Generally there should be nothing *necessary to finish a level* that requires any of:
- straferunning;
- extremely sensitive timing that could softlock you if you're on keyboard, lagging in multiplayer or have motor issues;
- checking only for a sound cue that something has happened;
- remembering how to distinguish two visually nearly identical areas; or
- backtracking to a previous area on the map that you had previously been given no reason to revisit.
I haven't caught all of them by any stretch of the imagination but it's a start.
Also some regular minor fixes.
E1M9
- Fixed some textures around the big blue-trimmed lift and removed an extraneous use line that triggered a faraway lift for no reason.
- The red key bridge lowerable section is now textured differently from the rest of the bridge.
E3M5
- Teleporter platform to get back up to the catwalk from the northeastern blood maze is now clearly marked as having a switch, as it is a mandatory progression rather than a secret.
E4M8
- Got rid of some fake contrasts on the noodles at the start.
- Added a radsuit for the northwest switch. While it is possible to avoid damage even without straferun, unless you've got a tic counter display and can time it to the damage interval this is basically RNG.
- The water flat on top of the lowering wall in the east was very, very noticeable. The switch is now stepped on instead of hit. (Not too sure if the secret isn't *too* obscure now...)
- Removed asymmetrical doortrak on the slime bridge on the southeastern piston switch.
- The linedefs of said slime bridge pit are flipped so a deathmatch opponent trying to grab the berserk in there is not magically immune to rocket blasts. (see #996)
- Realigned the four pistons by the gate to the starship. They also reveal moving parts when activated - not nearly as good as the crushers on the original DI, but better than nothing.
- Made the southern walls use PLAT1 to make it more obvious that those walls will lower later (with the added bonus that they match the four pistons).
- The southern light bronze area now has a strip to guide the player towards the switch in case they lose track of their direction while fighting monsters and forget to explore inside that area, as well as to better distinguish it from the southeast.
- The gate threshold to the southern light bronze area now matches that of the pre-opened southeast.
- There is now actually a threshold where you can tell where the starport ends and the ship begins.
- The two light bronze areas are a bit too similar-looking. Added a few health boosts so the player can spot/be attacked by them and know this is an unexplored area.
Map11
- The lift going down into the yellow key room requires a switch that is out of sight from the lift itself, which is not clearly marked as a lift to begin with. The only real way to realize what's going on if you don't already know about the lift is to locate the sound and immediately turn to investigate before the lift comes back up. I thought this was annoying when I first did my big overhaul of this map, but ultimately left the basic mechanism alone out of an abundance of caution; however, with the recent discussion of accessibility in the proposed changes to the documentation I'm revisiting this. That upper switch now lowers a wall to reveal the lift which is triggered by a walk line.
- The lower far switch on that same lift was actually literally *impossible* to make on keyboard and no straferun (and no vanilla wallbounce exploit), even if I change it to a regular lift instead of fast. This is completely unacceptable for something necessary to progression (rather than an obscure secret). The lower switches are now permanent repeatable floor-lowerers, while the line crossing from the lift into the lower chamber is a permanent repeatable floor-raiser, with the line crossing into the lift from above being a simple lift line.
- Retextured the stairs out of the water in the eastern branch so it's not an unreadable mess of criss-crossing grey lines.
- Realigned the new skull switch texture in the skull room.
Map19
- One of the stealth worms was stuck in a burning barrel.
- Removed monster block flag on line 2083.
- Unmerged and remerged a few identical sectors to better match the intended sound travel.
- Flagged line 281 as a monster blocker. This allows the player to always be able to make the jump onto that bottom stair without being blocked by the octaminator.
- That octaminator is now a pain bringer in easy mode. The far end of that platform path is well outside the maximum vertical autoaim range in vanilla, which means that to actually hit the octaminator without up/down aiming you'd have to be on one of the later platforms - i.e., confined to a relatively narrow area with no cover *against an opponent that has seeker missiles*. The best way to solve this is to charge towards the octaminator as fast and as soon as possible with the SSG, minigun, or ripsaw+prayer to RNGsus that you'll get a good painlock. This is not the kind of tactic the sort of person who *needs* to play on easy will think to do, or could do while also being ready to sidestep if the octaminator fires at the wrong time.
