[Mike Norvak]

Hi everyone. It's been a while since I started mapping with the WGR2 assets, 2010 more or less, many things have changed since then, even talking about the maps and my episode itself. Here is a teaser of the result of all those years.

What happens when you mix William G Realms and Mesoamerican culture legends?

HECTIC REALMS.



I can write more and you can read more about it, but it's better if you play.

INSTALLATION.

Extract all the content in a fresh folder and run Hectic Realms.bat

IMPORTANT INFO.

There are new keys you need to assign like in the original WGR2: Altfire and POW.

You can play the mod in Polymost or Polymer (cool lights implemented!) you can expect the usual problems using the render though.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Special thanks to Dan Gaskill for developing special code all these years, to my girlfriend Teresita for all her support and help, she really have motivated me to achieve what I actually had in mind for this mod. I'd like to thank betatesters Forge, Fantinaikos and Teresita for this version and Paul Boulduc for earlier versions as well.

I'm gonna upload the mod to MODDB the next week, for now here's a direct WETRANSFER link.

Hope you enjoy it!

DOWNLOAD HECTIC REALMS DEMO

Mike Norvak, on 25 February 2018 - 10:48 AM, said:

Finally at MODDB:

http://www.moddb.com...tic-realms-demo

[stumppy84]

Cool man! Cheers on the release!

[Mark]

I loaded it up. Looks cool. I noticed a problem with some text fonts and mis-spelling in that first green guy popup window.

"disease"

[Mike Norvak]

Thanks Mark! I think I'm gonna upload an updated version to MODDB fixing this kind of things, hope there isn't many of them.

[William Gee]

Congratulations! Cant wait to play it.

[Poorchop]

Wow this is pretty amazing. I just played through the first map and I was amazed to see that something like this is possible in the engine. The opening area looked amazing, especially with the skybox.

Mark is right in that the green guy's dialogue has some spelling and grammatical errors. It was kind of hard to understand what he was saying at first. Other than that, I couldn't believe that this was a Duke mod. Really nice job putting this together.

[William Gee]

WOW so far I'm really loving this! Thanks!
I have made a news article on the WGR2 MODDB page about it, waiting for authorization.

[Doom64hunter]

Some crashes:

* Opening the help menu and pressing forward after starting a new game causes a crash.
* After I got a statue of protection and tried to use the inventory buttons (I did not have any other inventory items before retrieving the statue) my game crashed.

I am able to reproduce these crashes consistently, so they weren't just spurious.

Also, the help menu seems to include some old info from the WGR2 base, such as the ending text for episode 1, and old item names.

[Mark]

I just checked my eduke log file. It has a boat load of texture, model and code errors.

[Danukem]

I'm going to download this and try to help out with the errors -- the code errors at least. Mike is an amazing level designer who has had to try to modify the code without much help from the original coder (me) for his new episode, which I know couldn't have been easy. I'll bet most of it can be cleaned up without too much trouble once I get a little time. Hopefully Sunday.

[Danukem]

I just started playing this and so far it's great!

Mike, do you want access to the game tip menu (or what used to be the game tip menu) completely disabled? This will eliminate that hang bug. Also I would be happy to clean up those text messages for you.

[Forge]

Trooper Dan, on 03 February 2018 - 04:23 PM, said:

I just started playing this and so far it's great!

Mike, do you want access to the game tip menu (or what used to be the game tip menu) completely disabled? This will eliminate that hang bug. Also I would be happy to clean up those text messages for you.

here's the last thing he said about it:

Mike Norvak, on 23 January 2018 - 07:32 AM, said:

I want to disable the tip function so everything is self-explanatory in-game, also no one wants to read a game mechanic in a game like this, but I hadn't had any chance to look for it in the code. The help art (F1) will be replaced with a controls sheet and some general advice for using weapons and items.

[Danukem]

Ok cool, I will completely disable the ability to pull up the menu using the key and restore that key to its normal hardcoded function. There will still be menu fuckery but no one will know. Except us.

[Danukem]

Most of the errors in the log are just from assets that got removed while there are still defs for them, which is harmless. I'll just comment out the def lines for those items.

