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Doom Corner  "for all Doom related discussion"

User is offline   Ninety-Six 

#3751 Posted 22 July 2020 - 02:44 PM

View PostRunningDuke, on 22 July 2020 - 12:05 AM, said:

it was a separate program that modified the various hardcoded limits into the vanilla executable, as far as I know.


I know, but nonetheless you could still run dehacked wads in DOS. It was a pain in the ass to set up but it could still be done.

View PostRunningDuke, on 22 July 2020 - 12:05 AM, said:

What do you think of the suggestions I have made so far with other wads that should be added? Is there a particular wad (other than the ones you specified) that you'd like to see added in the recent unity ports? I'm sure a couple of them have also the difficulty that you are looking for (I mean not too easy and not too hard). Also just reminded of two additional Ultimate Doom megawads that I forgot to mention: Switcheroom and The Ultimate NMD. I will go to add them to previous post if I can still edit it.


I've actually never heard of either of them.

As for the others, I'll also put them in spoilers for the sake of not extending the height of the page:

Spoiler


View PostRunningDuke, on 22 July 2020 - 12:05 AM, said:

EDIT: Done. On that subject, do you think Deathmatch wads should get added? I was thinking of the Gothic DM series but I don't know if there is a high demand for deathmatch wads to get added. I would also like if the ports get a proper online multiplayer support and even new multiplayer mods like Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag, that would be pretty cool as I'm sure there are many CTF wads that could be included.


First they should add online multiplayer. Otherwise, DM packs aren't worth much.

This post has been edited by Ninety-Six: 22 July 2020 - 02:46 PM

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User is offline   FistMarine 

#3752 Posted 23 July 2020 - 01:26 AM

Yeah, they should add online multiplayer before adding DM wads and also I meant multiplayer modes (TDM and CTF), not mods, now I can't edit that post anymore to correct that typo. :)

I will reply to everything you said in the spoiler (had to remove some quotes as there were too many, which prevented me from making the post)

Spoiler


Other than that, I only played some more Akeldama yesterday and reached the fifth level. I don't think I can finish the wad before the end of month considering I've got other games and mods to play as well. Just 5 or so levels per day isn't too bad.

This post has been edited by RunningDuke: 23 July 2020 - 01:30 AM

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User is offline   MrFlibble 

#3753 Posted 23 July 2020 - 02:33 AM

View PostNinety-Six, on 20 July 2020 - 07:08 PM, said:

The other admittedly doesn't apply on this machine, but the 640x480 resolution I was a bit afraid of since my actual computer didn't like resolution changes much.

I believe both Choco and Crispy render the screen at your actual host desktop resolution in fullscreen mode.

Both ports fix known Doom bugs. AFAIK it was never the intention to replicate the original DOS v1.9 in Choco without fixing anything.
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User is offline   Ninety-Six 

#3754 Posted 24 July 2020 - 06:25 PM

let's do it again!

Spoiler


View PostRunningDuke, on 23 July 2020 - 01:26 AM, said:

Other than that, I only played some more Akeldama yesterday and reached the fifth level. I don't think I can finish the wad before the end of month considering I've got other games and mods to play as well. Just 5 or so levels per day isn't too bad.


I very recently heard of Akeldama. I'm debating if I should play it. On the one hand it's spearheaded by valkiriforce, who I already credited previously as being consistently solid in terms of level design, but on the other hand it's a community megawad. Moreover it's one where there isn't one unifying style (deliberately so) so I'm not sure if there's going to be yet more slaps in the face.

This post has been edited by Ninety-Six: 24 July 2020 - 06:25 PM

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User is offline   MrFlibble 

#3755 Posted 26 July 2020 - 04:15 AM

I played a bit of Akeldama a while ago. I think it's generally nice but not too much so I stopped after like level 2. Difficulty had not been cranked too far on UV in what I have played, although admittedly my first try ended very quickly.

I can't play a lot of Doom in one sitting somehow. It's not that I dislike the levels I play or they are too hard or too boring. It's just that after playing some time I feel I need to rest (and not because I'm generally tired). This even happened to HacX which I actually liked a lot (but I didn't play a lot of the more radical modifications like The Adventures of Square or Rise of the Wool Ball to observe the same effect).

I'm getting the impression (judging by how many people who are Doom fans praise its supposedly perfect gameplay, compared to Build games) that there are simply players who prefer Doom style (regardless of actual specifics of a map), and those who prefer Duke3D style, and I fall into the latter category.
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User is offline   Ninety-Six 

#3756 Posted 26 July 2020 - 09:02 AM

View PostMrFlibble, on 26 July 2020 - 04:15 AM, said:

I'm getting the impression (judging by how many people who are Doom fans praise its supposedly perfect gameplay, compared to Build games) that there are simply players who prefer Doom style (regardless of actual specifics of a map), and those who prefer Duke3D style, and I fall into the latter category.


It's quite possible.

For me personally though, as I've mentioned a few times, I love these games for the combat above all else. Everything else is setdressing. I myself do get tired after a while, but in a strange way... that's part of the reason I love the combat. Because it can be mentally taxing.

That being said, in 100% honesty, I think the combat in Doom is...actually probably among the weaker games in these golden age shooters. And a lot of that is due to the RNG-based damage system. People will defend it and that's fine, but I'm not a fan because it hinders my ability to make plans (and also opens the possibility to just be screwed over in general). Now that may sound like a challenge, but I think the best combat systems are ones where your success depends on you being able to A.) devise good plans, and B.) execute those plans. You dying happens only because you either made a bad call or weren't good enough to execute. Throwing in a third variable, a gamble on if the game itself will let you do it makes gambles rely less on sheer skill alone. I feel like a gamble grants a much greater sensation of both loss and victory when you are testing your own abilities and not your luck.

I think this is best exemplified by a concept I like to call "fire and forget." In the heat of battle, while prioritizing enemies, if you think 5-10 steps ahead of what's happening now, you can plan your shots. You can fire off a rocket launcher at a bigger threat in the distance, and before any of them hit you can whip out your shotgun and start dealing with the more immediate threats, confident that you fired the exact amount of rockets needed to kill the thing, and the only thing that determines if it dies or not is your confidence in your own ability to aim. This opens you up to so many more options at a time, as the battle changes or new elements are introduced and you have to think on your toes. Fire and Forget becomes an essential tool, and you have so many more options and decisions to make and act upon in the space of less than a second.

And unfortunately, Doom's RNG simply doesn't allow for that. Without being able to fire and forget, you're limited to thinking only one or two steps ahead, and damage you take may be unavoidable just due to bad luck instead of health being a cushion for your own failures.


I think one of the key reasons I prefer the combat in Build games (Duke especially) over Doom is how many movement options the protagonists have. Sure, they're not as fast as Doomguy, but they are significantly more agile. All three jump pretty high (to say nothing of the jetpack), often more than enough to leap over the heads of your enemies. This gives you an ability you often don't have in Doom: the ability to escape a dangerous situation. In Doom, when you get cornered (or, more commonly, teleported into the middle of a horde with monsters on all sides), unless you have ammunition for the plasma gun or BFG (or have them out already), you're as good as dead. In Duke, you are more than capable of escaping, even against a whole swarm. You can retreat, find a safer place to hole up or recover, and then have a few moments to think over your next approach.

That's probably a key reason why I don't tend to complain about Duke maps so much (that and the community not being super interested in making "the hardest level evur"). Even in hairy situations, there's usually an escape route that generally depends on your ability to move well, think fast, and act faster. Being able to know exactly when an enemy will die also helps in those situations.

This post has been edited by Ninety-Six: 26 July 2020 - 09:02 AM

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User is offline   MrFlibble 

#3757 Posted 26 July 2020 - 11:36 AM

View PostNinety-Six, on 26 July 2020 - 09:02 AM, said:

I think one of the key reasons I prefer the combat in Build games (Duke especially) over Doom is how many movement options the protagonists have. Sure, they're not as fast as Doomguy, but they are significantly more agile. All three jump pretty high (to say nothing of the jetpack), often more than enough to leap over the heads of your enemies. This gives you an ability you often don't have in Doom: the ability to escape a dangerous situation. In Doom, when you get cornered (or, more commonly, teleported into the middle of a horde with monsters on all sides), unless you have ammunition for the plasma gun or BFG (or have them out already), you're as good as dead. In Duke, you are more than capable of escaping, even against a whole swarm. You can retreat, find a safer place to hole up or recover, and then have a few moments to think over your next approach.

