The City of the Damned : Apocalypse | Remaster | v2.0 | Oct, 31st 2023

[Tormentor667]

I always wanted to see some sort of remaster/remake of this, The weapons in the original version of this mod were particularly what always kept bugging me. Also, I think you finally answered the longtime question I had wether or not this was supposed to be set in the Blood Universe or if the player was supposed to be Caleb.

What were the problems you had with the weapons? Generally my goal was to make them not too powerful. It should feel more dangerous and less like an action shooter.

Alright, sorry to say but initial tests aren't so good. With literally nothing else loaded (-noautoload), I am getting frame rate drops with the remaster. Just by standing at the campfire at the start (where the revolver is), I am losing a lot of framerates.

This is certainly strange, I am having slowdowns with BoA sometimes on intense maps but I absolutely have no problem running TCotD2. I just downloaded the latest version and also added a new beta, maybe it runs better for you if you update GZDoom and the beta as well: https://www.mediafire.com/file/87xcqkl8 ... 2.zip/file (btw I also fixed and improved the portals ingame, maybe that was the problem)

If I could make a suggestion; I always found the price of not reaching a shelter when the alarm sounds...

---

...a little anticlimatic. The game builds up the supposed horror of the creatures plaguing the city, but when the worst case scenario happens, all that happens is you encounter a single invisible thing that touches you once, making you keel over without a lot of fanfare. I think the horror of being trapped outside could be better served by something less omnipotent; say, a massive horde of regular enemies that can be killed, but respawn endlessly, ensuring the player's death is long and drawn out as they run out of ammo, try to use melee, realize they can't do it without losing some health each time, try to flee only to get boxed in, etc.

That's definitely a good idea and I thought about something like this back than - but I found it more scary somehow to have some invisible deadly ghosts running around instead. We have all these zombie apocalypse games and movies around, people know this kind of scenario already and it's not that scary anymore - I always liked the different approach for TCotD2 a bit more

[Clownman]

I always wanted to see some sort of remaster/remake of this, The weapons in the original version of this mod were particularly what always kept bugging me. Also, I think you finally answered the longtime question I had wether or not this was supposed to be set in the Blood Universe or if the player was supposed to be Caleb.

What were the problems you had with the weapons? Generally my goal was to make them not too powerful. It should feel more dangerous and less like an action shooter.

They just felt slow/weak in the original version, while I understand you didn't want them to be powerful now - I don't think that exactly excuses the lackluster animations on 'em which just made shooting feel really awkward.

[Nash]

With the latest version, the framerate is slightly better, but it's still not as light and full-performant like the 2007 version. Anyway, I played through it and so far one game breaking bug I found was that

---

the house with the knife key has bugged doors. I was unable to get to the translation book - I had to use NOCLIP.

Also,

---

The first time the siren sounds, there seems to be a bug - the cultists that are running away in fear are forever running in fear. They just scream infinitely and run away even after the nightmare has finished.

As for improvements to the project, I have several ideas. I'm just going to dump my thoughts into here:

---

- Skybox is not SSAO friendly, should convert the night sky to a GLDEFS skybox

- Combat feels incredibly weak, damn. This was probably fine in 2007 but the lack of visual and audio effects in the weapons and combat in general is starting to show its age

- Player view height seems too short

- Are the Blood level textures in their original palette or are they in the Doom palette? The colours look very washed out

- I think it would be good to give the player some indication of when the next nightmare is going to happen, so that they can plan their journey. But to make it immersive, instead of just drawing some timer on the HUD, I was thinking about some pendant they have to select (maybe bound to 0 key) that glows more and more red, to indicate how close til the next nightmare siren. Or if that is too much work, maybe some immersive notifications/messages followed by sounds - perhaps in 4 stages - letting the player know that it's getting more and more dangerous and they should be a near a shelter soon. Something like "Something doesn't feel right" -> "I feel a cold chill in the air" -> "I feel a dark gloom approaching" -> "Evil approaches, I should seek shelter soon" (last warning). These are just example phrases LOL I'm sure someone can write better words.

- That recolored Cyberdemon for the last boss... yeah those sprites also look very dated too :(

- There should be cutscenes before each boss fight for increased dramatic effect. Like showing the spiders spawning out of the hole, or some cutscene to show Thamuz being summoned, things like that.

- Would be cool to have a little journal menu where you can go through every note you've read before, like in the Resident Evil games.

- Perhaps have some scoring system for the game ending where you are ranked for how fast you finish the story, how many secrets and monsters you completed, how many notes picked up, things like that. Again, like the Resident Evil games. It would encourage replayability. And perhaps a specially unlocked New Game+ mode for those who achieved the highest rank for the ending.

- Would be cool if the siren monster isn't an invisible ghost but literally something nasty like the Pyramid Head

[r&r]

Awesome job, keep on the good work.

Oh I found this bug
if you knew already?

