Shadow Genesis

First topic message reminder :

Hi all.

This topic is about a new mod that is being created by me and my brother, Mario Maniac. Yeah, he is still alive, in case you are in doubt.

First of all, I feel like I should say that this game, like its predecessors, is based in nazis and demons. I understand some of you may not like the idea, but we do. Also, by predecessors, I mean its prequels, all of them. This one is centered in the same story and it involves elements of previous gameses. 

If you ever played an addon made by us or heard someone criticizing our style, you probably know how things are going to be developed. We enjoy a challenge, and we also enjoy the fact that this won't be a game that you will be able to finish in a couple hours.

Anyway, we've been working on it for a long time now, although we didn't work that much due to other stuff and whatever. Sprites, sounds, coding and all that stuff, except for maps and music, are already done. Like I said before, there are many level specific codings that are obviously yet to be done.

We didn't decide yet how many levels the game will have yet. We are just going on with the story, until it is the right time to end. I also think it is worth mentioning the maps are all 128x128. We always thought it was bad to have so many small claustrophobic rooms, but that was the only way to make big nice levels.

Obviously, I'm not spoiling much yet, but I can guarantee the game has a bunch of never seen before features.

After that wall of text, here are a bunch of screens, to show something that has been made already. I'll post more screens from time to time in here.

Official Beta Screenshots (latest released version as of now):

Shadow Genesis Part 1 Beta Download: (The forum inserts this adfly thing on the link. I can't do anything about that, so don't complain.)
As bugs are found and fixed, I'll upload new patches here. You should download them as soon as possible. I'll also write what the bug is about.

Important things before you download this:

• You can press 'L' to see the ratios so far in the game.
  
• The game is incomplete. What you will download is a demo version, which corresponds to the first part of a two part game. This part contains 39 levels. Whenever the full version is released, you WILL lose your savegame.
  
• It's probably best not to play this on "I am Death Incarnate" unless you want some big suffering.
  
• WolferCooker succeeded in completing the game, but that doesn't mean there are no bugs. In fact, I can almost guarantee there are.
  
• If you get stuck somewhere and you feel like there is a bug that prevents you from completing it, it's better if you post it here so everyone can see it, and we can fix it if it's really a bug. If it's not a bug, I won't spoil anything and I won't give you the solution.
  
  
• There are no secret levels for now, although some "mechanisms" that would enable you to get to them are already in the game. That means there can be keys/switches/things that have no objective the way the game is now.
  
• Although this should be obvious, READ the ReadThis section.
  
• Achievements and mementos aren't in the game yet, even though the ReadThis describe them. Don't mind that, for now.
  
  

Full package (this has been updated and now links to the official beta version):
https://www.mediafire.com/file/nnzijaw3aaehu13/Shadow_Genesis_Pt._1_-_Official_Beta.rar/file


Patches (no need to download any of them anymore. All of the patches have been included in the official beta version. The list of patches has been kept here purely as a log).

:

Full Game (upcoming, not to be released anytime soon):

Small spoiler: Soul Orb Entrance





That's it for now. Cya.

Hi guys.

It's nice to see that the work of Shadow Genesis is still on progress. And for those who wonder why I'm gone too long, don't worry, I'm back in business (holiday and family visits is the reason for the hiatus), so I'll hope the sprites will be finished on October, I guess.

I'll explain how I got involved during the ideas for this gargantuan mod:
- Those who followed the "Shadow Genesis" thread in this forum, know that I was one of the first who posted some helps and signs of bugs who was fixed on the latest patches. During my gameplay, I realized that I had some of my sprite resources which I did for experiments seven years ago, but due to circumstances and a lot of private things, I've put this sprite test on hiatus. Luckily, I found them and came with a lot of ideas which suits for this mod, but I was on the baby stage for making sprites. Fortunately, making sprites went quicker than I expected, which was the result I've tested through MediaFire on the sprite thread I've created. So I came with Mario and Luigi with some ideas, and they're really impressed.
- On February, I've finished with sprites of weapons, ammos, healths, artifacts, treasuries, traps and decorations, some of them animated. Now I'm in the design of enemies. If it's no barrier through my progress, like I said, I will be finished in the middle of October.
- One thing Mario forgot to mention, is that many of the enemies we've seen on the beta stage, is outdated. For example, Iron Knight looks like a silhouette; Doctors and Scientists has pants which looks more like silhouette that pants; Elite Mutants (Mutantuber) looks pale etc.. So I fixed many of them so it looks more fresher and updated. Also, some of the enemies will have more frame rate (idle, attack, pain, death) and others will have eight direction rather than one.

It's also worth to mention that Milanor did also do a great job upon walkthrough of Shadow Genesis. He managed to beat the game on "Bring 'em on" difficulty, and spot some bugs and things to be fixed.

Yes, the progress goes slowly, but don't worry, it still going.

@wolfercooker
I'll still take some time, yes. But things will get faster. We had some specific problems that delayed our progress a lot. But it was worth doing.
It's also worth mentioning that this beta on its own is at least 2 of our previous games considering the amount of levels, and maybe like 4 considering the time it takes to complete it.
We considered splitting it in chapters. It could have 4 chapter with about 15-20 levels each. But that would kill a huge interaction from level to level. Secret weapons you found wouldn't be carried long enough, making them lose their value. Things like that.

