monster population and tall grass and hanging vines instead of darkness.

- monsters were often hidden around corners, and safe places to hide for cover were mostly rare or non existent. This was particularly troublesome as monsters pretty much always saw me before I saw them, and you really couldn't fight any one monster without also fighting all of them at once. This made me feel really panicky and like I didn't have any control, which is why I felt like I needed to take a break after 4 maps. I didn't die much thanks to the generous soulsphere placement, but i did take a lot of damage from hitscan hell and tiny imp fireballs.

- if you gave me Doom 2, or Alien Vendetta or Plutonia Experiment with all the monsters removed, I could open those maps up in an editor I could place the monsters in their original locations with 80% accuracy just from playing the maps before and never even having looked at them in an editor. I couldn't say the same for Valiant.

Sorry if these all seem rather negative. Many people here spoke very positively about your maps, so I'm probably in the minority when I say that I didn't find it too difficult or too easy, but I wasn't necessarily enjoying myself so far while playing it. I trust that there are certainly some very good maps to come though so I will continue playing in hopes that perhaps i was just having an off day and my feelings will do a 180 next time i play it. I enjoyed Vanguard a hella lot, so Ill stay optimistic.

[skillsaw]

40oz said:

Just played the first four levels of this for the first time last night. Sorry I took so long to catch up. I jotted down some thoughts.

- a megawad is a tremendous feat, wish I had known about this before you laid it on us!!

- the pistol is better but still feels like a pistol. As in "I can't wait to get rid of this thing" type weapon. The first couple rooms in the first level kinda made me use it when I didn't want to.

- the new chaingun is sweet. I felt compelled to completely empty my bullet inventory everytime I pick up a bullet box. Thank you for making bullet boxes give 75 :)

- I had trouble adjusting to many of the new monsters and weapons. Even though most stuff was mostly intact, I had trouble adjusting to it at first. I'm a really traditionalist player though, I haven't touched a wad that used new dehacked or decorate monsters in a loooong time. It's a personal preference I think. It reminded me of playing heretic. You feel like your playing doom and then things start happening and then you realize its not quite doom.

- the gameplay was super hectic. In a way it reminded me of Doom 3 except with 5x the monster population and tall grass and hanging vines instead of darkness.

- monsters were often hidden around corners, and safe places to hide for cover were mostly rare or non existent. This was particularly troublesome as monsters pretty much always saw me before I saw them, and you really couldn't fight any one monster without also fighting all of them at once. This made me feel really panicky and like I didn't have any control, which is why I felt like I needed to take a break after 4 maps. I didn't die much thanks to the generous soulsphere placement, but i did take a lot of damage from hitscan hell and tiny imp fireballs.

- if you gave me Doom 2, or Alien Vendetta or Plutonia Experiment with all the monsters removed, I could open those maps up in an editor I could place the monsters in their original locations with 80% accuracy just from playing the maps before and never even having looked at them in an editor. I couldn't say the same for Valiant.

Sorry if these all seem rather negative. Many people here spoke very positively about your maps, so I'm probably in the minority when I say that I didn't find it too difficult or too easy, but I wasn't necessarily enjoying myself so far while playing it. I trust that there are certainly some very good maps to come though so I will continue playing in hopes that perhaps i was just having an off day and my feelings will do a 180 next time i play it. I enjoyed Vanguard a hella lot, so Ill stay optimistic.

Haha, thanks for playing. Not sure I would really consider any of your bullet points as a negative, though (other than the pistol one, maybe, but that seems minor to me). The comments about the gameplay being too hectic, there being insufficient cover, and the monsters being unpredictably placed are actually very major positives as far as I'm concerned, so chances are you will find the rest of the maps to be exhausting as well if that's not your cup of tea.

[Memfis]

40oz said:

- if you gave me Doom 2, or Alien Vendetta or Plutonia Experiment with all the monsters removed, I could open those maps up in an editor I could place the monsters in their original locations with 80% accuracy just from playing the maps before and never even having looked at them in an editor. I couldn't say the same for Valiant.

I'm curious, what are you trying to say here? You mean that monster placement in D2\AV\PL is much more memorable or something else? It's not very clear to me.

[ReFracture]

I think he's just trying to say that encounters felt a bit tighter and memorable in wads like AV. More about traps than a large monster count.

Valiant is just chaos by comparison, they're everywhere and while there are traps they aren't really frequent or as threatening as the general enemies that are all over the place.

Not really a negative so much as a different style I guess.

[40oz]

Memfis said:

I'm curious, what are you trying to say here? You mean that monster placement in D2\AV\PL is much more memorable or something else? It's not very clear to me.