This is not the first time it occurs to me that Doom was likely initially developed with a much lower pace in mind than it actually turned out, and certainly not for the gameplay situations created by the community. It's a bit odd because it works out rather well anyway, yet indeed there are notable restrictions that do not exist in Build games because they were already built against the background of what the FPS genre had evolved into after Doom's release and revolutionising success.

This post has been edited by MrFlibble: 26 July 2020 - 11:36 AM

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User is offline   FistMarine 

#3758 Posted 28 July 2020 - 12:59 AM

Spoiler

Quote

I very recently heard of Akeldama. I'm debating if I should play it. On the one hand it's spearheaded by valkiriforce, who I already credited previously as being consistently solid in terms of level design, but on the other hand it's a community megawad. Moreover it's one where there isn't one unifying style (deliberately so) so I'm not sure if there's going to be yet more slaps in the face.

It's pretty interesting and I have quite a couple of notes that I want to make now, some of which you may find helpful:
-I played until MAP07 few days ago and I will continue later today. These levels aren't generally difficult. There are a few nasty traps (Plutonia like) sometimes (especially in MAP05) but you should be able to do fine without dying, as I have done so far, I guess I was lucky. Note that I'm playing in PrBoom+ (complevel 2) which emulates vanilla and it also helped me to slide between monsters when I got trapped between them sometimes, I don't see this happening in ZDoom due to different physics, so I suggest if you get trapped, just jump over their heads (assuming you have enough room) and make use of the port's advantages even if it's cheating, if use ZDoom why not make use of the port's features? That is what I do when I play ZDoom maps.
-MAP05 has a few nasty traps and it has TWO soulspheres, so I recommend you to grab one earlier if your health is 100 or lower. I did the mistake of saving that soulsphere for end and realized there was another one in a secret area (in the blue key room with a nasty teleport trap), since for me it's a blind playthrough (never played the wad before) and complete all levels by myself, with checking doomwiki and youtube for remaining secrets, also note since it's a recent megawad there are very few UV-MAX videos of it on YouTube
-MAP06 is not too difficult (I only recall a nasty Plutonia-like trap in middle of map) but it's pretty long as has around 430 enemies I think. It took me an hour to complete, even a bit more than that just to find that last missing secret (had to check an YouTube video to see how to get it)
-I would have played more few days ago when reached MAP07 but when I saw on automap it has around 300 enemies, I said it's enough for that day.

Oh and just read now, it's a good point you make in regards to being able to jump over enemies heads in BUILD engine games and this is what I suggested in Doom if using ZDoom port as I have found this useful in times I used ZDoom years ago (back when it was my main used port) and I don't see other option other than running away and hope you don't get cornered while blasting the hordes. In the more vanilla ports I play either with the original controls (DOS EXE and Chocolate and maybe Crispy as well) or WASD + Mouse in the other ports like Eternity and PrBoom+ (and full mouselook in ZDoom family ports, with jumping and crouching as well), so it depends a lot of port used and the situation presented and although the more Vanilla ports are more restricted, it really helps with being able to slide between enemies, something I don't remember happening in ZDoom ports. Oh and yeah Doom's RNG also plays a big role, it really can make the difference between life and death, especially with say Revenant's rockets (dealing as little as 10 damage or as high as 80 damage).

I will try to play more Akeldama until the end of month and hope I can finish it before those Doomworld guys do. Yeah I know I'm way behind but I hope I can do it, at least reaching MAP20-MAP25 or so, so I don't shamelessly lose with only 10 or so maps complete. I really wanted to compete with them at whatever megawad they choose to play per month but never got around and I usually lose interest in playing quickly, so it's like 3-5 maps at most completed per day depending on the length and difficulty of maps.
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User is offline   FistMarine 

#3759 Posted 28 July 2020 - 05:20 AM

Can't edit post anymore, so I will make a new post I guess. Finished MAP07 of Akeldama. Sadly, died once this time. Quite an unexpected death. That's what happens when you run out of supplies (like shells) and save better stuff (a megasphere) for later. I had no damn plasma at that time which could have saved my ass from that room! But managed to get it shortly after when I cleared the room. The plasma would have been a massive help earlier if I found that particular secret that holds the plasma you see at beginning of level which I found just a few minutes later too. :)

Not gonna lie, the mapset really keeps you on toes at times. Sometimes I got clean out of some dangerous rooms, other times I take quite a bit of damage. Other times I play too careful and even then I screw up. Those 2 archviles at beginning of level were also the cause of giving me a bad start, making me play a lot more careful until I clear most enemies and find better supplies.

I will show some screens of that particular room and when I succeeded at it, then finding plasma. Oh and the beginning of MAP08 I suppose.

Also one question: it seems like I scored 100% (and on automap it showed all kills) but wasn't supposed to have over 100% because of an archvile that resurrected a few enemies at one point in level? Or is it because of a feature that PrBoom has called Smart Totals which makes it more like ZDoom ports which show 100% if you kill absolutely everyone (or rather in PrBoom's case, the resurrected enemies not counting as extra kills). Can someone explain this to me? Even though I got 100% I wouldn't like to have few missed monsters (which I doubt it) but in this case I will make an exception. I know if I asked at Doomworld, I would have gotten an answer immediately but I don't know what else to say, I haven't really used PrBoom+ in the past until I got used to it. Oh and interestingly, I looked in the menus and didn't find any "Smart Totals" option to see if this changes the kill count or not. So I am a bit lost at the moment but I guess I will just continue playing normally from MAP08.

I will continue later because so far this megawad has drained me a little bit, what was going to be a long awaited classic vanilla megawad, turns out to be a bit exhausting due to maps featuring like 300-400 enemies. It didn't help that I started playing later in month when everyone is now close to the end of it. And the fact nearly each level takes me like an hour to finish (45 or so minutes to reach end, then go back and look for all missed stuff).

This post has been edited by RunningDuke: 28 July 2020 - 05:23 AM

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User is offline   Ninety-Six 

#3760 Posted 28 July 2020 - 02:26 PM

View PostRunningDuke, on 28 July 2020 - 12:59 AM, said:

Ah, so that's why the later half isn't as good as the first half. I dislike when guest mappers join later in project and make the whole project drop in quality. I mean to be fair there are quite a couple of talented mappers but I would prefer if the project is made by 1-2 maybe even 3 or 4 mappers instead of having too many mappers working on it. I think it flows much better when it's a single or two mappers at most, working on a wad.


For me it kinda depends. If all the maps are of the same quality, if not style, I don't tend to mind. Though of course, with guest mappers you are already sort of rolling the dice on that.

In ADO's case, I do think it was a net negative. The guest maps were either average at best or a pain in the ass. I think Rory Habich's levels were by far my least favorite (him being the one responsible for E3M3, incidentally). Chris Hansen's was probably my second least favorite group.

It was a real shame too, because when ADO was good, it was great. Some absolutely fantastic UD level design. But when it was bad, it was... E4M9 (aka E3M5 in the non-anniversary edition). Or E3M3. Or E2M6.

View PostRunningDuke, on 28 July 2020 - 12:59 AM, said:

That makes me wish it was part of Final Doom and then I (along with pretty much everyone else) would have also included it in the regular Doom playthroughs.


I wish it was too. It's criminally unknown. It was both technically impressive for 97 (impressive for the doom engine, anyway), and really fun to play, as it used that tech for some great effects. A lot of the levels were short too, so they'd be quick but intense little romps, and then you were off to the next one.