@milanor
The current levels have changed a little, but what you have to do to complete them remains the same.
We still will play the whole game just to adjust health, ammo and whatever else it needs. Right now, the most important is to make sure there are no crashing bugs. You guys helped us a lot finding them. Thanks all. Don't worry though, we won't make difficulty level restrictions.
I really don't know much about those recording softwares, except that fraps will kill your memory before you notice it and hypercam is way too awful to be used. i'm glad you managed to find a way to handle that. And remember, you're free to record anything, if you wish.


@brickgolem
We really liked the enemies you have made, indeed. The reason we added yours instead of replacing current ones was because of things like... a new enemy now has 8 direction. We would have to go through the whole game searching for every place we used that enemy and add a deaf floor, if he was a boss, for example. We surely will forget somewhere where this fix will be needed to prevent something of going terribly wrong and we might ruin the game. We constantly screw up something and we don't even notice. I can't say how many times rain and snow stopped working suddenly during our tests. Many of the bugs you guys found weren't there when we tested the levels, to begin with. That's how things work, though. It's never easy.

And of course we won't stop making this game, no matter how long it takes. We went way too far to stop now.

Brickgolem, thanks for introducing fresh ideas and sprites into the game. I've been out of ideas for a long time. I've been down to only music suggestions now.

Thanks for the compliments, WolferCooker.

Speaking of music, could you ask Mario or Luigi if it's possible to change main level music/ambient from level 1-9 and level 22? I mean, that it has authentic music rather than DOS music?

Here's some links for video game musics:
https://downloads.khinsider.com
https://www.vgmusic.com

@brick: You can always ask us yourself, too! Still, those musics were actually chosen to be there (I mean, it's not like we have just forgotten to change them). We wanted the early levels to maintain the original feeling of the game. Those are also the levels where there are less puzzles and less innovative environment - a more vanilla-ish way of mapping, if you ask me -, in the end, that's why we decided to do that. Later in the game, as things begin to get ugly, it is of the utmost importance to make choose all the appropriate stuff (musics, enemies, walls, you name it) to succeed creating the atmosphere we desire.

Also, we are aware that some people enjoy much more the shooting and killing than trying to understand a (very) complex plot like this game's. Well, can't really blame anyone for now, as the first part of the game was never intended to give the player full awareness about what's happening. Quite the opposite, actually, as it should raise a lot of questions. Still, specifically for level 22, that's a level that's hugely well-constructed plotwise! And most certainly the music there is part of its charm. 

It's also nice to remember the good old times!

Brick, the Maniac brothers and I agreed to the DOS music in the early levels a long time ago. No sense in changing them now.

The maps are a lot smaller, a lot more simplistic, and so much easier to beat. IMO Luigi is right, they do give off a vanilla-ish atmosphere. A lot of mods usually pay tribute to the old school way so why not here in the beginning. 

That's how it usually was in earlier levels in their past mods as well so it's really nothing different.

I'm agree with you, guys; I'm actually remembered those music in original classics as well as The Lost Relic and Weltgericht.

By the way guys, I should have asked this long ago. Be honest!
We have done way too many different things. Before we advance too much in the levels, please say... which part(s), considering environment, enemies, puzzles or whatever else you can think on... was remarkibly annoying? I know you all loved the mixing part, so let's ignore this one.   
All levels we made for the second half so far have a lot of those unusual stuff. I would be awful if we repeated the same thing. 

And also, if you found some level or something of the level particularly appealing. That could be things like rain, the cutscenes, in what the level was centered, or anything else that grabbed your attention. Even the music.

I'll bet you guys are wondering if this project is dead after over a year of no updates. I got two words for that: HELL NO. It's still alive and kicking. 

I have been informed from Mega Luigi a couple days ago that there will be a status update on this mod soon. I do not know when though so be patient on it.

The most basic of basic updates I have briefed on is that they are halfway done creating the maps for the second part of the mod. There will be more puzzles. And thanks to brickgolem's enemy sprite pack he made last year, there will be even more variety of enemies. And if you saw last year's YT video update on it, the maps for the first part were redone using more than 2 planes. It really does feels a lot more Doom-ish with the actual walls being much taller than the player's head along with the ability to nearly create actual buildings with different ceiling heights on the inside.

There is a lot more done/gonna be a lot more done than just this, however I do not know what else was changed. And even if I did, I will continue to respect Mario Maniac and Mega Luigi's wishes by not spoiling it.

So look for an official update from them soon. Only they will reveal what they wish to reveal at this point. One thing is for sure, this mod is approaching Duke Nukem Forever in production time since its beginning which dates back to the end of 2009 . Of course you have to respect how busy the Mario brothers are with life outside of this.

Anyway this mod will not disappoint like DNF did. From what you have seen and played in the released demo version (which is very impressive in of itself), it will be nothing more than just a small fraction of what it will be once the final version is out.

Hello guys.

I would like to say something in case anyone's wondering if I stopped the sprite process, which in fact I didn't. It's still going softly, although not to much since I had a lot of things which stalled my progress.

Interesting though, is how fast the time is flying from us. It's almost nine years since the start progress on Shadow Genesis, five years ago since the first screenshots of the mod was revealed, and over two and a half year since the beta was released. Also it's also over two and a half years since I stepped into this project as a helping hand.

