[Community Project, limit-removing/-cl3+UMAPINFO] Death By 1000 Lines - Ultimate Doom community project - RC3

[NuMetalManiak]

E1M7: Secret sector 162 can only be lowered twice with its linedefs (697 and 698) being S1. Not sure if intentional.

 

E2M4: First switch when triggered does not show that its flipped.

 

E3M3: One closet (sector 120) doesn't lower, three lost souls (82, 83, 84) don't come out.

 

E3M4: random suggestion but make it so that the teleporter leading to the exit platform actually look like it's lowering, cause I thought I was stuck.

 

E3M7: honestly this needs to be the secret level. Way too confusing and a total roadblock for UV normies, swap it with the current secret map imo.

 

E4M9: no music for some reason.

Edited June 18 by NuMetalManiak : Done

[Firedust]

Started my playthrough, made it to e1m9 so far. This is classic dooming at its finest, great stuff. Not sure how I feel about Nell's theme as music of choice in a Doom level though ahahaha.

Also, this project has got me thinking how many of the og doom levels had <=1000 lines. Because so far I definitely wouldn't call this concise by any means.

 

E2M4: this teleporter closet is broken: https://prnt.sc/J8vsf37Pfs8_

E3M3: broken closet with lost souls: https://prnt.sc/wIJB6JkOOgPo

 

Edited June 19 by Firedust

[Somniac]

Thank you both for the feedback and bug reports! I will get around to addressing that when I can, been pretty busy recently but I'll be off work next week so I'll have time to time to go through this in detail.

 

On 6/17/2024 at 11:07 PM, Firedust said:

Also, this project has got me thinking how many of the og doom levels had <=1000 lines. Because so far I definitely wouldn't call this concise by any means.

 

Well, for KDITD at least, E1M2/E1M3/E1M6 are the only maps to exceed 1000 lines. E1M7 gets close, but not quite at 958. The lowest in E1 is (unsurprisingly) E1M8 with just 333 :p

 

On 6/17/2024 at 7:33 PM, NuMetalManiak said:

E3M7: honestly this needs to be the secret level. Way too confusing and a total roadblock for UV normies, swap it with the current secret map imo.

 

You know, I think this is a good point. I really liked E3M7 as I thought the concept was both bizarre and original, but I do see how it could frustrate players. I found it pretty difficult myself, but I thought it might be something that speedrunners would enjoy figuring out. @Scionox, @DeetOpianSky how do you both feel about this? Would you be alright with the slots being swapped? I know its pretty late to be asking this, so if that's not cool I understand, but I think it might be a good decision.

[DeetOpianSky]

30 minutes ago, Somniac said:

Thank you both for the feedback and bug reports! I will get around to addressing that when I can, been pretty busy recently but I'll be off work next week so I'll have time to time to go through this in detail.

 

 

Well, for KDITD at least, E1M2/E1M3/E1M6 are the only maps to exceed 1000 lines. E1M7 gets close, but not quite at 958. The lowest in E1 is (unsurprisingly) E1M8 with just 333 :p

 

 

You know, I think this is a good point. I really liked E3M7 as I thought the concept was both bizarre and original, but I do see how it could frustrate players. I found it pretty difficult myself, but I thought it might be something that speedrunners would enjoy figuring out. @Scionox, @DeetOpianSky how do you both feel about this? Would you be alright with the slots being swapped? I know its pretty late to be asking this, so if that's not cool I understand, but I think it might be a good decision.

If it's best for the project; I'm okay with it.

 

[JustAthel]

Hey! So, I couldn't figure out a 1K line compliant way to fix up E3M5, so I might end up leaving those weird pillar visuals in, but I do have some changes for E4M9, including adding difficulty settings around the map, fixing one mistextured ceiling, and trying to fix that teleport ambush in the secret area.

 

Hope this one works out a bit better!

e4m91k-try4.wad (Version 2)

[Scionox]

On 6/20/2024 at 12:30 AM, Somniac said:

Would you be alright with the slots being swapped?