Regarding Akeldama, I am both attracted and put off by the challenge described in just the first part of episode 1. Attracted because I love a good challenge, as said before, but repelled because I can't help but wonder if it's starting that hard, when the bs will start coming in. I wish I didn't have to ask that but I've been just that brow-beaten and jaded.
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User is offline   FistMarine 

#3761 Posted 29 July 2020 - 01:37 AM

About guest mappers, yes I meant to say it mostly depends but I know in most cases these guest mappers tend to do maps that vary in quality when comes to the rest of maps in the wad that were made by the main author(s), like in ADO case as you said, that guy's maps (one of them being the infamous E3M3 with the caco pit) were a noticeable drop in quality. And as for Chris Hansen's maps, I'm surprised because that guy is known for making good maps, at least that was the impression I got from some of the wads he made like CH Retro Episode, which I hope to play soon. Yeah I know I have so many wads to play but I'm not making a good progress it looks like, as I'm focused on the current wads and even these take some time, for others it looks like I leave them for another day. As I'm playing a couple of wads at the moment (DTWID, KDIZD, Double Impact, Akeldama) and I haven't finished any of them yet. I try to limit myself with one wad per source port. So if I want to play D2TWID or Wonderful Doom or other vanilla wads, I have to finish DTWID first. Yes the 6 save slots (or 8 in Crispy and Boom ports) are a bit restrictive and I'd rather not start a new wad and accidentally overwrite my saves. Although in DTWID's case I have done E1 and didn't start E2 and E3 yet, I prefer to fully finish a wad before moving on to the next one. And in ZDoom's case, well I want to finish KDIZD first.

I agree, Perdition's Gate is pretty sweet and also should have gotten a mention for Top 100 Wads, in my opinion and give it a bit more publicity instead of some generic 1 level wads that were chosen in the Top 100 Wads. I do hope to see it added as official addon in the recent ports but we will see either tomorrow or next Thursday what wad they add next and I wouldn't be surprised if the wad chosen to get added is BTSX E2 as it has been hinted to be added sometime in future. I still have hope that some other great wads will be added, what I don't see considered to be added are multiple 1 level wads. I would have loved to have Romero's E1M4B/E1M8B as official addons (to go with his SIGIL wad) and other great 1 level wad or short episodes or whatever. Even then, it looks like they mostly select megawads since NEIS, which is all great but I wouldn't mind starting with the next wad getting added, to see more 1-episode wads like Double Impact was and that way we would see new wads getting added a bit more often than having to wait 6 weeks until they add a new wad. I would have preferred if they added a new wad monthly but that's fine too.

As for Akeldama, well yeah there are quite a couple of tricky traps sometimes happening but it isn't something that a skilled Doom player can't handle. I consider myself a skilled Doom player, not as good as those Doomgods and Speedrunners but I am competent enough to handle most maps.

Oh and speaking of which, I finished MAP08 (100%). Wasn't as bad as I thought. It had 260 enemies and was shorter than previous maps. I survived this time but there are some tricky traps as well that you must be aware. Some screens I will upload, as usual.

Also yeah, just found the option "Smart Totals" in the menu which I missed yesterday. It was disabled and even if I changed the option (I prefer leaving it to default), I can't tell if in MAP07 I had enemies missed (due to archvile resurrecting some monsters) because I just overwrote the save (I tend to overwrite saves of maps I died and keep rest as backup, though I also overwrote the first 2 or so level saves due to running out of slots, if you get what I mean) but I will keep that in mind in future.

EDIT: I realized the screenshots are shown in the opposite order, not in a random order as I thought. So the first screenshot you see is the last one (e.g. the one in MAP09).

This post has been edited by RunningDuke: 29 July 2020 - 01:42 AM

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User is offline   Ninety-Six 

#3762 Posted 29 July 2020 - 04:18 PM

To be fair to Hansen, ADO was originally released in 2002. The most recent map I've played from him was in TNT:R, funnily enough, and it was alright. Not amazing, but not bad. Certainly better than his ADO offerings.

There is a case to be made for developing skills. From what I can tell Hansen started making maps in 2000, versus say Corfiatis himself who had been making stuff since the mid-late 90s.



As for the top 100, it's possible that the organizers simply hadn't played it. It was a commercial release, after all, which not only puts a gate in front of it (especially since it came out in 1997, a year after Quake, Duke 3D and Strife had come out), but since it was an unofficial total conversion, that harshly limited its potential attention.



I'm also noticing in your screenshots that the proportions are off.

This post has been edited by Ninety-Six: 29 July 2020 - 04:23 PM

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User is offline   FistMarine 

#3763 Posted 29 July 2020 - 09:43 PM

Quote

As for the top 100, it's possible that the organizers simply hadn't played it. It was a commercial release, after all, which not only puts a gate in front of it (especially since it came out in 1997, a year after Quake, Duke 3D and Strife had come out), but since it was an unofficial total conversion, that harshly limited its potential attention.

Ah, fair enough. Still, there should have been a mention somewhere if they knew about the wad's existence. Either way I'm still waiting for the wad to get added to the Unity ports, that will surely make it available to a wider audience. Not sure why they aren't adding it already as Tom Mustaine is still available and I doubt Atari cares about the wad anyway. I hate when companies like these that are holding hostage certain products and not allowing them to be re-released in any form. As far as I know Atari also had the Blood source code but thankfully it is no longer needed when Blood ports started existing since 2017 or so.

Quote

I'm also noticing in your screenshots that the proportions are off.

What do you mean here? Do you mean the aspect ratio is off? Because I prefer to play with image stretching the whole monitor instead of say, black bars around the screen (I never liked black bars around the screen, which Chocolate Doom unfortunately forces in 3.x versions but there is a way to make fill whole screen by modifying cfg file directly). Or the ammo amounts and health/armor? Because like I said I take random screenshots at random times (if it's current level, at random point of level, when I reach a new level it's often at very beginning before I quit game), it's the order of screenshots that doesn't match the continuity, it's the last screenshot that I upload first and the first one shown is the latest. Not much I can do about that unless I upload them in the opposite order and they may show up fine. I have explained in the previous posts anyway, it's not that big of a deal. You can also look at the screenshots names as I rename them according to the map I reached and the number of screenshot.

As for the differing ammo, thing is I often use SSG and in some maps I ended up with a low quantity of shells even after searching the level for any leftover shells/boxes but then the situation fixes in the next level. Same applies to other ammo types that I find, the last map had generous amounts of rockets and even plasma. I used plasma to quickly clear some archviles that spawned and certain traps when I wasn't sure what was going to happen. Armor, it depends. Some maps (like MAP08) had only green armor available, so I ended with 200% health and 100% armor at end of level after getting all supplies I saved. MAP09 was generous and had THREE blue armors (one at beginning of level which was much needed as I had green armor) so it was easy to end up with 200% health and 200% armor. It even had two soul spheres available.

Speaking of which, I reached MAP10 of Akeldama. Yes I realize I'm like 20 maps behind and I won't make it to the end until tomorrow, at best I will probably make it to MAP15 (with secret levels completed) or MAP20. I guess I will finish the megawad sometime in August. I'm curious what wad they choose next month. I will surely play the chosen wad too, after I finish one of the existing wads.

MAP08 and MAP09 weren't too bad. I handled them better than I expected. I had a lot of luck in the archvile encounters that spawned in the map (there were 3 archviles and each one spawned at some random points) and while I was fighting one and taking cover, I just looked at the automap and it finally clarifies my confusion earlier. When an enemy gets resurrected and killed, none of these affect the current kills or the total kill counter. It doesn't change at all. So that means in MAP07 the archvile didn't resurrect anyone which I just falsely thought and made me wonder if I did miss an enemy or not. In the last map I played, when the resurrections happened and I happened to kill everyone (all kills on automap), I finished level with 104% kills. So I guess the "Smart Totals" option in menu if I were to enable, it would change the automap kill stat and make each resurrected enemy count as kill and then I would have higher kills than the total count, which is what I expected initially to happen. For some reason this option isn't enabled, so it only creates confusion involving resurrected enemies. But I guess that's what clears my confusion earlier, so I'm happy with knowing that now.

