JAMAL JONES TRILOGY - Version 1.1 RELEASED! May 12, 2023 - [Doomkid's Mapping Contest]

Evening folks, am having a blast playing through EP1 at the moment. However, I found a potential bug in Map 14 (Derelict Row). 

Looks like there are two traps that don't work (For both the Blue and Red Key), there are hit-scanners in closets that don't open. 

Great map all the same, just said I'd report here (Played on Prboom-plus on Complevel 2, Expert)

Hell yeah, so happy to see it released at last! A hearty congratulations to every damn one of you. This is one for the history books. Love that credits map too, excellent work @NiGHTS108 :)

One little thing I do have to admit is that (story spoilers):

I was planning on making some edits to my E3M19 to tidy up some grievances I had with it, but all the problems I had were really abstract; wasn't easy for me to find out what I even wanted to do. I think I'll leave it be, I've spent enough time on it already. If anyone finds any issues with the map or has any criticisms or advice, please let me know! It's my first map and I'd love to learn from it as much as possible.

Hey, so I've been playing the entire Jamal Jones Trilogy on stream (archive links below), and I'd like to address some issues and bugs that I've encountered during my playthrough so far. I've been playing on Ultra-Violence (Expert), pistol start and Complevel 2 in DSDA Doom.

Jamal Jones Episode I

• MAP01 (  @Rykz - To the Site ) - There's a bridge that has a HOM. In OpenGL, the ceiling is a sky. Software fixes this. But in both OpenGL and Software, the sector HOMs on the floor. This should be somewhat easy to fix since the bridge before it, works correctly.
• MAP04 ( @Astronomical - Initialisation ) - Not really a bug... but the secret involves walking behind a wall, but it's kinda confusing cuz the teleport is only 1 way. so if i go behind the wall the other way, it doesn't teleport me. This can make getting the secret confusing.
• MAP10 ( @Doomkid - Base of Consequences ) - Seems like there's a hanging body (Thing 504) that stops hanging and lowers down when a sector lowers. It seems it's a complevel 2 behaviour that can be easily fixed by moving the hanging body a bit away from the the line (1034) and the sector (154) that lowers.
• MAP14 ( @Origamyde - Derelict Row ) - The map has 2 instances where some fights never happen because monsters seem to be stuck in the geomentry. One instance is the red key ambush that never happens because of some pinkies being stuck in the doors of some monsters closets. The other is in the Blue key room, where the closets don't seem to open in Complevel 2. I couldn't figure out why the closets get stuck in the blue key room, but it could possibly be solved by moving the monsters a bit away form the monster closet doors.
• MAP31 ( @Goat-Avenger - FORLORN FANTASY ) - Map has 2 automaps which makes 100% items impossible in complevel 2. In Vanilla compat, you can only pickup 1 automap per level.
• MAP17 ( @Blue Phoenix - Sewage City ) - not really a bug, but just a suggestion/thought. There's a secret teleporter that lets you telefrag a Cyberdemon (right before grabbing the red key). While I like this secret, it made me a bit confused since it teleports you away from the red key. and so I kinda had to backtrack (and I got lost in the map a bit, because I didn't realise the red key was just after the secret). I think it'd make more sense to telefrag the cyber and then have a teleport to teleport you back to where the secret was to guide the player to grab the red key.
• MAP19 ( @Peccatum Mihzamiz - Inner City Evil ) - Most everyone knows this, but I'll just mention it anyway. All the fancy invisible bridges are broken in the map. :(  Otherwise, the map seems to work perfectly fine besides that.
• MAP20 ( @Michael Jensen - Warhevil ) - This is definitely gonna be a personal thing, but I'm a bit disappointed the player can't backtrack to grab the beginning soulsphere secret, especially after going thru an entire 30-45 minutes of the level.

