New maps, and other projects whose primary focus is new maps, belong here.
Note: This forum, and all forums below it, are not for questions or troubleshooting! Threads created here are for active projects only! If you have questions please feel free to use the Editing subforums or General forum.
Forum rules
The Projects forums are only for projects. If you are asking questions about a project, either find that project's thread, or start a thread in the General section instead.
It was conceived as pure limit-removing Hexen map. It er, sort of still is... for a given value. Either way this is, first and foremost, ERLBA (thread here) demo map aside from being a Hexen map. When played with ERLBA 0.40, almost every monster is out there somewhere, waiting to do unspeakable things to GZDoom players.
I ran out of many, many, many things in the process.
Spoiler:
I ran out of pitiful 64 tagged lines first. This is madness, because this kind of static limit on lines - not even line tags! - is literally what limit-removing is about and yet even DSDA does not touch this static limit (yet?). Few people cared enough for mapping in Hexen, I guess. I used the lines for decoration anyways, so that went.
I ran out of 200 tagged things qucikly, and switched to closets. Goddamn closets, not even teleport closets... that reminds me I need to confirm if untagged teleports in Hexen work at all. There are lots of things I can improve with more tagged things, like godawful radius-blasting closets in advance. There is a reason for three times the flechettes.
I ran out of 255 sector tags - which the Hexen format is to blame for, but whatever. Only trigger-based lighting really suffered.
I ran out of 255 tags again. Because why not, really? Had to tighten some scripts too loose with multiple sectors.
I ran out of 32767 segs. Pfeh, bye bye vanilla sourceports for good. DSDA does chug along nicely.
I ran out of time and it was January. Then it was mid-January.
I ran out of tags and wanted a nice puzzle and polyobjected it to hell. I did not have design space to run out of polyobjects.
I ran out of maximum stack depth for Hexen ACS doing scripts 71 and 45. Not even an infinite loop, just three recursions. I rewrote the function and DSDA now runs. The function now looks like badly written assembler but whatever.
I ran out of luck and linedef-skipped into void. Because that of all things obviously had to finally happen sometime, certainly.
I ran out of time to whack-an-ettin so I only did a DSDA full run, a Zdoom speedrun, and GZDoom + ERLBA full run. At least every script is confirmed working (*yaaay I broke Hexen ACS until I repaired it*)
I ran out of desire to fuck with nodebuilder to make several polyobjects display correctly.
I ran out of patience before I realised I haven't placed Zedek, Traductus and Menelkir anywhere! Worse yet, I haven't planned them included and few arenas are big enough.
I ran out of tolerance for limit-removing Hexen source ports that inconsistently aren't.
I ran out of excuses to run out.
TL;DR Use DSDA, any Zdoom-derivative, or other advanced sourceport supporting Hexen. (Crispy and most its forks will not work)
Map is big, non-linear, with six simple puzzles and many other minor scripts. What *I* consider simple puzzles. They actually take thinking. Monster density is typical for my Hexen maps (think Deathkings). Under skill 5 mana and flechettes are abundant... until you realise that you are, in fact, backtracking second time and the closets are not opening yet. You may run out completely if you rely on ultimate weapon too much or blast invulnerable Heresiarch.
Known issues:
- Some polyobjects don't display correctly without rebuilding nodes. Tricking nodebuilder into not splitting their sectors is too much work.
- DSDA support for Hexen is not complete - buut at least you can 100% play entire map, if you mind not the unsupported features.
No comments so far; not surprising since it has been just over a week and nobody likes Hexen for some strange reasons. Either way I did some testing myself and it is RC1 now.
- Added an arena sub-map with class bosses in there. Good luck figuring out how to reach it.
- All remaining uses of ACS functions && and == were replaced. If anything seems to not work please report, but I am pretty sure nothing broke.
- Added more detailing to some areas
- Tweaked sky texture so DSDA produces sun at a height better matching GZDoom and UDB default settings
- Lots of other minor bugfixes and tweaks
So far I enjoy playing the pwad, although the cave system had lead me astray a few times. There are a couple of serpents in the cave which have their head stuck in the ceiling, which was a bit distracting.
I am playing this pwad with GZDoom which meant that I had to rename common.acs to zcommon.acs. Yes, you mention to use DSDA, but I only use GZDoom.
Kappes Buur wrote:So far I enjoy playing the pwad, although the cave system had lead me astray a few times. There are a couple of serpents in the cave which have their head stuck in the ceiling, which was a bit distracting.
I am playing this pwad with GZDoom which meant that I had to rename common.acs to zcommon.acs. Yes, you mention to use DSDA, but I only use GZDoom.
Spoiler:
Spoiler:
Recompiling throws this error, I don't know why
Spoiler:
Great work.
My TL; DR is sure long, but the very next words after DSDA say "ANY ZDoom-derivative" . Which GZDoom obviously is. It is Crispy Hexen which does not work. As a matter of fact the target port is GZDoom - this IS intended to showcase my Zscript-only mod, but why not let the map work in limit-removing Hexen if I can? After bouncing off Heartland really hard (first time I acutely hated a pwad for its layout design) I discovered I do, in fact, strongly not like this much verticality in Doom-engine completely at all and there are few enough vanilla Hexen maps around.
Use of common.acs should not stop pwad from running in GZdoom, unless I missed some nifty config option which recompiles from SCRIPTS lump during runtime or otherwise misunderstand how GZDoom can actually handle Hexen or just plain misunderstood what mistake you are pointing out. The "floor" being a reserved word for Zdoom ACS did not come up when compiling in UDB or SLADE for Hexen: Hexen format, but is a silly mistake nonetheless I'll admit.
Thanks for reminding of chaos serpent hitbox/sprite mismatch; I looked into several caves with low ceiling, but the cave immediately near start in particular is still a problem because I can't lower it without revealing it or breaking the cliff pathing for monsters and neither are desirable. Others are now a bit higher so it should not distract as much; the Chaos Serpents are a lot worse than revenants in their sprite/hitbox difference.
Side note:
Spoiler:
I learned many nice things while mapping for limit-removing Hexen too, like how limit-removing source ports are (not), how large of a level Crispy can handle (huge by my standards, which this - basically an entire hub - is), or how convoluted I can make an vanilla ACS script without breaking something (very, but not enough for nodebuilding random layout - I need Zdoom ACS arrays for my 80 random corridors connecting 30 rooms, not an endless forest of hardcoded if forks), or that I did trigger the vanilla ACS interpreter flaw in pre-release version.
On caves:
Spoiler:
the cave system is fully devoted to killing players; you will explore it either way, but an early visit will result in springing dangerous traps without any weapon while late visit will let you resupply flechettes.
The file was updated with many small fixes, and then uploaded to /idgames (Idgames link - https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/level ... u/srct2022). If there are still bugs, feel free to point them out, I do fix things eventually if I am still around.
Thanks everyone for playing, and I sincerely wish you all are still able to have fun once these gloomy times end.
Last edited by alexsa2015sa on Mon Mar 07, 2022 3:53 am, edited 1 time in total.
Giving this a play, I'm enjoying it so far - it feels faithful to the original style of Hexen which is cool to see. I'm in the lower area with the switch puzzle where I assume I need to hit the switches so the symbol on the floor matches the one on the wall? It's pretty creative which is cool to see. Nice work!