Urania - megawad in style of Plutonia [release]

[Firedust]

Still playing this wad, it's massive. 12 hours playtime and I just cleared map 27. Commenting to say that it would be better to get rid of the red bars blocking the exit, at the end of the level. Found it annoying having to backtrack all the way to the other side. :(

EDIT: Stuck on map 28. I got the red key and opened all the red doors but I can't find a way to lower the devil-face thingie blocking the door in front of the exit. There seems to be an arch-vile and a few imps hidden behind one of the crates near the exit with the switch I am looking for, but I have no idea how lower the crates. Where is the switch that lowers them?

[Keyboard_Doomer]

Apologies for the very late notice.

We have chosen Urania for this week's Thursday Night Survival on ZDaemon. The session starts this Thursday at 19:00 BST/14:00 EDT and it would be cool to see the WAD creator join us. Of course, everyone else is invited as well!

More information about the session can be found in the Doomworld post.

[Firedust]

Map 29, the room where the exit is: everything is black here. Did you make it like that on purpose?

EDIT: Just completed this. Had a blast! Thanks a lot.

[Finakala]

This sounds pretty promising, and having played through both PRCP and P2 relatively recently I'm in the mood for something else Plutonia-like. Just finishing up Resurgence now so I'm also in the moodset for something hard.

Screens look decent as well.

[riderr3]

Firedust said:

EDIT: Stuck on map 28. I got the red key and opened all the red doors but I can't find a way to lower the devil-face thingie blocking the door in front of the exit. There seems to be an arch-vile and a few imps hidden behind one of the crates near the exit with the switch I am looking for, but I have no idea how lower the crates. Where is the switch that lowers them?

The one single potion in this area is the clue - crate will be lowered.

Firedust said:

Map 29, the room where the exit is: everything is black here. Did you make it like that on purpose?

Yep!

Keyboard_Doomer said:

Apologies for the very late notice.

We have chosen Urania for this week's Thursday Night Survival on ZDaemon. The session starts this Thursday at 19:00 BST/14:00 EDT and it would be cool to see the WAD creator join us. Of course, everyone else is invited as well!

More information about the session can be found in the Doomworld post.

Interesting. I marked "Player starts only" for cooperative. But I provided the access from other sides - like this place with SSG on MAP01. So yeah, it's coop-friendly, more or less.

May be someone can find this "coop bugs" where players can stuck...

[Demonologist]

Took a while for me to beat this, never expected it to feature maps that big and/or eventful. Not much free time for those nowadays sadly, was able to press on harder only during weekends.

First of all - for 2 years in the making by a single person this is, like, astoundingly impressive, the only one man megawad that features bigger maps I can think of is Armadosia. Ironically, Armadosia is also orders of magnitude more confusing, while I admit that there were a couple of maps in Urania where I gave up after spending loads of time wandering around and consulted the editor to progress further - all in all I managed to disentangle the levels' logic just fine most of the time.

And then, the gameplay. It has its fair share of trademark plutonic scenarios, though I was also heavily reminded of Use3D's maps in particular (see cchest1-3 and nilla.wad for reference) - constant crossfires, unfriendly environments rife with other hazards aside from hail of bullets and fireballs, as well as the need to be in constant search for supplies to be able to gun down the omnipresent adversaries, especially the meatier ones. Map29 in particular is a posterchild to this hypothesis, a genuinely harsh level with devious monster placement, crass ambushes, lots of damaging lava and some precarious balancing with every living thing in the area sniping at you from afar, that one really felt like something Use3D could've pulled off. Not a bad thing mind, I find such maps to be interesting enough in their delightful cruelty.

On the other hand - I tend to disagree with Firedust's statement regarding the overly tight balance for pistol starts, aside from map23(*) I never felt in dire need of additional supplies. Most secrets aren't that hard to find, after all.

Some specific comments:
- 03 felt like the most accurate recreation of Plutonia's style in both action and aesthetics, very nice;
- 06 I personally consider to be the most intelligent map in the whole set, the opening look makes one think that it's going to be underground catacombs type of level, luckily it's much more interesting than that. Nonlinear with lots of interconnectivity and good health/ammo balance, it was really interesting to explore and battle through, as the action was quite punchy throughout;
- 09 is by far my top favorite in the whole megawad, frantic, fast and cool, superb stuff.
Honorable mention comes to 08 for killing me the most iirc, it's amusing just how exposed the interiors of this base are, something's firing at you all the time, through every window, on every open spot. Quite intense.

There were maps that felt objectively weaker, most likely they're the oldest ones, but they were hardly dealbreakers, not to mention that they're in the absolute minority.