Jamal Jones Episode II

• MAP03 ( @Borpo The Wizard - Delta Complex ) - like @Large Cat said earlier, there's a part of the map with some pits that'll totally crash Vanilla due to VPOs. Also really strangely, there's a secret teleporter that you can take that will stop you from accessing half of the map, since you need a yellow key to go back. That's kinda strange to me, I might make it so the backside of the Yellow door can open from the backside, if the player decided to take the teleporter so they could do the rest of the map they missed.
• MAP04 ( @b0n3 - Menagerie Mayhem ) - Some of the monster closets can become broken, leading to it being impossible to get 100% kills. In my playthrough, it was 2 Archviles that were supposed to teleport to where the sniping green imps are. The easy way to fix this, is to set the mosnter teleport lines to WR instead of W1. The other monsters that didn't teleport in were some of the monsters in a monster closets that had 8 monster teleport lines set to W1. An easy way to fix this is to add an extra WR teleport line to make sure the monsters that break the W1 lines, can still teleport in. In case you didn't know, monsters will not teleport on teleport lines if the destination is blocked by either another monster or the player. Also I'm not sure why, but this map trigger a spechits error during my playthrough which is bad for demo recording.
• MAP05 ( @mgr_inz_rafal - Techbase Damaged by Hell ) - Not sure why, but an imp in sector 75, got stuck in the floor making 100% kill impossible. Sometimes monsters can do that because of the nodes messing up. I usually fix it by moving some of the vertices a bit or simply adding more verticies to fix the nodes that can sometimes break.

Twitch Video Archive:

Full E1-E3 Video Collection: https://www.twitch.tv/collections/1js-00r6OxdMCA

I'm planning on doing another post when I get through more of Episode 2 and Episode 3. These are the maps I've gone through so far on stream.

@Doomkid

made an update for my map (E1M17 Sewage City)

Sewage City fix1.zip

change log:

1:add teleporter next to backpack secret  that sends you to the key and add an insurmountable chest high wall in the castle secret, this should make the player less likly to wander about not finding the red key.

2: changed pinky closet exit to not get a cyberdemon rocket directly at your face.

3: made the blue door ate an angle so the player more easily find the exit to the sewage treatment facility

4: various minor edits including fixing  a tutti-frutty and an untagged secret.

there is comp texture with a strange width (193 I think) this prevents it from tiling properly in vanilla/chocolate, I suggest adding allblack patches to the right until its and even 256 width. I also suggest doubling it vertically so it can tile that way as well.

Hey all, thank you so much for the bug reports and the map fixes - this coming week I intend to address it all to the best of my ability. You're all helping SO much!

On that note, @Arsinikk, I just want to double check that those videos will stay up a good long while (for reference)? Seriously, thanks again man.

I am a bit late but thank you for using my map! and very huge pats-on-the-back all around are very well deserved

Sewage City fix1a.zip

2 texturing mistakes I forgot to fix

also after you telefrag the cyberdemone a step raises so can get back up on the perch if you fall off.

I'm only on episode 1 but this is the most damn fun wad I've played alongside D2TWID and Doom Zero. 

If there is one thing I need, though, it's the soundtrack in MP3 because by god these are probably some of my favorite MIDIs I've heard

14 hours ago, Votterbin said:

If there is one thing I need, though, it's the soundtrack in MP3 because by god these are probably some of my favorite MIDIs I've heard

I presume that you can convert all the MIDIs to MP3 via "Keppy MIDI Converter" with the favorite soundfont of yours!

5 minutes ago, RastaManGames said:

 

I presume that you can convert all the MIDIs to MP3 via "Keppy MIDI Converter" with the favorite soundfont of yours!

Awesome, I'll try that. Thanks!

Here's a fix of my map: all the bridges work again, though 2 of them at times still have graphical glitches at times. Nothing I could seem to do about it. I'm ok with them being like this. Tested with DSDA.

Here is the second half of my Jamal Jones Trilogy stream playthrough and the issues and bugs that I've encountered during my playthrough so far.

Again I've been playing on Ultra-Violence (Expert), pistol start and Complevel 2 in DSDA Doom.

A reminder that most of the comments below are specifically tailored to actual map bugs and issues. I will refrain from commenting on my thoughts on combat and gameplay. If you would like to know my personal thoughts on those for each map, you can watch the stream archive collection I've added on Twitch. Those videos should be up forever.