Now that I reached MAP10, I'm also curious when the real challenge of the wad begins. So far it wasn't too bad, it feels somewhere between TNT and Plutonia in terms of difficulty. I admit I look on doomwiki.org on each MAP page (only the maps I reached so far) and look at the statistics and how many monsters (and their types) are present and the powerups are in the level so I know to plan my routes and see if there is a single soul sphere to save it for end of level, same with the blue armor, etc. Plus the secrets explained and how to reach them is the only useful info available as there aren't many YouTube videos of the megawad. Some secrets I find by myself but there are also others that take some time to figure out and I think it's fair when I reach end of level to start looking and reading those descriptions carefully. I gotta say this is the first megawad I'm 100%'ing. So far the only things I 100%'ed (in regards to Doom games) were Ultimate Doom and Doom 2. I never 100%'ed Master Levels, TNT and Plutonia (and let's not talk about any other wads I've played, the other wads I'm playing don't count) because back then I didn't care about 100%'ing each level, just completing the levels (and the secret levels). In 2018 I took my time to explore and get 100% when I replayed Ultimate Doom and Doom 2 (I also like to give credit to BigMacDavis, who has helped me with finding certain secrets in his useful YouTube videos, I know he uses ZDoom which I don't really like seeing when comes to IWADS (due to various inaccuracies) and the fact he cheated sometimes (though that was to show those inaccessible secrets) but I cared more about finding secrets) and these days I want to go further and 100% pretty much every wad out there (with some exceptions, of course I won't 100% maps that are impossible to).

Also just reminded, 96, since you are a completionist like me, when comes to unreachable secrets, do you use noclip even temporary just to access those secrets or you leave them? When I did UD and D2, I wanted to get 100% with exception of those unreachable secrets, as I don't like cheating at all, even if it's temporary. So in those cases I didn't mind not having 100% secrets found (other times there were maps that had no secrets, thus 0% secrets at end of level in vanilla Doom).
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User is offline   Ninety-Six 

#3764 Posted 29 July 2020 - 10:25 PM

View PostRunningDuke, on 29 July 2020 - 09:43 PM, said:

What do you mean here? Do you mean the aspect ratio is off? Because I prefer to play with image stretching the whole monitor instead of say, black bars around the screen (I never liked black bars around the screen, which Chocolate Doom unfortunately forces in 3.x versions but there is a way to make fill whole screen by modifying cfg file directly).


Yeah that's what I meant. I didn't really notice until all the screenshots had the chaingun and I noticed it was egg-shaped.

I actually refused to use DOSBox for anything at all until I found out there was a way to adjust that in the config files. When circular things aren't circular (Duke's nuke logo, Doom's chaingun and rocket launcher, etc) it just drives me up the wall for some reason.

But naturally, to each their own.

View PostRunningDuke, on 29 July 2020 - 09:43 PM, said:

Also just reminded, 96, since you are a completionist like me, when comes to unreachable secrets, do you use noclip even temporary just to access those secrets or you leave them? When I did UD and D2, I wanted to get 100% with exception of those unreachable secrets, as I don't like cheating at all, even if it's temporary. So in those cases I didn't mind not having 100% secrets found (other times there were maps that had no secrets, thus 0% secrets at end of level in vanilla Doom).


Depends.

If it's unreachable due to a bug, and if it's a wad I intend on coming back to (like the official episodes), then I'll just straight up edit the map itself and load it as a PWAD. If it's a mod I'm playing first time, then first I'll spend a while trying to get in via normal methods. When I start suspecting it might be a bug, I'll look it up to verify if it is a bug or just obtuse. If it is definitely a bug then yeah I'll cheat for it. It's a clear example of that intention vs. released split, since obviously you would be intended to get that secret and I value that more than the released version.

And if it's unreachable by design, then that itself depends. Generally speaking I hate one-chance secrets. They're incredibly anti-exploration. They only make sense if the player already knows it's there and then it's a challenge to reach it, but obviously first time through they won't know that. So when they do go secret hunting, they could spend forever trying to find it, and never will. Begs the question how they expect anyone to figure it out at that point. Putting a strict limit on when it can be achieved means a secret hunter will have to bumble their way to the secret at the right time on pure accident. This also applies to secrets hidden on a damaging floor (especially if the level is 90% damaging floor).

In such cases, whether I cheat or not depends on how I've felt about the wad up to that point. If it had been fairly good, I'll be nice and let them keep it. However, if it started earning bad credit, then I'll probably cheat by noclipping or god mode in the case of damaging floors. This is because A.) If it has earned bad credit then that means it's probably not the best designed and I'll probably need whatever is in the secret to survive the next bit of bullshit, and B.) the wad had its chance already. At the start of a wad I'll play nice but the more bs it gets, the more likely I'll be to cheat for secrets (though when I get to a point where god mode in combat seems justified I just quit).

Also if a wad is just a series of unmarked secrets that you could never possibly figure out on your own, I'm not above cheating for those secrets either.

It's funny that we were talking about 2002ADO earlier, as that has probably the only example of a one-time secret I've ever seen that works. E1M9's BFG secret is right at the start of the level and can be found easily. But to actually grab it, you have to wait until the level time reaches five minutes. Then and only then will the door open, and then close permanently. So why does it work? Because it paints a giant "5" on the floor of the room. It doesn't exactly tell you what the five means, but it's something. A player could use some logic and reasoning to think it meant five minutes and to return there then. The player is given something to work with.

It's actually incredibly ironic since pcorf had a nasty habit of making almost all his secrets unmarked back then. He's gotten better since, but while I enjoyed how his levels played back then, his secrets were bad enough to force me to cheat for them.

This post has been edited by Ninety-Six: 29 July 2020 - 10:29 PM

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User is offline   FistMarine 

#3765 Posted 29 July 2020 - 11:45 PM

Quote

Yeah that's what I meant. I didn't really notice until all the screenshots had the chaingun and I noticed it was egg-shaped.

I actually refused to use DOSBox for anything at all until I found out there was a way to adjust that in the config files. When circular things aren't circular (Duke's nuke logo, Doom's chaingun and rocket launcher, etc) it just drives me up the wall for some reason.

But naturally, to each their own.

Ah, I see now. Yeah I don't like either when the screen resolution is squashed but in case of PrBoom+ I didn't know how else to do. In game looks fine. When I take a screenshot it is taken at the resolution I'm playing. If I didn't have Doom Aspect Ratio option forced, then PrBoom+ would have probably looked like this (a random screenshot I grabbed from Google images, it is actually a thumbnail of a YouTube video):
Spoiler

As you can see, I just can't stand the status bar with the green texture covering the sides (due to the original status bar being made for original resolution) and I also notice the shotgun looks a bit smaller. That's what I mean by wrong aspect ratio and I prefer the original Doom format with whole screen filled and nothing squished. I'm no expert in how aspect ratio and resolutions exactly work. But to me it doesn't look good if I don't have the same resolution that the game originally had. No I don't mean playing on 320x200 (320x220) resolution in source ports as that's stupid, I don't get those people who play like that and limit themselves what they see on screen just to emulate the stupid vanilla doom limitations. I mean I like using a resolution that still preserves the original feeling, example 640x480 is a good default and is what is used by Crispy (in Chocolate I did have initially set to 640x480 if I'm not mistaken but I put 1280x920 thinking it looks better on my screen). Yes I know Chocolate just upscales 320x220 but still, I wasn't sure what exactly resolution to use. A bit annoying that they rid of the resolution setting in 3.x series, hope they bring it later. I don't like having to modify my cfg file manually to make it display on screen instead of adding black bars on sides. On other source ports it depends, on Eternity and ZDoom, I use 1024x768. Maybe I should have used 1024x768 for PrBoom as well but I went higher because I can select higher resolutions and still preserves Doom aspect ratio format. In Eternity and ZDoom based ports, if I select higher, it turns into widescreen mode and I no longer have the original Doom format for menus, status bar, etc. Basically in Eternity I would get what you see in above example screenshot: stretched status bar with green borders.

I use the default 320x200 resolution in most BUILD engine games (only in RR I use 640x480 which is actually the default in that case, yes I still hate RR but I was thinking to play user maps/mods for it soon) and on my Win 10 laptop, the games show up on my whole screen, no bars at all. Granted, when I started DOSBox first time 2 years ago (when I bought the laptop and played the Doom games in DOSBox) in fullscreen mode, it showed a squished image and bars on top and bottom. I then went to Intel Graphics Settings and made so the whole screen gets stretched to fit on monitor. What I don't understand is why at PC at home (that uses AMD graphics card) I can't find a way to make DOSBox show up on whole screen normally in fullscreen mode, I get black bars on top and bottom. This only applies to DOSBox startup screen and 320x200 games. If I play games at 640x480 resolution, then it shows up normally on my screen, aka the whole screen filled which is what I want. On my laptop, I haven't gotten any problems in this regard, no matter if 320x200 or 640x480 games. Also I admit my laptop isn't a gaming laptop (I plan to buy a gaming laptop soon) but it seems to work fine with most games I tried.

