Please identify Zdoom megawad

[Caleb13]

Hi all, I played a Zdoom megawad about 2 years ago, but I can't find its name now. It had one map that really stuck in my memory and I want to play it again. That map was essentialy an unholy cathedral. Approximately in the centre of the cathedral, there was a massive organ (musical instrument, not a body part) and many benches, all this surrounded by a low wall. The player had to climb a small stairway up to organ's keyboard and activate a button there. This started a *massive* fight - that low wall became impassable and literally hundreds of monsters began to spawn around the organ, on the benches, everywhere. At one point, organ's pipes began to spit dozens of Lost souls. I remeber that there were one or two new monsters in this megawad, one of them were "unholy acolytes" or something like that. Those acolytes were spawning on "organ loft" during the entire sequence. Thanks for any tips!

And... um... and there is another megawad I need to identify, but this one is *very* old. I remeber only its final map, because it took me forever to beat - this was because it was so big that any attempt to save in it caused doom2.exe to crash. In fact, I remeber that the author specifically designed the map so big to prevent players from save/load "cheating" - he boasted about this in attached TXT file. And the map was literally riddled with traps and monster closets of all sorts. Hmm, when I think about it, all the maps in this megawad were heavily trapped... But back to the final map. The map was built aroud a rectangular courtyard, its dimensions were around 2048x2048 units. There was 128x128 rectangular pillar in its center. There was Romero's head placed on it about 512 units above the ground, but it was well hidden inside the pillar until the very end. Most of the playable areas were in a base, which was built around the courtyard. The player had to find all three keys, then he could flip a switch which revealed Romero's head. Well, it was not visible, it was hidden behind a two-way wall, but it was immediately apparent where it is. The final battle was very easy. There were two or three platforms from which the Romero's head player could be attacked and the player could use practically any weapon to destroy it.

[Xaser]

The first one is Deus Vult 2. That organ scene is a classic.

[Phobus]

I know I've read about the second one before, but I never played it, so I can't remember the filename - searching through the archives didn't get me anywhere fast either.

Xaser is right about the first one though - its Deus Vult 2. Think the zip file is up as DVII-1u.zip or something now.

[Caleb13]

Thanks for identifying it, I played through entire DVII already. I even found this Unholy Cathedral speedrun video, but I have one question about it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qv_QMsctMU

That guy uses a shortcut, he can get inside the organ area at the very beginning (which is normally impossible). He has to activate three hidden switches on the pillars around the organ. I analyzed the map in Doom Builder to see which ones I need to activate and which ones I need to avoid. That worked, but... are there some clues about this in the game? Can a player actually find out the three correct switches without a map editor? Or are they just a "debug tool" the author left in the map and they are not supposed to be found out at all?

[wildweasel]

I imagine the switches are just "stuck" in the ground and need to be raised first by triggering other switches.

[Kate]

Wildweasel is right, it's an exploitation of a bug that existed in the original vanilla doom where you can activate switches that you cannot see nor reach.

[Gez]

And by the way, Deus Vult 2 is not a ZDoom megawad. It just needs something that's both Boom-compatible and limit-removing, so it works just fine in PrBoom+ for example.

[Caleb13]

Wildweasel is right, it's an exploitation of a bug that existed in the original vanilla doom where you can activate switches that you cannot see nor reach.

This is not the case. The switches are not hidden in the ground. Their linedefs have some generic grey texture and they don't even play the typical switch sound when activated. After all, you can see/hear this in the video I linked.

Chrm, I guess it would be best to ask DVII's author about this...

[Gez]

They are shortcuts added for speedrunners...

[Caleb13]

They are shortcuts added for speedrunners...

Okay, but I will reiterate my question then: are there some ingame clues to find them, without the need to actually dissect the map in an editor?

[Gez]

No.

If there were clues, then they wouldn't be "speedrunner-only shortcuts".

[Caleb13]

Interesting, I never thought that speedrunning is still so important nowadays. Thanks for the explanation, though.