Atonement [33 Vanilla DOOM II Maps] [Now on idgames]

[Lord Pavis]

Hello, in map 29 it seems I'm soft locked in the blue skull area. The moving wall I use to enter doesn't move anymore and the elevator at the end of the area has a closed grid on top. I don't have the red skull, only yellow and blue. What would be the path to follow then? Get back to yellow skull area or pass the grid elevator to open space area?

[Moustachio]

On 3/16/2023 at 12:55 AM, Lord Pavis said:

Hello, in map 29 it seems I'm soft locked in the blue skull area. The moving wall I use to enter doesn't move anymore and the elevator at the end of the area has a closed grid on top. I don't have the red skull, only yellow and blue. What would be the path to follow then? Get back to yellow skull area or pass the grid elevator to open space area?

 

I think I see what happened. The secret path from the dark corpse maze that goes through the brown castle area did not trigger the lowering of the switch that allows you to re-enter the yellow key room.

 

Here's a patched version that makes two edits: atone-m29-patch.zip

• Lowers the wall when you enter the yellow key room via the lift from the castle.
• Opens rest of the underground area when entering it from the blue key room.

[sandwedge]

Hey there, I've been on a bit of a chocolate doom binge at the moment and was instantly grabbed by this one.  The palette change with all the reds, pinks and yellows in the mars episode looked really cool in chocolate, the music sounds great in OPL2, and the levels have a great difficulty curve.  I've just made it to map 19, but mainly just here to report a visplane crash on map 18 near the exit, not sure if it was reported before.  It happened pretty easily looking to the stairs you raise up, not sure if it happens with the stairs down.  But had to really deliberately avoid looking in what is a pretty natural direction when the enemies spawn there.  Hope that helps, great work all around and thank you for helping my chocolate addiction along lol.

 

looking out just to the right of here to the ending stairs:

[Moustachio]

Thanks for catching that, @sandwedge! That area had always given me some trouble, and it seems that every edit I ever made pushed it back over the visplane limit. So I made a patch that reworks that area. I think it looks nicer, and the highest count I could get was a 118 in this version. I also made some tiny edits to the start of the map, and I added a bit of tucked away ammo and health near the end.

 

Here's the patch: atone-m18-patch.zip

[TheFartKing]

I am not usually a big vanilla (-cl2) player but man this immediately grabbed me. The combat encounters are tense, fun and the teleport traps during back tracking really shake things up. I’m about 5 maps in and am enjoying the heck out this wad. 

Edited April 15, 2023 by TheFartKing

[Rudolph]

Just found out about this one. I played the first map and I enjoyed it.

 

However, out of curiosity, I summoned the new enemy to see what it was like and I am disappointed to find out it is more or less the Annihilator from Eviternity. I just hope it is used parsimoniously, because I am not a fan of rocket-firing enemies!

[Rudolph]

I made it to MAP04 and I must ask: were you inspired by Back to Saturn X? I do not know if it is the texture or the geometry, but it all feels very familiar.

 

Also, how do I get to the secret Megasphere? I have found a teleporter that dropped on top of a rock formation, but I do not know what to do next.

 

And if I fall in the pit formed by the three rock pillars, I appear to be unable to get out:

Edited April 14, 2023 by Rudolph

[Moustachio]

3 hours ago, Rudolph said:

I made it to MAP04 and I must ask: were you inspired by Back to Saturn X? I do not know if it is the texture or the geometry, but it all feels very familiar.

 

Also, how do I get to the secret Megasphere? I have found a teleporter that dropped on top of a rock formation, but I do not know what to do next.

 

And if I fall in the pit formed by the three rock pillars, I appear to be unable to get out:

 

Yes, I love BTSX. E1 is one of my top favorite wads.

 

The megasphere is a secret within a secret. There's a secret switch you can activate from inside the base, and that raises some stairs that you can use to shoot a switch and open the door out onto that ledge.

 

And thanks for catching that soft-lock! Here's a patch for that: atone-m04-patch.zip

 

Three game-breakers so far. I'm going to have to upload an updated zip to the archives at some point. I think I'll do it on the 1-year mark of the final release.

[Rudolph]

1 hour ago, Moustachio said:

The megasphere is a secret within a secret. There's a secret switch you can activate from inside the base, and that raises some stairs that you can use to shoot a switch and open the door out onto that ledge.

Thank you!

 

So what is the point of the teleporter, then?

[Moustachio]

@Rudolph it’s for co-op, so that players spawning in can get around the map quicker.

[Summer Deep]

Just discovered this mapset and have played the first 14 levels in UV continuous - great fun so far!

 

It's presumably a bit late to point out issues after the final release, but I did discover that in MAP14 it's possible to bypass the red key section completely and gain  access to the exit area by sliding over the pillar on this staircase. I would imagine that the player is not supposed to do this!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 17, 2023 by Summer Deep

[Shepardus]

In vanilla, you wouldn't be able to stand on top of that pillar.

[Summer Deep]

Not entirely sure what you mean, but the video below shows what I was referring to. Maybe the pillar isn't involved in it?

 

Otherwise, it's maybe because I was playing in ZDoom?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 17, 2023 by Summer Deep

[Shepardus]

Yes, it's because you're playing in ZDoom that you're able to stand on top of the pillar. In vanilla you wouldn't be able to stand on or pass over it, just like you can't stand on top of enemies.

[Rudolph]

In MAP05, I struggled a bit to get the final secret (in my case, the Computer Map and the Blursphere on a ledge) to register.

 

I managed to get propelled in the air by the Arch-Vile and land on said ledge, grabbing the power-ups in the process. However, it is only after running around for minutes that I realized that I had to cross a trigger line that itself required lowering a wall in order for the secret to register.