- 347 and 249 are now also monster blockers, and the worms in that slime pit have been moved to the platform just behind the combat slug since they're awakened early on and that's where you'll first encounter them anyway.
- Replaced the teleport pad in the vertical platforming sequence with a lift, to minimize disorientation and going the wrong way. (In retrospect I probably could have just made the teleport destination face the pit you came in from, but the lift worked aesthetically better anyway.)
- A good chunk of that entire platforming area has been moved 8 units to the west so that things would align with the flat grid.
- Lines 307 and 309 are now also monster blockers. The worm that would be trapped between them is now moved further down the route and marked ambush.
Map20
- Removed the useless, misleading skull switch texture on the bars at the start.
- The door leading into the blue key arena needs no blue key; the door leading out needs a blue key. Both are marked with blue-light trim. Removed the blue lights on the first one.
- The lowering wall leading to the teleporter now uses a pipe texture.
- The door leading out of the giant quadruped arena now has a bright flickering light.
- Yellow key is another case of effectively-randomly-mandatory damage. Added a path.
- Same with the lava tunnel on the red key route.
Map25
- The silver lift near the river and shack is now activated by SW1GSTON switch right on the wall at eye level, rather than counterintuitively and invisibly recessed into additional sectors.
- The painlord ambush lift is now accessible after the encounter. A small health refill has been added there for easy and medium.
* levels: more minor fixes.
E1M2
- Hide all outdoor inaccessible areas and monster warp closet lines.
- Fix some texture alignments in the blue key room.
E1M3
- Untag 1-sided walk trigger line 821.
- Make the western secret dead end room look less like id E1M3. (Not touching the specific powerups that are also from id just yet.)
E1M9
- Retexture the edges of that ragged hole in the wall revealing the tekwall underneath, now that the rounded-corners STARG textures no longer work like that.
- The stairs just beyond that corridor are also redone, to avoid that perfect line of ickwall bullet holes.
Map28
- The way out of the blood pits in the huge marble skull face courtyard is now much easier to find, rather than being a de facto secret.
* levels: minor fixes.
Map11
Replaced that fake door near the red skull with a drop tunnel.
Map12
A few random texture fixes, especially around the south end of sector 147.
* level: more fixes.
E1M3
- Minor item floating in one of the staircases.
E1M7
- Widened the item trenches in the northwest switch room to minimize the chance of a floating item.
- Narrowed the water trench in the southeast switch area to prevent someone from squeeze-gliding in.
E1M9
- Funny-shaped nukage bridge no longer has visible switches. Instead, that railing can be used from the outside anywhere along any of the long sides to lower it.
- Door on the north of that bridge was missing a doortrak.
E3M5
- Northeast giant blood pit had floating items in the new ledges. (Those bits are now also 100% pure meat instead of the rocky crust on top.)
E4M4
- Secret in the southwest is now the room instead of the doorway. Lighting adjusted accordingly.
E4M5
- There's an obscured lamp in the northwest that's supposed to look (in id) like a small lamp placed on top of the box. Freedoom's yellow lamp doesn't work for this, but Freedoom's candle sprite is perfect for the intended effect, so now it is that instead.
E4M6
- Various thin secrets.
E4M7
- Thing no. 580 was the wrong type and bled into the ceiling (see #941). The blocking version is now used instead.
E4M8
- The secrets by the starting area are now the rooms themselves instead of the doorways.
Map11
- Untagged the lizardbaby-triggered doorway as secret.
- All lizard baby sectors are now 72 units tall.
- Realigned the vines in the trilobite corridors overlooking the western atrium.
- Berserk red key secret room lengthened to guarantee having to step inside it.
- Red key is now at a different location, the platform now being a teleporter to it, allowing the location of the red key to be a single sector that can be flagged as a secret.
- Replaced the light source in the yellow skull room with something less likely to have already fallen over.
- Replaced the evil eyes with tech lamps since those aren't shootable.
- The trigger for releasing the pain bringers in the nukage fountain is once again a walk line.
Map16
- Every sector in the backpack secret was tagged as secret, leaving a total of 3 secrets one of which was skippably thin. The skippable is now untagged.
Map18
- It was possible to squeeze into the blue key pillar to trigger the ambush prematurely. The pillar is now the entire 64x64 platform.
