Thirty Two Inch Nails megawad

kristus said:

EDIT: why is the pistol made to sound like the shotgun?

I think that's so when you're using the chaingun, it sounds badass like the chaingunner's weapons do. I think Rebirth did that too.

Deeforce said:

The estimation on the Archive is no sainthood. I even think it is pretty pointless. Just look at Neo Doom, one of the best wads ever made (even with own music from Daniel), but it only has a 3,5 star rating. So, why do you care?

[rant]Heh. Don't even get me started about the pointlessness of the archive's estimation. But being serious though, I agree that the final product is all that matters irrespective of the amount of work it takes to produce something. If I spent 5 years making WOW.WAD, it would still be one of Doom's most infamous WADs instead of a masterpiece. The audience is concerned only with how great they find the final product, not what it cost to produce it.

Also, I agree that you shouldn't need to play an entire WAD to give a very good estimation of it. Scuba Steve claims that he rarely plays through anything he nominates for Cacowards. Whenever I play something incredible, Like Scythe2, DVII, or Alien Vendetta, I know I'm going to love the entire thing just by playing the first map. The quality of people's work between maps does not generally vary that much between maps in a megaWAD unless the author is new to mapping, but Eternal has already defined his style.

In any case, the most important thing for a mapper to do is have fun mapping. If that condition is met, then other people's estimations are not excessively meaningful. They are a tool you can apply to try things that might improve your future work for yourself and others. However, mapping solely to get a positive reaction will just become like a job. IMO, It is when you map for yourself that you produce your best work, because you show everyone else how amazing your vision is, so even if they don't like your work, they can still respect it in their own way.[/rant]

Gez said:

(Now, let's get started on a megawad where every map stands within a 1024x1024 square, with vertexes all snapped to a 32x32 grid, using no more than 2 sectors, ten wall textures, and only one type of monster per map. Hah!)

Genius. Let's do it! =D

exp(x) said:

When the hell did I suggest that mappers should only make vanilla-compatible wads? I just stated my preference and nothing more. I know I'm in the minority; I'm not asking anyone to cater to me.

You know that Graf Zahl, he's just biased against your 'Blur-o-Vision' :P

You mentioned you didn't like PrBoom/PrBoom-Plus, I find that odd.. I mean, it behaves just like Vanilla doom as far as I can tell (Or at least I assume so since it plays back vanilla demos perfectly..)

I can't stand the menus of the Booms.

kristus said:

I can't stand the menus of the Booms.

yeah.. it did take some getting used to. Maybe entryway should put it on his list of stuff to do.

entryway said:

Did you try to map for three hours every day during two years and to receive an estimation for your next hard work after 2/7 levels or after iddqd+idfa+idclip "flying around" mode, because of "who cares lol"?

If he's mapping solely for the purpose of getting a review, and is really that bothered by one person giving feedback before playing the entire thing, then I think he should probably find something else to do. Opinions and feedback are great, but having an argument simply because Deeforce "rated" the wad after only playing two maps is unnecessary.

Nobody is obligated to play the wad either, no matter how much work is put into it.

Yeah, I was playing this WAD and I'm getting this really janky, game-breaking glitch. Whenever I pick up a health bonus, I instantly die. Well, not completely. I lose my weapons and can't pick up anything (and have 0% health), but I can still wander around and press switches and stuff. The enemies still attack me too (to no effect), but seem to lose sight of me for a split second (chaingunners don't fire continuously.) I was enjoying the WAD until this point, but that kinda killed the experience.

Here's a demo of the glitch: http://files.filefront.com/32innail+janky+glitchlmp/;11930304;/fileinfo.html; recorded with PrBoom V2.4.8.3 -complevel 9

This only happens in PrBoom V2.4.8.3, so I guess I'll just play this in Zdoom so I don't have to dodge health bonuses, but otherwise this seems a rather serious issue given that this is the most up-to-date PrBoom version save for V2.4.8.4, and PrBoom is the recommended source port... =/

-

Good stuff so far. I liked MAP01 and MAP02. MAP03 and MAP04 were kinda neat. They were just too long for my taste. I also don't like having to face off against a cyberdemon right before exiting the map. The arena's too small. I didn't get a chance to play MAP05-07 yet.

I did enjoy playing the maps though. Excellent usage of the default textures.

Death-Destiny said:

This only happens in PrBoom V2.4.8.3, so I guess I'll just play this in Zdoom so I don't have to dodge health bonuses, but otherwise this seems a rather serious issue given that this is the most up-to-date PrBoom version save for V2.4.8.4, and PrBoom is the recommended source port... =/

This doesn't happen in 2.4.8.4 - when I play back your demo in that, no problem occurs.

Don't know what the cause of the problem in 2.4.8.3 is - it's a new one to me.

BTW, this wad is described as limit-removing, not Boom-compatible, so -complevel 2 is the right one to use.