If a slaughter map is any indication of good gameplay, you can identify a lot of key elements within the first few seconds of gameplay. Like imagine a level where theres a middle tower with hellknights on it, revenants on pillars around the borders, and a ton of imps/pinkies and a cyberdemon at ground level, with a path to a megasphere if you go right, and a path to a rocket launcher if you go left.

Even though you may have to die a few times, you can see the clear indications of danger and evaluate a solution. You might be able to tell that the cyberdemon already acts like a rocket launcher, so it makes sense to get it to infight with monsters first, then go for the megasphere. While the ground level monsters are distracted with each other, you can buy yourself some time to get the rocket launcher and snipe those revenants, then eventually clean up the hellknights and wounded cyberdemon when its all over.

In Valiant, most of the monsters attack you guerilla style, by being hidden around inconspicuous corners, behind vines, or by teleport ambushes summoning monsters in all different directions and locations than from any one identifiable source. This makes almost every trap and monster encounter depend very heavily on improvisation on the players part.

Not that that is entirely bad, but when I'm making a level, i feel I'm being more fair to my player if there are quiet suspenseful parts to give the player a chance to think and prepare, and that monster encounters are set up so the player can easily interpret that "this action does that, and that action does this" by making traps use hard monsters and larger quantities (to keep from being easy) but the actions dispense or awake monsters from 1-2 locations maximum, so the player can understand what's happening as soon as it starts happening. When monsters awake from 6 or more locations in an asymmetrical battleground, it's very chaotic, and most classic Doom wads refrain from that.

It's more a personal preference I'm sure. I might have to release more single levels to demonstrate.

[Dutch Doomer]

Thought I've seen it all, thanks for proving me wrong. The new imps are going to take some time to adjust to, and I like that. Now they are a challenge again, unlike the originals. Architecture is amazing, and I like the new chaingun too. Thank you for completing this Skillsaw.

[UglyStru]

One more thing Skillsaw, fuck you for MAP22. This map is probably one of the hardest maps I have ever played. Reason? Those god damn Arachnorb things you decided to fill the fucking level with. Also, not enough ammo to complete it. Been stuck at it for hours and hours now.

[Darch]

40oz said:

actions dispense or awake monsters from 1-2 locations maximum, so the player can understand what's happening as soon as it starts happening. When monsters awake from 6 or more locations in an asymmetrical battleground, it's very chaotic, and most classic Doom wads refrain from that.

It's more a personal preference I'm sure. I might have to release more single levels to demonstrate.

I think this "organized" gameplay can be great when you're playing a map for the first time, but it can get tedious when playing for a second time, as you know where everything will be.

I prefer chaotic gameplay, where players have to be aware of all sides. I think it has way more replay value if combined with monster freedom of movement. Again, personal preference.

By the way, I'm at MAP07 of Valiant and having lots of fun so far. I particularly liked the signs of this map and shooting targets here and there, I like when a game acknowledges it is a game. Great stuff as always, Skillsaw.

[zinkai]

Think I hVe just finished map 12 or 13 not sure. Love how u have small levels with such great inter connectivity and loop back that u have truly inspiring stuff

[SyntherAugustus]

Completed the megawad finally. Cool final boss.

[Guest]

Map 31 sector 1383 is a lift but has a damaging floor. Don't know if you are done with bugfixing, but I will mention it anyway.

P.S. Awesome mapset.

BlackFish said:

Completed the megawad finally. Cool final boss.

What... no videos? I am disappoint. :)

[scifista42]

One more MAP31 bug, regarding the final bridge. If you jump onto the last platform as soon as you can, the bridge would raise wrongly.



Aside from the HOM, the bridge is high enough so that I couldn't step onto it, so I couldn't access the exit.

[SyntherAugustus]

KiiiYiiiKiiiA said:

Map 31 sector 1383 is a lift but has a damaging floor. Don't know if you are done with bugfixing, but I will mention it anyway.

P.S. Awesome mapset.



What... no videos? I am disappoint. :)

I'm doing a handful for Valiant. I might do more of them depending on my time. Right now I have free time, but with my current freelance gig the 10 hr work day plus 2 hrs each way commute eats up the whole day.

[skillsaw]

Probably not fixing that bug at this point, even though it's a pretty bad bug. Thanks for letting me know anyway. I don't know if anyone has recorded any demos on 31 yet or not but I'm very leary about changing anything after this thing has been finalized for as long as it has.

[AD_79]

Leave It In!™

[Darch]

nice, I love reading the "known bugs" sections and things like "none this is quality bla bla bla" are not a good read.