[Bethesda.net] Masterpack for Doom II

[elf-alchemist]

TLDR: The Master Levels suck, this project fixes that.
 

For a deeper read, read the motivation and inspiration behind this project.
All episodes, formerly merged as one 46-map megawad, are available separately, as the following:

 

• Dr. Sleep's Inferno
• Jim Flynn's Titan
• Cranium's Cabal
• Christen Klietech (Soon)
• The Lost Leves (Soon)

 

Aubrey hodges was kind enough to give his blessing for the use of his music on the PSX TC add-on.

Get the PSX Doom Extended OST and PSX Final Doom Extended OST from his Bandcamp.
 

Special thanks to these folks:

@OpenRift, @THEBaratusII, @Voidette, @ethel5691, @dusk-iv and everyone from the DOSBox Deathmatch Club and discord community, for being great friends, who supported me in hard times and encouraged me to keep working on this project.

@LadyMistDragon for just listening to my insane ramblings on the various maps as I played them.

@Xaser for making the most important map for me, it was the most cathartic gaming experience I've had, playing through his homage to Dr Sleep.

@Amaruψ for being an amazing friend. Thank you, goober.

And to all the creators of the incredible additions and improvements to the Master Levels, mentioned, or not, in this post, for working hard on making a better version of my personal favorite Doom WAD.

P.S. This topic has been edited so many times I completely lost the original, so no old thread spoiler.

 

 

Edited September 4 by elf-alchemist

[Ethel486]

Congratulations on the first release of the script!!!

[Ethel486]

Did a little testing, for some reason, there's no music on the first level of Inferno when playing on GZDoom... Also are you planning to add back the custom TITLEPIC?

[JPL]

Oh wow, this is very cool, congrats on the release! Really glad that someone made a non-ZDoom-only, non-WadSmoosh requiring, more super duper version of Works of the Masters.

[Average]

So, for clarity's sake,  I presume I have to install Python?  I did that and something happened but it was so fast I couldn't see the Shell window.  Again, I presume it worked but where is the compiled WAD?  Is it the four WAD's that reside in the "base" folder?

 

I feel like step by step instructions wouldn't go amiss.  These things are only easy if one knows the steps involved. :)

[elf-alchemist]

THANK YOU, everybody for the greatly positive response.

 

 

7 hours ago, JPL said:

Oh wow, this is very cool, congrats on the release! Really glad that someone made a non-ZDoom-only, non-WadSmoosh requiring, more super duper version of Works of the Masters.

It means the world to me, to hear this, from the man himself no less. Back when I still played on GZDoom I adored every last inch of WS and WotM to heck and back, I even learned quite of bit of Doom editing from just messing around with both pk3s on SLADE3, truly the idea behind making the Masterpack is rooted in that innocent time period of mine when I would just try out different episode names, would try to split "Hell on Earth" into separate episodes as well, when I tried changing the MENUDEF to simply give the WotM episodes yellow names to fit the ML theme, or even to remove the Master Levels WADs and move them to the masters.pk3. Those were good times. But now, they are even better.

 

 

16 hours ago, ethel5691 said:

Congratulations on the first release of the script!!!

You're awesome, Ethel, thank you.

 

 

12 hours ago, ethel5691 said:

Did a little testing, for some reason, there's no music on the first level of Inferno when playing on GZDoom... Also are you planning to add back the custom TITLEPIC?

Just checked and turns out, I made a pretty bad off-by-one error when naming the music entries on ZMAPINFO, will fix.

The missing TITLEPIC is not only a known oversight-type bug, it has also already been fixed in the latest commits, as of right now.

These will be fixed by release version 0.2.

 

 

6 hours ago, Average said:

So, for clarity's sake,  I presume I have to install Python?  I did that and something happened but it was so fast I couldn't see the Shell window.  Again, I presume it worked but where is the compiled WAD?  Is it the four WAD's that reside in the "base" folder?

 

I feel like step by step instructions wouldn't go amiss.  These things are only easy if one knows the steps involved. :)

As it stands you are correct, as far as Python is concerned, although, it is in my plans to add executable binaries to the project, to make things more convenient :).

The build should have produced a `masterpack.log` file as well, it has the same output as the terminal.

Currently the final `master.wad` is built on the `dest/` directory next to the `masterpack.py` itself.

