Elementalism, an ambitious new GZDoom mapset. Phase 1 out now!

Finally. Heretic 3.

Absolutely amazing work! I pass the second level and get a lot of pleasure from every aspect of the game. On MacBook Air M1, macOS Monterey everything goes smoothly.

Glorious project dude and i hopefuly you don't stop make next maps.

18 hours ago, rediska_3_14 said:

Finally. Heretic 3.

You know what, one of my complaints is the use of shotgunners and other Doom enemies that clash a bit too much with the rest. I was playing Water 1, and that they did a nice job with the atmosphere, setting up the lore with the stone inscriptions, the exotic music, the ancient temple architecture... it would fit more to have some Heretic/Hexen/fantasy enemies than modern enemies.

On 3/5/2022 at 10:22 PM, Thelokk said:

Running through this one at the moment, the visuals are astounding, and the gameplay is surprisingly (GZ)Doom-like. The 'original' graphics (ie Doomguy's hands, weapons, monster sprites etc) look a bit out of touch considering the smorgasbord of environmental prettiness, but that's nitpicking.

Gameplay-wise I'm getting some strong BTSX vibes.

The story is so far generic and incosenquential, and I imagine it is meant to be. Not a huge flaw bth, considering the genre. 

I thought the same when I entered E1. But I forgot quickly this thought. Maybe because the shotgun is quickly acquired? Or maybe seeing the typical DOOM monsters immerses you again.

1 hour ago, Turin Turambar said:

You know what, one of my complaints is the use of shotgunners and other Doom enemies that clash a bit too much with the rest. I was playing Water 1, and that they did a nice job with the atmosphere, setting up the lore with the stone inscriptions, the exotic music, the ancient temple architecture... it would fit more to have some Heretic/Hexen/fantasy enemies than modern enemies.

You could mod Heretic/Hexen/fantasy enemies with a seperate WAD right? For myself, who never played Heretic/Hexen (yet), is nothing missing here. But I also played only E1 and E2 so far.

As I said I played yesterday E1 and E2. I run then into E3 just to see the level and then to turn off the game. I saw then that the game was performing not well for me. I did not had an fps counter, but I would assume it was into the single digits.

Seems like that my Corei5-2500k is showing its age. Maybe I should overclock only for Doom 2? xD

But I think I will need to quit the mod, if I will not find a solution. Maybe I should turn off GZDoom's fancy graphic options, before I try to lower the resolution.

Congrats for the release, the mod looks awesome. :) On the Earth levels I also got Serious Sam TSE vibes. :)

I never played the big difficult wads, which decino is playing. But so far UV in this wad is very enjoyable in the first levels.

1 hour ago, Kyle07 said:

As I said I played yesterday E1 and E2. I run then into E3 just to see the level and then to turn off the game. I saw then that the game was performing not well for me. I did not had an fps counter, but I would assume it was into the single digits.

 

Seems like that my Corei5-2500k is showing its age. Maybe I should overclock only for Doom 2? xD

But I think I will need to quit the mod, if I will not find a solution. Maybe I should turn off GZDoom's fancy graphic options, before I try to lower the resolution.

I just played E3 today. Thankfully, the opening area is as bad as the performance gets in that level, the rest of it is more enclosed and performs better.

I found that when performance was getting bad, it helped to turn off rendering interpolation in the video settings. After all, if I'm not reaching 35fps anyway, interpolation isn't going to be of much use, and in fact it was creating jittery motion that was making the game feel more choppy than the framerate itself would suggest.

31 minutes ago, Shepardus said:

I just played E3 today. Thankfully, the opening area is as bad as the performance gets in that level, the rest of it is more enclosed and performs better.

 

I found that when performance was getting bad, it helped to turn off rendering interpolation in the video settings. After all, if I'm not reaching 35fps anyway, interpolation isn't going to be of much use, and in fact it was creating jittery motion that was making the game feel more choppy than the framerate itself would suggest.