* levels: more fixes.
E3M7
- Ambush-flagged and moved the pinkies in the lower small intestine so they stop trying to block the player from below either drop.
- Got rid of some orthogonal lines in the intestine to get rid of the fake contrast.
Map11
- Jump-proofed the decorative canal areas near the final arena.
- Some attempts to address #996.
Map14
- Removed the close-30-seconds door for the descending serpentipede monster closet because if they all bunch up like that while you have an SSG it's a boring wait afterwards. Have fun being hunted by them in the corridors!
- Addressed #996 in the south.
Map15
- Made the two lifts to the red armour secret visually consistent with each other.
- Some feeble attempts to address #996.
Map17
- Jump-proofed by Catoptromancy: numerous platforms raised above what should be jumpable in most sourceports that enable it by default.
- Added a backpack by the corpse near the start, as playing the map "right" and refraining from shooting until you get the tripod puts you in significant danger of running into a shellbox while at near full.
- The stairs inside the living room are flush up against the wall, so you don't waste time falling off and getting back on.
- The window texture now better matches the light falling on the floor.
- Moved Tree #73 and #37 as they were being invisible jump-blockers from below.
- Restored there being three chunks of rock for the blue key.
- Changed up a lot of textures in hopes of creating visually distinct areas.
- Added an extra secret in the start tunnel.
- Made the switch in the water go to 8+LAF fast instead of lowest because those weird sudden flat changes didn't look good.
- Shrank the pillars near the yellow key so you could move around all of them.
- Changed the torches inside the southern switch corridor to techlamps, and added new torches around the entrance to the eastern building.
- Changed the hanging corpse in the living room to another hanging corpse. (see #941)
- Made the couch look more like a couch. And one that's been in a war zone.
Map23
- Replaced the haphazard texture on the northern teleporter room and added some light sources.
- Improved the trim around sector 236 so the door doesn't go right into the curve.
- Used the correct CONS1 flat for sector 246 and shrank it accordingly.
- Addressed #996 in the south.
- Moved the (non-hanged) corpse in the starting secret out of the doorway. The way it hinted at the true nature of that wall was really neat but sadly doesn't play well with software renderer.
Map25
- Southern curved tunnel had a single orthogonal line that led to a misleading fake contrast.
- Some feeble attempts to address #996.
* Delete map17m.wad
* levels: restore old e2m1.
* levels: address E3M6 softlock.
see #998
* levels: minor E1 fixes.
E1M6
Address #976. The diagonal crate at the bottom of the nukage pool was too small and the zombieman was stuck. It is now a slightly larger crate using the big crate textures.
E1M7
Address #976. The bars around the rocket launcher were wrongly marked as secret.
E1M9
Address #976. The walk-over lift line now blocks monsters, preventing from trying (and almost always failing and just annoying everyone) to chase the player into the dead end with the armour. (I had considered raising this dead end and removing the fence, letting the player jump back into the main courtyard, but we'd get the unseen pinkie jump block problem again.)
E2M2
Make the exit into a more E2-typical FIREBLU gate.
E4M1
Make That Room look less like someone tried to draw E1M3 from memory.
* levels: more minor E1 fixes.
E1M6
Addresses #979, point 14. When you grab the chaingun in the north, you'll find 1-2 shotgunners standing at some terminals. Even though you're in plain view and clearly in a place where a person should be able to hear you, they will not hear your shots until you advance out of that grey floor. Removing the grey floor sound block lines cures this, apparently without causing premature alerting of the monsters on the other side of the green American football goal-like thing.
E1M8
Addresses #979, point 19. Lowers the pad to make the face more visible, and instead of the single torch in the middle on some skill levels you get a border of torches coming out of the nukage (which is now a hurtfloor) in all skill levels.
I've also taken the liberty of adding some progression into the southern labyrinth, turning the three "boxes" into distinct-looking columns going from masonry to monstrosity. Its purpose in disorienting the player enough to make the emergence seem to be into a new area should be unaffected. The light level is also significantly reduced, which ironically helps navigation somewhat. The final result should look a bit more like an intentionally disorienting labyrinth rather than a placeholder.
* levels: E1M9 adjustments.
Central room monster closet doors are no longer upper unpegged.