There will be more, better instructions coming soon, I'm just a little bad with presentation, myself. But they will be improved

 

 

Again, thanks everybody for the positive responses, this is the fuel that drives me to keep working on this project, seeing the Master Levels get the love they deserve.

[JustAthel]

This looks pretty interesting, I never paid too much mind to the Master Levels due largely in part to the tedium of having to -file every single wad down the list. Thanks for making the levels more accessible!

[PsyDOOMer]

I should ask, because I can't quite get it out of my head: why TNT and Ultimate DOOM? Is there are a reason why those two PWADs were chosen?

[PsyDOOMer]

It's also throwing this error at me. Since I'm not a programming wiz, I'll hope you get what is happening:

 

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "D:\Games\Commercial\Doom\Other\doom-master-levels-masterpack-0.1\masterpack.py", line 371, in <module>
    main()
  File "D:\Games\Commercial\Doom\Other\doom-master-levels-masterpack-0.1\masterpack.py", line 363, in main
    masterpack_build()
  File "D:\Games\Commercial\Doom\Other\doom-master-levels-masterpack-0.1\masterpack.py", line 339, in masterpack_build
    master_p2_wad = extract_p2_lumps()
                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "D:\Games\Commercial\Doom\Other\doom-master-levels-masterpack-0.1\masterpack.py", line 310, in extract_p2_lumps
    doom_wad = WAD(DIR_SOURCE + 'DOOM.WAD')
               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "D:\Games\Commercial\Doom\Other\doom-master-levels-masterpack-0.1\omg\wad.py", line 276, in __init__
    self.from_file(from_file)
  File "D:\Games\Commercial\Doom\Other\doom-master-levels-masterpack-0.1\omg\wad.py", line 284, in from_file
    assert os.path.exists(source)
AssertionError

 

[elf-alchemist]

30 minutes ago, JustAthel said:

This looks pretty interesting, I never paid too much mind to the Master Levels due largely in part to the tedium of having to -file every single wad down the list. Thanks for making the levels more accessible!

I should, rather, thank you, for giving this thread a look and giving some consideration to the Master Levels, you are awesome.

 

2 minutes ago, PsyDOOMer said:

I should ask, because I can't quite get it out of my head: why TNT and Ultimate DOOM? Is there are a reason why those two PWADs were chosen?

The Master Levels include a whole lot more than just the original 20 PWADs (21 maps) released by id. Of the seven authors involved, almost all of them had various other maps out, some independent releases before and the after the Master Levels... and some, which were included in Ultimate Doom and TNT: Evilution which is why these IWADs are needed, because E4M7 was originally the 8th map in the Inferno series by John "Dr. Sleep" Anderson, and Tom "@tmustaine" Mustaine's MAP01 and MAP17 from TNT.WAD were originally sent to id for inclusion in the Master Levels before being rejected. (Fun fact: early versions of these maps can actually be found in DWANGO WADs of all places, since they were very very very originally supposed to be DM maps)

 

9 minutes ago, PsyDOOMer said:

It's also throwing this error at me. Since I'm not a programming wiz, I'll hope you get what is happening:

You are missing the Ultimate Doom IWAD in the `source/` directory, is it named in lower case? That may be it, since the code is reading the file in case sensitive names right now. Will fix.

[TMMMS]

i remember playing works of the masters but i didnt know it included 46 maps in total

 

could you provide us with a complete maplist

[elf-alchemist]

1 hour ago, TMMMS said:

i remember playing works of the masters but i didnt know it included 46 maps in total

It didn't, originally, it only had 45. I added in Kick Attack! as Boot Assault in the Lost Levels episode, taking the idea from @Devalaous's own Master Levels QoL PWAD, as a way to round off the maps by Theresa Chasar and Tim Willits, since he was involved in making that colab go through at all, it seems.

 

 

1 hour ago, TMMMS said:

could you provide us with a complete maplist

Updated the post, now it's here :)

[TMMMS]

ah i see so youve brought the total map count to 46 by adding in ultimate doom and tnt maps and one new map

 

thanks for the clarification

 

[TMMMS]

nevermind i realized i had to download python which is something i wasnt familiar with

 

one more question how do i run the masterpack.py on windows 10

 

when i click on it i get asked to pick a program to open with

Edited May 7 by TMMMS

[Devalaous]

Kick Attack is a nice little level, once its stripped of Kick assets. 'Boot Assault' is just a play on words I made up on the spot as a 'what-if' if it got rereleased, but hads to change its name. Cant just remove Kick, as he already has a wad named Attack..