Quote

Depends.

If it's unreachable due to a bug, and if it's a wad I intend on coming back to (like the official episodes), then I'll just straight up edit the map itself and load it as a PWAD. If it's a mod I'm playing first time, then first I'll spend a while trying to get in via normal methods. When I start suspecting it might be a bug, I'll look it up to verify if it is a bug or just obtuse. If it is definitely a bug then yeah I'll cheat for it. It's a clear example of that intention vs. released split, since obviously you would be intended to get that secret and I value that more than the released version.

And if it's unreachable by design, then that itself depends. Generally speaking I hate one-chance secrets. They're incredibly anti-exploration. They only make sense if the player already knows it's there and then it's a challenge to reach it, but obviously first time through they won't know that. So when they do go secret hunting, they could spend forever trying to find it, and never will. Begs the question how they expect anyone to figure it out at that point. Putting a strict limit on when it can be achieved means a secret hunter will have to bumble their way to the secret at the right time on pure accident. This also applies to secrets hidden on a damaging floor (especially if the level is 90% damaging floor).

In such cases, whether I cheat or not depends on how I've felt about the wad up to that point. If it had been fairly good, I'll be nice and let them keep it. However, if it started earning bad credit, then I'll probably cheat by noclipping or god mode in the case of damaging floors. This is because A.) If it has earned bad credit then that means it's probably not the best designed and I'll probably need whatever is in the secret to survive the next bit of bullshit, and B.) the wad had its chance already. At the start of a wad I'll play nice but the more bs it gets, the more likely I'll be to cheat for secrets (though when I get to a point where god mode in combat seems justified I just quit).

Also if a wad is just a series of unmarked secrets that you could never possibly figure out on your own, I'm not above cheating for those secrets either.

It's funny that we were talking about 2002ADO earlier, as that has probably the only example of a one-time secret I've ever seen that works. E1M9's BFG secret is right at the start of the level and can be found easily. But to actually grab it, you have to wait until the level time reaches five minutes. Then and only then will the door open, and then close permanently. So why does it work? Because it paints a giant "5" on the floor of the room. It doesn't exactly tell you what the five means, but it's something. A player could use some logic and reasoning to think it meant five minutes and to return there then. The player is given something to work with.

It's actually incredibly ironic since pcorf had a nasty habit of making almost all his secrets unmarked back then. He's gotten better since, but while I enjoyed how his levels played back then, his secrets were bad enough to force me to cheat for them.

Interesting observations. I don't like having to fix official maps (even if it's for myself), I play only official things and releases from other people. It's very easy to fix mapping mistakes for myself but I'd rather prefer if say...those unreachable secrets get fixed in the recent Unity ports and then I'd experience these fixes the best and official way. That's one of the things I wish they'd do in the recent ports, the Doom games have quite a few minor things that are easy to fix and should get fixed because even someone like me who is a purist, wants to have a fixed and best version available. The unity ports have come a long way since exactly a year ago they were released. It's only a matter of time they will fix other stuff that should have been fixed long time ago. Who knows what else they have in store? In fact, today is the perfect day they will probably release an update to the ports (maybe a new addon, who knows?) and I'm looking forward to that. Until then, I will focus on playing some games and mods.

I wouldn't cheat at all unless I'm forced to cheat. I could play through the game in cheating way (example play through whole Doom 2 with IDDQD and IDKFA from the beginning of game) and then I can cheat to get those inaccessible secrets. In a normal playthrough (like the one I did 2 years ago), never. I'd rather finish MAP15 with 90% secrets (and MAP27 with 87% secrets) than to cheat. Although there seems to be a new way to trigger that secret in MAP15 which I have noticed last year:

I swear to God, last year I have been thinking just before the video was uploaded, if I can trigger the secret using that save game glitch and if it worked, I would make the video and upload to YouTube. Then I found out someone else found it before I did. Of course Zero Master was first by finding that way with the Pain Elemental but this alternate method works too if playing in original DOS version (and ports based on vanilla). I guess I will be doing this next time I will play through Doom 2, so I can finally have 100% secrets in all levels (minus those that have no secrets at all and show 0% at stats screen).
Also here is the other unreachable secret (in MAP27) that can be gotten using a glitch (again I think Zero Master found it, but like case above, this video is by Classic DOOM):

Hope you will find this useful!

I hate too those one time secrets. It's actually the other "unreachable" secret in MAP27 where you have 30 seconds from the beginning of level to get to it. I knew about it in last 5 or so years when I watched videos on YouTube but before that I had no idea of its existence. In my 2018 playthrough, I got to it before it closed, thankfully.

For those secrets if they require you to go through damaging floor, I normally hate those too, I think those that hide health supplies (especially soulspheres/megaspheres) are generally fine I think because you can recover lost health. However I hate if I were in situation where I have almost no health and can't go back or I can't reach that secret in time before I die. Also a bit unrelated but I really hate that rare chance of the radiation suit leak where you can take 20 damage (on those stronger damaging floors) even with radiation suit on.

I only "cheat" by looking at YouTube videos that show secrets of the particular wad or reading walkthroughs (like on doomwiki pages) or randomly finding people talking about the secrets in question (example in the Doomworld megawad club topics if they explain that secret), I don't like having to cheat in my game, maybe I could make an exception (when I'm exhausted of searching for the last kill/item/secret) by cheating and when finding it, quitting game to reset cheats, then starting up again. I actually did this few years ago when I played some random wads in GZDoom, I just did that because I played some 1994 wads and couldn't figure some stuff. Thankfully doomwiki.org does a good job at detailing secrets and mentioning unreachable kills, secrets, items because you will notice for example on some Memento Mori maps, that some things are unreachable. Here is an example

That secret in 2002 ADO sounds very interesting. I think it reminds me of ROTT (shareware) first level which also had a timed elevator that opened like 3 or so minutes into the level and if you didn't go there (it's at beginning of the level), you could miss it permanently.

I will go to play some Akeldama because I think I have wrote enough for now. Yesterday I have done 2 maps, today I will probably do 2 or 3 more maps. At the very least reach MAP15 or so until the end of month, as embarrassing as it is to not finish this wad in time. Though to be fair, I finished my studies in the second week of the month, so it was only natural to be like 7 maps behind. Not sure why I didn't start immediately and left until 2 more weeks to start. That's very bad timing on my part. But that's what happens when you don't play games and mods in months and don't even know what to play first! :)

This post has been edited by RunningDuke: 29 July 2020 - 11:53 PM

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User is offline   Ninety-Six 

#3766 Posted 29 July 2020 - 11:59 PM

View PostRunningDuke, on 29 July 2020 - 11:45 PM, said:

Hope you will find this useful!


Not particularly. I already knew of them but unfortunately I just don't think it's worth it. Exploiting glitchy unintended behavior to get around broken unintended map issues just seems entirely not worth it. I understand where you're coming from, but exploiting semi-random enemy behavior and wasting time (and potentially dying for it) just to get around something that should have been bug tested a bit more thoroughly, when I could "restore" the map to what was intended and have more fun with it.

The whole reason I'm a completionist is because of how I see video games. I believe that if it was designed and put into the game, it should be seen, for better or for worse. The true, full intended experience for the game.

The key word is, once again, intended. It was intended to be seen, so I see it. That sort of exploitable behavior to get around an error... that's two things never meant to be seen.

That's my logic, anyway.

View PostRunningDuke, on 29 July 2020 - 11:45 PM, said:

Also a bit unrelated but I really hate that rare chance of the radiation suit leak where you can take 20 damage (on those stronger damaging floors) even with radiation suit on.


Yeah me too. And that one's not even a bug. That's just being an asshole because they want to be. Probably the second most frustrating thing in Doom for me after the RNG damage system (if we're not counting glitches, anyway).

