tmorrow

Major spoiler.

Emergency! This is not a drill! 144 babyastralcaco's have invaded the Eviternity II credits map. Here's one eye witness account. "So there I was, reading all of the mapper boards, when out of nowhere some pillars start lowering. Returning to the teleport hub, out of nowhere, 144 very upset and ravenously hungry astralcacodemons attack with no mercy. I had no chance ..." Astralbabycacos are extremely cunning. They have hacked the doom code so they are not classed as enemies and therefore do not appear on the monster count. But they could be hiding, anywhere, on any map! Ready to pounce without mercy! Be warned! It took me way too long to work out how to make the astralbabycacos appear.

I'm wondering how much further you can go with these outrageously difficult eviternity tysons. Dsda archive indicates there's only 7 holes left: maps 18, 20, 23, 29-32. I'm amazed at what you've managed to pull off so far.

Whew! I spent 15 minutes there flicking switches at random before finally working out how to properly solve the 3x3 version. I remember playing with the hand held 4x4 sliding puzzle when I was a child and solving it. A lot of kids in school had one (before the rubik's cube came along). Guess I've gotten dumber with old age. The other 2 puzzles to earn the other 2 keys were a blast too. I lost a lot of barrels learning to get the timing and movement right for the 2nd one. As for the 3rd puzzle, I managed to fluke it before learning it properly, so I wouldn't say I've really "solved it" yet. Great map, as are all the others I've looked at so far. Halfway through the wad.

Yet another tricky TNT2 secret. The secret sequence starts in the room to the north within a semicircular corridor.

You've done amazingly well to discover so many of the hidden, non official secrets in TNT2 (map16,21,23,31). I've managed to find ones on map02,13,16,21-23,30. I've just assumed they are intentional. Sometimes there is a clue, like a countable item you've missed so you know there is something to find. However map21, sector 76 for example contains non countable items so there is no way to know you've missed finding a non official cache. Once map26 drops, I might put a list of of all of them in one post so the dev team can tackle them in bulk. Personally I don't feel any of them are necessary to beat the maps although they certainly make it much easier in some cases. map06: You can collect the blue armor (missing the secret) but you have to get into the secret alcove (with the switch) to trigger the secret. map12: This map relies heavily on some confusing triggers to raise and lower sectors. I haven't managed to reproduce this problem. Sector 456 contains the 4 specters that should be wakened after the first shot fired by doomguy. Sector 455 starts raised above the 4 specters, preventing them from teleporting initially. Crossing any of a dozen W1 triggers on the west side of the map will lower sector 455, allowing the monsters to teleport. In your case, the sector 455 is lowered, so there should be nothing preventing those angry specters from teleporting. Do you recall if the specters were asleep? If you can reproduce this problem and explain how, it would help a lot. map20: This sector doesn't look like it should be damaging. I'm assuming it's there to scare off or apply pressure to the player trying to get to the megasphere secret nearby. map25: A fair point. That soulsphere is on a triangular pillar that gets lowered by entering the yellow door area. The triangle remains slightly above the void though after lowering so it isn't all that hard to make sure to stand in the center of the triangle to register the secret. map29: I'm not so sure about this one. I'm guessing the map designer is insisting on the player exhibiting some strafing and platforming skills to earn this secret. Failure just requires some retries to get it right. It's not a "one attempt only" type of secret. BTW, with my mediocre skills, I usually have to reattempt this a few times to get it right. map31: The blue armor is just another of the many non official secrets in TNT2. The unconnected linedef 4408 warning should probably be fixed. It looks wrong to me even if it isn't breaking the map. map33: No. TNT2 is targeted to be as vanilla as possible (final doom compatible, i.e. complevel 4). A couple of maps might end up being limit removing. The map progression is strictly map01-15,31-32,16-30. Any map33+ levels are bonus maps expected to only be playable with advanced srcports supporting wads with extended map names. Depending on the srcport, that is usually achieved by either "-warp 33" command line option, using the IDCLEV cheat in game, or using the "map map33" console command. Thanks for the excellent feedback, I'll leave it to the dev team decide on these items.

I'd suggest only reporting the most egregious slime trails like the one you found on map27. Under vanilla doom engines and nodebuilders it can be hard to remove them, for example removing one can make another appear elsewhere.

This secret is tricky.

I've noticed a map editing issue with this wad (all maps load fine in gzdoom srcport). I'm just bringing editing issue to your attention. The current version of UDB (3.0.0.4032 (6d2a3b6)) has trouble seeing 10 of the 12 UDMF maps in the wad (current idgames release). Using the "GZDoom: Doom 2 (UDMF)" Game Configuration on wad load, only MAP02 and MAP10 show up. Looking at the map sections in SLADE and the reason is apparent. Graphic and music lumps appear before the ENDMAP closing map marker in 10/12 of the UDMF maps. GZDoom is forgiving of this but UDB is not for some reason. Anyway I hand edited my version of the wad to move the ENDMAP markers before the graphic and music lumps in each case and UDB is much happier, now seeing all 12 of these missing UDMF gems now. This could be considered a UDB bug, I'm not sure. I regret to inform that I haven't played this wad in earnest yet, but it IS high on my todo list. The maps look awesome with an incredible number of secrets to track down and some challenging gameplay to boot.

