Laz Rojas' WolfenDoom for ZDoom [v1.32]

[ZikShadow]

I've been playing the Rheingold duology with Sneaky Doom & Hideous Destructor and it's been a blast so far, aside from all the jank with how incompatible WolfenDoom is with gameplay mods. Some are amusing, like the images below, some are not (especially deathscript door opening/map ending enemy related ones).

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However, I did notice some oddities in my run, things that persists even in classic Rheingold.
I'm specifically talking about Rheingold 2's West Wing. The wooden barricades in that map doesn't seem to actually block you, allowing you to just pass them and essentially skip the map. Is that a deliberate choice or a bug?

[NightFright]

Thanks a lot for your report. While your screenshots show glitches that only happen if you use mods that alter sprites (which I cannot fix), what you reported for Rheingold Ep.2 is a different matter. For some reason the DEHACKED code doesn't kick in and this gameplay-breaking glitch in MAP06 occurs. I have issued an emergency update due to that - also since I found that my good old hanging corpse in MAP04 in the same pack still gave you invisibility (I had messed with it before, but apparently I only removed the fading effect, not the Invisibility Sphere features).

CHANGELOG v1.31 (Aug 20, 2019)
- ACS code integrated into patch wad for: Original Missions, Nocturnal Missions, Spear of Destiny
- Operation Rheingold Ep.2: Wooden barriers in MAP06 now unpassable as intended (map-breaking bug!); hanging corpse in MAP04 can no longer be collected; dog food no longer counts towards item percentage; transparency fixes for some hanging corpses

[ZikShadow]

glitches that only happen if you use mods that alter sprites (which I cannot fix)

Ah, no worries. I know that WolfenDoom ain't exactly a mod made for gameplay mod compatibility in the first place, I'm just goofin' and having fun with what works.
I imagine one could make something like that by converting the decorations and props with whole new entities that doesn't use Doom's sprite naming scheme and replacing the monsters DEH triggers with map-based flags so one could finish maps even with custom enemies, but that sounds like one heck of a remodding job. No complaints or arguments there.

Unrelated to the cool fixup job you've done here, some of the maps in this pack are pretty poor in quality. Copy pasted sections, mandatory secrets for progression, new gameplay mechanic out of nowhere like Rheingold 2's arbitrary crate/vent climbing, egregious backtracking, and such. Portal particularly strikes me as pretty bad play-wise. Others play better, fortunately, so it's not all acid rain on the parade. Glad to finally experience this old relic everyone seems to like.

[NightFright]

Yeah well, you gotta consider Laz wasn't exactly what I would call a 100% professional Doom modder. However, I still think he did a pretty good job with these mods, especially considering their creation date and the tools that were available at that time. A lot of things could be done much better by now and some design flaws you find there are considered almost unforgivable these days, but as snapshots of their time, the mods stand for themselves. Surely there was a lot of copy/paste involved, which is also kinda understandable considering the amount of mods that have been made in a relatively short period of time. Anyway, this is pretty much how Wolfenstein found its way into Doom, and I guess we shouldn't criticize Laz too much for his achievement retrospectively.

[CeeJay]

And let us not forget the fact that this dude did it all himself. No team, just him by himself. Some of his projects were ridicously ambitous for a lone modder (like the whole Rheingold series) and many had an epic scope and feel to them, the execution was usually poor to decent but this is forgiveable giving the circumstances. He was one of my early inspiratons, a shame he retired.

[Phredreeke]

Any chance of porting sliding doors to Laz's episodes (as in Caleb26's episodes) and adjusting the scale of enemies and player to match the surroundings?

[Dr. Shotgun]

Just gave the new version a spin. The ammo rebalancing and removal of dog food from the items% are greatly appreciated.

I'd say this is a legitimately good alternative (albeit different) way to play Wolfenstein 3D now. Fun way to kill time.

[Rex705]

I just wish these could work with Kriegsland but oh well they are old maps. They are still lots of fun to play and the little updates help.

[ravage]

The merges I had hoped to do eventually were these:
- Astrostein 1-3 (+ maybe The Portal since it's the prequel)
- Operation Arctic Wolf (Pt.1+2)
- Operation Rheingold (Ep.1+2)

There are no plans of adding any additional content at this time. I also don't want to deviate too much from the original mods in order to preserve as much of Laz' creative genius as possible.