However, I'm also seeing this:

Line 15812, setvarvar: invalid array index mongroup[400] 15
Gv_SetVar(): tried to set invalid array 15 or index out of bounds from sprite 631 (9), player -1

The source of the warning is that some sprites are tagged with zvel values that are too high to go into the mongroup array. Here's an example (this is the sprite referred to in the warning above):



My code takes the zvel off the sprite and makes that the array index. The array was only defined to have up to 200 elements, with each element corresponding to a different group of monsters in the game. This allows code to track the status of each sprite corresponding to a particular element; when all monsters of a group are dead, an activation is triggered.

Tagging a monster with a group number that is out of bounds would cause undefined behavior. But since the levels evidently play correctly, I would guess that the invalid group numbers were either put on by mistake, or leftover from something else. So, I could increase the array size to 1000 to accommodate the invalid group numbers, but that might be undesirable because it would put the monsters into working groups. I'm not sure what to do.

tldr: user error -- you can remove the zvels on the bad sprites, change them to values under 200, or tell me to increase the max to 1000

[Forge]

if i'm looking at the section of map I think i'm looking at, and the enemies I think you're pointing out - those tags are leftovers from earlier iterations.
iirc, once upon a time, killing those enemies opened the wall behind them, or something like that.

afaik, they don't trigger anything anymore
can't say for sure what their tag status is supposed to be now, so you'll have to wait for Mike on this one.

[Doom64hunter]

Here's a save file showcasing the second crash.

Jump up the ledge in front of where you start, and you will find a pedestal with a statue of protection.
If you pick it up and then use the inventory right/inventory left buttons, the game will crash. It won't do this before picking up the statue however, and it also won't do this if you have another inventory item available.

Attached File(s)

•  inventory_crash.zip (2.36MB)
  Number of downloads: 242

[Danukem]

I have some fixes right here:

https://www.dropbox....0fixes.zip?dl=0

Just replace files of the same names. The one exception: you probably don't want to replace your wgr2.cfg
I included the wgr2.cfg only because it binds altfire to right mouse, and imo that should be part of the installation.

Here is what is fixed:

• The gametips menu key is now disabled. This means you can't crash the game by pulling up that menu and then pressing forward (the menu is not used in Hectic Realms anyway).
  
• Fixes the crash mentioned above relating to getting the protection statue and then pressing left/right on inventory list.
  
• Eliminates log errors about files not found. The only exception to this is the upward view on one of the skyboxes, but it looked like most of the skybox was loading and I wasn't sure what to do about it or even if the skybox is actually used.
  
• Eliminates log errors about array out of bounds -- the code will now silently refuse to go out of bounds on the relevant arrays. This is actually a step backwards if you think about it, but I don't want to hear about CON errors because of map errors, so fuck it. The errors weren't actually hurting anything.
  
• Corrects some grammar and unclear or glitchy writing in the quests. I tried not to change any of the content, but Mike you might want to check this to make sure it is ok with you.

Obviously I recommend integrating these changes into the next release, assuming it all checks out.

EDIT: One more thing. The way saves works has changed since WGR2 was released. Before the save X command would create a save to slot X, and it would replace saves of that same slot. Now it just keeps piling up more and more saves. Either this needs to be remedied somehow or the code that creates autosaves should be removed.

[Mike Norvak]

Trooper Dan, on 04 February 2018 - 12:00 AM, said:

I have some fixes right here:

https://www.dropbox....0fixes.zip?dl=0

Just replace files of the same names. The one exception: you probably don't want to replace your wgr2.cfg
I included the wgr2.cfg only because it binds altfire to right mouse, and imo that should be part of the installation.

Here is what is fixed:

• The gametips menu key is now disabled. This means you can't crash the game by pulling up that menu and then pressing forward (the menu is not used in Hectic Realms anyway).
  
• Fixes the crash mentioned above relating to getting the protection statue and then pressing left/right on inventory list.
  
• Eliminates log errors about files not found. The only exception to this is the upward view on one of the skyboxes, but it looked like most of the skybox was loading and I wasn't sure what to do about it or even if the skybox is actually used.
  
• Eliminates log errors about array out of bounds -- the code will now silently refuse to go out of bounds on the relevant arrays. This is actually a step backwards if you think about it, but I don't want to hear about CON errors because of map errors, so fuck it. The errors weren't actually hurting anything.
  
• Corrects some grammar and unclear or glitchy writing in the quests. I tried not to change any of the content, but Mike you might want to check this to make sure it is ok with you.