Nothing is guaranteed, but the chances are that since map17 hasn't changed, your current beta4 savegame should load fine in beta5. Try it and see (keep a beta4 around just in case). Keep an eagle eye out for any bugs in beta5, the TNT2 dev team want as many eyes on beta5 as possible.

Beta5 change log. Sorry I can't elaborate further but hope it can target testing. map03: Texture alignment map19: Tarnsman's softlock and monster encounter updates map20: rd's softlock fix and minor updates map30: Performance updates. Detail updates. Addressed a potential softlock map32: floatRand's gameplay update General: Texture updates. WADINFO and CWILV updates

Many thanks. Old age and poor eyesight is catching up to me! The old teleport to a room full of barrels with the icon of sin - an old favorite. This wad is incredible. I can see a huge amount of effort went in to it. I'm amazed you could produce something this epic after only one other map project. Congratulations and thanks.

Where is the map30 exit? It supposedly leads to map33. I can't seem to locate this exit even when looking in UDB. Any help appreciated. Cheers.

I just tried it in dsadoom 25 and the e4m9 secret exit works fine. Furthermore I looked at the UMAPINFO definition in 2022ado.wad (dated 2022-10-31) and its e4m2 entry is this: map E4M2 { music = "D_E4M2" next = "E4M3" nextsecret = "E4M9" } This appears to be correct to me. I'm not sure why you are getting anything different.

I know it doesn't have a footer, that's why I picked it, to explain the problem when the launcher doesn't pick up a pwad. For demos with a footer, the launch will work provided you review and remove everything but that pwad on the wads tab. My bad. It's intuitive but somehow I got the idea it was the setting from the previous launch, but I see it is for launch you are about to do. It works perfectly. I understand you have your pwads organised in separate folders. If you add some pwads in say complevel 2 folder, and some author folder under that and then keep playing back or recording demos for it, then it works fine. However, every time you want to change you have to do several things. You have to navigate from that last folder to a new folder. Then you have to add the pwads and finally you have to remove the old pwads. That is not efficient. I really liked the way the old launcher worked. It suited my needs very well for someone that plays back lots of different demos and is way quicker to launch for me than with the new launcher. Best of luck with the launcher.

The short answer is you don't but it's usually faster than your designed method. My questions are why do I have to? Why aren't they all automatically available like they used to with the right one selected like it used to be? I'll explain by example. Take Roofi's recent d2all demo for 180mpv, recorded on prboom+ 2.5.1.4 - https://dsdarchive.com/files/demos/180mpv/67311/180mpv_d2all_51202.zip. Double click the zip. Double click the lmp. pre v25 dsdadoom. Launcher appears. Review. If iwad not right, drop down list and select doom2. If file not right, click 180mpv in the file list presented (supports type ahead if you have large pwad list in there). Click to launch. Quick, painless. your launcher + dsdadoom v25. Your launcher appears. The demo is populated. If iwad not right, select it. If complevel not right select it. Now, where does the pwad come from? Rather than having a window with them all listed, I have to click the wads tab. I have to add the wad if it hasn't been added before. To have the same functionality as before I would have to hand add every pwad I have to the list. Then the list has unnecessary info, the full paths are listed. There is no type ahead to get to the pwad in the list that I want. Further, there is no selection process to pick which one or ones to use. Every pwad in the list is added to the launch command which is definitely not what I expect. Finally, the wads are listed not in an alphabetic order but in the order that they were added so it's hard to spot the one you want even if you could select just that one. At the moment to get it launch properly, I have to make sure only the right pwad is in the list and remove all the others, each and every time I swap pwad demos to playback. Step 2 takes longer than just throwing in a "-file pwadname> entry at the moment. Another thing, is there a way to see what the command line that will be passed to dsdadoom BEFORE launching? That would be most helpful. At the moment I have do the launch and then see what parameters were passed.