In case you missed it, here is my previous comments for the first half of the Trilogy:

And here is the rest of my comments:

Jamal Jones Episode II (cont'd)

• MAP11 ( @phoo - Gloves Off  ) - Not sure why but 18 enemies seemed to not wake up in out of bounds monster closets. When I took a look in the map editor, there didn't seem to be anything wrong. The monsters weren't set to Ambush, and the sound propagation seemed correct. I'm not sure but none of the pinkies blocked by a 107 tagged door woke up, and zombiemen behind a tagged 95 door didn't wake up either. 
• MAP15 ( @Synuś Vader - UAC Delta Labs ) - There was just a small open container that had some untextured lines around sector 510. There were no gamebreaking nor progression-breaking bugs in the map.
• MAP32 ( @TVdinnermasterchef - UAC R&D Weapons Facility ) - It's pretty clear why this map is limit-removing. One can just look at the reactor pillar section that would undoubtly go over the drawsegs Vanilla limit. There is a huge progression breaking bug in this map on complevel 2. There is a WR line (Linedef 1946) in front of the blue door that makes it so the player can't open the blue door. This is because in Vanilla, action lines will block the player's use action. I will also mention that because of how the teleport out-of-bounds monster closet lines are constructed, the map triggers the spechits error during the final fight. I'm unsure if spechits affects limit-removing or not.
• MAP17 ( @Large Cat - Final Contact ) - Just a little reminder that Large Cat said they had an update to their map. I noticed a few minor visual bugs in the Jamal Jones Version 1, that they said had been fixed in their latest version.

Jamal Jones Episode III

• MAP01 ( @joe-ilya - BASILICA ) - While the lower lava room is a cool effect (sector bleed ha!), there are some HOMs that seem to happen on the darker sectors. You may be able to fix these by surrounding the dark sectors with surrounding lines to continue the flat bleed? Otherwise map was perfect.
• MAP04 ( @NeilJohnRips - Reading the Demonic Scriptures ) - Minor note, the FIRELAV2 on the steps near the end of the map don't animate. Not sure if this is on purpose or not. FIRELAVA should be used instead of FIRELAV2 if you want them to be animated.
• MAP05 ( @Elto Gaming - Bloodshot Sunshine ) - There are monsters in sector 108 that are stuck together. I assume this was a difficulty monster placement mistake.
• MAP06 ( @Jastrzab Trzeci - Babylon 1816 ) - Not really a bug per say, but I got kinda confused on which switches and in what order I was supposed to press them in the final area of the map. I got through the map fine, but I'm still a little confused on what was the supposed order for them.
• MAP07 ( @Hitboi - Devilish Belly ) - The sector that holds the SSG is untaggable because the player is teleported before they can tag the secret first. The player needs to be able to touch the floor of the secret sector for the secret to trigger.
• MAP09 ( @ShadesMaster - BLOOD FOZZLE ) - In complevel 2, sector 95 (tagged 2) never lowers because there is a pinky that is stuck in the wall (thing 123). This makes the plasma rifle unattainable with 100% kills and secrets becoming impossible. Also it is a personal thing, but I'm not a fan of not being able to backtrack for secrets once the player enters the final arena.
• MAP10 ( @b0n3 - Underside ) - Unfortunately, I cannot tell you if there are more issues with these map, since I couldn't progress past a certain point. I actually dedicated the end of my E3 stream to trying to troubleshoot this map since I was confused on why it didn't work. After dropping into the Marble block arena, the W1 line (tag 9) that "lowers to highest floor" doesn't work in complevel 2. It's worth noting that it does work correctly in complevel 9, but the "lower to highest floor" action in complevel 2 is bugged that it only works correctly if it is surrounded by only 1 other sector. If it surrounded by 2 or more sectors, it will consider itself to be the highest floor and will never lower down.
• MAP14 ( @Vladguy - Rocky Rumble ) - It was interesting to see how your map changed form the last time I tried it. My only comment is that the green torch near the exit no longer makes sense, since you removed the secret near that area.
• MAP17 ( @NiGHTS108 - Scorching Ivy ) - My only complaint is that there is no way to backtrack once you fall into the final arena. I wouldn't mind this if the Cyber was crushed like the Revenants and Archviles were. Imo there's no indication that I'd have to deal with the Cyber manually. Just my 2 cents.
• MAP19 ( @Cammy - Grilled Billions ) - Not sure why but the lava sector tagged 107 raised like 8-16 steps higher than it should've in my playthrough. This sector I found could potentially cause a softlock. I looked in the map editor and didn't find anything incorrect, and was confused on how it could've raised higher because the surround sectors don't go that high. Also there are two revenants that got stuck in my playthrough and never teleported in near line 3093. I think this could easily be fixed by making that line monster blocking.