Changed central room stairs to use a different texture because STEP4 was tutti-fruttiing again.
Added some aesthetic improvements: the subject matter of the recycling.
Replaced the lift with stairs leading to the rocket launcher to avoid the pinkie jump block.
Tried to use the same door texture for all doors that are only remotely opened.
Used a more see-through barrier for the corner guys in the middle room, after an incident where I spent way too long and eventually resorted to IDDT to find a single zombieman - interesting challenge but probably inappropriate given the way the rest of this map works.
Fixed a bunch of miscellaneous texture issues.
* levels: move Armory name+mus to E1M5; rename E1M9.
The spooky sountrack simply does not work for a shoot-'em-up level like that.
It works better for E1M9 now that there's actually something ominous implicitly lurking in there.
* dehacked: rename E1M9 and E1M5.
* dehacked: update E1M9/5 par times.
* delete misplaced dehacked.txt
* levels: bugfix: remove E1M2 wall midtex.
The level had a decorative door-the-player-had-come-in-from that was obscured by a wall texture.
Thanks to Smokey on Discord for pointing this out.
I've also removed the Doom Builder camera thing.
* levels: Cleanup Eureka errors in seven levels
Relatively minor Eureka fixes following the level changes at the start
of 2023
freedoom1.wad
E1M2 Outside wall ceiling lower than floor. Raise ceiling to 100.
Fix stuck shotgun zombies in hidden in triangular sector #319
Fix unused transparent CGRATE1 texture on linedef #747 by
clearing it
E1M9 Remove unused back sidedef on lower side of door jamb sector
#255 in the upper right hand corner of the map.
E3M7 Sector #182 cleared unused tag #31
Sector # 58 cleared unused tag #35
freedoom2.wad
MAP14 Replaced missing textures with GRAY1 in monster closest upper
left of map
MAP16 Fix missing textures in inaccessible outside area with ASHWALL2
MAP26 Delete unused tag #2 in sector #38
MAP27 Replace four missing textures above four short red torches with
MARBGRAY in the switch maze room
Replace transparent texture AQTRIM03 with AQRUST10 on lower
trim for door below the switch maze room
* levels: rebuild nodes
Ran "make rebuild-nodes"
---------
Co-authored-by: mc776 <24984517+mc776@users.noreply.github.com>
* levels: fix various bugs.
Thanks to Goji!, Inuk and rednakhla on Discord for pointing these out.
E1M3: Northern lift simplified to address texture alignment problems.
E1M5: Door near (-205,1336) (leading out into open ceiling area with the big strip of lights down the middle) door tracks needed to be lower unpegged.
E1M9: Lift near (-2328,120) was split into 2 sectors, causing HOMs when they went out of sync. There's nothing that relies on this split (contrast the neat lighting stuff from Map22) so the lift is just merged into one sector.
E2M2: Shellbox near (-486,192) is right on the line between two stairs, causing it to rest on the bottom step which causes ports like GZDoom to have the sprite clip *very* visibly into the upper stair. Moved it slightly so it rests on the upper of those two stairs.
E2M3: Door leading to red key and "door" leading to soulsphere: former should be lower unpegged but latter should not, but were reversed. Two exit-door-textured doorframes also given more conventional DOORTRAK and lower unpegged treatment. The teleporter representing the hatch going down into the nukage is now fully repeatable.
Map07: Infinite height in vanilla would cause the spectres in the red key courtyard to trap the player on the entrance ledge from below in a way that could not be seen or diegetically explained. Those three spectres now warp in only after you cross the ledge. (Setting them to "ambush" would do nothing since you're in LOS with them from the top of the ledge.)
Map11: Lights above red keycard weren't aligned; moved that entire sector and added a few lines to round the corner. Removed a strobe effect on the exit teleporter to compensate for a GZDoom issue where the light would go to absolute zero during the blink.
Map12: Room to the south with the 2 stimpacks, ammo boxes, 2 chaingunners and berserk would sometimes cause some of the items to be "levitated" to the highest sectors they touch. Moved them away from said higher sectors - it looks a bit sloppier but this is a backroom not a storefront lol.
Map13: The easternmost archvile platform had the archvile stuck in the seam, preventing it from lowering in vanilla. (Worked fine in GZDoom) Moved it a little further in.