Good to know about E3. But I have already read, that E4 is more demanding? Did not know that there is interpolation in Doom games/source ports.

What I will definitely turn off is ambient occlusion. This should do something.

In general I was not soo happy with GZDoom yesterday. Seems that the vsync option does not change anything or the tearing is not removable. It gets more extensive, the lower the framerate gets, then I see tearing all the time. I have an old 2009 Medion 1080p Monitor, so no G-Sync for me. Maybe it would be better to play on my 65" TV, but I don't want to use a controller when freelook is activated.

Maybe the vsync option gets turned on, when I restart the game.

The blue key is not obtainable in Roots of the Weeping Mountain. When I fell to get it, it completely disappeared off the map :(

6 minutes ago, CrazyJeff said:

The blue key is not obtainable in Roots of the Weeping Mountain. When I fell to get it, it completely disappeared off the map :(

Yep, it's a bug with RC1 (see the opening post for details).  You can give it yourself with the console by typing

give blueskull

The current download, v1.01, fixes this.

okay, thank you :)

I haven't checked v1.01 yet, and this is probably already known, but the hud dosen't work starting on the last map of E2 and later.

4 hours ago, CrazyJeff said:

I haven't checked v1.01 yet, and this is probably already known, but the hud dosen't work starting on the last map of E2 and later.

Can you explain a little more about what you mean?  This isn't a bug I recognize.  In what way does the hud stop working?  And when you say the last map of E2, do you mean a specific level?  

When I started W5 boss map, both the new and classic hud could no longer display regardless of settings. The classic one doesn't show on the auto map either. I thought it would come back when I got back to the hub or next episode, but it did not. I had to turn on gzdoom's alternate hud.

2 hours ago, CrazyJeff said:

When I started W5 boss map, both the new and classic hud could no longer display regardless of settings. The classic one doesn't show on the auto map either. I thought it would come back when I got back to the hub or next episode, but it did not. I had to turn on gzdoom's alternate hud.

would it be possible to record your game when this happens? this is a really confusing bug that has not been reported elsewhere.

Sorry it took me a while to reply, I didn't know new members had a post limit. Anyway, I have not been able to repeat the glitch. I even replayed W4 twice. It must have been a fluke. Probably due to me constantly changing settings to get better performance. Well, I succeeded at that. I managed to dramatically reduce stutter, and significantly increase fps by enabling just three cvars! I'm very happy about that because this is the best mapset I've played since Alien Vendetta :)

1 hour ago, CrazyJeff said:

Sorry it took me a while to reply, I didn't know new members had a post limit. Anyway, I have not been able to repeat the glitch. I even replayed W4 twice. It must have been a fluke. Probably due to me constantly changing settings to get better performance. Well, I succeeded at that. I managed to dramatically reduce stutter, and significantly increase fps by enabling just three cvars! I'm very happy about that because this is the best mapset I've played since Alien Vendetta :)

Thank you for the kind words!  And also glad to hear it was a fluke, hopefully it doesn't happen to anyone else.

Out of curiosity what were the three CVARs you used?  GZDoom is a complex beast so any potential avenues for improving performance I'm always keen to know about.

11 minutes ago, Bauul said:

 

Thank you for the kind words!  And also glad to hear it was a fluke, hopefully it doesn't happen to anyone else.

 

Out of curiosity what were the three CVARs you used?  GZDoom is a complex beast so any potential avenues for improving performance I'm always keen to know about.

The cvar's I used are:

gl_precache-This dramatically reduces (but not eliminate) stutter when a scripted event triggers, or a new large area loads.

gl_sort_textures-I don't know what this does, but this boosted my frames as much as 10fps in many areas.

gl_finishbeforeswap-I think this works similar to triplebuffer, so it only helps if vsync is on. fps gain can be as high as 20+ frames!

These were tested by using the in-game fps counter.

