JENESIS - done and on /idgames.

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Jenesis is a 32-map mapset for Boom and all derivative sourceports, during the development of which I flexed my single-player-mapping muscles to the limit. Most of this project was speedmapped over a set period, although there are a couple of old, "recycled" maps in this set, which I've included here because I desperately wanted to finish them rather than letting my creativity stagnate. That, and I really thought it was about time they got the proper care and attention they deserved, and saw the light of an actual release alongside the first few single-player maps I've ever put out.

Each map is intended to follow a specific theme reminiscent of the brilliantly nostalgic themes that are present in the original IWADs, such as Doom 1's episodes, the unmistakeable Plutonia and TNT themes, and there are even dashes of Hell Revealed and Alien Vendetta. As such, the architecture here is kept relatively simple, detail to a minimum, but layout and gameplay are first priority. :)

Check out the wiki page for further information: http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Jenesis

MAP LIST:

EARTH EPISODE 1
===============
MAP01: Treatment Plant        -- "Into the Fire" by Theshooter7
MAP02: The Canal              -- "River" by Forty-Two
MAP03: The Oasis Facility     -- "Under the Waves" by Pendulum / Jimmy
MAP04: The Garden Terminal II -- "CCCool" by Lee Jackson
MAP05: Submerged Refinery     -- "Rusty Bridge" by Forty-Two
MAP06: Waystation             -- "Pistons" by Jimmy
MAP07: Dead Center            -- "World Tournament II" by Zora
MAP08: Plunge                 -- "Sewer Chase" by Forty-Two
MAP09: Slime Vaults           -- "Undisclosed Desires" by Muse / Jimmy
MAP10: Ruins                  -- "Garden" by Forty-Two
MAP11: Devil's Industry       -- "Crush" by Pendulum / Jimmy

EARTH EPISODE 2
===============
MAP12: Highway of Destruction -- "Shoot the Guns Out of Their Hands" by TheGreenHerring
MAP13: Transporter Station    -- "Zerpentine" by Bobby Prince
MAP14: Poisoned Ocean         -- "Pathogen" by Jimmy
MAP15: Alchemy                -- "Voyage I" by Jimmy
MAP16: Crestfallen            -- "Cliff" by Forty-Two
MAP17: Deadline               -- "Prototype" by Jimmy and Forty-Two
MAP18: Mineshaft              -- "Airport Chant" by Jimmy
MAP19: Subterranean Labs      -- "In Space" by Forty-Two
MAP20: Into The Gate          -- "Mysteries of the Quiola" by Paul Corfiatis

HELL EPISODE
============
MAP21: The Other Side         -- "Deevine" by Xaser
MAP22: Haunted Halls          -- "Bassline" by Mark Klem
MAP23: The Atrium             -- "Distant Tranquility" by Jimmy
MAP24: Hades' Wall            -- "Sunset Over Babylon" by Jimmy
MAP25: The Carcass Pit        -- "Going Nowhere" by Revenant
MAP26: The Savage Abyss       -- "Song in the Key of TNT" by Jamie Robertson
MAP27: The Vulcanum           -- "Fallen" by Symphony X / Simone Mularoni
MAP28: Baphomet's Keep        -- "The Greater Good" by Forty-Two
MAP29: Mutant Jenesis         -- "Moonlight Bloodbath" by Icytux
MAP30: Abysm                  -- "doombg" by ynxyg

SECRET LEVELS
=============
MAP31: Duality                -- "Smells like Burning Corpse (Remix)" by Zora
MAP32: Reprise                -- "River" by Forty-Two

I will test it.

Count me in.

I could play test, so count me in as well.

Interesting screenshots there. MAP02 looks like someting out of Plutonia in terms of texture use or something.

Thanks, guys. :D Will send the PMs to the testers in a little while. ;)

I'll test if you need more.

Okay, I think that does it. Five testers is enough to be getting on with, I think. ;)

Jimmy91 said:
I assume generalized line specials don't work in PrBoom (although they do in PrBoom-plus). For this reason, do NOT attempt to run this WAD in PrBoom. Any further advanced sourceport which supports generalized line specials should run this WAD fine, however.

Uh.... I think you must have your wires crossed. I can't imagine where you've got this idea from...

The only reason generalised line specials wouldn't work is if the engine compatibility level is set lower than Boom, and this is the case for both branches of PrBoom.

Maybe your prboom.cfg has default_compatibility_level 2 or some number less than 9 in it, but otherwise I'm just thoroughly confused.

I thought generalized crushers didn't work in Boom, which is what he might be refering to ?

Nope, sorry. I'm an idiot. xP Seems they actually work fine once I set that compatibility variable to 9.