Little, or better said, nothing do I know the further progress of Shadow Genesis besides the YouTube videos, so I'm looking forward for the update soon.

I, on my other hand, are in progress on the next update with the enemy pack. It will contain a lot of surprises (issue fixes, more frame rates and new enemies) and is probably done with the second coming next year. This will be the final ideas I'll send to Shadow Genesis and they decide what's coming on the final version. I rely that Mario Maniac and Mega Luigi would do a great job creating this game and it would be a success.

Hello guys. This is the first post regarding the progress of our game in a quite long time!

So, what WolferCooker said is all true. As much as we don't want to spoil much, we feel it's good to show after such a long idle time. I don't remember if I mentioned this before, but when we started the levels, we had all the enemies and walls added (and coded), and for that reason, we thought the level design process now would be much faster. For this second half, sometimes we add a new enemy, but nowhere near as many as we added before. However, the number of planes is something that slows us down quite a bit. Just to explain, a plane doesn't mean another level of higher walls. I'm talking "plane" with the meaning it has on Wolfenstein code. We have some planes for walls, some for ceiling and some for objects. Different planes for objects is what allows us to place two objects in the same space, for example. And mapping higher walls with different levels of ceiling is a new level of challenge, as all we see in the editor is a pile of symbols that could mean an object beneath a ceiling that's below a wall with another object above it. It's pretty easy to miss things that way.

Examples of some things we have achieved with this:

Spoiler:

Well, but you guys may be thinking we are sort of making up excuses for our slow progress over time. So, about this specific room I have shown, lemme also show you guys how does that look on the map editor:

Spoiler:

So, how the hell does these images help at all? Well, they kinda don't, but that's how we are making our levels. Just make this exercise yourself, try to join all these images and form a 3d image of that room. To place second level objects, you must be sure there is a first level ceiling beneath it, or else it will just float around. You also must take in consideration level two walls because it makes no sense to decorate a higher level room which you can't see. In this case, we also must be sure the room is a closed space with no holes in the second level ceiling.

Did you visualize it? Hard, right? So, you kinda have to train your brain to be able to work with that. It's kinda like stacking layers of the level to compose the bigger picture, and it is not only a challenge, but it also takes an extra effort to achieve a good result. Anyway, continuing!

Besides that, some examples of things we added:

Spoiler:

You can notice the first levels of the beta version are more similar to the wolfenstein design than the later ones. Pretty much finding a key or another and getting to the end of the level alive. This second half won't start like that. Almost every level will have a small challenge or a puzzle or a unique thing you won't see in other level. And decisions... until like the half of this second half (sounds weird I know), decisions you made through the game, like calling or not calling Snake for example, will start having consequences. In the beta nothing happens because you simply didn't get there yet. Specifically about the holy staff, you'll have a second opportunity to take it. All I'll say is the harder it was for you to find it in the first half, the easier it will be to find it during the second half. You'll understand why later. Decisions 


About the puzzles... we tried to not spoil information about them because it was a beta. After the game is released, we won't be so strict about that. It's not our goal to make people suffer, but we need people to try first and help us finding what's too harsh, what's too easy, what's too annoying (unlikely, the game is lovely ). If we spoil, we can't get to any conclusions.

Alright, so to show something. First, we have been thinking about a major change. We are considering the possibility of allowing players to start in the second half if they wish. Why? Because the game is really long. It will go over 70 levels for sure, and not everyone is willing to play that much in a row. However, if you decide to do so.. remember the decisions? For the best or for the worst, it will always be considered as if you haven't chosen the optional thing to do. That means, you'll lose at the very least, the Orb of Fate secret levels, as well as secret weapons and you'll lose vital clues to understand the story as a whole. The story is not easy to follow, and requires some attention. Again, we're not sure we'll do this. But possibly, yes. Any opinions on this matter are welcome.

Second, there are different types of ammunition now. Not for all weapons. Those ammos are rare. You'll probably will find them once or twice in the levels as a free sample (I'll explain this soon). So, if you die you lose them? No. We got rid of the life system. It's a useless feature. The game now includes an autosave feature. It always saves your game in the first slot. And you can't save on that one anymore. That slot has the last you level you started, at the very beginning of it. If you regret something you did, or if you die, that slot is loaded and you start again as if you just entered the level. No risk of losing anything of your progress, no risk of having to restart the whole game because of some mistake.

About the ammos, some of you may have noticed the weirdo stuff on the status bar on the first screenshots. Since we got rid of the life system, we freed up some space on the status bar and used it for something more useful. That little symbol you see there is actually a new type of ammo for blitz. I won't spoil much about its properties or what does it do, but in some weapons, like blitz, you'll be able to choose other types of ammo.

So what if I'm playing two parallel games? Won't it overwrite that restricted slot? No. Because now there's a profile feature as well. Each profile has its own save slots, so you don't need to copy the game's folder and play in another directory just to prevent that. And look, all the treasures you collected will be displayed. Why? Because they are your money now too. We made something we won't spoil much, but it allows you to more or less build your own reward. Yes, it's also for buying things like the rare ammos, but it goes far beyond that. It's somewhat a new concept of thing, quite hard to define even for us, like at the limit of understanding (this is a ref for the future, take notes, kids). The point is, every level will have an item. A specific new item. Everytime you collect 3 of those, you'll have the chance to buy things there. Why you need an item? First, because nothing good is free. Second, because this is a purely optional feature. You won't have to do this a single time to beat the game, if you don't want to. So, if you think that's too unfitting for wolfenstein... ignore it. No problem. After adding those things, we also think that deciding how well you played the game by kill, treasure and secret ratios is not enough. Expect a revamp on how your grade will be evaluated, with lot more data and statistics than the usual ratios.

