ZDoom

About two years ago, I started learning DECORATE, ACS and UDMF to see if I could do silly stuff with it. After experimenting for a bit, I started working on a MASSIVELY overambitious project: A 5-stage partial conversion of Doom inspired by arcade games of yore, with revamped weapons, enemies and mechanics. Needless to say, I didn't go far: I pretty much finished the gameplay part, but mapping on such a scale was just too much for me. So I sat on it for a while, until I decided to retool it to make it work with the sole level I had completed, adding a bit more meat to it as well as a proper ending... ladies and gentlemen, I present to you DipSwitch!

Spoiler: What's DipSwitch?

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• Relentless, nonstop action! There is no such thing as ammo management in DipSwitch. You start with the shotgun and chaingun and the one you don't use quickly regains ammo! Coupled with the quicker weapon switch time, you can just hold left click and go back and forth between the two weapons at light speed. Every second you waste worrying about how many shells you have left is one you could spend unleashing hot lead upon the legions of hell!

• Quick movement in all dimensions! Having virtually infinite ammo doesn't mean combat in this mod isn't tactical - far from it! Jumping is mandatory, with the map being designed around it. You'll have to hop around the arenas to get over obstacles and dodge tricky patterns, while doing your best to keep those guns aimed at the baddies!

• Bombs, bombs, BOMBS!!! While your weapons have virtually infinite ammo, you can also find grenades lying around the battlefield. One press of Fire2 and you'll throw them at mach speeds towards your target, obliterating it and others in a MASSIVE range (Seriously, the hitbox is huge - don't let the explosion graphic fool you!). They're like shmup bombs, allowing you to get out of a sticky situation while dishing a lot of pain to the tankier demons!

• High-stakes combat with the Credit system! The map is meant to be played without saving (Though I'm not your boss - if you want to quicksave, go for it!). As such, you have twice the health as normal, coupled with arcade-like "Credits"! Press the Reload key at any time to spend one credit, fully healing you and making you invincible for a few precious seconds! When dying means restarting the whole map again, knowing when to use a credit or not becomes a vital skill! (Though again, feel free to save and reload if you really want to.)

• A short but highly-replayable map! DipSwitch can be completed in about 10 minutes, and a first playthrough probably won't take much longer. But there's more than meets the eye here - As per arcade tradition, play well enough and you might be rewarded with something nice...!

• Horrible-looking buildings! I'm bad at mapping leave me alone

It's the first time I release such a big project, so I'd love to get feedback on it! It's still pretty rough around the edges in some parts so I'm definitely planning to update it some more.
Thanks so much!

Released update 1.05!

Spoiler: Changelog

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- Reduced the Hell Knight's health to be similar to the Cacodemon - they're both still bullet sponges, but at least he will always die in 2 grenade throws now.
- Modified the final rooftop arena and teleporter zone so you can't see the elevator (and the rendering errors that come with it) from it
- Slightly adjusted the camera on the TITLEMAP
- Added a version number on the TITLEMAP
-(Hopefully) Fixed a bug where you could end up starting the Extra Stage script without actually getting teleported
- Added two new intro warnings and Extra Stage boss subtitles

Edit: Quickly pushed version 1.06 because I forgot to set TITLEMAP to "fade to black" initially. Whoops!

This was an absolute joy to play through, though I am yet to find whatever secrets it holds!

Aside the Hell Knight issue (which according to the changelog has been fixed in the latest version), the only other problems I found were:
- In the final wave arena, in the second wave an imp spawned right on top of me and made me stuck for a second until a suicide bomber set me free with a bang.
- In the boss arena, I got stuck on a piece of debris and ate a few rockets.

Regardless I really enjoyed this mod!
It was a very fun little experience all around.

Hey this was great fun!

I love the arcady feel, great work with the GUI and HUD. Also the checkpoint system works great to add to the feeling. Also the variation in gameplay and the level markers were very nice. Great work!

Thank you both, that's really nice! <3

Jarewill wrote: ↑Thu Jun 01, 2023 1:57 am This was an absolute joy to play through, though I am yet to find whatever secrets it holds!

Aside the Hell Knight issue (which according to the changelog has been fixed in the latest version), the only other problems I found were:
- In the final wave arena, in the second wave an imp spawned right on top of me and made me stuck for a second until a suicide bomber set me free with a bang.
- In the boss arena, I got stuck on a piece of debris and ate a few rockets.

Regardless I really enjoyed this mod!
It was a very fun little experience all around.

The "stuck in a monster" bug has a very silly reason behind it - it's because enemies don't actually spawn during second waves! They're here from the start, just dormant, invisible and tagged as non-solid - I simply "wake" them up and spawn teleport puffs on them when the first wave is done. It's a very convenient solution for my purposes, but if you're EXACTLY where a monster is supposed to spawn it can lead to stuff like this. I'll try to find a better way to handle this to prevent this kinds of situations!

As for the boss arena debris getting you stuck, that's duly noted! I'll try to place them in a different place.

The only thing I didn't understand was the point system, how does it work? Why do you redeem coins?

I was thinking about how to add to the arcady feel - you could ramp up the damage points of the weapons, and then spam 3x-4x the monsters to create a gibb-fest!