[mini-mod] Universal Automatic Continuation 1.4

[Dinosaur_Nerd]

This is a pretty simple script making use of levelcompat to allow for continuation from episode to episode in wads like The Ultimate Doom and Heretic
This allows for continuation in a lot of other map packs as well, such as Masters of Chaos and Adventures of Square.
It also includes a utility to restore some HP on continuation of an episode, much like how zEpisodic handled this.

This was originally designed for a gameplay mod I work on in order to resolve issues that arose with the release of GZDoom 4.2.3
I decided I might as well provide a download of a standalone version for testing and utility purposes.

If you know of a map pack that has episodes with no progression available between them, and this script fails to allow continuation, please let me know by replying to this thread.
Bug reports are also extremely helpful!

Download the U.A.C. here!

[BROS_ETT_311]

This is awesome! As far as I can tell it seems to work as intended. I did notice that there currently isn't support for SIGIL, is this planned in the future?

[SergeantDiggs]

This is good. Tired of waiting for ZEpisodic to be updated, so it's nice to see a similar mod pop up! Trying it out!

[Dinosaur_Nerd]

This is awesome! As far as I can tell it seems to work as intended. I did notice that there currently isn't support for SIGIL, is this planned in the future?

hmmmmmmm...

I'll need to check into a way to make sure we don't try to jump to a map that doesn't exist if SIGIL isn't loaded, haven't tried setting the nextmap to a map that isn't there and just not sure what would happen.
I'll do some experiments and try to see what I can do.

This is good. Tired of waiting for ZEpisodic to be updated, so it's nice to see a similar mod pop up! Trying it out!

Thanks for giving it a test!
Let me know if you happen upon any glitches at all.

[Morgul]

Good job, it's always useful to have more thane one mod to chose from
But what's the difference between U-A-C and EpisodicEX ?

[Dinosaur_Nerd]

Good job, it's always useful to have more thane one mod to chose from
But what's the difference between U-A-C and EpisodicEX ?

The difference is in the code how this is handled
my version is making use of the LevelCompat handler, while episodic ex is reading map hashes from a text lump that is included, it reads these files by making use of a UTF library called ZK core which recently encountered a VFE due to some hardcoded change in GZDoom 4.2.3
This VFE may be fixed at some point in the future, but I am very impatient and have long wanted to get rid of the data overhead anyway.

This little script was designed for my own personal mod, Guncaster Vindicated.
The script provided here is universally compatible, and provided simply as a resource, nothing more, nothing less.

This is awesome! As far as I can tell it seems to work as intended. I did notice that there currently isn't support for SIGIL, is this planned in the future?

now it's compatible with both WadSmoosh (any combination) and Sigil v 1.21 (which isn't compatible with wadsmoosh).
Once WadSmoosh updates compatibility to the current version of sigil, this script will start to recognize it and adapt accordingly.

This is also probably another difference between this script and Episodic-Ex
This script is flexible and able to detect sigil and Wadsmoosh compatibility without producing a VM abort if all potential maps are not included.

[ShockwaveS08]

Another difference between the two: UAC actually works with QC:DE, with no further modification required!

Any chance of support for REKKR in the future?

[Dinosaur_Nerd]

Another difference between the two: UAC actually works with QC:DE, with no further modification required!

I try to use a naming convention that should help prevent duplicate class name conflicts.

Any chance of support for REKKR in the future?

This already supports rekkr, try it with your current copy of U.A.C.
If it doesnt work, update to the latest version of rekkr

[ShockwaveS08]

I know of a few mapsets/TCs that could use this...

(The Ultimate) Doom The Way id Did
No End In Sight
The Lost Episodes of Doom
Playstation Doom TC (on a caliber similar to WADSmoosh)
Shadow of The Wool Ball
Rise of The Wool Ball

[Dinosaur_Nerd]

I know of a few mapsets/TCs that could use this...

cool! lets see about these...

(The Ultimate) Doom The Way id Did

Yep!

No End In Sight

You got it!

The Lost Episodes of Doom
Playstation Doom TC (on a caliber similar to WADSmoosh)

uh, no... what a mess...

Shadow of The Wool Ball
Rise of The Wool Ball

Aha! These don't need it.
These episodes continue on their own.
Shoutout to MSPaintR0cks, he loves his fans!

[ShockwaveS08]

Seems I've encountered a bit of a game-breaking bug: When playing on a map that has a "death exit", dying anywhere on the map except such an exit will cause a VM Abort if you try to reload any save associated with that map, regardless of that savegame's health status.

Bug encountered in The Ultimate Doom, E1M8: Phobos Anomaly.
How to reproduce: Die anywhere in the map except for the Death Exit.

[openroadracer]

Say, could you add a few more, please?

Specifically, I'd like to see Maps of Chaos added, in all three variations if possible. And I'd also like to see if it could be possible to make it where you can play through FreeDOOM Phase I's C4M8 and be put into FreeDOOM Phase II's MAP01 if possible. The latter is because I have WadSmoosh and Steam's DooM Classic Complete, and I'd love to be able to load FreeDOOM as PWADs over WadSmoosh as an IWAD, and then use Universal Automatic Continuation to play all the way through from C1M1 to MAP30 all on one save.

[Dinosaur_Nerd]

Seems I've encountered a bit of a game-breaking bug: When playing on a map that has a "death exit", dying anywhere on the map except such an exit will cause a VM Abort if you try to reload any save associated with that map, regardless of that savegame's health status.

Bug encountered in The Ultimate Doom, E1M8: Phobos Anomaly.
How to reproduce: Die anywhere in the map except for the Death Exit.

pretty sure this is GZDoom's fault as the eventhandlers are just doing weird stuff...

So I'm going to shelve that trick in favor of good old ACS until gzd gets its issues sorted out.
Consider this fixed.

as an added bonus feature, this new ACS is capable of calculating percent based health, so now the HP slider will be giving you health based on the percentage of your max health instead of a flat number out of 100.

Edit: Turns out for some reason Eventhandlers and Levelcompat change load order when save games are involved. Gonna put levelcompat on the shelf until further notice and use a single eventhandler to take care of everything from here on out.
Basically the exact same method can be applied using an eventhandler on WorldLoaded as with levelcompat in this use case, but with no (currently known) risk.

Will update and apply this fix soon.

Say, could you add a few more, please?

Specifically, I'd like to see Maps of Chaos added, in all three variations if possible. And I'd also like to see if it could be possible to make it where you can play through FreeDOOM Phase I's C4M8 and be put into FreeDOOM Phase II's MAP01 if possible. The latter is because I have WadSmoosh and Steam's DooM Classic Complete, and I'd love to be able to load FreeDOOM as PWADs over WadSmoosh as an IWAD, and then use Universal Automatic Continuation to play all the way through from C1M1 to MAP30 all on one save.

I'll think about it, but probably not, seems like a lot of margin for error and lots of problems coming from both of these.

If you were wanting it to be a thing with wadsmoosh, then definitely not. Wadsmoosh compat for this is already a tangled mess and would get exponentially messier with any further additions.

[ShockwaveS08]

Found another game-breaker: When transitioning from one episode to another, your HP is not refilled by any amount, regardless of how much HP you want to restore via CVAR. Found myself in E2M1 with exactly 1HP after going through E1M8's death exit.

[Cheater87]

Would it be possible for this to work with fullrun.pk3?