 

Not really a bug, just a nitpick. I am still very much enjoying the mapset as a not-quite-as-hard-yet Back to Saturn X pastiche!

[Keyboard_Doomer]

Hello,

 

not sure what's the state of a possible update to the idgames version but we're going to play the first half of the wad for Thursday Night Survival today.
The session starts 11 hours from the time of this reply and you can expect it to be fairly active for 4+ hours.

[Moustachio]

The TNS sessions were a lot of fun and brought some small bugs to my attention:

 

Spoiler

• MAP02: Four teleporters (lines 1104-1107) were missing their tags.
• MAP03: One deathmatch start (thing 232) was inside of a barrel.
• MAP23: Arch-Viles can boost you out of some of the windows leading to a soft-lock. I added teleporter pads outside of the windows in case a player falls out.
• MAP24: The ending linedef can get skipped, causing an unlucky player to fall out into the ocean. Soft-locked. I added an impassable line behind the ending structure to catch the player.
• MAP27: The BFG secret spawned the player partially in a sector that was shorter than player height. Different ports had different responses to this: Vanilla doom lets you walk out like nothing happened. GZDoom crouches the player so that they can leave. In ZDaemon, players got stuck, leading to a soft-lock. I moved the teleporter target out of the wall.
• MAP28: The teleporter from the first area into the belly of the big spiderdemon arena lowers immediately after the player first enters the area. This lead to a soft-lock if the target teleporter hadn't been lowered yet. I restructured the target pad to remove the soft-lock. I also added extra sound blocking linedefs before the big drop into the spiderdemon arena. This ensures that players can't wake everything up before jumping down, which helps slightly to prevent a possible bottleneck scenario.
• MAP29: There were a few soft-locks in the brown castle area: behind the red pillars (if infinite height is turned off), and outside the windows. I added extra decorations and teleporter pads to fix the soft-locks.

 

I fixed all these issues and compiled all of the patches so far into one wad (including the earlier patches for MAP04 and MAP18):

atone-patch-5-22-2023.zip

 

Load it after atone.wad in your wad order.

 

One more goal I have for the 1-year update is to add DM starts to the back half of the wad.

Edited May 22, 2023 by Moustachio

[painelemental667]

DOOM: Atonement Ultra-Violence First Playthrough Part 1: Episode 1 No Commentary

DOOM: Atonement Ultra-Violence First Playthrough Part 2: Map07-Map19 No Commentary

This wad is surprisingly good. Good classic dooming overall and there is challenging or hard parts too. I played 19 levels and enjoyed so far.

 

[Salt-Man Z]

Since this popped up in my notifications again, I went ahead and replayed MAP33 for the first time since the E3 release (when it was MAP31, if I recall.) What a blast. God, I love this WAD.

[DreadWanderer]

Any idea if the wad will get a unified update soon? I've compiled the bits and pieces from the thread but I probably lost track of something.

[Moustachio]

Probably within the next couple of months, maybe even sooner. I have this patch from 5/22/23 that has all of the changes I've made so far compiled into one patch, but I'd like to go through and fix one co-op issue in MAP32 + fix some of the midis that loop with gaps.

[DreadWanderer]

7 minutes ago, Moustachio said:

Probably within the next couple of months, maybe even sooner. I have this patch from 5/22/23 that has all of the changes I've made so far compiled into one patch, but I'd like to go through and fix one co-op issue in MAP32 + fix some of the midis that loop with gaps.

 

Cool, thanks for the answer!

[CacoKnight]

Do we have to load the patch together with the idgames wad?

 

edit:

Boom, seems to be working, didn't notice anything weird (still on MAP06) but thank you for those fixes!

Edited March 15 by CacoKnight

[DreadWanderer]

1 hour ago, CacoKnight said:

Do we have to load the patch together with the idgames wad?

 

That's how I did it - piece by piece at first, then using the compiled patch. Probably best to wait for Moustachio to release a final patch but up to you.

[Moustachio]

Final patch won’t arrive until mid-April, so go ahead and use the current patch @CacoKnight.

[KevvyLava]

On 7/31/2017 at 1:13 AM, Moustachio said:

 

Atonement is a 33-level wad for Doom II. It is fully compatible with vanilla Doom II. It's been tested with DOSBox, Chocolate Doom, Crispy Doom, GZDoom, and the Eternity Engine.

 

The maps range from small to large, easy to hard, and everywhere in between. Unlike most wads, the shorter maps in this wad tend to be at the end. They are by no means a cakewalk though.

 

The first maps in this wad were originally released 5 years ago. Hopefully, the progression in my mapping style becomes apparent as you play on, although the old maps have also received some updates both minor and major.

 

You can download the release candidate below. I'm counting on my fellow Doom wad enthusiasts to help me out here and mention any game-breaking or otherwise noticeable bugs they find. If you've been waiting for a finished version of Atonement to begin playing, here you go. This is pretty much the finished wad. With any luck, I will be able to upload this version to idgames on Halloween.

 

Download:

idgames Archive

Google Drive

 

All of the midis for this wad were provided by Dial-up for Murder. Here's a link to the music I used ^{(thanks, Tim!)}:

• MIDI Dreams
• MIDI Nightmares
• Atonement

 

 

Story:

  Reveal hidden contents

You are the premier marine scientist working on the UAC's baddest tech yet: inter-planetary transport. You're up on Mars, making sure the new machines don't turn people into giblets. A few lost volunteers later and you've finally perfected your invention. On the way to power on the machine you start to feel an uneasy presence nearby...

 

 

This is excellent old-style Doom gameplay that feels more modern due to the textures and the music.  Difficulty is above-average and I really enjoy this so far!