Phocas Island 2 Released

[chopkinsca]

There shouldn't be any major bugs left (I certainly hope not). It's been uploaded to the archves and now waiting review.

It requires Gzdoom. Everything you need to know should be in the download.

Get it here from the IDgames archives.

Thank you, and have fun (I hope).

[Nash]

Beautiful scenery, I'm loving it so far. A good break from the regular shoot and run gameplay of Doom... brings me back to the old adventure games from the 90's.

I only noticed one bug, but I can't seem to reproduce it. At the intro map, the path to the skill levels are blocked. I had to mash on the Use key and eventually I was let through.

Will post more as I progress, I gotta get back to playing it.

[Nash]

Okay, two things so far:

1) Some more ambient sounds would be nice. Beached is kind of silent...

2) Not enough contrast in the lighting. Most of the caves look the same. I had to look REALLY hard to distinguish any differences. Of course, being on an LCD doesn't help, but some more lighting details would be nice. Another case was in Bosk, when I got inside that tree thing (the one with the odd bug). I couldn't tell the difference between walls and floors...

[chopkinsca]

I only noticed one bug, but I can't seem to reproduce it. At the intro map, the path to the skill levels are blocked. I had to mash on the Use key and eventually I was let through.

I had that one come up, but thought it was caused by something else I had removed. It's because of a script that checks the renderer and must mess up somewhere. I thought the bug was gone, since I spent a lot of time in that map.

1) Some more ambient sounds would be nice. Beached is kind of silent...

I'll see what I can do. I'm not sure what I could use though. I kind of like the silence for the most part, makes you feel alone.

2) Not enough contrast in the lighting. Most of the caves look the same. I had to look REALLY hard to distinguish any differences. Of course, being on an LCD doesn't help, but some more lighting details would be nice. Another case was in Bosk, when I got inside that tree thing (the one with the odd bug). I couldn't tell the difference between walls and floors...

In the tree I could give the main wall a different brightness. I'll see what I can do about the caves. It probably won't be much more than adding holes to the ceiling in some places. To me the caves look different, but that might be because I made them.

[Nash]

For Beached, maybe some ocean sounds would be nice. Some breeze or seagull sounds maybe. Then as the player explores deeper into the island, have some forest-like sounds like crickets, birds chirping or something.

For the caves, maybe create some shadows here and there that would define the shape and colour of the caves even more. I still think it's hard to make sense out of the cave environments simply because there's not enough contrast. If you remember what skadoomer said in the Phocas Island 2 thread over at DRD... this is precisely what he was talking about.

(Foreverhood has the same problem too, IMO, but not as extreme as Phocas Island 2.)

[chopkinsca]

For the caves, maybe create some shadows here and there that would define the shape and colour of the caves even more. I still think it's hard to make sense out of the cave environments simply because there's not enough contrast. If you remember what skadoomer said in the Phocas Island 2 thread over at DRD... this is precisely what he was talking about.

Would you be able to take a screenshot of an area that is bad in particular? Because I know all the rocks that stick out and such, I can't see it the same way you do. I tried to alternate the textures so that rocks next to each other have contrast. Other than that, I'm mostly clueless on how to fix this.

[Nash]

It wouldn't be possible for me to take screenshots of said areas because there's just too many of them. But basically, some of the more bad-looking areas are the ones where you used the same texture for the floors/ceilings and walls. If you can't find a way to vary the lighting for those, then use different-coloured textures or something at least.

I don't blame you, though... it's just the way Doom maps work. It would be nice if GZDoom supported pre-calculated lightmaps like Quake, or at least what JDoom is doing by adding the nice shadows to the borders between walls and flats.

Okay now I found a bug.

http://nash.wanzafran.com/doomstuff/phocas2.png

Sorry for the large image. If you look at the screenshot and the printed coordinates at the bottom-right corner of the screen, you should be able to reproduce this easily.

Stand and face exactly like how it is in the screenshot. Now run into the wall. You'll magically end up at the top of the cliff (where the pathway to Hallowed will be to your right).

And yeah, I turned on God mode. Some of the battles were kind of hard for me with the demons moving really fast and all...

[chopkinsca]

This cave thing gives me a headache just thinking about it. Maybe part of it is because I used the evenlighting option in the mapinfo. Without it, some walls contrast too greatly. I also tried to not use the same texture where walls and floors joined. In the earlier days I wasn't as careful of this though. Also, there are two 'rock' textures that while having a different pattern, now that I look at them, are too similar in colour. I'll have a run through and try to find any walls/floors/ceilings which have the same texture. Not sure if it will fix it though.

As to the bug you found in the screenshot, I never found that. I'm not sure why it happens, but that rock you suddenly climb is mostly a 3d floor on top of a raised floor. I'll fix that, as it clearly isn't intended.

What skill are you playing on? Skill 3 is quite a step up from skill 2. If a monster is too hard on skill 1/2, I'll look into it. Skills 1/2 use a complete different set of monsters than skill 3. I want skill 3 to be quite difficult, but if you think something is far to hard, let me know.

[Nash]

Don't worry about the skill settings. I just fail at it, heh. I was approaching this with a laid back adventure gaming kind of vibe that I totally forgot that the monsters are deadly.

Okay now I've been running around Hallowed for about an hour trying to figure out what to do. I even had to resort to the walkthrough but I STILL can't figure out what to do.

(To anyone who hasn't played it yet, don't click the spoiler!)

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I oiled the lever, went to the middle and pulled the second lever. According to the walkthrough, it says that I should look around for a key. WHERE THE HELL IS IT? I spent an hour looking really hard everywhere but I can't find it at all.

[chopkinsca]

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In the outside area, with the three hanging gardens the key is sticking out of the dirt in the left garden (if you are facing the middle one). It's hiding behind a flower or two. Now that you reminded me, I need to make it more obvious. It needs a message that at least directs your attention to the gardens.

[Skunk]

Chris you already know how I feel. Heh.

EDIT:

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The key is incredibly tiny, took me about ten minutes to find it.

[Nash]

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God damn it is tiny! Make the sprite bigger or something. And I suggest that a message is printed when you pull the second lever, like "I hear steps being created above me" or something.

Okay, finished it. Total playtime is about 3:11:20. The adventure elements are fun, but running around not knowing what to do isn't. >;/

I could figure out what to do in the beginning, but once it came to Retreat... it just got too big for me.

I give this WAD 7.5 out of 10 stars.

Now some questions...

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1) What's the purpose of the Korax fight? You get a key which doesn't seem to do anything?

2) Is it possible to ever get into the cabin?

[chopkinsca]

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I just added a message about the stairs being built before you mentioned it. I'll make the key a bit bigger and more in the open instead of behind flowers.

And for spoiler 2:

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Both your questions answer each other. The only purpose to fighting korax is to get a 'good' ending. I couldn't think of anything else to make it worth the trouble of going the long way through. The key you find opens the cabin, which is only used for giving two journal pages that tell the 'story'

[Skunk]

Hey, Chop, when did you add that? I don't remember that... I was wondering why I was missing a few pages... I'mma go play through it again.

[Skunk]

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Okay, wtf, I can't find this Korax... did I miss something?

EDIT: It's pretty bad that I beta tested this thing and I don't know about this since I know about everything else.