And that's my bug and issue report. It's quite a hefty WAD. Hopefully this was useful to you @Doomkid. It was alot of maps to sift through.

Again you can watch my entire playthrough of Version 1 of Jamal Jones Trilogy here (7 Videos):
https://www.twitch.tv/collections/1js-00r6OxdMCA

Hey folks, finally finished Episode 1. My favourite maps were probably Maps 2, 16, 18 and 31 - having said that, I don't think there was a dud in the set!

I really like the aesthetics of the project and it's a joy to experience so many different mapping styles. Also, I love how Berserk can absolutely wreck Revenants and Archviles 😂

11 hours ago, Arsinikk said:

My only comment is that the green torch near the exit no longer makes sense, since you removed the secret near that area.

i forgot to change it :/

@Arsinikk Thanks so much for all the help you're giving this wad with your thorough playthroughs and reports! I watched your playthrough and it gave me the juice I needed to update Grilled Billions. Here it is, @Doomkid (ignore the file name, it's not a new map name).

Mostly minor adjustments based on what I observed in your playthrough - the big secret area is visible on the automap now which gives you more of a hint on how to reach it, there's a little more plasma sprinkled here and there, I removed the unnecessary backpack/health bonus secret, added health bonuses around the sniping Cyberdemon to make it more obvious you can telefrag him, and changed the location of the teleporter. I also fixed the monster closet issue that caused those two revenants to get stuck for you. I have to admit though, I was unable to recreate the lava glitch you encountered. Nobody else who's played the map has reported it, so hopefully it was a weird one-off bug. Oh, and you also have to shoot an actual switch now to get to the secret cells, instead of a dumb blinking wall texture.

Hope you enjoyed the map, even if it was long!

Streamed again on Friday and was able to finish episode 1, maps 16-20 and they got pretty grand in scope!  For the most part I think they all held up in their long playtimes though.  Had some bugs in map 19 which are generally known about so I'll return when those are fixed, was a great map from what I played of it tho.  I was told Map 20 was a contest winner and I can see why - pretty awesome concept.  Not sure when I'll get into episode 2 so this'll probably be more of a long term playthrough.  Great work everyone!

EDIT: was just watching bits of this back and noticed at 1:15:47 on map 17 there's some sort of HOM thing in the sky.  only other issue I remember tho may have been pointed out by Arsinikk already.

Sewage City fix1b.zip

changes

1. rearranged the walls and sky to get rid of HOM,  not exactly sure what was causing the issue.

2. made stairs wider in the castle section for monster accessibility.

Not a major bug, but in DSDA-Doom in the first episode Cyberdemon attack frame doesn't lit up, but it does in Ep 2&3. I assume that there are minor differences in deh lumps.

Just finished e1, and this was a rip-roaring good time. :) All the mappers brought their A-game, and this gave me those same crunchy vanilla doom warm fuzzies that I loved from the Rudy and Ray Mohawk wads.  Also, that berserk bayonet!  I've never had so much fun not shooting stuff in doom.   Can't wait to blast through e2 and e3. 