All in all - this was quite an odyssey, yet I can't help but to stand and applaud. No seriously, I stand and applaud. Bravo, an outstandng demonstration of one's mapping prowess, very competent and elaborate set of maps sporting hardcore gameplay achieved through surgically precise monster placement and complex leveldesign as opposed to throwing hordes at the player, with lots of care put into every aspect of it, and it's surely noticeable.

(*)23 could've been a very good candidate for the most intelligent map in the set, yet I have to say that I felt undersupplied ~80% of the time spent there, and was thus forced to perform some strange and dangerous dance for tens of minutes just to stay alive with laughable amounts of ammo while facing death squads that kept warping in with every milestone reached. It's only towards the end when I was finally able to gather enough firepower and retaliate in full glory. In hindsight - it felt like all the advanced weaponry and significant ammo stashes were always heavily guarded, and I don't think it's a good way to arrange things, keeping the player on the rough edge too explicitly can quickly turn everything into an unpleasant chore as opposed to fun challenge. A shame really, this map could've been among my favorites, as it's really interesting in terms of layout and progression.

[Firedust]

Demonologist said:

All in all - this was quite an odyssey, yet I can't help but to stand and applaud. No seriously, I stand and applaud. Bravo, an outstandng demonstration of one's mapping prowess, very competent and elaborate set of maps sporting hardcore gameplay achieved through surgically precise monster placement and complex leveldesign as opposed to throwing hordes at the player, with lots of care put into every aspect of it, and it's surely noticeable.

Exactly my thoughts on this, Demonologist. I really hope more people play this because it's simply effing incredible.

Also concerning the ammo: I played continuous and found it ok, but it felt like some maps were pretty brutal, should I have tackled some of them otherwise.

[Keyboard_Doomer]

riderr3 said:

Interesting. I marked "Player starts only" for cooperative. But I provided the access from other sides - like this place with SSG on MAP01. So yeah, it's coop-friendly, more or less.

May be someone can find this "coop bugs" where players can stuck...

We didn't find any places where players can get stuck in the first session, however map04 and map05 turned out to be quite confusing for us.

This week we're playing the middle portion of the WAD and everyone is welcome to join us: Doomworld post with more info.

[riderr3]

Keyboard_Doomer said:

We didn't find any places where players can get stuck in the first session, however map04 and map05 turned out to be quite confusing for us.

MAP04 have voodoo doll for obtaining blue key. So that unexpectable behavior can be happened in multiplayer. Also MAP09 have voodoo dolls but it's optional.

[hawkwind]

Currently finished map 06. There appears to be two bugs in this level ...

1. Seems impossible to get to secret sector 272.

2. Seems impossible to get to sector 220 to activate the switch at line 2913. Sector 219 can only be teleported to by monsters.

Thankfully, the level can still be completed without this.

[riderr3]

hawkwind said:

1. Seems impossible to get to secret sector 272.

Possible. There a 2-pixels wide catwalk nearby.

hawkwind said:

2. Seems impossible to get to sector 220 to activate the switch at line 2913. Sector 219 can only be teleported to by monsters.

I tried it now and not see a bug. There are rising stair over there. Can be wrong stair behavior preceded by another events?

[hawkwind]

Correct on both accounts.

There is a possible bug on map 03 that I forgot to mention.

When I played this, I crossed lines 717/718 before crossing line 876. Note the effect on the lower of line 1502. If it is a bug, putting wfall1 on the lower front sidedef of line 1502 will fix.

map07 ...

When sector 6 is in its raised position, MIDBRN1 cannot be seen from sector 154. The "bars" probably should have been 1 m.u. west.

[galileo31dos01]

I need help please!! I'm stuck in level 5, I've been looking for the yellow skull or at least a way to find it and I just can't, it's driving me crazy!!! I have the blue and red skulls, 213/238 monsters killed by far (HMP), 4/7 secrets, the room with the SM, hell knights and revenants is intact (I don't know how to free them), also using Crispy Doom... so if anyone can provide a little help for me, I'll be totally glad...

 

Oh and great megawad btw, just many confusing switches

Edited March 24, 2017 by galileo31dos01

[riderr3]

52 minutes ago, galileo31dos01 said:

I need help please!! I'm stuck in level 5, I've been looking for the yellow skull or at least a way to find it and I just can't, it's driving me crazy!!! I have the blue and red skulls, 213/238 monsters killed by far (HMP), 4/7 secrets, the room with the SM, hell knights and revenants is intact (I don't know how to free them), also using Crispy Doom... so if anyone can provide a little help for me, I'll be totally glad...

 

Oh and great megawad btw, just many confusing switches

I guess you missed that switch in cave area, it's easy to miss

Spoiler

For access to another side of cave.

And welcome to Doomworld!

[Quagsire]

How many maps?

[riderr3]

7 minutes ago, AbsorbedHatch said:

How many maps?

