CBTC

"My friend has been taken. I don't know who or why, but I must find them." Circadian Offset Part 1 is the first part of a single player focused 7 map mappack partial conversion containing four maps and one secret map made to run on the GZDOOM sourceport. It was initially one map but I then realized that the enemy placement and layout might deter new players, especially those who might want to try out a Doom mod, so I decided to make a mappack to "ease in" the gameplay by introducing new enemies, weapons and items as they progressed. Circadian Offset is a single player focused 7 map mappack partial conversion made to run on the GZDOOM sourceport. It was initially one map but I then realized that the enemy placement and layout might deter new players, especially those who might want to try out a Doom mod, so I decided to make a mappack to "ease in" the gameplay by introducing new enemies, weapons and items as they progressed. Circadian Offset is inspired by games like Blood, Duke Nukem, and Doom wads like BTSX and Sunlust. Combat typically consists of dodging fast moving projectiles and an emphasis on arcade skills, and to help the player movement is a lot tighter and less slippery compared to Doom. Most enemies fire projectiles, and any enemy that uses hitscan attacks have a very noticeable tell or windup. Expect some mini slaughter like encounters but not as punishing (unless you access the secret level) Every enemy, weapon and item pickup is new. You can expect to see textures from Blood, Hexen and ukiro's texture mapset. I have made a lot of changes since the first part, but I assure you that most of the changes are in favor of the player. I put in a changelog below, but it isn't a full list since I don't recall every change. - Map05 and Map06 added - Increased player speed by 25% - Health potions are automatically used when player health is below 50%, but the player can still die from any attack that does more than 50 damage. I noticed some don't have the habit of manually using health items so this should soften the blow. - Secret weapon in secret map altered to be a lot more useful against mobs (you'll see what I mean) - Secret weapon can also be obtained earlier in the secret map on the "easy" and "normal" difficulty. - Secret map altered slightly to make it easier for the player to get their sense of orientation in the map. (Sorry I am not willing to retexture the whole map. Too much effort) - Fire serpent effects altered to be easier to see. Head size increased to be easier to hit and see. - Lever action shotgun changed from projectile to hitscan. - Several enemies have their health reduced to be less spongy. Double double barrel shotgunners can now be killed by a single shotgun round if all the pellets hit, for eg. - Map02 has more cover during the ascension part. - Acolyte projectile speed increased, Acolyte health decreased. More of a glass cannon now (both a buff and nerf to the enemy) - Impaler crossbow firing rate slightly reduced - Demon Wizard enemy changed to Hierophant. Now does an archvile like attack with noticeable animation. Less damage than the Archvile's own attack. Cannot be resurrected. - Wall messages to hint to the player what has happened in several maps. It's quite unlikely that I will be revisiting this mod anytime soon after release, other than to fix any glaring bugs you guys might find. And I'll admit there's so much more I want to add, alter or edit but after working on it for 5 years and I want to move on to other projects. I hope you understand. A couple of tips: - Map03 has traps. But use it against the enemies. - Map05 is huge. Save often and take a break when you need to. In fact take a break whenever necessary. - Map05 is also hugely inspired by Sunlust (in regards to creating interesting encounters using map geometry and functions, but expect mini slaughter sections). But I can assure you it isn't as punishing, even on the hard difficulty. Just keep the quicksave key handy. (I need to stop relying on arena like areas admittedly...) - The very last section of Map05 (very blue in color) may be bugged somewhat and may require you to shoot at the switches multiple times using the tommy gun to trigger the next event. If you don't want to have to deal with that section, the teleport in the middle will bring you to the next map. (use "fly" in the console command) I do hope I managed to accomplish gameplay that is in a "good way". This is my first time into the mapping scene and the maps are kind of experimental, so I don't expect that people like all of the maps and I welcome any feedback on improving, even if I am not planning to change a lot of it, as it always proves useful for future projects. Here's a gallery of the places you can expect to visit: New screenshots for Part 2! Tested on GZDOOM ver. 4.3.0, 4.5.0, 4.7.0 and 4.7.1 with UDMF map format. Recommend using the latest version of GZDOOM (I don't know which version was it, but earlier versions don't show certain correct messages or something) using both DOOM 2 and Freedoom as IWADs. Machine specs this mod was tested on: - Nvidia GTX 1060 graphics card - Intel Core i5 - 4GB of RAM Please enable, bind or adjust: Mouse freelook Jumping Crouching Turn off auto aiming PRESS "Z" TO HEAL (sorry the font makes it look like a 2) Minimize the HUD elements until you see only health, health potions, ammo and armor (I don't have a custom HUD made for this mod) Brightness (some areas can be pretty dark) Resolution (you may have to reduce the resolution, if your machine can't run them at a smooth framerate, especially for the secret level) You can expect framerate drops in all the maps, because of how highly detailed they are. I've tried my very best to optimize all of them, even removing a lot of detail, but sadly only so much can be achieved :( I recommend most people start on the Easiest or Medium difficulty. Certain design elements were inspired by wads like Sunlust, and because of that I highly recommend saving as often as you can (I didn't implement any autosaves). You can expect Map 3 and the secret level to be the most difficult. DOWNLOAD THE MOD HERE (for full release) (Unfortunately it's a pretty big download, due to several texture sets used) Credits: Ola "ukiro" Björling: OTEX texture set James "Jimmy" Paddock : MAP02, MAP03, and MAP05 midis Joshua "Dragonfly" O'Sullivan: Menu theme, Intermission, Ending theme, MAP01, MAP06 and some boss midis Realms667 Repository for various monsters, weapons and items Daniel "Cherrybutt" Tan: Level design and gameplay Full credits inside the pk3 file. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope you'll have an enjoyable time playing Circadian Offset~ Cherrybutt