Grazza said:

BTW, this wad is described as limit-removing, not Boom-compatible, so -complevel 2 is the right one to use.

Complevel 9 is just what I had set as the default when I recorded the demo. However, I tried both complevels to the same effect. The issue seems to be caused by the version of PrBoom and not the compatibility settings, apparantly, although I couldn't begin to imagine what would cause this to begin with, though. I know similar types of things happen with DECORATE if you make a mistake with a loop or an illogical function call or something, so I would guess it has something to do with the DeHackEd work, though I wouldn't know why this glitch is version-exclusive, though... very wierd. =(

Yes, probably a very weird glitch, and Andrey will no doubt explain it when he appears here next. There was nothing that brought it to my attention when I updated the documentation for the new releases, which is why I am also mystified by it.

A health bonus can have this affect legitimately, but that's only when "Max Health = 0" is used in the dehacked patch (a pretty stupid thing to do, unless the aim is to create a zombie player), and with vanilla's (not Boom's) interpretation of Max Health being applied. But neither of those was the case here!

Actually, the 2.4.8.3 release had a number of issues - more than most test versions, in fact. (That's why the 2.4.8.4 release followed so soon afterwards.) Upgrading to 2.4.8.4 or the current 2.4.8.5 test version is recommended.

I think I came pretty close to shitting myself at a few of the traps.

So far I'm enjoying it. The size of the maps is keeping me pretty confused though @_@

Talking about oddities, I died in level 2 and after I was dead the infighting monsters apparently activated a voodoo doll, increasing my corpse's health to 50.

Mechadon said:

So far I'm enjoying it. The size of the maps is keeping me pretty confused though @_@

Heh, yeah. I was wandering around MAP02 for a while wondering where my last key was (I recorded a demo of this map in PrBoom V2.4.8.5 to give it a test run since I just ungraded. It was my first time though the map though, so if I post the demo later, you get to see me be lost for a couple of minutes. :3)

Anyway, a trivial bug to report. In MAP04, if you're standing in sector 284 when it raises, you get stuck since there's no triggers to activate from here, which was kinda annoying since I was still recording my first play-through and had to quit since I had cheats disabled.

On a positive note, I'm really loving the mood of this megaWAD. This is probably one of the top megaWADs I've played this year. The creepy/horror theme is just so well done. And to believe it was all done with a restriction! (Eternal seems to do his best work this way). *thumbs up* =D

esselfortium said:

It sounds like the problem I had with KDiKDiZD, where barrels would sometimes get gibbed underneath crushers, causing them to not explode.

This is correct, it's the crushed things race condition where a thing gets squashed before all its codepointers are executed.

dac07 used to suffer from it, cc2 map29 suffers because of it (and because Boom forgot to implement generalised walk-activated crushers), and cc3 map31 suffers from the reverse of it (if the race didn't exist you'd die the instant the "bomb" is activated because of a sign overflow in P_ThingHeightClip)

Grazza said:

Yes, probably a very weird glitch

I really can't understand where is a problem. This demo plays similar in 2483 and 2484. There is no weird things or maybe I can't see them. Death-Destiny had 101% of heath when chaingunner started to kill him.

2484 corrects mistakes in software rendering. If you use opengl, then 2483 is fine.

entryway said:

I really can't understand where is a problem. This demo plays similar in 2483 and 2484. There is no weird things or maybe I can't see them. Death-Destiny had 101% of heath when chaingunner started to kill him.

Playing the demo in V2.4.8.4 should work properly, where I simply get killed by a chaingunner. However, if you're playing back the demo in PrBoom V2.4.8.3, once I picked up the health bonus, I was reduced to 0% health, couldn't pick up items, etc. Are you playing it back in V2.4.8.3? That's strange that it would work for you, given the compatibiity settings seem to make no difference for me... very odd... =/

I got my copy of 32innail.WAD from the archive, if that makes any difference and had not altered anything from PrBoom V2.4.8.3 defaults other than key bindings and mouse sensitivity.

Death-Destiny said:

Are you playing it back in V2.4.8.3? That's strange that it would work for you, given the compatibiity settings seem to make no difference for me... very odd... =/

Yes. I have redownloaded prboom+ 2483 and pwad and tried without configs in software and GL. Does it happen in gl and software for you? If it happens only in software then maybe some overflow happens in new patch drawing code and some game data can be overwritten :/

My command line:
pr(gl)boom-plus.exe -file 32innail.wad -playdemo 32innail_janky_glitch.lmp (with and without -skipsec 80 at the end)

DD's demo desyncs in both prboom 2.4.8.4 and 2.4.8.3 beta for me (probably complevel shizit actually. Lets see if I can use start/run without hurting myself).

Wow, level 5 is amazing. 2 got on my nerves though searching for what to do.