This post has been edited by Ninety-Six: 30 July 2020 - 12:01 AM

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User is offline   Ninety-Six 

#3767 Posted 30 July 2020 - 02:29 AM

Welp. Turns out MAP30 of TNT:R is a shitshow. That's disappointing.

Engineering situations where taking damage is mandatory is always awful level design. Especially when savescumming won't even help, since at that point you're just reloading over and over hoping you roll lower numbers on the next attempt.

Fun.

This post has been edited by Ninety-Six: 30 July 2020 - 02:34 AM

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User is offline   FistMarine 

#3768 Posted 30 July 2020 - 02:34 AM

View PostNinety-Six, on 29 July 2020 - 11:59 PM, said:

Not particularly. I already knew of them but unfortunately I just don't think it's worth it. Exploiting glitchy unintended behavior to get around broken unintended map issues just seems entirely not worth it. I understand where you're coming from, but exploiting semi-random enemy behavior and wasting time (and potentially dying for it) just to get around something that should have been bug tested a bit more thoroughly, when I could "restore" the map to what was intended and have more fun with it.

The whole reason I'm a completionist is because of how I see video games. I believe that if it was designed and put into the game, it should be seen, for better or for worse. The true, full intended experience for the game.

The key word is, once again, intended. It was intended to be seen, so I see it. That sort of exploitable behavior to get around an error... that's two things never meant to be seen.

That's my logic, anyway.

Yeah me too. And that one's not even a bug. That's just being an asshole because they want to be. Probably the second most frustrating thing in Doom for me after the RNG damage system (if we're not counting glitches, anyway).

I thought that it's better to exploit glitches to access those secrets rather than using cheats to access them. I don't like glitching either but I have no other option other than cheating, which I just don't want to when doing a clean/perfect playthrough and thought this will be perfect time to exploit these glitches so I can score 100%, to give me a reason why I should revisit doing Doom 2 (in Ultimate Doom there is still no way to access those secrets in E4M3 and E4M7, seriously I wish E4 wasn't so rushed). I will also consider doing pistol starts (UV 100%) for each level in UD and D2 because I planned since long time. And about dying part, I don't think that will happen since I don't intend to lure the pain elemental to perform that secret glitch in MAP15. I will just save on top of teleporter and reload to perform the glitch as seen in the video above. It is done similarly to getting pushed by pain elemental, you get "lowered" into floor and you will trigger the secret as if you used the IDCLIP cheat. Just remember that in vanilla Doom there is no way to tell when you find a secret, so the only way is to see the level stats. Which is also why these inaccessible secrets manage to sneak in the official Doom maps. The thing I found bullshit was when Romero claimed two years ago (after Zero Master found that secret in MAP15 with pain elemental method) that this is how he intended players to find that last secret. OK but how did you (Romero) even know that secret was inaccessible in first place considering that vanilla Doom doesn't have a way to tell you found a secret and you can never realize what secret you missed or found? That's why I found bullshit and he recently even claimed Doom is 3D. But personally I don't think it's 3D. Quake was the first full 3D game. What is your opinion here? I don't want to enter into "Doom wasn't 3D" arguments considering there are even topics on Doomworld where people argued whether Doom is 3D or not. To me Doom has always been 2.5D and BUILD engine games have been 2.75D.

As for Radiation Suit, yep I agree. No reason to have that feature. Although to be fair, in Quake the biosuit didn't protect from lava (it only gave you a slight immunity, didn't help much) and although this wasn't seen in official levels (I mean the biosuit placed close to lava), I know there are custom maps that make this possible (maybe even the official mission packs? it's been a while since I played the mission packs). So maybe it makes a bit of sense to have the radiation suit leak (which is a 2% chance) on the stronger damaging floors in Doom. What doesn't make sense is why it's fine most of time when wandering in lava and suddenly you take damage but in next second you are fine? I don't like questioning logic in games but this leak is silly. Oh and I also find annoying how there are sectors (even in original game) that somehow damage you and this means mappers can make even normal floors as damaging, even worse if it's the 20 damage type.

I played more Akeldama and reached MAP11. Not bad! MAP10 was quite tricky at times. I won't spoil but there were quite a couple of traps but somehow I survived them all. Other than that death in MAP07, I survived everything else in first 10 maps. Not bad at all! I have a feeling the wad starts getting much harder from now on and looking at the statistics on doomwiki on the secret levels (yes I admit I took a look yesterday when I finished playing), it seems as they are a bit on the slaughter side. I wonder how they will be. Still have 5 maps to complete before I reach the secret levels.

Oh and I also played a bit more Herian 2 yesterday and reached MAP06.

This post has been edited by RunningDuke: 30 July 2020 - 02:40 AM

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User is offline   Ninety-Six 

#3769 Posted 30 July 2020 - 02:43 AM

View PostRunningDuke, on 30 July 2020 - 02:34 AM, said:

I played more Akeldama and reached MAP11. Not bad! MAP10 was quite tricky at times. I won't spoil but there were quite a couple of traps but somehow I survived them all. Other than that death in MAP07, I survived everything else in first 10 maps. Not bad at all! I have a feeling the wad starts getting much harder from now on and looking at the statistics on doomwiki on the secret levels (yes I admit I took a look yesterday when I finished playing), it seems as they are a bit on the slaughter side. I wonder how they will be. Still have 5 maps to complete before I reach the secret levels.


To be honest, at this point, I don't think I'm gonna bother. It's too high-risk, especially right now as I once again I find myself regretting ever touching this game.

It'll pass before too long and then the cycle will repeat, probably.

This post has been edited by Ninety-Six: 30 July 2020 - 02:49 AM

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User is offline   FistMarine 

#3770 Posted 31 July 2020 - 04:32 AM

View PostNinety-Six, on 30 July 2020 - 02:43 AM, said:

To be honest, at this point, I don't think I'm gonna bother. It's too high-risk, especially right now as I once again I find myself regretting ever touching this game.

It'll pass before too long and then the cycle will repeat, probably.

I think you are right. I just finished MAP11 and yep, it started getting into the usual modern Doom maps territory (this map had 9 archviles, a spiderdemon and even 4 cyberdemons, two of them encountered at same time near beginning of level). Somehow I survived all these deadly traps but the last trap came with the cost of burning through that secret megasphere because I knew and expected those last remaining enemies (and fact there was a cyberdemon remaining) didn't want to risk eating a rocket and dying (though in reality that cyber was stationary on top of exit and far away, so I was actually hit a couple of times by revenant fireballs and hell knight's projectiles while trying to go towards exit but spectres blocked me, yeah I panicked a bit too much). So although I still had 94% health and blue armor remaining (without megasphere I would have died since I only had 100 health before picking it up, regardless of the blue armor I still had remaining that I picked up earlier) when I backtracked to get health and ammo supplies (found 3 cell packs left in the map), decided to get green armor anyway. Yes I realize green armor is pretty weak but couldn't resist to not have everything picked up. The leftover blue armor would have eventually wore off in next level and wanted to make sure armor lasts. Health seems to be plentiful in the maps anyway, so even if I get hurt badly, surely there will be a medkit or a powerup in map somewhere. I'm sure the difficulty will get slightly easier for these few couple of maps until secret levels and later levels. But honestly, I will leave that for next week because I'm very exhausted. Just look at the automap stats of level 12. Look at how much I spent so far to complete the first 11 levels. 7 hours and half (without counting the breaks I took between levels). I expected the wad to have short Doom 2 type levels, instead the levels take like 40-45 minutes at least (granted I also try to 100% them instead of just finishing them).