Ah, well this is the full release now. You can check out the moddb page again to find another entry titled Circadian Offset Final Release or something to that tune. I released it like a few weeks ago lol and tbh I kinda forgot about it for a few days. D: Great now I feel like kicking myself for not changing the title lol Oh yea the fonts look pretty bad. I'll try and see how I can resolve it, but no promises. Believe it or not, I still struggle with GZDOOM and the fonts were the hardest to get working. Didn't know about nametags haha. I don't play with them so this is the first time I am hearing about it. I'll see how to implement them. As for the teleports, I was afraid something like this would happen. Try using the latest version of GZDOOM for that startup error. In the meantime I will take a look at it and see how I can resolve that. Try replaying the level again using other teleports if you plan on playing it again. I might have made it so that that teleport (which works off an ACS script) can be activated by monsters which is not intended (especially since flying enemies are present). That teleport was quite difficult to resolve initially, and I was scared it might have been broken. Anyway, thanks for playing! I hope it will hold your interest until the end!

I've made those last 2 bosses have much less health now. They shouldn't take so long to kill

Haha I take it to mean you wish to give this an even higher rating? Thanks for the high praise!

After nearly 5 years, my mod Circadian Offset has finished development and is ready for download! Here are some screenshots from the mod from Part 2~ (and I'll be honest, as much as I have tested it, I am deathly nervous of any possible bugs I may have overlooked) Check it out here~:

Thanks for playing! I actually wanted to have an area that you can shoot through that would multiply the damage of your crossbows to do more damage to them. But I didn't know how to do it

Sorry for the late response, had a lot of problems in life that needed strangling recently. I might consider replacing the demon wizard with something that has more animations, it's sprite set isn't incredibly diverse. Happy to know you beat Map 31, tbh I'm not happy with the BFG replacement. I would have loved instead to replace it with Hexen's Wraitverge(?) but I haven't implemented it. I guess Slaughtermaps kind of grow on you as you play them. I don't think I would have finished Sunlust otherwise. Like I said, the maps were quite experimental (not necessarily in design, but sometimes through more technical know how in regards to GZDOOM), and though I may not love it wholeheartedly, I am not against trying it out to see how it will play out. Your maps seems interesting, will try it out when I have time Thank you for playing! Glad you think they're exquisitely detailed. I'm upping the player speed for dodging the projectiles a lot easier. The shotgun priest sound effects could definitely use some work, not sure what I might use however. Sadly the cultist designs were something I wanted to recolor, but I tried but I just lack the technical know how to do it. Map3 had a lot of cut sections. The only part still left unaltered in Map3 is the tightrope section and the archer/red cultist section while everything else was made or redesigned. I redesigned MAP3 where the traps were used against the monsters as opposed to you being the one being trapped. Call it an experiment of "avoiding traps is easy because it's predictable. But avoiding it while being under pressure makes it difficult". Traps on their own imo are kind of boring. Maybe I would redesign those 2 areas, but I like people to see the rolling ball spikes, and those are the only areas that have them. Yea, I do have a sort of story for this. It's a bit of a dumb story, but it's a personal one for me.