To show you guys a bit of the profile system: (don't pay attention to the fact the main menu still remains with the original looks. That may be literally the last thing we will do before releasing the game, but don't worry, it will be changed...someday)

Spoiler:

Well, that's all folks, for now! We really appreciate that you guys understand that a game of this size does not get finished in a night. We wish it did.

@brick: we really look forward to seeing your new stuff! Seeing all the things you released gave us a huge burst of creativity, which is always something positive. I also must agree about what you said concerning time, we are all getting old, it seems.

@WolferCooker: at least for us, the game will not be a disappointment

If no one ever beats the game, we're fine with that. At this point, we're happy we manage to build this after so much time of work. We want to put all our ideas on this game because there's a good chance this will be our last one. If not, the next one certainly will be, and much, MUCH shorter than this one is. Don't take this on a depressive note, but we gotta be realistic, we can't even say we will be still alive to finish another mod of this size! Either way, we can assure you guys this one will be completed, 100% guaranteed.

HOLY FCK!   


Mario and Mega, you guys just might have saved the entirety of Wolf3d modding from total extinction. A door that all of us thought never existed has appeared and will open up to many more different ideas and possibilities!

Once the full version is released, let the water run free! A new age in Wolf3d modding is upon us!

Thanks for the words but I guess saving it is a little too much.
True that we don't get as many mods a year like we did back in the 90s, but I guess most things we get now are way more innovative and of better quality, so it's only natural they will take longer to be made.
And we've been working non-stop on this modding since we started it. However, we don't have as much free time as we had before. Back in 2010 we used to work on it sometimes 4 hours a day each of us. Now, particularly, I've been working on it like 6-8 hours a week. Sometimes less.
It's not unusual taking 3 weeks to get walls and objects placed. Than another week to place enemies, bonus objects and floor/ceiling, and yet another week or two to add that unique things we mentioned, like the puzzles. Easily two months gone for a level. That makes 10 levels a year.
Sounds ridiculous when we used to make a level for Lost Relic in one afternoon.  
There are some good points, though. A thing I learned is that when you start developing rooms randomly to see what you can come up with... it ends like garbage most of the times. I might think a little too much, but I try to give every single room a meaning of why it must exists. It's also common keep 2 hours staring at wdc with only 2 rooms made in that time. When that happens, it's time to stop. Try again tomorrow.
It's also common see our game decaying. We make changes that affect other changes. Rain stopped working countless times, shade stopped affect the ceiling, particles go through walls, Snake bugs doors and make them unusable, projectiles spawning at random places in the level, lower level walls hiding higher level objects, text messages crashing the game for being too large, enemies simply not spawning anymore, timed artifacts becoming unlimited, game crashing when the level starts after you did a certain something on a previous level... all those are weekly problems we face very very often.
And the specific things also bug. In my case for example, the key card wall you find once couldn't be interacted with anymore, Citadel gates stopped working and killing the Hierophant wouldn't open the final gate. All those things happen at random and we can't predict them. That's a good reason of why some levels were bugged in the beta even after we tested and played them. Yes, in theory, we should test every level again after any major change, such as the higher walls. But we don't have time for that. So what I do often is choose a certain specific part of some levels and play there to see if it's still working, and I managed to find several bugs by doing so. We still will play the whole game obviously, after it's finished.
The mentioned decisions are also a good reason for our delay. We gotta code and create all situations and test all situations. Sometimes we spend a whole day testing something it will take you a minute to do.
We already concluded this was not a work supposed to be done with only 2 people. If we knew what was ahead, we wouldn't have started this game. But taking so long also gives us time to evolve and have more ideas, so the more delay, the farther we get from finishing this. Don't know if that's a good or bad thing.

Isn't brickgolem your only current bug tester right now seeing as he sent a screenshot to you guys? If you give me about 6 weeks from now, I can help again like I did with the first half as I will have a month between semesters by then. Granted that will be all the time I will have, but having a second tester (albeit temporary) can help you guys save a bit of time and move further along the project.

We don't have any testers. But what you did during first half for now is impossible. That because we both decided beforehand which map numbers each one would make.
Yeah, we make the maps out of order. Not a big deal because we have all planned, but if you played the second half now, you'll have like 3 or 4 maps to test before crashing the game. And defeating the Hierophant would lead you to secret level which would afterwards send you back to the middle of the first half. Not only the maps are made out of order... after the first half, the next map not necessarily is the next map number. For example, after the Hierophant (level 39), the next level if I'm not mistaken is level 46. We still have to remap the number to show you the proper value in status bar, so don't be fooled by the screenshots. That number means nothing concerning the levels.
I'm not saying we just made 3 or 4 levels after all this time either. They are quite scattered around the map numbers.

Oh my 

It's not as bad as it sounds. That happened because we didn't have an exact number of levels to do before, so we couldn't just place secret levels at the end because we didn't know the end was. Now we know how many we have left but still unsure of how many they are, because of those gaps.