I'd have taken secret slot if it was available at the time in first place, so i'm fine with it

[Somniac]

RC3 now available! Changes:

 

Spoiler

E1M1 - made blue door switch a bit more obvious
E1M8 - added an off-map baron in a crusher w/ barrels to prevent softlock + added some weapons and a bit of ammo
E2M4 - fixed switch not animating
E3M3 - fixed sector that wasn't lowering
E3M4 - unpegged exit teleporter textures - pillar now appears to be lowering
E3M7/E3M9 have now swapped places
E3M9 - WILV graphic typo fixed
E4M1 - fixed a pillar that wasn't displaying texture properly
E4M9 - updated by author

 

This will hopefully be the final update before /idgames, I'm gonna hold off on that for probably another couple of weeks to allow for any extra feedback/bug reports to come in plus giving me time to sanity-check it all.

[galileo31dos01]

Playing this currently. Settings are UV/PS, Crispy Doom, although I know of the UMAPINFO but this is just because of preferences. I'll mention below any observations I find along the way, so will keep this post updated periodically.

 

The first and foremost, E1M7 is missing in the latest release, though I'm not seeing anywhere in the thread if this was deliberate or an accident.

 

As for map titles in the dehacked, if you create a new patch and set the engine to "Extended DeHackEd" in WhackEd4, there won't be limit of characters to type in the strings, and you can easily copy and paste the intermission texts into this patch (and edit par times, if interested). It would be essentially supported in crispy and dsda-doom, I suppose in doom retro and other ports as well. Setting the engine to "Ultimate Doom 1.9" is for vanilla afaik.

 

And, I wanna give you this. It's to replace the current wilv03 if you don't mind, since part of the first and last words are cut off the screen on certain resolutions. Pretty sure this is the longest title and other long ones are fine, though if there's any other similar situation I'll bring it up.

Spoiler

 

In so far, E1 has been pretty good fun. Excited to see the next episodes!

 

EDIT 07-04-2024:

 

(E1-E2)

Spoiler

I downloaded the latest copy of E1M7 that the mapper released in the development thread and played that one. In that version of the map there are some very VERY tiny invisible walls here where you see me standing, which are also very hard to notice even if I intentionally walk around that spot. Issues with nodes I'd say. 

 

E2M3: Super irrelevant but the sides to this door opening could be lower unpegged (as well as 1 pixel raised). I will add that, imo, the black sectors should be hidden in the map. 

 

E2M4: Somehow this imp was on the edge of the lift. That's how I found it.

 

E2M9: The monster closets in the YSK/BFG section wouldn't lower to the ground for me, thus the only way to grab the YSK is via noclip currently (or, playing in cl9). The culprit I believe, or culprits, were the lost souls behind the YSK door, as some of them hitboxes are barely overlapping the walls, and stuff like that can actually affect sectors elsewhere in vanilla/limit-removing, so in this case the various monster closets. Easy fix is to expand that little room about enough for the lost souls to stop causing problems.

 

Strangely the final text shown for me was the original instead of the new one in the dehacked. Not sure why though, it should be well set but who knows...

 

E3

Spoiler

E3M1: All I'll say is that I would have liked to see more of that first mini-thing with hexagons (map's alright though).

 

E3M5: Please offer armor on UV. At the first dimension you teleport (wood), I almost got shredded by shotgunners in the centre while I couldn't do anything about that, if they weren't killed by infight which fortunately happened quickly. One of those cyb doors had dozens of shotgunners coming out in pairs and chipping my health away in the open, died twice... more reason to give armor...

 

Additionally, at the second dimension (red), you can just easily navigate in and out without ever shooting and thus never waking up the monsters that are supposed to teleport in. Not sure if intentional.

 

E3M6: Is it safe to assume in order to reach the secret exit I have to... jump to that ledge, continue walking on it until you can land on the hidden path? If so, that's what I did. I guess that is the only way judging by the switch that's on the hidden side of the wall. 

 

There're two chainsaws but since you can only grab one, the other stays there. Intentional?