There are a large number of demos out there that don't have this footer. Anything not recorded on prboom+ or dsdadoom for example. This includes vanilla, chocolate, crispy doom to name a few examples. In those cases, you can't get the iwad, complevel or pwads for these demos, resulting in launching dsdadoom with just the demo name supplied. This always results in the demo playing back in dsdadoom with default iwad doom2.wad set and no pwad setting at all, i.e. complete failure if it's not doom2 and needs a pwad to run correctly. This is what I have to do now since your launcher isn't helping for most of the stuff I playback. It's far worse now. I have to remove settings from the previous launch and add in new settings for the current launch. Double click functionality is gone. I feel the old launcher design is more helpful. You can double click the pre v25 dsdsadoom or prboom+ exe, an IWAD, a PWAD or a LMP (even within a zip). The results are: exe. The launcher pops up. You select game and files (or accept the default which is last IWAD used and no files). iwad. That iwad loads, bypassing the launcher. pwad. The pwad will load with an iwad determined internally (don't know how). Shift double clicking instead will force the launcher to appear so you can review/change the selections. lmp. If the iwad and pwad can be picked up from the demo trailer (see @Never_Again post) then it will auto launch. If not, the launcher will appear where you can again review/change the selections. Note if the demo creator has odd iwad/pwad names then that will also bring up the launcher for review. This old launcher behavior is particularly useful, especially when you need to review and change settings. A couple of clicks is all that is required. More often than not, its launcher settings (if it comes up) are correct. In the new launcher I'm finding myself having to type in the cmd line fragments (-file usually) to get things to work and remember to remove them again later (or the launcher will use them again even though I've moved on to another pwad). Unfortunately, I've had to revert to v24.3 with its old inbuilt launcher. The new v25 with the new launcher just doesn't meet my needs for demo playback ( I do a lot of this). I understand why the launcher was separated from the srcport and that it will take some time to get a new launcher working the way many will want it to. I hope you can take some of this feedback and keep up the good work with the new launcher. It is looking very promising.

My nominations for next month. I hope everyone is enjoying this months choices. +++ 2022 A Doom Odyssey +++ Solar Struggle +++ Doom in Spain Only

Ok, I'll stick to 24.3 thanks. I guess there's no point posting what does/doesn't work without the use of an external launcher. I know you meant well but that suggested launcher is disgusting. The launcher's first suggestion is to move all of my iwads to the launcher directory (which would break all other engines that use the DOOMWADDIR environment variable to know where the iwad/pwads live, like vanilla, chocolate, crispy, prboom+, zdoom and gzdoom). To humor it, I copied the iwads instead and then tried to playback a demo by dragging and dropping as it suggested. It then failed because the launcher is unable to parse pathname's properly (can't handle paths with spaces in them). At that point I deleted the launcher. I enjoy being able to shift/double click the exe, iwad, pwad or lmp (even within a zip) and let stuff just work.

I'm running win7. All pre v25 releases had a dsda-launcher. Has it been removed? I've double checked, v24.3 has it, v25 doesn't. I'll post more details about what does/doesn't work if indeed the launcher has been removed. If not, then my question is, how do I get the launcher to come up? Shift click on the exe, iwad, pwad or lmp used to do it before.

An evil Santa theme is certainly not new, especially in doom christmas wads but a Santa-dressed, crazed, child killer it certainly on the extreme end of the spectrum. I've just finished uvmax'ing the set and can confirm that 100% kills/items/secrets is achievable. The maps may be a tad easy but that crazed Santa and his henchmen will find several ways to whittle down doomguys health over the 12 maps, they are killers after all. GZDoomBuilder complains that FLAT5 is double defined in the flats namespace and that PP_START patch namespace isn't closed (Andrea uses P_END instead) but neither cause any game play problems in GZDoom. Both the internal and external dehacked have par times only for the first 3 maps. A fun wad to play during the Christmas season. Fanks for making A War on Christmas.

Correct. Garrett's playthrough was on an older beta when the switch was buried. His playthrough is still excellent and useful to show where the switch is. As a reminder to everyone, please get the latest version of TNT2 from the OP, there has been a lot of changes from release to release.

Both can be reached. The secrets are linked, so missing one you'll miss the other. Sector 44 is the ledge with the plasma rifle. Sector 121 is a ledge with 3 cells and 8 health bonuses. Good pickup. You can action either of the linedefs to reopen the doors and enter the area again (they aren't blocks). I checked this in chocolate doom 3.00, dsdadoom 24.3 and gzdoom 4.9.0. The effect is only visual and thus not critical, but should probably go on the fix list.

You are referring to Cybie's perch. It is reachable from the rocket launcher secret room. You are referring to the hellknight platform in one of the white honeycomb floored rooms. There are 3 steps in the floor that can be raised to make a staircase to the hellknight platform (and so on). As far as I know after several plays, every kill, item and secret in TNT2 is reachable in chocolate/crispy doom, prboom+, dsdadoom, zdoom2.8.1 and gzdoom4.3.0+. Please keep reporting every problem you find, excellent stuff.

TNT2 Devilution is still in beta, so you won't find a lot online about it. The focus is on identifying and fixing any problems prior to release. Hopefully hawkwind's hint is enough for you to find that elusive but very helpful red key! Please offer up any feedback you can on the maps you've played so the best version of TNT2 gets released when it's ready.