Quality of Life Patches for various WADs

16 hours ago, Devalaous said:

Eviltech patch and all of the above mentioned wads are now live. Eviltech is Nicholas Monti's first megawad, and the story text in it is not in english. I don't have the skill to translate it to english, so it remains as is.

@nicolas monti himself released a version of Eviltech with additional bugfixes and with the text translated to English and posted it on Doomworld last year. I'm really sorry that I didn't see you were doing it before, I would've linked it sooner.

It's a really cool megawad, I played it a few months ago (the original version of course because I hadn't noticed there was an updated one until right after...) and enjoyed it a lot.

Oh neat, I guess I can backport some of those changes and have that patch exist for the old classic version, like how I have patches for AV First Edition, 2002 ADO, Mars War and Good Morning Phobos

EDIT: The Eviltech zip file now has 'eviltech_fix_en' which backports the english story updates to the 2012 version, the overall readme also now specifically calls it the 2012 version to avoid any mixups. I gotta say, the 2023 version is almost identical to how I updated the 2012 version.

On 5/10/2024 at 3:18 AM, Devalaous said:

I also had a quick look at @Auron's save game thing, and it saved the contents of the UMAPINFO Label field as the default save name, as I suspected.

 Oh, my bad.

It was actually me who requested that feature to Fabian, on Woof!'s GitHub, because I was playing Chex Quest 3: Vanilla Edition at the time, and it has a secret exit trick, to shorten episode length down to 5 map slots. Had I seen this earlier I would've commented.

Here's the origin story:

https://github.com/fabiangreffrath/woof/issues/1638

on the op you said there is a non-doom2ised version of way out and still doomed

do you know where i can find it? the only download link ive found is for a file called all-e1.zip and its just a bunch of separate wads rather than a single one unless this is the version you were referring to but then im not sure how im supposed to play it

do i have to load all nine levels plus your patch? or do i have to turn the zip file into a pk3 myself?

edit: im also having a hard time tracking down black hell as i see no black hell in either maximum doom or idgames

Yes, 'Way Out and Still Doomed' is an episode comprised of 9 pwads. Its just how some people released their episodes back in 1994. Thus you load up the whole lot with the patch. It works fine. Parts of it ended up on Maximum Doom as Doom 2 lazy conversions, those never work right so I tracked down the original form.

As for Black Hell: https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom/a-c/blakhell

Thanks to @Mad Butcher for supplying some nearly-lost material, here is the first pass of a patch for Swift Death that restores Redhouse Effect and First Sequence Remastered. As always, the default patch adds them as a menu option, the second integrates them into the campaign. I wrote three new intermission texts to accommodate that, so go easy on me for any cringe. Redhouse Effect was removed for overwhelming dislike, and was featured on Onemandoom's Swift Death review, as one of the only 'bonus maps' reviewed but no longer playable, so I felt it needed a restoration of sorts for history's sake.

I am far far below the skill level of Swift Death, so these levels integration has not been fully tested, only basic 'does the level load, does the music play, does the sky render?' sort of tests. On another note, this patch was the first time I ever had to use SLADE's colour remapper tool, to get my M_EPI graphics fitting with Swift Death's custom menu graphics

Greetings, I found this error in the umapinfo of dtwidle_fix.wad, the next level after "e5m0" should be "e5m2" not "e5m4".

Fixed and updated, redownload to get a fixed copy.

hi again im having a problem running obituary with your patch

i renamed obtic11.zip to obtic11.pk3 and then i drag it and obtic_fix.wad to gzdoom.exe and while the maps load properly the custom enemies still use vanilla sprites

that means imps shooting rockets from the palm of their hand and such

Obituary is infamously one of the most difficult to run classic Doom megawads, up there with Strain and anything else made with NWT. Not sure why your making things even harder with .pk3 stuff. The only thing that works is the content in the Fixed folder from DSDA's download of obtic11, that's what my patch runs on, and the remnants.wad is integrated into the patch. You have to run obtic.wad from the fixed folder with obtic_fix OR obtix_fix_wep, depending on whether you want the new weapons or not.

changing the file extension from zip to pk3 is no trouble at all actually and like i said everything seems to be working fine except for the absence of custom sprites

if by dsda you mean dsdarchive.com then thats where i downloaded obtic11.zip but im not seeing any fixed folder though

instead im seeing 5 wads 2 of which are clearly for deathmatch

https://dsdarchive.com/wads/obtic11

This has the fixed version, I redownloaded it earlier today to make sure.

what the hell? did someone upload the correct archive right after i downloaded it? it contained no fixed folder before

anyway its all working perfectly now thanks to you!

16 hours ago, TMMMS said:

what the hell? did someone upload the correct archive right after i downloaded it? it contained no fixed folder before

The fixed folder has been in the archive since 2015, so you probably downloaded it from elsewhere.

18 hours ago, Devalaous said:

Obituary is infamously one of the most difficult to run classic Doom megawads, up there with Strain and anything else made with NWT.

STRAIN is actually not too bad, just extract the .00* files using a modern tool like 7-Zip and load the .deh and .wad. Nowadays there's also the repackaged edition where you don't even have to do the former.

well i first downloaded it from idgames but after devalaous brought up dsda i went and re-download the file uploaded there

maybe i accidentally rolled my mouse wheel down or something because i swear the first item inside the archive was dehacked.exe

either that or i accidentally kept opening the wrong archive

Hello, it's me again, I'm afraid I've found another error in revolution_origws.wad, some images were not converted to "doom" graphics, causing the game to crash when starting.

I'll fix that in the morning, thanks for finding these. When theres only one set of eyes, this stuff keeps getting overlooked

EDIT: Fixed

Another finding In the UMAPINFO of ar_fixint.wad(Anomaly Report), the next level after map 32 is map 16 instead of map 33.