Hey homies!

It's a bit funky to realize that it's been almost two years since the last post here, so it's understandable if any of you thought the game was dead. The good news (?) is that it is not .

Although we haven't updated this for the longest while, we didn't stop working on the game in this meanwhile. As most of you probably know, we are not exactly fond of spoiling all the game's content here, whether it is through screenshots or videos. This is one of the reasons for the lack of updates, as we thought it would be really tedious just to come here to say "level X is now fully decorated!!" or anything of the sort. 

We are still thinking about an idea we had to keep you guys more updated, but we didn't decide yet if we are gonna do it. 

By the way, I just wanted to say this one more time, but unless we die before finishing it, we are not going to stop working on the game before it's finished. It's a simple matter of investing a lot of effort and time at something and we definitely won't let it go to waste.

I have added a little video of the entrance to the Soul Orb (aka the place where demons become important) in the first page of the topic. It's nothing new for those who played the game, it's just a little something for those who didn't. It felt kinda right to at least post something that could be viewed as (at least mildly) interesting.

One last comment! I would like to emphasize how one of Mario's last posts here is too damn true for our own good.

"It's also common see our game decaying. We make changes that affect other changes. Rain stopped working countless times, shade stopped affect the ceiling, particles go through walls, Snake bugs doors and make them unusable, projectiles spawning at random places in the level, lower level walls hiding higher level objects, text messages crashing the game for being too large, enemies simply not spawning anymore, timed artifacts becoming unlimited, game crashing when the level starts after you did a certain something on a previous level... all those are weekly problems we face very very often"

Last week, when i had a little free time, I thought I would be able to work on my ongoing level, just to receive from Mario the news that the following things were bugged:
 - Higher ceilings were not being affected by shades
 - Transparent forest walls were not working with a mix of parallax/cloudy sky, leading to a weird reddish color being drawn on the transparent part


And these things I found myself:
 - Lower walls hiding higher level objects (for the thousandth time! Seriously, our game must be jinxed somehow, I've lost count of how many times I have fixed that. Yes it is working now. Just now. Tomorrow it may not be, for reasons.)
 - Objects right above higher walls were sometimes being drawn over the wall itself (yeah, maybe you can't imagine this. Don't worry, it's not important)
 - A vgagraph image was apparently replaced by an image of Waluigi with a color wheel, which happened when we lost our WDC project (for those who don't know, this doesn't mean we lost any content, but a few replacement images were saved just on the project, causing the vgagraph to restore to its previous state, with the Waluigi image). This took me some time to find out, as the symptom was just a crash.

Needless to say, I used pretty much all my free time fixing the decayments of our code. Yeah, that's not something to be proud of, but well, we are kinda used to it by now. Anyway, the important part is that it's all fixed. So far we have always been able to fix any bug we find in our code, thankfully. But yeah, when Mario said this was something we faced very very often, it is absolutely true.

"We already concluded this was not a work supposed to be done with only 2 people. If we knew what was ahead, we wouldn't have started this game. But taking so long also gives us time to evolve and have more ideas, so the more delay, the farther we get from finishing this."

And this! Besides the fact that this is not a workload compatible with two people getting more clear by the second, the part about evolving our ideas is so true. I spent some weeks (just weeks ok) without working on my level, and in this meanwhile, I had some exciting ideas about what to do. I remember feeling a bit like ~meh before, as I felt that the pool of ideas I had at the time was a bit short on interestingness. That means that, in my point of view, my level will be much more interesting now than it would be had I finished it weeks ago. It's interesting, what can be seen as a lack of progress sometimes comes for the best and makes the result much more rewarding to us. 

Ah yeah, just as a curiosity and a comment after the one after the last, it's pretty obvious that as creators, we both have our own favorite maps. I mean, from my own levels there are some that were much more interesting than others, imo. From the beta version of the game, I have a whole spectrum of feelings towards my own levels that go from "argh" to "#woah self-hug". Not sure if any of you are still reading my wall of text by now, but it would be interesting to know how you guys score each level. Of course, I believe most of you who played probably don't remember in detail most levels, but that's something we could do when the final version is released. It would be definitely interesting, as a creator, to know if my own views of how I score my own levels match the feeling you guys had when you played it. If this sounds interesting, lemme know. Either way, I will probably mention this again whenever the final version is released, assuming old age allows me to remember that by then.

Anyway guys, I guess that's it for now. I hope you all are okay considering the context we currently live in.

Hey. Just to let you guys know, this user, Asia Market, started recording the gameplay attempting 100% at the levels. I'm sure there are levels in the beta, like the Citadel A, in which that can't be achieved.
I warned him about that (it's a beta afterall), not sure he will keep doing it until the last level.

Here's his channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-SYMtiCfw6GcHu75f5_Olg

For the record, he already completed the game once. He got stuck at sound switches puzzle (the very first one, he didn't get the orb), at the mixing the puzzle (he didn't read any info) and in the cave's first level.

I'll be curious to see if that guy found a way to unlock a small room full of treasure/demonic treasure in the Citadel level that I couldn't.

I thought I had mentioned, but that room was accessible until we changed one thing in the game's mechanic and now it's not anymore. You'll need something the beta doesn't have to get there.