 

E3M9: I didn't beat this one on UV, HMP, or even monsterless, but did on HNTR cause it's completely straightforward, which is fair judgement of skill differences I suppose. Reminds me of map 32 in 1K2 in its jarring difficulty and particularly gimmicky next to the set, but I fear this one comes off as more difficult for difficult's sake than the 1K2 map, and that's saying quite when the other map has you figuring out the quirks of a revenant projectile. I know people completed that map on UV before, and so far we don't have feedback from someone who legit beat this one yet.. My critiques:

 

Top-left wing: it took a lot of falling off, sometimes unexpectedly, to understand that the platforms are so thinner than what the blood splats suggest, specially at the pointy ends. But fine. The only real complain is that you can get splashed (even pushed off) inevitably on the last platform if the cyb happened to shoot near exactly on the last turn. The wall should be farther away imo. 

 

Top-right wing I get that you can sort of identify the chasm-thin bridges if you walk through the middle of each triangle, and some trees marking exactly the ends of each platform, though mostly I saw no way to discern paths where you can tell when there's a bridge or not, outside of trial and error, since the view is confusing and most is invisible. Find the paths after dozens and dozens of attempts and then it's memorizing angles and stuff, but I'd only do this part monsterless since the cyb is annoying all the time, so initially it does feel like guesswork for the most part. The cyb can also kill or push you off while you take the first lifts, no escape from the rng there regardless of your timing. 

 

Here's a suggestion for HMP: put a blood splat on the centre of each bridge, this would hint players where to go by reducing the guessing factor to a minimum. 

 

Bottom-left wing: again, platforms thinner than what the blood splats suggest, though now no margin of error on UV. I think the switch actions should be on the walls instead of the edge of the platforms, or additionally on the walls too, or change to WR - for a while I thought some of them were broken because I'd hit them and nothing would happen. On HMP, for the last two walls I relied on the teleport, cause I kept falling off, so I think the void teleports are a good addition for this skill setting.

 

Bottom-right wing: so this is where you have to go first. I didn't try hard enough but I'm not a fan of the idea itself anyways, seems like it could either take seconds or a loooooooong time to get it right even after knowing what to do, unlike the other wings (well, with the invisible bridges you can end up memorizing the path and then a rush as quick as possible). The platforming does seem not too tricky at least. I do wonder, if you pull it out within first/second rocket of a volley, whether you can get screwed by the rest of incoming rockets if you don't instantly start platforming, but that's just me thinking...

 

Critiques aside, there are no issues with the map being a bag of challenging but short gimmicks.. at the same time, there're rough edges and such that could be tweaked without compromising both the ideas and the main difficulty.

 

E3M7: HOMs on the windows in this massive pillar. Monsters that teleported on the streets appeared with very strong delays in between by the time there were less to come in. Same with the cacodemons on the blood pit. I've not checked the setup in the editor but if there are ways to fasten up these teleportations with the lines available, that would be so much better. As of now, I feel you can find ways to clear up the whole red area and have to wait a lot for all things to teleport in.

 

E3M8: Umm, is this map in the right slot? If so, it's pretty underwhelming as an episode finale (single area, lots of ammo, not quite many monsters, not one spiderdemon boss, no sense of closure like E2M8). Coming after E3M7 -and specially E3M9- the feeling was even stronger. The thing is, none of the other current maps in the episode would do for a proper finale unfortunately, E3M7 would be the closest candidate but it'd need focus on the death of one last spiderdemon imo. As it stands, this map is okay in itself but needs to be elevated to a proper final map imo.

 

E4

Spoiler

E4M2: So the pit with the cacodemon and cyberdemon, since I was rushing to pick up the goodies I fell into the pit (luckily on the caco side) while it was raising. I'm not sure if there's a workaround to this that isn't, changing to instapop, but it wasn't a big deal anyways - I think it even fit with the map's sector weirdness.

 

E4M9: Imo the green armor in the secret should be given much much earlier. This is because at that point it's of little to no use, you're past the majority of hitscanners and monsters outside of the last secret invasion, for which you're given a blue armor. I don't know if there are lines left to use but perhaps this green armor could be in a new super simple secret at the start? (I thought one of the metal pillars could be a good place to hide one).

 

Additionally, the setup for the teleporting monsters in the secret water lake could be layered if there are more teleporting spots around the place. As of now, the spawn one by one, the latter ones with several seconds of delay in between, which renders this part awkward. When I thought there weren't more, I left this area and dealt with the other invasion in the starting area, then checked back the secret and there were a few stragglers that fortunately found their destination just in time. 