Obviously I recommend integrating these changes into the next release, assuming it all checks out.

EDIT: One more thing. The way saves works has changed since WGR2 was released. Before the save X command would create a save to slot X, and it would replace saves of that same slot. Now it just keeps piling up more and more saves. Either this needs to be remedied somehow or the code that creates autosaves should be removed.

Thanks for the fixes. About the array out of bounds I heavily recommend it should stay as it was previously since those respawns are leftovers from earlier versions as Forge already pointed even though they should be spawners instead of respawns so the x-vel was actually supposed to work as a delay and not a group number, anyway I'm not planning to exceed 20 group numbers or so in my episode, so as far as nobody exceeds a higher number it shouldn't be a problem.

Thank you for the grammar corrections as well. I'm gonna upload the pack with the new fixes once some other bugs are mentioned. BTW what's the deal with autosaves, is there something that can be done to checkpoints in my episode to prevent a malfunction? maybe alternating saving slots?

[Danukem]

Mike Norvak, on 06 February 2018 - 06:55 PM, said:

Thanks for the fixes. About the array out of bounds I heavily recommend it should stay as it was previously since those respawns are leftovers from earlier versions as Forge already pointed BTW what's the deal with autosaves, is there something that can be done to checkpoints in my episode to prevent a malfunction? maybe alternating saving slots?

It's not really malfunctioning, but the save system does work differently now in EDuke32. What I recommend is eliminating the autosave that happens at the beginning of each map (this is not a checkpoint -- it's an additional save that I added). Other than that, there's really nothing else that can be done by us if you want to keep the checkpoints. Hopefully the Eduke32 devs will fix it so that there is a small number of autosaves and the older ones get deleted automatically.

[Mike Norvak]

I attached the CON and DEF fixes made by DT here, since I can't edit the OP. Now you should play the demo without any crashes or missing stuff warnings.

William Gee, on 02 February 2018 - 08:42 PM, said:

Congratulations! Cant wait to play it.

William Gee, on 03 February 2018 - 02:03 AM, said:

WOW so far I'm really loving this! Thanks!
I have made a news article on the WGR2 MODDB page about it, waiting for authorization.

Thank you for such kind words William! Your work has been obviously a main influence for this episode, this is just a small teaser, there are more maps on the works and some already done, once I can release the whole thing people can see how the mod is based on the Four Tezcatlipoca mythology pitfuly there isn't many information about it in english, but the whole Mayan, Toltec and Aztec mythology is an amazing source of inspiration.

Poorchop, on 02 February 2018 - 09:00 PM, said:

Wow this is pretty amazing. I just played through the first map and I was amazed to see that something like this is possible in the engine. The opening area looked amazing, especially with the skybox.

Mark is right in that the green guy's dialogue has some spelling and grammatical errors. It was kind of hard to understand what he was saying at first. Other than that, I couldn't believe that this was a Duke mod. Really nice job putting this together.

Thank you!! I'm glad you are enjoying this guys!

I'd really would like to see a game trough video of the maps, if anyone feel like doing so.

Thanks Doom64hunter, Poorchop and Marked for the bugs and grammar errors report, I hope more people can play this so they give opinions about design and gameplay that's actually the reason I released a demo, so I can test and learn from players right in the middle of the planning part.

Attached File(s)

•  Hectic Realms fixes.zip (125.76K)
  Number of downloads: 363

[Doom64hunter]

Ok I completed it now.

Some feedback:

• It's not very obvious that the first map is supposed to be a hub the first time you play. The first time I walked into the teleporter to level 2, I thought I had accidentally missed about half the map.
  
• The last secret in the first hub map doesn't seem to be reachable. It's in a small room with one shotgun goat, a strange green crystal and a blue keycard, funnily enough.
  
• In the second map there are a lot of steep drops with flying enemies over it. You should put a flat at the bottom of these pits that automatically picks up any gold that falls down, like lava.
  
• I like that there is a lot of room to explore in the third level, but I'm personally not a fan of not being able to backtrack after a certain point in the map.
  
• The sounds that are made by the escaping wraiths in the first level once you place the heart are extremely loud. This was an issue in the original WGR2 as well.
  
• The second ghost you come across where the skull is has a typo. ("don not believe him")
  
• In the first map, if you dive into the water you can see some grates behind which are small compartments that also seem to have a water surface. On the surface itself, there are two further pockets of water that seem like they should connect with this underwater portion. You can't dive into these however. Seemed odd to me.
  