Uhhh neither you nor Mega said that. Mega always told me that room was accessible when I was test running it back then and even through the changes you guys made.

Not that it matters anyway because it's just the beta version. And hopefully you guys are almost done making the entire game.

He did?  
That's odd considering I made the level and I can assure you he didn't play it.
But this change was made long after the level was done and when I tested it, it was accessible. Or maybe you're mistaking it for the holy staff thing, that one is obtainable.

Depends on your definition of "almost". After I finish my current level, there will be only 2 left for me to do, but Luigi has some more to finish, not sure how many. He spent several weeks making a puzzle, that delayed him a little bit.

Well that's good news.

Btw, I have just looked on the messages we exchanged back then. There's this one:


I'm pretty sure what happened is that at the time I told you that, I didn't realize that change in the game's mechanics was also present in the beta version. If it were not there, it would be accessible indeed. But as Mario said, there will be another way to access that room on the final version, and we will surely give the opportunity for the player to score 100% on all levels.

AsiaMarket wrote:There's 6 things that I wanted to talk about for now.



1. On one of level 17's secret,there was nothing in it.Did you forget to add items?Or that secret is for luring and shooting the enemies.

Footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFPl2rWouEQ 30:25



2. On my first time of playing Shadow Genesis in I am Death Incarnate,I was only able to reach to level 20.It's because I was low on ammo and I couldn't kill the firespawn,imps,and lost souls.I think I wasted on trying to kill a human that is not a nazi.It's 100% that his name and info is in the Book of the Dead. I'm kind of not saying that you should add more ammos.I'm just letting you know that probably someone who play Shadow Genesis the first time, could be dealing with the same problem as I was.


3. On level 37,the part where you have to go into the black underwater is super duper hard.It's take so time around 5-10 seconds to load and then soon later you get kill by the monsters that I dont know even what they called.I really like the design and I can tell that you and your brother really work hard on coding and making the player look like he/she is in underwater but all the underwater parts has to go except for that one maze part with death artifact.Or move or remove the monster else where.I think the problem is that after the monster die,they drop black smoke which takes forever to disappear.I played on Can I Play Daddy difficulty mode and I can't imagine the amount of health and damage it will have in I Am Death Incarnate difficulty.It's 99% unlikely that you will remove it in the final version and I can completely understand that. Here a footage of me dying and reloading my save file.I have other videos of me dying in the underwater but Im too lazy to look through it.The video is probably not a good evidence since I only showed 2 attempts of me dying.

Footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMdwTlhYUqE



4. On level 18,the room where the ground prevent you from going until you kill the "boss"(What do you even call the "boss"?),I manage to get to the portal without killing the "boss".Did you already know this bug/glitch/trick?I used this trick on my first attempt of playing Shadow Genesis because I was worry that I wouldn't have enough ammo. You should add a death artifact at the enterance of the room and then make it to where once you kill the "boss",it will drop the holy cross.I type "boss" 5 times(including this one) and it's bugging me out xD.

Footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R5TPKxqOnI

5. As on trying to do a 100% gameplay on level 18, I only got 97% treasures ,and I think I know the reason why.When I touch the soul orb,it will teleport me to another place but I didn't actually grab the orb.When I touch the soul orb,my score didn't change.Maybe I'm wrong and you made to where the soul orb doesn't count as a treasure.Also I somehow miss the SS Sergeant(or Super Soldier) and got 100% kills.I'm a bit worry that I'm going to lose my 100% streaks .I thought that I was going to lose my 100% streaks in level 17 since I only got 99% kills during when I try to find all the secrets.By the way,I already know that some levels are impossible to get 100% when I first did my 100% gameplay


6. I really want to know the name of the music from the "boss" in level 18 and 23. My most favorite music is from level 28.The music from level 23 is more egypt theme in my opinion.Did you compose one of the music in Shadow Genesis?If so,then which one?I would be surprise and shock.Since there's so many music(that are probably about 50-60 of them), you can just name 1-3 of them.I already know that the music is in the file which is great.

I'm posting this comment on this forum instead on youtube is because for some reason youtube deleted this comment whenever I post it on your video.You might have like 5 notifications of me attempting to post this comment and I'm sorry if it's bothering you. 

Heya! First of all, thanks for your input. Feel free to comment on anything you might want.

So let's see:

About 1: you're right! I actually forgot to add anything useful on that secret, it's not there just to lure enemies or anything of the sort (I wouldn't consider that a good enough reward anyway). I had already noticed that a while back while checking this map, so it is actually already fixed on the version we are working on. Still, thanks for letting me know, and if there is any others, let us know too.

About 2: Hmmm, I'm actually not sure about which enemy you are talking about. If you can, send me an image or a moment in some of your videos where that enemy shows up, because right now I'm not really sure what to say about this. Still, I'd like to make a few comments about the ammo. A while back, Milanor played the game on Bring'em On, and he actually finished it. As far as I remember, he had a few problems in one or two specific levels, but not in the game as a whole. Something really important, though, is that you really should not and can't use any weapon to kill any enemy. If you use a weapon which doesn't work well to kill certain enemies, there is no guarantee you will have enough ammo to complete the game, indeed. That's written on the readthis btw.