 

E4M6: This sector loses the secret property as it starts raising, thus it doesn't seem possible to register the secret itself. 

 

E4M7: In this specific spot, there were some invisible skinny walls that I'd assume are related to nodebuilder issues (no idea how else to describe them tbh). Have this demo where I show exactly where they are (crispy 6.0.0 btw).

 

This monsters sector wouldn't open. Very likely not enough space in there for the monsters to not cause this issue.

 

E4M8: The only minor thing I would suggest is, less soulspheres and, specially, blue armors. I think two or three soulspheres are about enough on UV -- two/three for exploring, a third for the spiders, since you hand a blur sphere they just can't damage you that much. Maybe I was also very lucky that the spiders didn't snipe me through every window all the time, which seems like it could be the case on different playthroughs. Good episode finale btw. 

 

Edited July 9 by galileo31dos01

[Nikolanchik]

In this project, I tried for the first time to create a map with some restrictions. As for me, the map turned out to be average, but I'm glad that some people liked it. I very rarely play wads for doom, but I liked the concept of the episodes and I want to play it. Also, forgive me for the mistakes on my map.

[DeetOpianSky]

Ketx started a Youtube series of a playthrough using Project Brutality 3.0 a bit go. Pretty wild.

[galileo31dos01]

@Scionox

 

Spoiler

In your E3M9, this part:

 

 

Am I on the right track by assuming you need a cyb rocket boost to land on the first triangular platform? If so, the cyb on the opposite wing would never ever want to shoot into that direction, for me. Or maybe I should have waited more? (I mean, I waited a lot). Moreover, the black wall that you can open will then close entirely and render the cyb not visible, so I don't know what's the function of that wall-door in that place. I'm not sure what I could do tbh. I have other critiques about the map which can wait until I somehow manage to finnish it first. Any tip would be appreciated!

 

[DankMetal]

17 hours ago, DeetOpianSky said:

Ketx started a Youtube series of a playthrough using Project Brutality 3.0 a bit go. Pretty wild.

I never expected to see one of my levels being played with a mod like Project Brutality. I guess there's a first time for everything.

What i did expect though, was the crushers not working properly on GzDoom.

I do not plan on making a "GzDoom compatible" version of my map anyway, unless it's veeeeeery necessary.

[Scionox]

@galileo31dos01

Spoiler

You are on right track, all are pieces of same puzzle

 

[UserPlayer89]

there's more ways than one to completely cheese this section in E1M2

 

Edited July 14 by UserPlayer89

[UserPlayer89]

I got these errors upon loading into E1M7 playing on DSDA-Doom with the proper complevel

[galileo31dos01]

19 hours ago, UserPlayer89 said:

I got these errors upon loading into E1M7 playing on DSDA-Doom with the proper complevel

 

Because the map is missing in the latest release. You could find the map here and import it into the megawad using SLADE, which is what I did.

[Somniac]

Hey, sorry for not updating this for a while. E1M7 going missing was absolutely not intentional (I love that map!) and I've no idea how I even did that in the first place. Thanks @galileo31dos01 for pointing that out and for your feedback on a bunch of the maps. HERE is an updated version with E1M7 back in and the following changes:

 

- E1M4 updated WILV graphic

- E2M9 yellow key room fixed (lost souls don't overlap now)

- E3M3 updated by author (added a teleport for backtracking)
- E3M7 HOMS fixed
- E4M7 nodes cleaned up a bit more

 

I also noticed the Dehacked issue in Crispy Doom with E2M8, not sure what's causing that but I'm pretty sure it worked before. I'll try remaking it from scratch and maybe it'll work better. I'd like to get this on /idgames relatively soon, so if anybody wants to get in a final final version of their maps then if you can do so within the next couple of weeks, please do!

[Blue Phoenix]

E3M4: Another Time & Place  V3.2

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/8zsxezl9dkcjabxbk55y7/another-time-and-place-v3.2.zip?rlkey=nn880yqmhnhx6lbgfv6n6frmq&amp;st=a54sp9zw&amp;dl=0

 

Some very minor edits

final teleporter side texture scrolles

removed exit midtexture from final teleporter

added missing wall on the left side of entrance to final arena (just for consistency).