 

The only other Willits level I'd consider for an episode is the final level from his Raven episode, the rest of the levels are too primitive. Its unfortunate that Tom Mustaine has pretty much no other work to include, he was all about the DM.

[TMMMS]

no music gets loaded for map01 dantes gate

 

cabal 8 has a typo in the automap name it says maosoleum instead of mausoleum

 

both klie 2 and lost level 2 will not load instead klie 1 and lost level 1 will restart

 

also in devalaous thread there was mention of a map called interdiction zone but i do not see it in this one maplist

[Elderling]

For those who might be interested, I tested this in Windows 11 & Python 3.12.1 and it generated the .wad file just fine.

[elf-alchemist]

On 5/7/2024 at 10:31 AM, TMMMS said:

no music gets loaded for map01 dantes gate

 

cabal 8 has a typo in the automap name it says maosoleum instead of mausoleum

 

both klie 2 and lost level 2 will not load instead klie 1 and lost level 1 will restart

 

also in devalaous thread there was mention of a map called interdiction zone but i do not see it in this one maplist

Thanks for the issue report.

 

The first three problems are located in the ZDoom-exclusive ZMAPINFO and have been fixed in the latest commit, will be available in the 0.2 release.

 

As for "The Interdiction Zone", I have been thinking about it's inclusion, specifically in the Lost levels episode, purely because i don't much see it fitting in the Titan series, personally, as Devalaous commented, since it is one the few, true single-level PWADs made by Flynn, since most of his work (the Titan series and The Enigma Episode, to be precise) started as various one-map WADs that were later merged into a single episode replacement. That is to say, "The Interdiction Zone" and "Surrounded!" are his only work which remain non-episodic, having most of his early be individual maps for The Enigma Episode.

 

23 hours ago, Elderling said:

For those who might be interested, I tested this in Windows 11 & Python 3.12.1 and it generated the .wad file just fine.

 

On 5/7/2024 at 9:41 AM, TMMMS said:

nevermind i realized i had to download python which is something i wasnt familiar with

 

one more question how do i run the masterpack.py on windows 10

 

when i click on it i get asked to pick a program to open with

 

As for this, it is certain, that I will add a proper EXE for the less-command-line-savvy users, and later also for both Linux and MacOS users, too. Purely for convenience and accessibility. But that will start work on for 0.2 or 0.3.

Edited May 8 by elf-alchemist : i completely forgot to finish a sentence, like a whole 3 words were missing

[DreadWanderer]

I've always wanted to play the Master Levels but held off because of all the things I heard about poor quality. The work you did here sounds great and it definitely pushes me towards playing them, thank you!

 

I do have an issue to report: in the most recent commit, both doom.wad and tnt.wad fail the checksums when running the script, and as a result the unified master.wad is not generated. It runs perfectly fine on 0.1 though. Probably best to wait for 0.2 or 0.3?

[elf-alchemist]

42 minutes ago, DreadWanderer said:

I've always wanted to play the Master Levels but held off because of all the things I heard about poor quality. The work you did here sounds great and it definitely pushes me towards playing them, thank you!

Thank you.

 

42 minutes ago, DreadWanderer said:

I do have an issue to report: in the most recent commit, both doom.wad and tnt.wad fail the checksums when running the script, and as a result the unified master.wad is not generated. It runs perfectly fine on 0.1 though. Probably best to wait for 0.2 or 0.3?

Odd, I used the SHA256 hash of Ultimate Doom and TNT: Evilution form the Steam install and validated their SHA-1 checksum against the Doomwiki. Is yours, perhaps, the Unity version of the IWADs? I'm using the original DOS release and not the re-releases.

[liPillON]

In my case I use IWADs from my gog-purchased "legacy" releases of doom/doom2/final doom.

TNT.WAD fails SHA256 validation - I'd imagine due to it being the version that, according to doomwiki, "does not have the yellow keycard bug and also removed unnecessary secret specials from MAP10".