Yeah, it happens in both software and gl mode. (My command line is identical, BTW, with no skipsec.) I'm not sure what's causing the difference, but here's some screenies so you can at least see what I'm talking about, though:

This is right before I pick up the health bonus...


This is immediately afterwards...


And I can still run around and press switches and get attacked with 0% health and no weapons...


I hope that helps some.

Death-Destiny said:

Yeah, it happens in both software and gl mode

Do you have 2483 release or beta? Does it happen *always* with your demo (try to play the demo with difference resolutions for example)? How about -nodeh switch? (prboom-plus2483.exe -file 32innail.wad -complevel 9 -nodeh -warp 1) And give me your cfgs and 'buggy' EXEs

Edit1:
Problem is 'solved'. DD has beta of 2483, not a release.

If you want to see what happened, you can try it:
http://files.filefront.com/PRBoom+V2483zip/;11935676;/fileinfo.html

But I still can't understand why problem occurs with his EXE. They are dated with 2008-08-11 and only thing I did after this date before releasing is updating TXTs :)

Edit2:
Very strange things happen with that EXE...
glboom-plus.exe -file 32innail.wad -warp 1 + idclev 18 = bug
glboom-plus.exe -file 32innail.wad -warp 18 != bug
glboom-plus.exe -file 32innail.wad -warp 18 + idclev01 + idclev18 = bug
glboom-plus.exe -file 32innail.wad -warp 18 + idclev18 = bug
and even
glboom-plus.exe -deh 32.deh -warp 18 + idclev18 = bug

:-/

Edit3:
The problem occurs because of these lines in dehacked lump

Text 5 5
ssdthssdt_

Finally got around to playing, and finishing this.
These are some of the most impressive maps I've seen in some time. As others have mentioned, maps 1 - 4 in particular carry a heavy load dose of atmosphere rarely found in a doom map. I also noted a lot of creative texture use I hadn't seen before. Wonderful lighting too.
The music was well chosen, proving just how important it is to pick appropriate music when designing a map.

Map 4 (on UV) was a fair bit of fun, and is easily one of the biggest maps I've seen. Zdoom (non-GL) was struggling to keep my frame rate up in the main room. (But alas, I, like some others here, enjoy the visual effects produced by the software rendering, so don't see this as a complaint. :) )

Was there some trick to killing the big boss? I completely ran out of ammo on him, and ended up bolting to the exit once it opened.

Still, this is a very memorable set of levels - and for once, I wasn't terribly bothered that most of the maps weren't that hard.

Great stuff.

Insane_Gazebo said:

Was there some trick to killing the big boss? I completely ran out of ammo on him, and ended up bolting to the exit once it opened

Did you see in-wad demo3?

You can play it directly (with compatible port):
prboom-plus.exe -file 32innail.wad -playdemo demo3

It is not a big deal to beat him if you are not new in doom and know how BFG works. You should not be afraid and shoot him from more or less close distance. Even 50 shots from SSG (one shot kills ~200 HP) will take 10000 HP. It is not hard to take the rest 15000 with bfg if you know one shot takes 800-3000. In any case if you can't you always can reach the exit without killing.

I think it's possible to finish this level in ~4:10.

Death-Destiny said:

Complevel 9 is just what I had set as the default when I recorded the demo

Is it always safe to play doom2 levels with boom compat? I am afraid some things can work differently and it can be fatal.

Death-Destiny said:

Heh, yeah. I was wandering around MAP02 for a while wondering where my last key was (I recorded a demo of this map in PrBoom V2.4.8.5 to give it a test run since I just ungraded. It was my first time though the map though, so if I post the demo later, you get to see me be lost for a couple of minutes. :3)

Where?

Death-Destiny said:

Scuba Steve claims that he rarely plays through anything he nominates for Cacowards. Whenever I play something incredible, Like Scythe2, DVII, or Alien Vendetta, I know I'm going to love the entire thing just by playing the first map

Some people do not want to understand planned concept of megawad. The main concept of most megawads: the first level should be small and have only few monsters, the second should be bigger and harder etc. But people see map05 with 30k sidedefs and automatically project that to others levels and want all of them with 30k sidedefs and speak "the first level is small 1994 level". How many things you could say about doom2.wad or av.wad after MAP01? (but your rule works for Deus Vult, heh) 32innail has small easy maps in the beginning. They become more complex from one level to another. It has Boss styled and Icon Of Sin styled maps and all these things are made intentionally, because it is not a compilation of random levels by lots of authors.

Impressive work. Eternal is actually flooding the archives with really good stuff once per month, shortly after Remain3 and the HR like maps I don't remember their names.

Grazza said:

Yes, probably a very weird glitch

Fixed. Not happens in 2482-2484 only by good fortune. Introduced in 2482 year ago. I'll rerelease prb+, because weird things may happen, if musics or sfxes were changed by DEH.