I'm running a 6 core i7. At 4Ghz, I can maintain 60fps 99% of the time. But I like lower thermals, so I cap my cpu at 2.5Ghz. At that speed, I can hold 60fps 75% of the time. For the most consistent performance, I enable cl_capfps. 35fps is perfectly sufficient to enjoy this game. I hope these tips can help somebody. I'm now off to finish the Realm of Fire :)

gl_sort_textures and gl_finishbeforeswap don't do anything for me, but gl_precache ("Precache GL textures" in the texture options menu) does get rid of the freezes on entering certain areas such as the beginning of W2.

Hi @Bauul !

your mod is awesome ! level design on all maps, music, boss fights ect everything and epic! This has become my all time favorite Megawad, congratulations to everyone involved in the development of this Megawad, you did an amazing job ! I can't wait to see phase 2 continue your tremendous work ! 

I really hope your Megawad wins the cacoward 2022 you deserve it !

I skipped this because I figured my old gaming-laptop wouldn't handle it the way it was meant to be played. But I got a more powerful desktop now so Im gonna make sure to try this Soon(tm)

Another sound related suggestion: in the Water episode, get a few waterfall and 'water running' sounds, and apply in the appropriate places. An example:

Epic stuff! I enjoy the exploration, different combat scenario's, and impressive visuals. So far UV seems challenging but fair.

 

45 minutes ago, Turin Turambar said:

Another sound related suggestion: in the Water episode, get a few waterfall and 'water running' sounds, and apply in the appropriate places. An example:

 

Ambient water sounds is something I had discounted early on, but I am going to re-explore for RC2. The jury is still out on whether they'll become a permanent fixture though.

The trick will be to find water sounds that feel realistic for the amount of flowing water without overwhelming everything else with what's essentially white noise (which is what would happen in real life). 

Recorded one of the levels despite the obvious compatibility issues but it was a minor thing and I must admit, all of the maps in Water Chapter are fantastic. The aesthetics are great, I love the fact that monster quantity at first is misleading and there are way more to join with nasty teleports. Breathtaking climax, visuals are incredible, lots of details, felt like playing Serious Sam 2nd Encounter again.

I think the sound fade distance will limit the white noise effect, except directly under the waterfall, of course. I added a 'crackle' sound to torches in my default setup.

	Spawn:
		TRED A 0 NoDelay A_PlaySound("misc/torchburn", CHAN_ITEM, 1.0, 1, 3.75)
	Burn:
		TRED ABCD 4 BRIGHT
		Loop

It took a little playing to get the distance right, but it adds to the ambience nicely.

I know I've played other games with waterfall sounds that fade with distance. I just can't remember them right now. My instinct is to say Serious Sam, Half-Life and Tomb Raider, but I'm not sure.

I wonder where the Air realm is?

1 hour ago, Jannak said:

I wonder where the Air realm is?

The Air Realm will be appearing on phase 2 alongside with the Light and Darkness realms

Any idea how to get my skybox to not look like this? I'm honestly clueless when it comes to a lot of the technical settings and stuff so idk what I need to adjust or do.

Edit: Nevermind, found the hardware mode. I thought it was already on. 

15 hours ago, Bauul said:

 

Ambient water sounds is something I had discounted early on, but I am going to re-explore for RC2. The jury is still out on whether they'll become a permanent fixture though.

 

The trick will be to find water sounds that feel realistic for the amount of flowing water without overwhelming everything else with what's essentially white noise (which is what would happen in real life). 

Well yeah, don't put water sounds in all places where there is water, given the nature of the episode, that would get annoying fast :P

But in a few key places, they would be nice.

Finished playing through the earth realm today. E4 was awesome, felt like I was playing Dark Souls again (including the Blighttown-tier framerate =P). I've also gotten through the first three levels of the fire realm. I find that dynamic lighting makes a significant impact on my framerate in the fire levels, so I played most of F3 with it turned off. Without dynamic lighting, however, there's no indication of which doors in the level are locked and which ones are unlocked. I think it'd be helpful for there to be something besides the lighting to show that.