Maybe one day. There's a lot of textures inside, and I don't remember every single texture that I did use. I may have to dedicate a month just to determine what content went unused. Unless there's a way in Doombuilder or slade that can detect exactly what texture wasn't used in all 5 maps, which I am unaware of. The Dark Bishop and the Demon Wizard is something I will have to refine. I'll admit that the Bishop is kinda there to waste bullets with hindsight. They were the first enemies I added in and I liked their attacks and design, so that's something I need to look into. The Demon Wizard/Archvile comparison is spot on. I might replace the Demon Wizard enemy with something else. Map04 is the first map I made for this mod. It was supposed to be only one map (which explains the length), and I greatly hesitated to include more. I must have cut out an hour's worth of gameplay for Map 04 alone. I do also think the map itself could have been split up into several maps, with the main area being a type of hub area. (also I hate to inform you that Map05 will be very big as well...) The 3D floor elevators were used with a death pit inside them as a solution I didn't want to bother with due to a lot of trial and error. If there was no pit, the player could potentially walk under the elevator and get "squished" by the elevator, at least that was what I thought at the time. However if the player is stuck between the platform and the floor, it doesn't kill the player and it also breaks the elevator itself. There were also some buggy complications trying to make the elevator reach the height I wanted that I don't remember the specifics. In hindsight? Don't use 3d floors as elevators. Just use Doom's normal elevators. I am glad though that encounter with the two Thors is at least manageable. Map31 was supposed to be the last map. A fight against a final boss of sorts. Tbh I liked the design of the map, but like you I often find slaughter maps to be a chore (thankfully a lot of Doom mappers tend to put slaughter maps after a long build up or as secret maps) and I hesitated doing so but I relented since I thought I should include it as most Doom mods enthusiasts expect some slaughter sections. It also didn't help that I was playing Sunlust when designing it that I tried to incorporate some creative designs, though ultimately I guess in this context it failed. I tried to make it work as a last map, but it eventually evolved into a slaughter map. The waves coming in on a timer was a last ditch solution to making the enemies spawn in (there were complications where they got stuck in their initial area) and prevent confusion on what the player should press to get to the next wave (as you've pointed out with the symmetrical design. And yes, I did design the whole area first before making the encounters). I tried several configurations, including the switch press. I initially wanted it so that the next wave spawned after you cleared all the enemies in that wave and you were given a brief time to restock. Invul sphere was a last minute afterthought to soften the blow that players would receive, some spheres aren't present on the highest difficulty. Map03's final slaughter section was more meant to be a somewhat cathartic section as opposed to a test of skill in slaughter map ability. Funny you bring up platforming and puzzles as there was a platforming section that I cut out because I figured most people who play Doom just wanna kill things and not bother with breaks. Overall, I am super thankful you played all the maps. Tbh I was expecting maybe most people would try out 2 or 3 maps then drop it, but I am really grateful you completed it and came back with detailed feedback. I'm the only playtester and designer and it's really easy to be blind to your own design biases.