Anyway, first I need to get some momentum that puts me back into action, and right now there's nothing/nobody in sight to help with the merge problem. It's a massive task if you don't have any kind of automation for this. I had hoped the WadSmoosh project would make it possible, but apparently it was only made for Doom, not custom content like this.

Your work revamping all the wolfendoom stuff have reminded me that I started on a mod many years ago to merge Arctic Wolf into a single mod and fix up some stuff. I've recently decided to go back and work on it again. I should probably make a thread about it eventually, but thank you again!

[browncoat1984]

So I've been playing through this and enjoying it much but one thing I've noticed is that playing through the original missions & nocturnal missions there are several maps that have enemies that are located outside the map and the only way to kill them to get 100% kill is to use the kill monsters console cheat (I found out these monsters were outside map boundaries by using the am_cheat 2 map cheat) - I do not remember which maps contain the monsters but there were quite a few.

Another bug I have encountered is in the secret level for the final episode of the nocturnal missions, each of the hans grosse bosses are supposed to drop a gold key to give you access to the exit, instead if you kill any of them it finishes the level.

[NightFright]

I have checked the Nocturnal Missions and can confirm your findings. It doesn't only apply for MAP30, but pretty much any instance where the Grosse boss is used (e.g. also MAP32). I have identified the problem and it seems to originate from CeeJay's fixes (which I used as a base for my mod). No clue how this could elude me for so long, maybe it worked for some reason for a while, but looking at the code, I don't see how (it's basically jumping to the Gretel boss upon death which calls A_BrainDie). Right now I managed to stop the map from ending once you kill any Grosse boss, but making them drop a golden key is surprisingly hard. My usual methods with DECORATE don't work for some reason.

As for the monsters used as sound sources, I am trying now to replace them with sound ambience things via SLADE. I have never done this and am currently a bit puzzled about how to get it working (it basically does, but I can't make it play the correct sounds).

Anyway, I will keep trying and hopefully manage to fix this.

[NightFright]

Finally managed to get it right. If anybody wants to know how I did it: I basically checked all the maps for things outside of playable areas and converted them to ambient sounds. This way they shouldn't count towards monster kills any longer. Ambient sounds should still sound pretty much the same as it did with the old system (in some cases even better since obviously the Mancubi/Hitler Ghosts didn't really provide any sounds before I changed that). Hans Grosse bosses now also won't end the level any more once killed, but drop golden keys instead which should make MAP30 and MAP32 work as intended. For this purpose I had to delete the boss code from DEHACKED and recreate it in DECORATE as faithfully as possible with an additional drop.

Changelog v1.32
- Original Missions: 100% kills now possible on all maps (monsters as sound sources replaced)
- Nocturnal Missions: 100% kills now possible on all maps (monsters as sound sources replaced); fix for Hans Grosse boss not dropping golden key

[081316k]

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(I have no idea why this user blanked this post, and from context, have no idea what was even here to begin with. I am, however, re-approving it in this state because it would otherwise vanish entirely. The ZDoom Forum Staff would greatly appreciate it if users do not try to "delete" their old posts, no matter how useless they think they are. -ww)

[NightFright]

It is important to know that Laz' Wolfendoom is not supposed to be an authentic TC, therefore you shouldn't expect enemy behavior too close to the original Wolfenstein. Hitler never had two stages in this version and will never have.
Regarding difficulty: Hitler has 1.500 hitpoints regularly. I set it with 1.5x damage and 1.5x hitpoints, so 2.250 hitpoints. I might consider knocking it down to 1.25x/1.25x dmg/hp (= 1.875 hp) which might make things a bit more bearable without removing the additional challenge of playing on the highest difficulty level.
As for the lighting, honestly there's little I can do about it. Maybe just switch lighting mode in the menu and see where that gets you, there are some settings such as "Legacy" which make the game a lot brighter in general.

[081316k]

I got it sir. I just want to tell you that this is already ‘the best’ Wolfenstein 3D TC/MOD that I’ve played so far since it’s running on modern GZDOOM engine.
I’m sorry for the lack of knowledge about the end goal of the TC and I’m definitely gonna try the lighting options of GZDOOM in soon.

Best wishes,