I've played up to MAP05 and I really like what you're doing here. Here's the problems I spotted:

(Excuse the cheats, I'm not all that good at DOOM)

-The starting room of MAP01 feels a bit cramped.
-In my opinion, the monsters behind you in the starting room of MAP01 should be flagged as deaf.

Found a bug where this building disappears when you move toward the door:

A:



B:



-The Arch Vile in MAP02 seemed a bit out of place in my opinion.
-The secrets were a bit obvious
-I'm not the biggest fan of these stair textures:



-The "square" sea seemed a bit strange



Other than that I'm loving every minute of this. Keep it up!

Marnetmar said:

Found a bug where this building disappears when you move toward the door:

Limitation of the renderer. Can't do better unless you use portals or 3D floors, which wouldn't be really the kind of stuff you should expect in a Boom project.

The only workarounds are to either set the smaller building's height to something that would realistically obscure the taller building from these points of view, prevent the player from moving to a position where the problem can be seen, or tell players to ignore the oddity. ;)

Marnetmar said:

-The "square" sea seemed a bit strange

Again, nothing better to expect. I suppose the outer linedefs could be given linetype 337. In ZDoom-compatible ports that's line_horizon, and in other ports it just wouldn't do anything. (Doom tolerates unknown linetypes. Contrarily to unknown sector types which make the program abort.)

The 'sea' area could be helped by rounding the edges a bit, so the corner is less pronounced.

Only played up to level three so far, and its been looking pretty good, really a fan of the first levels music. Not to many problems so far, except for a small visual issue on the first level which I'll post a pic of later. And i'm with Marnetmar on those step textures.

Other than that good job, its been enjoyable so far.

MAP01:
- I think the first fight would be more fun if it was easier to get out of the starting room. Maybe move the enemies back a bit.
- In UV, the sergent in the starting room actually makes UV easier because you get the shotgun.
- The amount of health lying around might be too generous and easy to bump into. You might want to at least place health in areas where the player doesn't regularly walk around. I think the player should need to seek out health rather than just have it lying around everywhere.
- The way out of the first part isn't really made obvious, I had to run around back and forth for a while.

In fact I can't even figure out what to do, I gave up.

I shot the face but the rail things only raised half way up. Do I have to shoot another one somewhere?

Those platforms should raise all the way up when you shoot the switch. o_O Most odd. They're set to raise by their shortest lower texture - SUPPORT3 (128 units high) - so they should raise all the way up.

However, I can of course change their setup so they use a proper control sector which ensures they always raise by 128.

Sorry about that. :S

For the record I was using ZDoom 2.3.

Okay - I'll recommend that you try out the latest version of ZDoom and see what happens.

Xaser said:

The 'sea' area could be helped by rounding the edges a bit, so the corner is less pronounced.

Yeah, I think this is generally the sanest way to handle it. Just put a big 45-degree line in the corner and use some Curve Line magic on it in DB.

You could also just make the sea really big :D

While playing this on UV on the second level, i've ran out of ammo quite a few times there, and that is certainly not fun when you've got four revenants stomping around and all you've got is 3 shotgun shells. Might want to place some more ammo on the UV setting for that level.

You'd still want to make the corners rounded, though, or it'd just be really big and still have visibly pointy edges :P

Lawstiker said:

While playing this on UV on the second level, i've ran out of ammo quite a few times there, and that is certainly not fun when you've got four revenants stomping around and all you've got is 3 shotgun shells. Might want to place some more ammo on the UV setting for that level.

Pfft whatever dude, I've taken on quite a few revenants with my fists; clearly it was intended for that to happen.

In fact it is reasonable to suggest that you should be able to kill any monster, including the Icon of Sin, with your fists.

Two of my six testers (Mechadon and MegaDoomer) have now privately messaged me a very clear and concise list of issues and bugs present in all 11 of the maps. I will reply to their individual reports in a little while, and address each issue reported as best I can. Thanks a ton, guys. :D

Now, I need to make a decision - shall I publicly release the WAD after I've fixed all the issues reported to me by all my testers (and wait until some general feedback from the whole community before an /idgames release), or should it be another private beta?

I'd probably do another private beta for the testers to run through one more time. If all goes well after that, do a public release. That way, you'll have a little more peace of mind that it's as solid as can be. And if any other bugs pop up after the public release, just fix them and re-release.

Well, that's probably what I would do anyways :)

Any reason you spelled it "Jenesis" rather than "Genesis"?

I guess Gimmy91 would have spelled it correctly.

Well, I was thinking if there was any artistic or story or whatnot reason behind the spelling.

Nah, Jez Gez got it right. xP