The first map is unfortunately something of a failure. It's my least favorite map. It was inspired somewhat by Bloodborne, but like you mentioned, I struggled a lot to give character to a lot of the buildings. It had some elaborate things like an actual house you could explore, and a market place, but I scrapped it due to performance (I scrapped possibly an extra hour worth of playtime from the mod itself because I just wasn't satisfied with it). If I detailed it a lot the map would start chugging, and if I didn't detail it enough it would look featureless. At some point, I just decided to get it over with, because the first map was more meant to be an intro map to the first 3 enemies. The sound design issue is something I myself never really paid attention to. Some sound design issues were more of certain weapons being mute at certain points until I added a flag that states to play that sound effect all the time. Unfortunately I don't know how to do a damage indicator (which I really wanted to) since I felt that should be fair to the player. So sorry about that Yea I agree visibility is something I was worried about. I actually wanted the enemies to be cultist-looking (hence why they're wearing hoods). But the first 3 enemies are all wearing gray and dark, and I suck at pixel art. I think my biggest regret about this project is not knowing the limitations of GZDOOM itself. I had this idea in my mind that since it was based on the Doom engine, the 3d floors won't pose a problem. Sadly that's not the case and they're the biggest culprit when it comes to framerate problems (along with large areas). I'll probably map for either PrBoom or Eternity after this mod is finished (maybe even move to other engines), so I definitely agree in making smaller areas. Thank you for your feedback and the compliments! Don't worry about it being hasty, I think first impressions are important to making a good game. I hope to use this, maybe even revise these maps in the part 2 release~ Thanks for playing! I'll try to address every issue: - I don't recall many places where there is backtracking, may I know which areas? The few I can think of is after entering the portal in MAP02 to get a secret in which the way back is going back through the prison, which I'll admit is unnecessary but didn't rectify and maybe the blue key, but most of the maps are generally linear. - CD's projectiles were meant to be taken out with the shotgun, I forgot what health values I put them as, but I will admit some work could be done to balance out the machinegun, shotgun and some other enemy types. (Machinegun was a tommygun and I wanted to reflect it's firing speed) - I deliberately made the crossbow to be a weapon that is used often for MAP02 and MAP03, because you'll face much stronger enemies later on, making the SSG and crossbow the preferred weapon. On the highest difficulty however, ammo pickups are halved, and this is unfortunately the difficulty I playtested the map the most on. I'd rather take the risk of giving the player more ammo to play around with and it being actually finishable then frustrate the player with constant deaths (though unfortunately that may not be the case with MAP03) - It's 200% mostly because I didn't want to have to deal with making decisions on what armor I want the player to pick up. I simplified it. - The fire serpent's animation was something I liked and I liked how it messed with a player's perception of it, so I'm keeping it as it is. - Typos. I knew there were some, but couldn't pinpoint all of them, thanks for pointing them out. - Fair point as most people who play Doom use 3 for SSG, but I personally prefer the SSG have it's own separate slot, cause I wanted the Shotgun to stay relevant as well. This is something I also wanted to remedy with a weapon wheel, but I'll admit I forgot. MAP01 - Might consider that - I tend to make large areas, so that the player has room to dodge those projectiles. I might up the speed of the player MAP02 - Fair point, should probably reposition that armor pickup - That is the kind of reaction I wanted the player to feel in that section. Adding a sniper weapon would make it too easy. - The same goes with the pitch blackness, I wanted the player to either close the distance or avoid it entirely. - The portal section now that I think about it, is kinda dumb. I should have just done teleports (I did portals mostly for cool factor I guess) - The Hellsmiths don't have splash immunity. They take 3x more damage from the crossbow, but yea their health is 30000. I'll admit that double boss fight was meant to starve the player of the resources they collected and be careful with each crossbow bolt, so that they can't rely on it too much during MAP03 to utilize the traps. That fight is admittedly long MAP03 - Map03 was risky, I wanted to explore methods outside of killing enemies directly in some cases. It's a complete overhaul from another MAP03 that I made and I just wasn't satisfied with it, in fact it was kinda boring. Thank you for playing! I look forward to feedback on the rest of the maps

Thank you for playing it! Seriously though I'm just happy that you finished the first 2 maps~ Your feedback is validating since I did feel the same way while making the 3rd map, it's the most risky map I think I've made and I constantly wondered how challenging the map should be. I will definitely consider the balance, maybe make the player faster, decrease monster health and damage. Thanks for playing! Yea the first map is a little more of an intro map made to breeze through and get familiar with the first 3 enemies you'll encounter. I'll admit thought that the castle idea was more of eye candy and filler than anything. I struggled to come up with fun and interesting combat scenarios, though now that I think about it, I guess I do subject the player to a lot of combat constantly The shotgun was more of a thing I wanted to try and differentiate from other shotguns, and a bit of an experiment in balance. Plus it looks cool~ But I'll admit that the shotgun can be quite difficult to use compared to other hitscan weapons. Thanks for the advice on the performance, I do regret now making a lot of large areas. Will probably scale down whenever mapping for GZDOOM. I'll tone down on the circle tool if it impacts performance that much in the future and check what those errors on boot might be. Thank you for watching this and the feedback! Thanks~ If it's any consolation, I ran this on a pretty crappy pc with low resolution (like 1280 by 720 or lower) and the framerate is "playable", just try not to look directly into the ground or the ceiling

Yep~ I like church architecture

Thank you! The zdoom wiki helps with getting these really good shots

I liked those shots too~ Thank you very much, I hope you'll enjoy it!