About 3: yeah, that part is indeed probably one of the hardest. Thanks for sending the video, btw. I perhaps can take a look to see if it is possible for the situation to scale to a nearly impossible one, but I won't lie, you're probably right about the fact it will remain the same . Thing is, I have to emphasize this A LOT here, you really gotta pay attention to which weapon you are using. Some creatures require a sense of strategy if you want to get rid of them easily. These ones are called "blots" btw. For example, you were using the Soul Tormentor (aka demonic staff) to kill a blot... does that really feel like a good idea? I mean, it's a creature who lives on the deepest pits of darkness, so... yes, they are actually immune to the Soul Tormentor, no matter how many times you shoot them with it, so you were never gonna kill them with that. What I mean to say is that to kill some creatures, you will need to use some strategy at times, which does not only mean using the appropriate damage type. The problem you had with the black smoke from the blots was surely exacerbated when you used the Firewall, for example. I know most people aren't used to thinking on this kind of thing while playing Wolfenstein mods, but you really have to do that on our game . That will be even more necessary in the second part, btw.

About 4: Oh, nice one there! It's actually quite amusing how we, as designers of the game, sometimes neglect to think on certain possibilities. It's fine if you did that, btw, if it's there, it's our fault for not noticing. But still, thanks for letting me know . The boss is called Dark Inquisitor, btw. 

About 5: Hmmm... about the soul orb, I think you might actually be right on that. I just checked the code and it doesn't seem to be counted towards the 100%, so that's indeed a mistake on my part, thanks for letting me know! About missing the bad guys and getting 100% anyway, that's something I didn't see happening yet. It's not impossible that there might be some bug related to that, so I will check that as well. If you notice any kind of particular situation where that happens, please let us know. Still, I know it's something pretty important for most players to guarantee that 100% is achievable, so that's really something we have been keeping in mind for quite a while. Don't worry, we will surely allow the player to get 100% on all levels and fix any bug related to that if it happens. 

About 6: level 18 boss is main menu from Twisted Metal Black, and level 23 is from ocremix, I'd have to take a look to find the actual title. About level 23, just asked Mario and he says there's no boss there . Ah and no, we didn't compose any of these. I do find the idea interesting, but judging by how long we are taking to get this game done, I'm pretty sure that wouldn't be too wise right now

About posting things here, don't worry about it! Also no problem with YouTube, I know their messaging system is a joke and has always been since day one. So no biggie.

Thanks for all the input and questions btw, anything else you wanna say or ask feel free to.

Asia, those tome books you see in secret areas are key to knowing which weapons are the most effective against the new set of enemies. I'd screenshot each one of them if I were you.

All the weapons in your arsenal are not there just so you can spam bullets/projectiles any time you please.

BTW Mario/Mega, I hope you fixed that Tome book glitch & crash in Level 23 (IIRC. It's the one with the torch puzzle I had a problem with first time around).

We still intend to make those info available at all times once you pick them, specially because there are many more to be added. It was never the intention to make you memorize those. Most of them you can deduce with common sense, the rest... you use the book. Also usually the ammo supplied nearby the creature is proper to kill them.

The book should be fixed by now. Truth is that vgagraph chunks are a mess to configure every time you add a new image, it's not hard to miss something that very possibly will make something completely unrelated crash.

Alright that's good to hear

About Floor 19 Kill Stat:
I got 99% Kill on Floor 19. Any clue where the last enemy might be?Is it possible that the invisible skeleton counted as kill.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_N4M1gtXfw&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=AsiaMarket
I killed the enemies that possibly people might miss:            Timestamp:    Notes:         
Ceiling Chaingun                                                             / 03:35            Impossible to get through the door.
Cacodemon                                                                    / 09:04            Stuck between the wall.
Imp                                                                              / 28:45            Last enemy when you hit the fourth or last switch.I almost miss this.

About Floor 20:
The enemy that I was talking about is the EvilBJ.They are capable of dealing damage from far range I think and it was the problem that I had when I first play this game.
The amount of ammos at the middle and end are huge but at the beginning you get less ammos.The part when you finish the puzzle is the hardest.You get hit from everywhere
and the amount of health the firespawner have is big.I have to use up almost all of my ammo to kill all of the enemies.Does it have a resistance?

About Floor 21:
I really like the atmosphere of the level but the problem that I hate about this floor is that you can't go to the menu screen nor save.And I understand that floor 21 is a place where you can't go back after a mysterious guy teleport you to somewhere else.I aleast know how to leave the game.To be honest,I was going to complain about finding the secret and collecting the treasures with only a limited time but I got a 100% Kill,Treasure,and Secret.It's really clever of how you guys added a secret that doesn't require for you to push a wall but instead go to the secret area and also made it to where all treasure doesn't count as treasure(if you know what I mean). 

WolferCooker, you're completely right but the problem is that during my first attempt of playing this mod, I never care about finding the secrets so I ended up not knowing which weapon are effective.Reason is because I thought all secrets are actually 100% hidden with no hint so I never bother finding any secrets.Also I still have no idea what the percentage,physical,and death mean.Does physical mean bullets?  

I have no idea why but for some reason,I never knew that most healing item can cure the artifact of decay. I thought the Field Surgeon Pack is the only item that can cure artifact of decay.Even though there was this one time, I took 1 artifact of decay and then 1 medkit.I saw that my health stay still and then I was like this must be a bug but then I thought to myself "It probably only happen in floor 38 since I can't get to that place with multiple artifact of decay blocking my way."  That's why I never got the Orb of Enlightment.I thought I have to find a secret with a bunch of Field Surgeon Pack to get through the artifact of decay. 