 

I'd guess that your script requires the TNT.WAD from the Steam release of Final Doom but I can't say for sure since you're using SHA256 and the wiki only has CRC32, MD5 and SHA1 hashes.

 

Small suggestions:

1) update the documentation to explicitly tell users which specific IWAD version they're expected to use with this script

2) either use SHA1 in your script or ask @Redneckerz to add SHA256 hashes to each IWAD wiki page

 

 

 

Edited May 8 by liPillON

[DreadWanderer]

7 hours ago, elf-alchemist said:

Thank you.

 

Odd, I used the SHA256 hash of Ultimate Doom and TNT: Evilution form the Steam install and validated their SHA-1 checksum against the Doomwiki. Is yours, perhaps, the Unity version of the IWADs? I'm using the original DOS release and not the re-releases.

 

I'm using the legacy IWADs from GOG. Like liPillON, I have the fixed TNT version.

[Bald Cyberdemon]

19 hours ago, TMMMS said:

cabal 8 has a typo in the automap name it says maosoleum instead of mausoleum

that typo is how it was spelt originally btw
https://doomwiki.org/wiki/MAP07:_Mephisto's_Maosoleum_(Master_Levels)

[Devalaous]

I chose to fix that typo in my patches, and never will I apologise for it.

 

9 hours ago, DreadWanderer said:

I've always wanted to play the Master Levels but held off because of all the things I heard about poor quality. The work you did here sounds great and it definitely pushes me towards playing them, thank you!

 

I feel like we have a certain couple of youtubers to blame for that, since communities tend to follow popular people's opinions. Like how Habitat is somehow seen as the worst thing in existence, when it was actually pretty damn detailed for a level of its time. Ive played the Master Levels enough now to really appreciate the lot of them, even the weaker ones like Subspace. They really were a cut above *most* of what you could find back then, and could have been better received if id just made a proper IWAD out of them, and did some quality control on the Maximum Doom portion. The other side of the complainers is likely because a lot of the Master Levels are puzzley, which hurts the brains of actionlovers. Its pretty hard to *actually* call them poor quality though, and no, Bad Dream doesn't count as its an intentional shitpost that was snuck in under id's nose. All but one of them (Jim Flynn) got careers in the game industry after Master Levels, and Jim was just as important, given he worked on Boom. I'll always consider Master Levels pretty important in our community's history.

[DreadWanderer]

@Devalaous thank you for your thoughts. I've just started running through Dr. Sleep's Cantos and I must say they are absolutely excellent, not only for '95 but for the present too - they hold up incredibly well. Probably best to clarify that when I said poor quality I meant something closer to inconsistency since Anderson's levels did get justifiably praised. I'm a big sucker for thematic unity and elf-alchemist's reorganization does wonders.

[elf-alchemist]

7 hours ago, liPillON said:

In my case I use IWADs from my gog-purchased "legacy" releases of doom/doom2/final doom.

TNT.WAD fails SHA256 validation - I'd imagine due to it being the version that, according to doomwiki, "does not have the yellow keycard bug and also removed unnecessary secret specials from MAP10".

 

I'd guess that your script requires the TNT.WAD from the Steam release of Final Doom but I can't say for sure since you're using SHA256 and the wiki only has CRC32, MD5 and SHA1 hashes.

 

Small suggestions:

1) update the documentation to explicitly tell users which specific IWAD version they're expected to use with this script

2) either use SHA1 in your script or ask @Redneckerz to add SHA256 hashes to each IWAD wiki page

 

6 hours ago, DreadWanderer said:

I'm using the legacy IWADs from GOG. Like liPillON, I have the fixed TNT version.

 

There it is. I was always using the original WADs in it, I will add a disclaimer in the GitHub page and make the script not fail, but give a warning to the user, until I make the code more flexible in the regards of which versions of the IWAD to use, since the maps and patches needed are not changed in any major release, I don't think. (That is, E4M7, TNT:MAP01 and TNT:MAP17)

 

6 hours ago, No-Man Baugh said:

that typo is how it was spelt originally btw
https://doomwiki.org/wiki/MAP07:_Mephisto's_Maosoleum_(Master_Levels)

 

5 hours ago, Devalaous said:

I chose to fix that typo in my patches, and never will I apologise for it.