Thank you, a lot of it was inspired by other Doom wads~

Thank you! I hope the rest is enjoyable

Yea, it's true that the enemies spam their attacks (they have the MISSILEMORE flag enabled). While I was playtesting, it was kind of difficult to avoid certain attacks. I played a lot of Duke Nukem and Blood while making these maps, and got that inspiration, and wondered how Build engine games' formula could work with Doom. I did spread out a lot of cover for the first 2 maps. The 3rd map not so much and it to me was definitely the hardest out of all the maps I playtested, but the enemies you'll face there are somewhat less punishing I feel. The double double barrel shotgunner was kind of a reference to determine the movement, and I liked that you could totally avoid both attacks in open space. The movement was initially slippery like Doom, but I decided it to be more like Build games, so it's movement is tighter. I may up the speed in Part 2, let's just see how it goes (though I assume you enabled all run) I am really glad to hear you like the health potion placement. I told myself it's better to be generous with health than to be stingy, because at least people can finish the level :D Thank you for liking it! The feedback you've given is valuable

Thank you for the high praise! I hope I can deliver the next maps with the same kind of quality~

Thank you~

@Walter confetti Thank you! Though by my own admission I personally feel that there's still a lot of work left done before it can even reach such a status~

Been working on my partial conversion mod Circadian Offset. Part 1 is now released! Here are some pics of it, for those who haven't seen it: The next 2 show what I'm working on currently. These maps will be available for Part 2~

*Sorry this is a repost from another post I made here just with extra questions, since I thought maybe that one wasn't read. I've tried to find as much information I could and looked at how other mods did it but I still couldn't figure it out. If this violates the DoomWorld forums' rules then feel free to remove it. I would've thought this would be pretty easy to do, the first thing I tried doing was taking my numbers with the font graphics I want and renaming them to the STTNUM prefix and then putting them into my pk3 file, as I assumed if you rename them to Doom's graphic names it should replace them (since I managed to so with the medikit) When that didn't work I tried to take my font lump and renaming it to HUDFONT_DOOM.lmp. Still no change I then made a FONTDEFS and added this: STATUSFONT { 0 STTNUM0 1 STTNUM1 2 STTNUM2 3 STTNUM3 4 STTNUM4 5 STTNUM5 6 STTNUM6 7 STTNUM7 8 STTNUM8 9 STTNUM9 % STTPRCNT / STTSLASH - STTMINUS NOTRANSLATION 109 // don't touch the shadow color! } Nothing changed I suspect these links can help me: https://zdoom.org/wiki/Font & https://zdoom.org/wiki/FONTDEFS but I'll admit I can be kind of dumb sometimes and understand better with more detailed examples. I'm also trying to change the M_DOOM picture (shown below): I've created a new graphic to replace the default M_DOOM graphic. I thought just naming my new graphic M_DOOM to replace the one above should do it, but it didn't work This is what my pk3 entries look like. My graphic replacements for my hud are inside the sprites folder while my M_DOOM graphic is inside the texture folder

I did what you said and put all my custom graphics for menu and hud and it worked! Thank you so much!

I would've thought this would be pretty easy to do, the first thing I tried doing was taking my numbers with the font graphics I want and renaming them to the STTNUM prefix and then putting them into my pk3 file, as I assumed if you rename them to Doom's graphic names it should replace them (since I managed to so with the medikit) When that didn't work I tried to take my font lump and renaming it to HUDFONT_DOOM.lmp. Still no change I then made a FONTDEFS and added this: STATUSFONT { 0 STTNUM0 1 STTNUM1 2 STTNUM2 3 STTNUM3 4 STTNUM4 5 STTNUM5 6 STTNUM6 7 STTNUM7 8 STTNUM8 9 STTNUM9 % STTPRCNT / STTSLASH - STTMINUS NOTRANSLATION 109 // don't touch the shadow color! } Nothing changed I suspect these links can help me: https://zdoom.org/wiki/Font & https://zdoom.org/wiki/FONTDEFS but I'll admit I can be kind of dumb sometimes and understand better with more detailed examples. I would appreciate any help here

I don't know if this might help, but for me in wanting to get ideas on exploration, I felt it was important that exploration shouldn't make the player feel "lost" on what to do next. I found some ideas and things to look out for by playing a megawad that has multiple pathways and dead ends, to the point where you can get stuck and the level flow appears lost, and switch it up together with a map that flows really well, just to contrast how these maps handle their flow. The megawads I am playing now are Struggle: Antaresian Legacy, BTSX and Sunlust. Struggle can be non linear and I often found myself stuck in certain areas trying to determine where I was supposed to go next (sorry antares). BTSX flows well, you'll revisit areas and space gets opened up. Sunlust maps are often smaller and more focused so you almost always know where to go, and it helps that the maps are more open compared to just having rooms connected by hallways.

Thank you~ Though I'll admit I wish I could be faster, as it had cost me a position on a team I like that the Heretic reference got across, the mapset is more fantasy and Lovecraftian based than it is Hell based