Map19: The combat slugs teleport in from a W1 teleporter which could sometimes be spent while one of the pinkies is blocking the destination, permanently preventing that slug from teleporting in. These are now WRs like the other teleporting enemies.
Map22: More W1 monster teleports that should be WR. Also filled in some missing textures in the multi-sector lift connecting the cavern to the hall in the southwest, which parts are clearly not meant to be seen moving separately but can - it still looks fucked up if you manage to desync them, but it's a diegetic fucked up now.
Map24: Another W1 spawn. This one is impossible to screw up in vanilla, but there are some mods that could end up spawning something there that could block the archviles from teleporting.
Map25: More W1 problems. The spawn source room now also has a small barrier to make sure each pinkie only goes to its own teleporter unless the initial teleport fails.
Map27: Lizardbaby dropping too far meant that the bracket was falling along with it in a visibly unnatural way.
Map29: Broke up all the long linedefs on the perimeter of the map to get around the invisible hitscan barrier bug: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Hitscan_attacks_hit_invisible_barriers_in_large_open_areas
(Ideally this entire perimeter should be redone to break up the box in favour of more natural-looking formations, but that's a bit outside the scope of a fix like this.)
Also got rid of the Plutonia-style start/end teleports on the fixed Phase 2 maps, to address #867.
* maps: more fixes.
More floaty items and other things.
E1M9
- floater mid south stim by staircase
E1M7
- floater northwest clips near the tunnels
- floaters near switch by railings, now all on the railings
- duckproofed sector 439 barrier
E2M9
- floater thing #125 medikit on top of lift, now in middle of platform
- shotgun guy (thing #309) and the spectre behind it stuck in geometry.
- lines 430 and 761 both open the same door and are in the same room right next to each other. Since 761 is actually textured and positioned as a switch, the tag and special on 430 is removed.
* levels: flag e2m7 DM stuff as multi-only.
Marked the following based on eyeballing out what items are right next to DM spawns with no obvious alternate route to them: 487, 488; 203, 397; 499, 500, 501, 502; 482, 485; 491, 492, 493; 494; 496; 28, 486; 182; 54
* levels: more misc. fixes.
E1M6 W1 lines 2318 and 2321.
E3M5 Removed all monster block lines in that gross blood room and raised the blood floor to only 4 below the normal floors, but flagged more monsters in there as ambush to make up for it. Also fixed a lot of texture alignment issues in the top skin panels and lowered the ceiling, along with adding a new sector to address texture tiling issues in the northern teleporter room.
E4M1 fixed a mysterious HOM that was going on near the northern shadow line in the northern outdoor area. Merged a lot of sectors that were identical in their properties.
E4M7 entrance to sector 985 seems to be intended that the player run off the ledge into that room, then the pinkie near the ledge ambushes the player from behind. Instead, what sometimes happens is that the pinkie is alerted somehow, then obstructs the player (vanilla infinite height) from being able to get down there. That means of getting down into that room is now walled off, and instead you step onto that lift to bring it down from above. Neat side effect: any monsters still in the ring when you enter that room will follow you down there.
E4M5 linedefs 1724 and 1725 were facing the wrong way and couldn't be hit with projectiles.
Map25 Float thing 217. Moved that entire row further south to address floating item issues.
Map28 Float thing 464.
* levels: use inner room texture in E4M7 lift.
* levels: align side textures on that lift.
Didn't realize the little squares were sticking into the floor at the *bottom* of the lift as well.
In levels/e1m*.wad files fix errors flagged by Eureka when F9 (Check /
ALL) is pressed. This is mostly missing textures and similar errors.
E1M1 Replace transparent texture AQTRIM03 on walls with AQCONC03
E1M3 Replace transparent texture AQTRIM03 on walls with AQCONC03
Floor one unit higher than ceiling in a door
Delete unused tags
Replaced transparent texture in a secret room
E1M6 Deleted inner mismatched sector in outdoor water pond
Fix Missing textures
E1M7 Fix missing textures
E1M8 Fix missing textures
Delete unused tags
E1M9 Fix missing textures
A generic term like this isn’t really suitable for trademark, nor
likely to ever be disputed. The community and the engine both heavily
bias toward “episode” and indeed most other games do.
Closes: #682
