ZDoom

Happy Time Circus II is a Total Conversion for Doom 2 based on the 1990s IT miniseries, and the sequel to the original Happy Time Circus.


For the longest time, I'd been searching for a WAD that was dripping with atmosphere, and though I got some satisfying responses, HTC 2 was always listed alongside the first entry. While HTC itself was fairly good, the ending was meant to kill the player at all costs, regardless of fairness - not to mention the shortage of environmental design - but HTC 2 would cause crashes when loaded with new versions of GZDoom, forcing players to use much older versions or even ZDoom.

Eventually, I decided to throw together a home-made fix myself and give it a run through. What I didn't expect was for it to be positively dripping with personality, atmosphere, and more - so much so that I spent the next week, with some help from friends, fixing what bugs and issues we could find while also making a mod-supportive version with a different balance of certain items to keep it from becoming horrifically easy with gameplay mods.


TL;DR, this one doesn't crash when used with GZDoom.



FAQ:

Spoiler:

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Q: Will you make one without custom monsters so I can load Colorful Hell?

A: Sadly, as much as I'd like to, the map design itself does not allow this due to a significant portion of the enemies being able to travel through walls, and a lot of the map itself being designed around that function. This would break several ambush encounters and the progession of the map.


Q: How'd you learn Decorate and ACS?

A: I basically just cracked open mods I liked in SLADE 3 (a doom editing tool) and fiddled with it for a while. Having been part of a Lua community long ago helps as well!


Q: Will you be doing more?

A: For sure! Though how many and which mods, I'm not certain.

DOWNLOADS!

FIX STYLE - HTC 2, but patched to work with GZDoom.
SUPPORTIVE STYLE - Mod compatible! Should work with most out there.


Credits:
Ray Schmitz (shitbag) for creating the original versions!
Yholl and Sgt. Shivers for allowing the Final Doomer meme in the trailer.
MENTHA and Umbra for bug testing.

Crusty jugglers.

Really enjoyed the first one's atmopshere despite the bugs it had. Will be trying this one out for sure.

Sytruan wrote: Wait, this is already available!

Yeah, you should give it a different title, even if it's just something like Happy Time Circus 2: Bugfix Edition. IMO.

So is anyone else getting a monstrous amount of lag?

Gez wrote: Yeah, you should give it a different title, even if it's just something like Happy Time Circus 2: Bugfix Edition. IMO.

Done. Also redid the trailer! Last one was semi-hastily put together, hence the low quality.

EDIT: Nevermind, apparently my rendering software just loves to ruin the bitrate of everything it touches.

MetroidJunkie wrote:So is anyone else getting a monstrous amount of lag?

Though this map may be old, it's incredibly large and has a significant amount of monsters. While heavier mods like Project Brutality work, they most certainly won't run well.

I was trying it completely vanilla with GZDoom, had a very unplayable framerate.

Tried the "Supportive" version with Hideous Destructor and I'm pleased to say it worked pretty well! The "dormant until player in radius" behavior of some of the enemies is a little annoying when using a flashlight that allows you to see and engage at ranges farther than the monster activation radius, those little skulls especially with how hard they are to hit. I played up until the big wall lowers and releases the mega bulby (which promptly massacred me).

Overall though it's pretty playable and atmospheric. HTC's "schlocky creepy clowns horror" is surprisingly effective when combined with HD's particular style of "survival horror through gameplay mechanics". I like that almost every enemy is seemingly a glass canon, which HD's mechanics are particularly suited to. I found myself dreading every corner, every room clearing, looking over my shoulder whenever I went to grab a powerup or investigate a closet.

Thanks for making this work with modern GZDoom, and thanks for the supportive edition letting me experience it with my favorite mod!

MetroidJunkie wrote:I was trying it completely vanilla with GZDoom, had a very unplayable framerate.

It may be your hardware. The monster count, due to the size of the level, is near slaughterwad levels. Sadly, I can't really do much about this myself, as the entirety of the mod is already coded in Decorate, and there's no unused files or textures from what I can tell. However, you could try playing older versions - they perform better, but updated versions of mods won't work with them.

Caligari87 wrote:-snip-

No problem! The dormant enemy design I could try to take a look at, but if you had trouble getting far into the map, I'd consider lowering the difficulty. These enemies were designed to be difficult for the fast, agile, and arcade-like Doomguy, rather than the slow and tactical edge of HDGuy, not to mention the sadistic nature of the map's design. I'm happy you enjoyed it, though! I loved the dread just as much, which was why it inspired me to make this in the first place.

I think it's more of a limitation of the engine than my computer, I have a Quadcore 2.83 GHz CPU. By no means great, especially nowadays, but it's hardly a clunker and can play modern games without skipping a beat.

this is a very fun level and i'm glad you did this!

Just gave this a try. It's as creepy as I remembered. Love the atmosphere and the creepy weapons. And those damn balloons, blooding hands and jumping skulls, gotta be my favorite. Definitely an underrated mod if not for the game-crashing bugs in the original. Thanks for making this!

Sytruan wrote:The dormant enemy design I could try to take a look at, but if you had trouble getting far into the map, I'd consider lowering the difficulty. These enemies were designed to be difficult for the fast, agile, and arcade-like Doomguy, rather than the slow and tactical edge of HDGuy, not to mention the sadistic nature of the map's design.

I was actually playing on HD's "spooky" difficulty, which is extra-aggressive and deadly monsters but using the "easy" spawn-filter, so it wasn't so much enemy count that eventually did me in. The main problem is that you have to get practically in melee range to activate many of the enemies and they're invincible until you do, which nullifies the advantage of having a long gun. I think a small tweak to make activation line-of-sight instead of radius-based would be ideal.

Project has been updated! Following the stream by TerminusEst13, some issues were brought to my attention since I had a wider range of eyes looking at the project, so I've made changes to follow along with a few problems.

Changelog:

I'm really glad you made this, but I still hate how the floating clown heads rising out of the abyss count as monsters...