• One of the secrets in the first map involves you blowing up a wall near the starting area. This opening is for some reason highly lethal to Duke and frequently crushes him when he enters at the wrong angle.
  
• There is some random waterfall mist in the second section of the first map that doesn't seem to belong there, see attachment

Otherwise, good gameplay, pretty good map design, not too hard and a bit short, but it is a demo after all.

Attached thumbnail(s)

• 

[Mike Norvak]

Doom64hunter, on 10 February 2018 - 02:57 AM, said:

Ok I completed it now.

Some feedback:

Doom64hunter, on 10 February 2018 - 02:57 AM, said:

It's not very obvious that the first map is supposed to be a hub the first time you play. The first time I walked into the teleporter to level 2, I thought I had accidentally missed about half the map.

So did you go back to a previous save, or you kept playing the second map hopelessly? I don't think this is really a problem, and if the player puts some attention, he can guess the key at the top of level 2 in front of the player start is the one needed to open the chest in level 1. The only issue is potentially missing the blue spirit quest. So what I'll do is making the returning entrance two-way so the player can go back to the previous level if he feels like backtracking for whatever reason.

Doom64hunter, on 10 February 2018 - 02:57 AM, said:

The last secret in the first hub map doesn't seem to be reachable. It's in a small room with one shotgun goat, a strange green crystal and a blue keycard, funnily enough.

Missed that. Gonna fix it. BTW the keycard art is gonna be replaced, so there is gonna be keycards in the next release but just 2 or 3 in the whole episode.

Doom64hunter, on 10 February 2018 - 02:57 AM, said:

In the second map there are a lot of steep drops with flying enemies over it. You should put a flat at the bottom of these pits that automatically picks up any gold that falls down, like lava.

You are right, water tagged sectors automatically picks gold, will do this as well.

Doom64hunter, on 10 February 2018 - 02:57 AM, said:

I like that there is a lot of room to explore in the third level, but I'm personally not a fan of not being able to backtrack after a certain point in the map.

I know what are you coming from, anyway I want the maps to be a mixture of non linear and linear design, which means in some cases there will be points of no return, in the third level for example, is there any specific spot you wanted to get back to? I think preventing the player to go back forces him to explore for items and planning before he lefts.

Doom64hunter, on 10 February 2018 - 02:57 AM, said:

The sounds that are made by the escaping wraiths in the first level once you place the heart are extremely loud. This was an issue in the original WGR2 as well.

yeah, I'm gonna check the sound defs.

Doom64hunter, on 10 February 2018 - 02:57 AM, said:

The second ghost you come across where the skull is has a typo. ("don not believe him")

got it, already fixed that in my local folder.

Doom64hunter, on 10 February 2018 - 02:57 AM, said:

In the first map, if you dive into the water you can see some grates behind which are small compartments that also seem to have a water surface. On the surface itself, there are two further pockets of water that seem like they should connect with this underwater portion. You can't dive into these however. Seemed odd to me.

It was odd for my girlfriend as well haha but make it work will probably take me more effort and time than what it worths, so

Doom64hunter, on 10 February 2018 - 02:57 AM, said:

One of the secrets in the first map involves you blowing up a wall near the starting area. This opening is for some reason highly lethal to Duke and frequently crushes him when he enters at the wrong angle.

will fix it

Doom64hunter, on 10 February 2018 - 02:57 AM, said:

There is some random waterfall mist in the second section of the first map that doesn't seem to belong there, see attachment
Otherwise, good gameplay, pretty good map design, not too hard and a bit short, but it is a demo after all.

Yeah already fixed that as well, I was on a hurry to get this released before the past weekend, anyway I'm gonna upload the TC to MODDB with fixes and a new secret map.

[Doom64hunter]

Mike Norvak, on 10 February 2018 - 06:51 PM, said:

Some feedback:

So did you go back to a previous save, or you kept playing the second map hopelessly? I don't think this is really a problem, and if the player puts some attention, he can guess the key at the top of level 2 in front of the player start is the one needed to open the chest in level 1. The only issue is potentially missing the blue spirit quest. So what I'll do is making the returning entrance two-way so the player can go back to the previous level if he feels like backtracking for whatever reason.