This was in the Hospital office

[Ozymandias81]

@r&r that weapon is not present on TCOTD2, please test without mods first and then get screenshots using idmypos true command

@Nash It seems that map slowdowns comes from portals and sway shaders applied to trees, which inherit Doom props... If I can later I'll try removing inheritances and instead use as simple as possible code for those props

[Gothic]

You can come across an impassable line inside the Freak Show tent:


And to confirm the glitched door in the Hospital:


Minor visual stuff: the polyobject doors could use better border textures. That goes for all doors, not just the one pictured:



EDIT: Minor stuff in the boat at the very start:

---

This flag texture should be mirrored


The flats on the boat are reflective. Must be a very clean boat

I feel like taking care of this one could improve the framerates on lower end PCs

EDIT 2: Found some more stuff:

---

This door blends with the wall:


The safe texture is wrong in both sides, and it blends with the wall a bit:


This door opens at sound speed, and it slams you in the face if you use it from the right:

[Kappes Buur]

Hmm ...

[imgur]https://i.imgur.com/2mPQ2bQ[/imgur]

I wonder which flying instrument I should use.
Maybe I flee instead.

[Nash]

I have started to replace the textures with native Blood-paletted textures, overwriting the horrible Doom-paletted ones. 677 textures replaced so far. Yes, I am doing this by hand, file by file, eyeballing every single texture, pixel by pixel, to make sure I don't wrongly replace them. I spent almost 4 hours doing this. Please tell me I didn't waste my time... :P

[Tormentor667]

Update with a new beta and a lot of improvements, thanks to all of you for your appreciated feedback.

Changes
- Completely improved weapons system (thanks to Gothic)
- Fixed bugged doors all over
- Fixed cultists not disappearing
- Made skybox SSAO-friendly
- Player height fixed
- Many other fixes mentioned by Gothic, Nash and others

Link to beta 3: https://www.mediafire.com/file/00nwwcfj ... 3.zip/file

Further Plans
I really like a lot of ideas, Nash has proposed. The problem is, that I am simply not capable of doing these, I am lacking the coding knowledge for these additions. What I really would love to see to be implemented is
- Having a lantern at the weapon slot 0 that is off after a Siren attack and then starts to glow in red stronger and stronger (4 levels should be enough) before the next ambush happens (here I am missing sprites and code)
- A better boss monster, maybe something in the spirit of the pyramid head might work (Nash wink wink), but if that's simply too much effort and work (which I can understand), I would consider adding a different boss on my own based on an advanced enemy from the Blood universe (Cheogh might work here or the Blood Wendigo with an interesting behaviour)
- A journal custom item for all collected/read notes would be cool, so the player is able to read all of them (scrolling through them for example) would be charming indeed (I am missing the code for something like this though)
- A scoring system for a "New Game+" would be awesome (something similar to the Resident Evil Director's Cut that shuffles the position and the order of the quests and items), but I simply don't have enough skill when it comes to coding a results screen and then restarting the "+Map" then (I would have ideas though for a second map, that's for sure )

So as much as I love the ideas, I am in the need for someone who can help me with all of that, so if there is interest and passion, I am more than open to implement these special features and additions!

[Tormentor667]

Colors, beautiful colors!

Oh man, thanks so much for this, looks definitely better than the washed out ones I guarantee, this will be added to the remaster!

[Nash]

I can help implement most of the ideas I suggested, including code and custom artwork. It's going to be a long project, so give me some time to do them one at a time.

[Gothic]

Seems like a bugged build again, because there is no map in there.

[r&r]

@r&r that weapon is not present on TCOTD2, please test without mods first and then get screenshots using idmypos true command

@Nash It seems that map slowdowns comes from portals and sway shaders applied to trees, which inherit Doom props... If I can later I'll try removing inheritances and instead use as simple as possible code for those props

Same thing even with no mods

I remove all mods and noclip right back to the same place
and the door still opens the same like from the screen shot

[Nash]

I have identified what exactly is causing the massive FPS drops - there is excessive think time, in other words there are several actors with inefficient code. I know exactly which ones to fix. But I'd like to make sure our works do not collide.

[Tormentor667]

Seems like a bugged build again, because there is no map in there.

That always happens when I create the PK3 without closing the map in UDM. My fault. new build can be found here now with recent additions: https://www.mediafire.com/file/dl1dasr5 ... 4.zip/file

I can help implement most of the ideas I suggested, including code and custom artwork. It's going to be a long project, so give me some time to do them one at a time.

This is actually the best news I got today! Thanks a lot for joining this and implementing the ideas and stuff. If you need anything from me in the graphical department, let me know Thanks also for adding the textures with the original color, I will take care of the map this evening then.

I have identified what exactly is causing the massive FPS drops - there is excessive think time, in other words there are several actors with inefficient code. I know exactly which ones to fix. But I'd like to make sure our works do not collide.

Ozy has committed his work so I guess you can do your changes without any conflicts now as I will do only mapping work the next 2 days.