A few Bugs, all found on "Expert":

Map 1: If you jump to the megasphere to the right of the bridge outside the final exit area and look toward the exit area, there seems to be a floor texture where there should be a mid-texture at the far end of the bridge.

Map 19: This map was unplayable for me, since the 3-D bridge outside the main base area is broken, and crossing over it caused something to raise, blocking me getting back up.  I love the weird progression and goofy tone (and midi) of this map, and would love t play it legit, so it would be great to see this fixed.

Cheers, lads and lasses.  

Hi, question about E1M11, there is a secret berserk on a high sector 226 that I can't see a way up to, I'd appreciate a tip if possible!

is there some weird bot that has drove this thread to over 821,000 views?

35 minutes ago, TheShep said:

is there some weird bot that has drove this thread to over 821,000 views?

Them spiders be crawling or doomkid is just *that* popular

On 1/21/2023 at 9:54 AM, Arsinikk said:

MAP11 ( @phoo - Gloves Off  ) - Not sure why but 18 enemies seemed to not wake up in out of bounds monster closets. When I took a look in the map editor, there didn't seem to be anything wrong. The monsters weren't set to Ambush, and the sound propagation seemed correct. I'm not sure but none of the pinkies blocked by a 107 tagged door woke up, and zombiemen behind a tagged 95 door didn't wake up either. 

Thanks for the heads up! I'm not sure why this occurred either, I'll set aside some time to poke around and troubleshoot this further.

Few additional observations to Arsinikk's comments:

E1M14: The lift in the BK room that is sector 206 doesn't lower for me, while the other does. This may be a vanilla thing since I checked in boom and both lifts functioned.

E1M16: Very minor thing, the midtex in lines 4546 to 4548 aren't set impassable.

E2M3: In the big courtyard, there is minor glitch in the staircase, not that relevant anyways. I do agree with Arsinikk that the door requiring the YK could be freely usable from the other side, so from outside basically, since you can miss a lot of the map if taking the hidden teleport route, as I did.  

E2M4: Small misaligned tex here. Also something didn't teleport out, likely because the line was blocked at the time.

E2M8: Minor thing, but umm could this armor be moved out of the way? :x

EDIT: forgot that I wanted to suggest a little thing, to boost the stock of bullets to 300/600, since right now you can stock up very quickly with a few clips and dropped chainguns, let alone two boxes. Don't think it would mess with balancing stuff to be fair.

E2M8: The secret tag in sector 713 gets removed by the change tex action, so you can't register it.

E2M9: A flame caco thing 122 is stuck in the wall. 

E2M11: Yeah some zombies and pinkies didn't show up, those Arsinikk mentioned. It could be that they get glued to the door sector but not sure, maybe try with a different action?

E2M15: Flame cacos 476/477 can't move, they need more space.

E2M31: You can easily bump into the backpack behind the midtex early on, not that it's too relevant to fix.

E2M32: Aside from the BK door problem,, I managed to break the door for the secret invul by pressing twice on the wall. Simply remove the action and tag in line 1753. Then noticed two visual things: this black stripe behind the start, and this other, although they seem intentional but idk. The detailing in general no doubt exceeds vanilla limits. 

E2M17: Midtex bleed in the secret with chaingunners.

E2M20: Minor thing, but the torches in the final area were slightly annoying -- turn around a corner in the urge to be as fast as I can to clear up and avoid homing shit, and get hanged on a random torch for a moment. Well, it's a minor gripe anyways...

E3M1: Yea the floor over lava started HOMing after the blinking effect. Not sure if there is a workaround though it doesn't impact on gameplay afaik.

E3M3: Minor stuff, line 1472 only needs upper unpegged tag, and misaligned tex in SSG path.

E3M6: Super minor, this tex line 1156 doesn't match with the rest.

E3M10: Like Arsinikk, I didn't progress any further than the arena with marble pillars and skipped the map, so I don't know if there's more to look at. Although before that there was this glitch in the gray cave.

E3M14: A monster didn't spawn for me. It was the hell knight at the RSK, I think I didn't even touch the triggers. Might suggest using a single diagonal line instead in front of the key.

