Master Levels Plus - Episodic Selection With Bonus Maps

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SiFi270
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Master Levels Plus - Episodic Selection With Bonus Maps

Post by SiFi270 »

You may have heard of the Master Levels Menu Interface. It may be your preferred way to play Master Levels. If so, then that makes explaining things pretty easy because all you have to do to complete the file this thread is about is take the map files you manually placed into ZDMLMENU.pk3 and put them in the maps directory you find in masterlevelsplus.pk3. If you did it once, you can do it again.

But in addition to those, there are a number of maps already included in the pk3. I didn't make any of these, they're all by the masters responsible for the Master Levels in the first place. I've checked the txt files included with every one of them, and they all say I'm totally allowed to distribute them as long as I include said txt files, so they're in the PK3 as well.

Some were meant to be part of the same collection, but rejected, while others are connected by story to maps in Master Levels. Each author's maps are gathered into one episode, with the first three being the ones that form a story, listed in order of when the first .wad of that story was released. These are:
  • Inferno, by John "Dr. Sleep" Anderson. A loose retelling of Dante's classic, where you search for your beloved in Hell with the help of space poet Virgil. Levels are sorted in the order listed on the wiki, which can provide you with more details.
  • Cabal, by Sverre "Cranium" Kvernmo. The revenge story of a cyberdemon betrayed by his peers and turned into a human. Levels are sorted in the order listed on the wiki.
  • Titan, by Jim Flynn. A marine is sent to the moon of Saturn to find "the latest in alien weapon technology". Levels are sorted in the order listed in this review.
The remaining episodes are simply called "[name of author] levels", listed in order of which author's level appears first when the Master Levels are sorted into their usual alphabetical order. Christen Klie's episode includes six outtake maps, and Tom Mustaine's includes his tribute to Map14, but not his apparent sequel to paradox.wad because the txt file included with that one says I'm only allowed to play it, no modification no distribution no nothing. That, and it's just a small deathmatch map with no exit.

I've actually had this lying around on my computer for a while, but I didn't intend to upload it until I'd implemented story screens similar to map00 in Doom 64 Retribution so they could be seen at the very start of an episode and show more than one screen's worth of text. It was only today that I finally got around to looking at the map in question to see how it was done, and it was then I realized that it was too much for me at my current level, so I just went ahead and uploaded what I had.

EDIT: One last thing, if you don't appreciate the ability to carry your inventory from one map to the next, I'm just going to recommend this little addon by Coldiron. It even comes with versions for popular gameplay mods.
Dr. Shotgun
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Re: Master Levels Plus - Episodic Selection With Bonus Maps

Post by Dr. Shotgun »

This is nice. I've actually done something similar, running a personalized (and not releasable) custom Master Levels wad that contains the Master Levels themselves, and the extra maps from the three "storylines," and even included Mustaine's rejected tribute level. Though, I was not aware of Klie's rejected maps, so I didn't include them.

Besdies that, the big difference in mine was dividing them into episodes, starting with the unassociated Master Levels. I also tried to organize them by general difficulty, so the first map was Combine and the last map was Paradox. Then the second episode was the Inferno series, followed by the Titan series, and lastly the Cabal (because I found the Cabal maps to be pretty difficult).

I was wondering if there was a way to do what that guy did, and basically use some kind of external script thing to sew them all together like you did with Doom Complete. But it looks like you beat me to the punch.
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NightFright
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Re: Master Levels Plus - Episodic Selection With Bonus Maps

Post by NightFright »

Since Flynn's Titan "bonus" maps use custom textures which collide with regular Doom 2 textures and therefore potentially other maps you are packing with them, I was checking if anybody had managed to do it and landed here.

Unfortunately, after checking it out, I must say it was definitely not done properly. There are no textures and animdefs lumps, and without those there's no way this will work as intended. You would also have to edit all Flynn maps to give new names to the colliding textures (to get rid of any new textures having the same name as the old ones). Since this was not done, many places in the Titan maps look wrong (e.g. switches). Just putting the new textures into a "textures" folder is far from enough.

I am currently working on an edition which implements the custom textures properly without display errors.
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SiFi270
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Re: Master Levels Plus - Episodic Selection With Bonus Maps

Post by SiFi270 »

I realized that a while ago, but really didn't know where to begin when it came to solving it. I figured I'd have to go through the maps again to list every instance of an incorrectly displayed texture, and the idea of doing a marathon of a bunch of Jim Flynn maps can be pretty intimidating. I officially gave up when JPL came along with a better, more professional version.
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NightFright
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Re: Master Levels Plus - Episodic Selection With Bonus Maps

Post by NightFright »

I gathered some experience from compiling the so-called Heretic "Master Levels" where I had to solve tons of similar conflicts. It's actually not that hard once you figure out how the texture1 lump works and where the new textures are. I am basically finished with my adjustments and just need to test one more map. Maybe it's even possible to swap textures within a map without having to actually edit it, which would be preferrable.
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