 

Honestly, I can respect fixing the typo fix, but for this project, after some deliberation, I believe I'll keep it as is for now, but whenever I get to rethinking widescreen assets, including the TITLEPIC, INTERPIC, BOSSBACK and TEETH's CWILV, I will reconsider it, actually.

 

5 hours ago, Devalaous said:

I feel like we have a certain couple of youtubers to blame for that, since communities tend to follow popular people's opinions. Like how Habitat is somehow seen as the worst thing in existence, when it was actually pretty damn detailed for a level of its time. Ive played the Master Levels enough now to really appreciate the lot of them, even the weaker ones like Subspace. They really were a cut above *most* of what you could find back then, and could have been better received if id just made a proper IWAD out of them, and did some quality control on the Maximum Doom portion. The other side of the complainers is likely because a lot of the Master Levels are puzzley, which hurts the brains of actionlovers. Its pretty hard to *actually* call them poor quality though, and no, Bad Dream doesn't count as its an intentional shitpost that was snuck in under id's nose. All but one of them (Jim Flynn) got careers in the game industry after Master Levels, and Jim was just as important, given he worked on Boom. I'll always consider Master Levels pretty important in our community's history.

5 hours ago, DreadWanderer said:

@Devalaous thank you for your thoughts. I've just started running through Dr. Sleep's Cantos and I must say they are absolutely excellent, not only for '95 but for the present too - they hold up incredibly well. Probably best to clarify that when I said poor quality I meant something closer to inconsistency since Anderson's levels did get justifiably praised. I'm a big sucker for thematic unity and elf-alchemist's reorganization does wonders.

 

It is genuinely incredible to see the Master Levels getting the love they so desperately need. It's a huge shame, honestly, I shudder in horror every time I see @MtPain27's video on the Master Levels appear in my feed, specifically, it's like seeing your own adopted child get bullied at school, it's not a feeling I like. I honestly wish, if he were to ever try the Master Levels again, that he'd use this utility of mine, to give this incredible set of creators a fairer shot at it, instead of giving himself needless headaches because he didn't know how to make a xMAPINFO lump. But maybe that's for a different time, maybe once 1.0 releases.

 

Spoiler

For clarity, I'm not trying to stir up anything with the TNT apologist, he is my favorite Doom tuber next to funny pumpkin man. Please don't take this as a jab against him, his experience with the Master Levels is the very thing that encouraged me, and JPL before, to fix them. All I want is for more people to enjoy the works of Doom's early great authors.

 

Anyway, there's a lot do still, more work to be done for the 0.2 release, keep ya peepers up.

[DreadWanderer]

Thanks for the reply, I thought it would be good to flag this since everything went well in the github release but it didn't work in the commits so I wasn't sure what exactly changed in the code. 

 

I can also confirm that I'm getting a crash in the first level of Klietech (signal 11 0x0000).

[elf-alchemist]

Odd.

 

Signal 11 is a Segmentation Violation, which would be indicative of an error on the source port's side, speaking of, which one is it that you were playing on? Can you send a screenshot of the area you get the crash at? All levels should be Vanilla-compatible, even MAP09, E4M8 from UDTWiD, isn't Limit-removing.

[DreadWanderer]

34 minutes ago, elf-alchemist said:

Odd.

 

Signal 11 is a Segmentation Violation, which would be indicative of an error on the source port's side, speaking of, which one is it that you were playing on? Can you send a screenshot of the area you get the crash at? All levels should be Vanilla-compatible, even MAP09, E4M8 from UDTWiD, isn't Limit-removing.

 

I'm using the latest version of DSDA (complevel 2). The crash happens right at the beginning, as soon as the player moves. As far as I know the IWAD used for the Master Levels is Doom 2.

[LadyMistDragon]

13 hours ago, Devalaous said:

 

 

 

I feel like we have a certain couple of youtubers to blame for that, since communities tend to follow popular people's opinions. 

From what I remember, the Master Levels were poo-pooed for years, even though only Chris Klie's maps were the only ones that felt like true junk, and even then, it was probably no more than a few of them at most. If anything's the issue with them overall, it's probably that they haven't aged well relative to the preferences of the Doom community and somehow, that got turned into "other than the Dr. Sleep maps, and a couple of Cranium's, they're all bad!"