Edit: I just noticed that some labels from episode 2 of "DTWID: Lost Episodes" are wrong from "E2M4" to "E2M6".

I swear DTWID must have been made when I was really tired given how many times ive had to go back and fix something. Anomaly Report is also the first one I ever published instead of keeping to myself, so thats a pretty old 'whoops' there

All of it is fixed, and in addition I revised Anomaly Report to disable the stock Doom 2 text screens in both ZMAPINFO and UMAPINFO, might need to give it a once over to ensure I didn't morningbrain it

I might have to give up my 'UMAPINFO Saint' title from Xaser with all these errors xD

1 minute ago, Devalaous said:

I might have to give up my 'UMAPINFO Saint' title from Xaser with all these errors xD

I may just be the ZMAPINFO Devil, then.

So many dumb mistakes on my Maspterpack's GZDoom xINFO, it's almost driven me nuts.

Yeah, making frequent mistakes like that can be a big downer and embarrassment. I just remember that the various forum legends and most big releases come out with some pretty big 'whoops' moments and that multiple sets of fresh eyes are needed to comb over any release. Its especially frustrating for me though, because I used to comb over developer's work and find inconsistencies and errors for a living, now im doing it myself :D

Thankfully its all easy fixes, and I have all the time in the world to jump onto Slade and fix anything asap. Notably, most of the issues tend to pop up on the older ones, made before I had made the Templates, so I saved myself a lot of headaches by making those.

3 hours ago, Devalaous said:

Yeah, making frequent mistakes like that can be a big downer and embarrassment. I just remember that the various forum legends and most big releases come out with some pretty big 'whoops' moments and that multiple sets of fresh eyes are needed to comb over any release. Its especially frustrating for me though, because I used to comb over developer's work and find inconsistencies and errors for a living, now im doing it myself :D

Don't feel bad about it Devalaous. You have done a masterful job treating these old wads and giving them extreme quality for modern days. As you said a few days ago, just one pair of eyes is not enough to check so many details and sometimes something ends up going unnoticed. Keep up the great work.

1 hour ago, Devalaous said:

 and in addition I revised Anomaly Report to disable the stock Doom 2 text screens in both ZMAPINFO and UMAPINFO

Should you do the same with the others? The rebirth, Hell revealed and maybe deathless and Base Ganymede come to mind, I don't know. I also suggest that Base Ganymede could use a more unique intermission screen, something like this?

  lol google image

I am slowly updating the older patches with improved ZMAPINFO and UMAPINFO to bypass the stock text screens, I originally left them intact incase I came back with better writing skills, or if anyone else offered to do so, but by now, I just put in a generic 'thanks for playing' screen for Map 30, since DSDA/Woof/Eternity give a 'The End' screen if no text is defined, and set all the other screens to be skipped.

As for Base Ganymede, ive left it as intended, it was updated for the Unity port and finally got level names and a few updated levels, so any graphics left unchanged are likely intentional

My left arm is getting worse again, to the point im going to hospital on the 22nd to get it professionally looked at, so things will be slowing down again. Theres only one thing left in my in-progress folder anyway.

It is understandable, thank you for creating these patches, so you don't feel forced to use a port of the zdoom family to play wads where umapinfo was not yet a standard, you have saved my gaming.

Good luck at the doctor.

Community Chest 1 to 4 updated, since I found a mistake in CC4 where the regular patch would send you to Map 35 after 32 anyway in ZDoom-family ports, making the choice of patch redundant. CC4 should also now hopefully have a green 'which episode?' graphic too. I cannot test this update due to stuff going on at the home today, so if anyone else can give them a run, especially in UMAPINFO ports (which is where most of the updates occurred), please make sure I havent broken them.

On 5/16/2024 at 6:25 AM, Andromeda said:

STRAIN is actually not too bad, just extract the .00* files using a modern tool like 7-Zip and load the .deh and .wad. Nowadays there's also the repackaged edition where you don't even have to do the former.

I thought I responded to this, but apparantly not. Back in the day I actually had to go out and buy a 10 pack of floppies *just* to install STRAIN, I luckily still had a floppy drive in my PC at the time. I remember not being very impressed after finding out STRAIN was full of weird memey monster replacements and odd weapon changes, after spending a bunch of money on more disks than I needed, as bundles were all that were left at that point. I kept hold of that wad for as long as I could though, due to the bullshit to get it working. I recall NWT wads back then still being nigh unusable though. Thank god for the repackages.

Thanks (again 😄) for your dedication @Devalaous. Don't stress about the errors, hope you feel better!

Mostly unrelated to the topic, but with status updates broken..

Hospital visit went well, I do not actually have carpal tunnel it turns out, just a rather complex case of RSI, largely caused by...programming, aka this stuff alongside all the other modding things I do

So I definitely will be laying off this thread for the time being (aside from fixing any reported errors of course), after I finish that last WIP patch. Actually play the stuff ive patched while im 'on vacation' :p

I did want to make something for Dystopia 3 and Osiris, since both have been given widescreen graphics in the widescreen thread, but Dystopia 3 has no level names..

out of curiosity how ergonomic your workstation setting is? do you have an ergonomic mouse rug and such?

I'm very particular about the kind of keyboard and mouse I use, certain types feel 'wrong' and a lot of modern mice seem to...be made of blades and skin-tearing rough rubber, I swear. I first got signs of RSI 7 years ago, and it was foreign friends keeping me up all night on my phone in bed that really kicked it off. Having to compensate with my left hand for so many things caused it to spread to that one too.

Anyway, to be on topic, while I was resting from my therapy exercises (which are currently taking me half a day just to do half of them!) I updated the Concerned zip with a second patch, one for CB Speed, which is the first episode of Concerned on its own, with enough small differences to warrant one.