32

Also the new download section is sucks. It's not showing how many new maps included in wad.

[Quagsire]

1 hour ago, riderr3 said:

32

Also the new download section is sucks. It's not showing how many new maps included in wad.

It could use some work I suppose, but it looks cleaner imo.

[galileo31dos01]

2 hours ago, riderr3 said:

I guess you missed that switch in cave area, it's easy to miss

  Hide contents

For access to another side of cave.

And welcome to Doomworld!

Oh! Well it's really easy to miss, but even so it's not that hard to see it... In general I'm good at finding hidden switches, even though this wasn't the case. Anyway, thanks for the help and thanks for the welcome!

[galileo31dos01]

Is it possible that there's a bug with the intermission texts? For example, after level 6 the usual text "After jumping ........ saw" and it stopped at the "saw" word. It never happened to me with other wads before... 

[riderr3]

2 hours ago, galileo31dos01 said:

Is it possible that there's a bug with the intermission texts? For example, after level 6 the usual text "After jumping ........ saw" and it stopped at the "saw" word. It never happened to me with other wads before... 

Interesting. I suggest this is Crispy Doom issue. Though it parsed level names correcty from dehacked inside the wad.
I have not see this bug on prboom-plus or zdoom. I should report this to developers of Crispy Doom.

[galileo31dos01]

4 hours ago, riderr3 said:

Interesting. I suggest this is Crispy Doom issue. Though it parsed level names correcty from dehacked inside the wad.
I have not see this bug on prboom-plus or zdoom. I should report this to developers of Crispy Doom.

Maybe a picture can help too, I tried again with a few cheats to take the exit quickly and here's the next part: 

[chungy]

Looks like that DeHackEd has several errors that makes it impossible to load in vanilla anyway, and Chocolate Doom (and Crispy as a downstream) is enforcing the vanilla restrictions.

 

You may consider switching to bex instead (example from Freedoom), and possibly with a "# *allow-extended-strings*" line so Chocolate Doom can load it (with -dehlump).

[Wraith777]

On 25.03.2017 at 2:09 AM, riderr3 said:

Interesting. I suggest this is Crispy Doom issue. Though it parsed level names correcty from dehacked inside the wad.
I have not see this bug on prboom-plus or zdoom. I should report this to developers of Crispy Doom.

If the text string length in Dehacked is longer than allowed by Vanilla it will stop typing text further. Move word ("saw") to the next string (making first one shorter) and it should display all text correctly.

[riderr3]

Well I looked how pl2 guys managed dehacked lump...

So I have to shortened some level names and fix intermissions text.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/w7d7apws0n7zcnf/urania.deh

This external DEH file compatible with Chocolate Doom but not with Crispy Doom. Because in Crispy Doom external dehacked patch can not override dehacked inside the wad. I tried different ways but no luck. Also Crispy Doom is not supporting this "# *allow-extended-strings*" and the subsequent BEX stuff.

[fabian]

1) The intermission text stopped because the first line exceeded the screen width, i.e. there was a line break missing. This is fixed now in Crispy Doom (line breaks will be inserted as necessary).

2) External dehacked files are supposed to get loaded *after* lumps embedded in PWADs. I have no idea why this doesn't work for you.

Edit: External dehacked files are loaded between IWAD and PWADs, that's why it doesn't work as you intend. You may want to use the

-nodehlump

parameter.

3) Crispy doesn't even require the allow-extended-strings stuff (it is always enabled) and thus ignores this line.

4) There isn't any "subsequent BEX stuff" in the dehacked lump that you posted, but Crispy is supposed to support BEX syntax.

Edited March 27, 2017 by fabian

[galileo31dos01]

So far I'm in level 11, but before exitting I would like to know how to more or less get this last secret, please:

 

EDIT: Figured

Edited March 28, 2017 by galileo31dos01

[chungy]

Here's a bex file that should work with all ports supporting the format (pretty much all): https://chungy.keybase.pub/urania.bex

 

I've changed the line breaks for the intermission text, but I haven't corrected any of the grammar.  Doom seems to usually cut off lines at around 35 characters. It works fine included in the WAD as the "DEHACKED" lump.

[riderr3]

That's interesting dehacked researching here I can say!
 

17 hours ago, galileo31dos01 said:

So far I'm in level 11, but before exitting I would like to know how to more or less get this last secret, please:

EDIT: Figured

It's what I calling "clever secret usage"

[Voros]

On March 28, 2017 at 5:44 AM, chungy said:

Here's a bex file that should work with all ports supporting the format (pretty much all): https://chungy.keybase.pub/urania.bex

What about the *allow-extended-strings* comment for Chocolate Doom support? Urania is a vanilla compatible megawad.

[chungy]

Fixed/added.