E3M17: A minor thing you may take or leave, could this green armor be moved somewhere else? (I'm allergic to pickups in the middle of paths :p). 

E3M19: The lava sector 784 was a few units higher than the rest for some reason, and you can get softlocked/dead if you want the soulsphere on the lava -- the reason being, possibly, that the lava is below -500 units of height, and vanilla gets quirky with lower/raise actions when that's the case, so if the sector is told to raise to from -980 to -532, it'll go to -500 instead. The fix is to change height levels here and there. You could select the entire map, go to height offsets and type +100 or something, though you'd need to double check that everything else still works fine afterwards. Or just modify the area in question.

@Arsinikk

I'm a bit late to the party, but... :)

Author of one of the maps speaking. I just watched your stream; thanks for the overall good comments. A long time has passed since I've been watching somebody play my map. The map is convoluted, I agree, cuz I couldn't even navigate it properly myself. My goal was to have a non-linear map that promotes exploring, which may not fit well with the theme of hyperactive Jamal running and killing bad guys :) That's why you had to kill Arch-Vile with pellets :) Should you pick a different path or open more doors on the way and you'll get some decent firearms. And I agree, more rockets are needed. Also, a lesson learned for me about this annoying elevator - while I like the "drop traps" (usually with chaingunners, but you were lucky enough to first find a secret from which you could safely get rid of them), I should place them in corridors that you don't need to travel more than once, not in the main junction of the map.

PS. Good hunch about cyber telefrag :)

Now, regarding this:

Quote

MAP05 ( @mgr_inz_rafal - Techbase Damaged by Hell ) - Not sure why, but an imp in sector 75, got stuck in the floor making 100% kill impossible.

Yes, that's some crappy bug that I thought I fixed. It happens to me usually in a similar setup where I have an elevated opening to the skyview - maybe it's a combination of malformed nodes, ceiling height and/or deliberately missing texture? Dunno, but looks like my guessing game didn't eliminate the problem completely.

And also let me use this place to once again say big thanks to @Doomkid for the great effort of organizing all this!

On 1/15/2023 at 12:08 AM, Cammy said:

One little thing I do have to admit is that (story spoilers):

  Reveal hidden contents

I feel Jamal really should have died at the end. I'll admit it usually kinda irks me when wads kill you at the end for what feels like no other reason to be "raw" or whatever, but considering E3's story texts and levels dedicated to the mental toll Hell is taking on our boy, and the fact that Rudy 1 begins expressly because of Jamal's death, doesn't it just make sense? Having him live now just means at some point he gets killed offscreen, which is unceremonious in and of itself and I think also retroactively subtracts some urgency and meaning from Rudy 1. Something something "expected to be there but not important", but dammit, how cool would it be for Jamal E3 to lead straight into Rudy 1 like that? Plus, it'd be neat to see NiGHTS's credits map recontextualized as a sort of Doomguy Valhalla.

 

I haven't been really active with my work for this project, (light story spoilers if you care)

On 2/6/2023 at 10:56 AM, galileo31dos01 said:

: The lava sector 784 was a few units higher than the rest for some reason, and you can get softlocked/dead if you want the soulsphere on the lava -- the reason being, possibly, that the lava is below -500 units of height, and vanilla gets quirky with lower/raise actions when that's the case, so if the sector is told to raise to from -980 to -532, it'll go to -500 instead. The fix is to change height levels here and there. You could select the entire map, go to height offsets and type +100 or something, though you'd need to double check that everything else still works fine afterwards. Or just modify the area in question.

Ah! Then that explains it! Thanks so much for your help, galileo. I learn new things about this funky little game every day.

I know better than to say this WILL be the final version of my map, but I sure HOPE this is the final version of my map. I raised the whole map around 500 units, and after some Chocolate Doom testing it seems like the lava bug is fixed. I also tidied up a couple other, more minor things - just a formerly-lava floor which still hurt, a lift that didn't work in vanilla, and some texturing issues.

I'm having a problem on E1M31: 

 

( :'-/ )