Also yeah at beginning of map11 (when you enter that room that has a few enemies teleporting, before the two cybers encountered), there is no way to backtrack to the beginning part of the level but I'm glad I found quickly and restarted those first 5 minutes and redoing the first few enemies spawned because there is NO way back to get the berserk and health bonuses at map start. I had saved them for later initially because I was at 200% health (and armor) so I didn't see the need. But turns out you MUST get them. If I had used a ZDoom based source port, I would personally (even if it's cheating) simply jumped to go back but since I used PrBoom+, no jumping for me (and I don't like cheating either). Either way I'm glad I decided to restart early because imagine if I had found out after doing this map. Where's the last items? At the beginning of the level and no way to get them. :)

So yep, the previous map that I played yesterday wasn't that bad (forgot to mention it did also contain a spider demon, which is the trickiest part), had a few traps but it wasn't like I was low on health, just was lucky. This time although at some points I was like 40% or so health, I was lucky by just running from one side to another (during a crazy encounter), I get a bit desperate sometimes and not sure what exactly to do or just quickly spam plasma (or rockets, while being careful to any spectres or lost souls if any) to get rid of the monsters, especially archviles as quickly as possible. Not sure when you get BFG first time. But the way it seems so far and I'm sure you won't like playing the wad (to me the difficulty was alright, didn't reach the frustrating point just yet) but yeah I can confirm there are deadly traps and even sometimes an enemy spawns in front of you while another spawns in back, there are chaingunners sometimes in positions you can't reach yet until you get closer (while they can snipe you), archviles sometimes get spawned alongside other monsters (the last map had 9 archviles but not multiple at same time, just one at a time) and there may be more. It's not something you can't do, I really recommend you to just save often and use multiple slots like I do. The wad really keeps you on toes as I have said before. It almost feels like Plutonia at times.

In the end, yes I did 100% each level so far and I'm glad of my performance. I would have liked to read some comments in that Doomworld megawad club topic (to see how well they did) but I'd rather not spoil. I'm 20 maps behind and most people probably finished the megawad until now. I'm curious what wad they choose next. And it depends of the port required because I can't start a new wad until I finish current one for each port. If they start something that I'd like to do in PrBoom+, I gotta finish Akeldama first.

As for the recent Unity ports, it looks like yesterday nothing new happened as I was hoping but I know next week they will surely do something. Perhaps a new addon? Only time will tell...

Some more Akeldama screenshots (possibly the last ones I will show, really don't feel like taking a screenshot for each map).
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User is offline   Ninety-Six 

#3771 Posted 31 July 2020 - 09:17 PM

The Unity add-ons come out fairly slowly, really. Once every other month or so, I think.

It's a shame (but not surprising) that akeldama starts getting dumb with it.
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User is offline   FistMarine 

#3772 Posted 05 August 2020 - 08:56 PM

Yeah, the addons slowly get released at every 1.5 months (every 6 weeks) or so, usually Thursday. Well, today is the day when the next addon should come out! Someone actually posted recently at Doomworld about that because there was someone else who kept asking when is next addon coming out. Personally I would have wanted to have an addon getting released monthly (usually at the end of month) instead at every 1.5 months (because for example we had no addons released in July, so I feel like the extra two weeks are just unnecessary to make less overall addons available, they could have made the process slightly faster and end up with 12 new addons per year instead of only 8). Granted, when they first released the addons (Final Doom, NRFTL and SIGIL) back in January, it took a month for Double Impact to come out in February. But since then, there have been only megawads and maybe that's why it takes them so long to add a single addon. Would have preferred if they added even 2 new addons at a time (a megawad and a short episode wad) to make up for the extra 2 weeks time. Oh well, I'm still looking at Doomworld to see what else they add later today.

Speaking of which, I registered a few days ago at Doomworld. Though I haven't posted yet but I will surely talk to sponge (one of the guys behind the Doom Unity ports) regarding all my suggestions for the ports and what else they should add, as well as other quality of life improvements (for one thing, integrating the Minor Sprite Fixing Project into IWADS, making the pistol use the unused frames and so on). And I have a lot of plans for these days, seeing as there are many things happening and I need to keep up with the wads getting released as such.

As for Akeldama, yeah it's a shame although I read in that Megawad club topic, apparently some of the maps were put in a random order, with some harder/longer maps coming out earlier and then some later maps being shorter than their slot they were placed in. Also they chose a random community project (1000 Lines Community Project) to play this month and I was going to play it in Eternity (while continuing Akeldama at a later time) but I have to finish out Double Impact first...damn so many wads to play! Well, I will play a lot Doom related content today to make up for past days where I played something else.

I did play more DTWID in last 2 days. I reached E2M3. Don't have much to say other than E2M1 was ok and E2M2 was quite confusing to reach 100% everything, as initially I reached the end without any secrets found (and some monsters and items missed) but thankfully I was able to backtrack and find everything I missed (did manage to find the soulsphere secret by myself but still had to check YouTube for everything else). I have two screens for now.

BTW I do feel the need to say something. Last week when playing Akeldama (haven't played since then, still at MAP12), I did realize how annoying the mouse feels in PrBoom (it also has vertical movement enabled so moving the mouse also pushes you forward or backward or moving you in left/right which can be irritating sometimes). In Eternity it isn't any better, the mouse feels a bit slow to turn and doesn't have the vertical movement but I feel like in both cases, the movements feel a bit wonky. Same also applies to older versions of ZDoom (1.22/1.23 beta 33) which didn't have the perfected mouse movement/mouselook that newer versions have. I now understand why almost everyone prefers ZDoom/GZDoom ports because they have a really smooth mouse movement and better controls in general, you can have a modern Doom experience at the cost of the compatibility. I really wish there was an universal Doom port to be able to do everything. GZDoom is very good at everything except vanilla compatibility which fails at (ZDoom also fails miserably at vanilla compatibility). Yeah I realize there are compatibility settings but I'd rather not touch them considering I mostly play ZDoom/GZDoom specific wads when using these ports. If I play a vanilla/Boom compatible wad, I use the intended port MOST of the time. Only when playing older 2000s wads sometimes I use ZDoom to have a better time, because there aren't many amazing wads that came in 2000s if I'm not mistaken. I generally remember what came in 2010 and onwards, which also started the vanilla trend (and wads playable in Chocolate Doom). Before that, in 2000s it was either ZDoom or Boom stuff, rarely there was a wad made for Vanilla/Chocolate Doom.

Oh yeah, before I end the post, a few days ago I also finished an old ZDoom map (KZDoom7: The Power Plant) on UV using the old ZDoom 1.23 beta 33 version (which the map was made for) and I was able to finish it 100% (although I had 132% or so kills due to archvile resurrecting a few monsters continuously, also yeah ZDoom at that time still had some vanilla elements, like the fact weapon doesn't center when firing, the Doom kill counter wasn't fixed so lost souls didn't count as enemies/kills, resurrected enemies added as kills but the total kill counter wasn't updated). The map wasn't difficult until the end when you fight not one, not two but THREE Cyberdemons at same time! And if that wasn't enough, once to kill one, two spider masterminds teleport into the level! I died twice because of these spiders (would have done the map perfectly) and the map also took me more than an hour to finish as it said TIME SUCKS at end of level (in newer ZDoom versions you get the total time and even correct time after an hour). Oh and also in PrBoom+ there is no longer the TIME SUCKS feature since in some Akeldama levels, I remember it took me more than an hour to complete them and the timers showed fine.

You can check KZDoom7 at doomwiki.org here: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/KZDoom7
Look how the map doesn't have proper difficulty settings implemented, so HMP and UV are identical, while HNTR has only few less enemies. I can't check the doomwiki page right now (it says my connection is not private) but here is the download link if you want to play the map: https://www.doomworl...rts/j-l/kzdoom7
I will replay the map at a later time in latest ZDoom 2.8.1 and see if it still works as intended or if it's broken, as old ZDoom maps have a tendency to break in newer versions, which is a shame.

This post has been edited by RunningDuke: 05 August 2020 - 09:09 PM

0

User is offline   Fantinaikos 

#3773 Posted 06 August 2020 - 03:08 PM

Let's face it: After this, and this, and this, and this...


This was an inevitable result.

4

User is offline   FistMarine 

#3774 Posted 06 August 2020 - 11:00 PM

Quote

Yeah, the addons slowly get released at every 1.5 months (every 6 weeks) or so, usually Thursday. Well, today is the day when the next addon should come out! Someone actually posted recently at Doomworld about that because there was someone else who kept asking when is next addon coming out. Personally I would have wanted to have an addon getting released monthly (usually at the end of month) instead at every 1.5 months (because for example we had no addons released in July, so I feel like the extra two weeks are just unnecessary to make less overall addons available, they could have made the process slightly faster and end up with 12 new addons per year instead of only 8). Granted, when they first released the addons (Final Doom, NRFTL and SIGIL) back in January, it took a month for Double Impact to come out in February. But since then, there have been only megawads and maybe that's why it takes them so long to add a single addon. Would have preferred if they added even 2 new addons at a time (a megawad and a short episode wad) to make up for the extra 2 weeks time. Oh well, I'm still looking at Doomworld to see what else they add later today.