Nah, I didn't keep playing the first map hopelessly, I just kind of accidentally stumbled into the level load trigger, loaded a previous save and eventually concluded that it has to be a hub map, since there was nowhere else to go.
It's just a bit unexpected for Duke, since the vast majority of level sets, WGR2 including, have an exclusively linear map progression. The only other mod I can think of having done this was the Millhaven map in the AMC TC.
But I guess after you've experienced it for the first time, it's not that much of a problem anymore since at that point you expect there to be a hub. And I'm not opposed to the concept itself.

Mike Norvak, on 10 February 2018 - 06:51 PM, said:

I know what are you coming from, anyway I want the maps to be a mixture of non linear and linear design, which means in some cases there will be points of no return, in the third level for example, is there any specific spot you wanted to get back to? I think preventing the player to go back forces him to explore for items and planning before he lefts.

It's a tricky subject to handle.
If you include points of no return, I think it's important to telegraph their existence to the player in some shape or form so they can explore without accidentally blocking themselves off from parts of the map.
I can't exactly say you didn't do that here, since both of these points in map03 do involve steep drops to tell you that you can't go back. And a big red sign saying "POINT OF NO RETURN" seems a bit too over-the-top.
The exception are the bars that randomly lower behind you where the path with the toxic goop is, that one was kind of unpredictable.

[Mike Norvak]

Doom64hunter, on 11 February 2018 - 01:16 AM, said:

Nah, I didn't keep playing the first map hopelessly, I just kind of accidentally stumbled into the level load trigger, loaded a previous save and eventually concluded that it has to be a hub map, since there was nowhere else to go.
It's just a bit unexpected for Duke, since the vast majority of level sets, WGR2 including, have an exclusively linear map progression. The only other mod I can think of having done this was the Millhaven map in the AMC TC.
But I guess after you've experienced it for the first time, it's not that much of a problem anymore since at that point you expect there to be a hub. And I'm not opposed to the concept itself.

It's a tricky subject to handle.
If you include points of no return, I think it's important to telegraph their existence to the player in some shape or form so they can explore without accidentally blocking themselves off from parts of the map.
I can't exactly say you didn't do that here, since both of these points in map03 do involve steep drops to tell you that you can't go back. And a big red sign saying "POINT OF NO RETURN" seems a bit too over-the-top.
The exception are the bars that randomly lower behind you where the path with the toxic goop is, that one was kind of unpredictable.

The bars in the toxic goop area are more like a trap so if the player decides to go there, he can't return, it was originally intended so the player can't go back using a statue to go up before reaching the first heart.

Here are some shots for curious who hasn't played the demo yet. (Attachments aren't working for me atm)

https://ibb.co/kk1FT7
https://ibb.co/b3LLvn
https://ibb.co/eZ4r1S
https://ibb.co/gftvT7

And some WIP for next release.

https://ibb.co/edmcan
https://ibb.co/dBkEMS
https://ibb.co/iR4G1S

[Mike Norvak]

Waiting for upload approval

http://www.moddb.com...s/hectic-realms

[Micky C]

I tried it out shortly after you created this thread, but forgot to post about it. Essentially after the game really opened up and you could explore a large area, I died by rising out of some water and apparently being crushed by a low rock ceiling. The previous save, even with autosaves, was far enough back in time that I didn't continue out of annoyance. The game was certainly starting to get good by that point though, putting the "realms" into Hectic Realms.

The texturing, layouts, and in particular the terrain design is incredible.

[Mike Norvak]

It's a shame the map design didn't encouraged you to play it again, I think I know the place you are referring to but I don't remember any bug killing the player there. Glad you liked the architecture and terrain, I'd like to read some opinions about some points of no return and non linear layout areas but those are further after the part you stopped playing. Anyway this is just a demo, so there will be more surprises in the future.

[Micky C]

I finished the demo. I agree with previous posts that some of the level transitions were quite abrupt and without warning which isn't idea. I didn't have too much trouble finding my way; it's always nice to do a bit of exploration.

In terms of the squishing bug, there's definitely a bit of rock that's lower than the surrounding sectors (on the right side).

[Mike Norvak]

Finally at MODDB:

http://www.moddb.com...tic-realms-demo

Could an admin change the OP link? It seems is impossible to edit it, I remember the posts could be edited in the past even after years, why this has been changed?

[Mark]

Because people were deleting posts during hissy fits.