Well, that was disappointing. Nothing new happened yesterday. I was really hoping to have a new addon released! Don't understand why they are dragging this for so long, though to be fair in this weekend is the QuakeCon 2020 event and I fully understand there may be a slight delay considering they have other things planned as well. Perhaps they are saving this for later today or for the next 2 days? Only time will tell...

I also played more Double Impact and did E1M3. Died once this time sadly (though I reached the normal exit before that and realized I was missing nearly HALF of kills and most secrets), stupid spectres got released behind me (in the acid tunnel) while I was already fighting two others in front of me (and barely seeing them) and was low on health anyway. Didn't help I took massive damage earlier thanks to some devious traps. A bit annoying how I started the level with maximum 200/200, cleaned the first few rooms without taking damage and still died nearly at end of level because I was running low on health at some points on map. Oh and there are a few areas you can't access anymore, so make sure to grab everything in those areas before you leave! When you reach the end of the secret exit, you get locked with no way out, so I had to redo that part (thankfully had an earlier save) and get the missing kills/items/secrets before I entered that room. Eventually I got 100% and also time sucks because my time was just slightly above 1 hour! I reached E1M9: Operations. Just a small note that on the automap only the level name is displayed (and for some reason in first map the name was shown in a single word, "Maintenancearea", probably a dehacked error) so if you want to make sure you reached secret level, look at the name of map and check doomwiki or youtube videos and confirm you reached E1M9. Although in this case it's obvious as you find the normal exit a lot sooner and the secret exit even contains room full of enemies, so you will want to get to secret exit anyway. Speaking as a completionist.

Oh and let me correct something earlier. The mouse also moves you forward/backward in Eternity as well, however it is noticeably slower than PrBoom+ which also has always run enabled by default. By comparison, Eternity has more vanilla controls it looks like (I even had to set WASD controls by myself, while PrBoom+ had them enabled by default). I still think that ZDoom based ports have the best mouse aiming/movement from all Doom ports, however this comes at the cost of the vanilla accuracy and honestly when playing vanilla/limit removing sets like Double Impact, I wouldn't feel good when playing in ZDoom because I would be jumping and crouching around map and access areas in unintended ways. That and the various forced changes that I just can't stand when playing ZDoom/GZDoom, which I'm fine with when playing mapsets specifically designed for them (example Knee Deep in ZDoom) but not when playing the IWADS or classic wads. So I'm happy I chose Eternity to play Double Impact. I especially can't wait to play Romero's SIGIL episode after a year!

I will have to play more Doom stuff as I've been wanting to but I have also been busy with the Quake games (as I had to replay them after a long absence) and Duke3D World Tour E5! That's why it's taking me so long to do everything.

Some bonus screenshots of yesterday (because I have nothing better to do). They show up in the order from newest to oldest.

This post has been edited by RunningDuke: 06 August 2020 - 11:04 PM

0

User is offline   Ninety-Six 

#3775 Posted 07 August 2020 - 06:43 AM

And thus the cycle begins anew.

I was looking through doomworld (to see if there were any updates to Perdition's Gate: Resurgence. There kind of was since I last checked? Whatever, it's not important for this post) and two mapsets caught my eye.

The first was Back to 1994. The second was UAC Pacific Northwest.

For the former, I was initially drawn to the premise. I have a massive soft spot for the bizarre, nonsensical level and sound/sprite patches of early modding (same goes for similar endeavors for Duke. For instance, replacing the RPV with a static image of a helicopter that is obviously many magnitudes too small is something I find just absolutely adorable). As a matter of fact, while I have no desire to see high-quality community content go away, I do still miss the freewheeling spirit of "anything goes" in these old mods.

However, that being said, I didn't plan on actually playing it until I saw this post from the author:

nicolas monti said:

The traps are intended to be survivable without foreknowledge, the ammo for them is there at hand.


Given my several rants on the topic by now, it should be no surprise that this then led to an immediate download (alas, I'm currently having trouble finding a keyboard/mouse placement for my wrists, so while I can't play it as of yet I at least wanted it downloaded and ready to go for when I am able). I don't know yet if the claim is true, but I am obviously compelled to investigate as such. Hopefully the results will be favorable, and if so I will be more than happy to keep this in my collection permanently. So long as the gameplay is solid, the bizarre aesthetic choices will have no bearing on my overall enjoyment (and as I said, I already have a soft spot for this particular aesthetic anyway).

A similar optimistic note was what drew me to the second as well. It's not done yet, but there is some grounds for being hopeful. The author is a newcomer (already a good start), and apparently has experience in Half-Life 2 and TF2 mapping. Given that the latter is a multiplayer class-based FPS, it at least implies that this person has some foundational understanding of gameplay. He even directly states that he's still learning how combat balancing in Doom works, meaning that it is something that is a concern for him.

There is, of course, no guarantee that it will turn out well. To my knowledge I haven't played any of his previous works, so I can't vouch for them. Nonetheless I cannot help but to be hopeful. My search for wads that can (theoretically, without luck) be beaten without foreknowledge is still ongoing with very few results. Any that meet this requirement are welcome in my collection.


on that note

View PostRunningDuke, on 06 August 2020 - 11:00 PM, said:

Double Impact


Good luck with the final level. It's complete trash with the works: Requires good luck, has completely unfair sections that require trial and error to survive, and to top it all off it doesn't even tell you what the hell you're even supposed to do to actually beat the damn thing.

Legitimately one of the absolute worst levels I've ever played since I started playing Doom.

And I have played a lot of crap.

View PostRunningDuke, on 06 August 2020 - 11:00 PM, said:

I now understand why almost everyone prefers ZDoom/GZDoom ports because they have a really smooth mouse movement and better controls in general,


Yyyyyyyyyyyep.

As for the compatibility thing, to be honest, I actually have two zdoom setups. One with mostly vanilla settings enabled (again, minus the hitscan bug), which I feel are close enough. Plus, I'm not exactly going to miss the infinite monster melee range bug.

The other is a default zdoom setup with all compatibility options turned off, freelook engaged, jump and crouch bound and enabled (I have them unbound for the vanilla version so I couldn't even use them if I wanted), etc. I use the former for vanilla/limit-removing wads, and the latter for the advanced stuff (KDiZD, Tribute, Fall of Society, etc). I would make a boom setup too (zdoom is an extremely tiny application so having multiple copies doesn't even make a dent in disk space, especially with harddrive sizes of today), but I've not actually played that many boom wads, surprisingly. A few, sure, but not enough to warrant a whole setup versus just flipping the compatibility switch.

This post has been edited by Ninety-Six: 07 August 2020 - 06:48 AM

2

User is offline   MusicallyInspired 

  • The Sarien Encounter

#3776 Posted 07 August 2020 - 09:00 AM

Doom DLC: The Ancient Gods Part One

Full Trailer Reveal on August 27.



Pretty nice graphic too

This post has been edited by MusicallyInspired: 07 August 2020 - 09:37 AM

4

User is offline   OpenMaw 

  • Judge Mental

#3777 Posted 07 August 2020 - 02:15 PM

Selling a piece of Doom Merch. One of a kind GI JOE custom Doomguy with four guns and a GI Joe display stand:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/184393612402
0

User is offline   Ninety-Six 

#3778 Posted 08 August 2020 - 09:12 AM

View PostMusicallyInspired, on 07 August 2020 - 09:00 AM, said:

Doom DLC: The Ancient Gods Part One

Full Trailer Reveal on August 27.



Pretty nice graphic too


That sounds a lot like Vega.

Spoiler

0

User is offline   MusicallyInspired 

  • The Sarien Encounter

#3779 Posted 08 August 2020 - 04:29 PM

I'm pretty sure that
Spoiler

1

User is offline   Ninety-Six 

#3780 Posted 09 August 2020 - 12:59 AM

I never actually thought of it that way.
0

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