About Landmine:
I'm so happy that you didn't add place any landmine in the first level or any other outside level.I would turn off my game sound if I see any landmine like in Spear Resurrection.Also I don't see any way of obtaining a landmine as of right now.I was going to complain about the landmine in your old mod called Operation Weltmeisterung but I got confused with Project Weltmeisterung.I never play Operation Weltmeisterung. 

About Blot:
That's strange,I thought the Blot is not immune to Soul Tormentor since I actually kill them with it.And also Soul Tormentor is my only weapon to use since most of my weapons were almost empty and also since I'm close to the end, why not use up all the ammo on the Soul Tormentor.
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__s8zBD-iGA&ab_channel=AsiaMarket

Floor 19: It's possible it's not counting. If I still remember, it only spawns when you get to that area, so if you complete the level without going there, you should get 100% kills... assuming it's the revenant's fault. I'll check it as soon as I can.

Floor 21: Yeah since the level is really short, the only real challenge is get to the secret. The scattered treasures right now work only as points, but after we release the full version, each treasure will have their own value. That might force you to choose between some of them.

Won't say anything for the others since Luigi made level 20 and the blot creature.



Physical is related to the explosions of certain weapons. Normal bullets are considered the "default" damage, so the monster's HP works as weakness or resistance.

Indeed there are no landmines in the beta, they will only appear in the second half. We didn't initially plan to release a beta at all, we only did because we didn't know it would take us all this time to finish the game. But like... it's there in the ReadThis anyway.
And no, they won't be invisible like in Spear Ressurection. They are extremely noticeable, actually. The game is pretty tough already, we don't need this to make it harder.

Yea, most secrets have some kind of mark, being an object or a decoration. We don't want you to push every single wall in 128x128 map to figure out secrets. After we finished the first half, we revisited the maps specifically to add those hints.
Speaking of which, I'll take the chance to say that you must have noticed the game starts in a pretty standard way. We VERY slowly started adding features, such as the secret in level 21, puzzles, spawning enemies... to make you thing outside the box. Do not limit yourself to Wolf's original scope of secrets and challenges... The second half will have A LOT more of those things, almost every level have one of more of those kind of secrets.

Just adding to Mario's reply:

About level 20: oh I see. I'm pretty sure there are just a few of these enemies in the level, though. I don't really remember having too much problem with them when I tested the level, I think it's more related to the strategy used to kill them, as in, not staying too close. About the spawn having a resistance, once again, you really have to read the things that are written in the ReadThis section and in the middle of the game. 

For example, the thing about physical damage has been explained there (and fiery spawn's resistances as well). 
 

The game is designed assuming that you will know how what to use to kill the enemies (not necessarily always the best options, but if you try to use a flamethrower to kill the fiery spawn, well, you're gonna die (and rightfully so)). So yeah, the fiery spawn has resistances, not everything is equally effective, but it is possible that there is not enough ammo on the room where you fight it, especially due to the other monsters too. It has a lot of hp too, so it will probably take a while to kill it even using the best choices of weapons. But I will test it again and see if it needs more ammo and/or health, don't worry.

About blot: oh right! I just tested it on the current game and it is indeed immune to the Soul Tormentor, but then I realized we have actually improved (a lot) the resistance system after we released the beta, which means a lot of things were changed there. At first we had coded it in a not really scalable way, but we later changed it to a more good looking table which works wonderfully well when compared to the other system. I just checked the code of the beta version and you're right, blots are not immune to Soul Tormentor in the beta version, although they were meant to be. So yeah, you can use it to kill on the beta version, but don't count on that for the final version as it won't work. It's not impossible that there may be other mistakes in some enemy's resistances, we also intend to check that again before releasing the final version to ensure things are properly working. Still, what I said earlier remains, you really have got to use some strategy to deal with certain types of enemies, like not using the Firewall on blots, for example. But thanks for providing the video anyway! It's always good to be able to actually see what's going on.

Quick question! Is it possible to get to the green door in floor 30?

AsiaMarket wrote:Quick question! Is it possible to get to the green door in floor 30?

Indeed you cannot! That's related to a secret level, which is not included in the beta version. This is only a really small part of it though, don't think it will be that easy 

Hey guys, time for a very timely update on our lives, which haven't ceased to exist.

We are still working, the second part of the game is honestly turning out to be quite different compared to the first. Of course, the main aspects continue to be the same, but there's a whole set of new playing dynamics that will come into play, and naturally this also causes the levels to take longer to be designed. Can't blame you guys if you think we have given up, but in all honesty, we just took our first break in a VERY long time a month or two ago. Totally worth it, we came back feeling renewed, more motivated than before, with a much more fresh mind, and I'm really excited about continuing to put my ideas into practice (and so is Mario).

By the way, I heard about Asia Market's new in-development game inspired by Shadow Genesis! This is wonderful news for us, it's quite amazing to see that happening to our (unfinished) game, because that's pretty much how we started, being inspired by WSJ's games. So it is a very strange feeling, but a good one. Not sure if Asia is around here, or if anyone saw his game, but we are always here to talk about ideas and we really appreciated all the reviews/discussions about Shadow Genesis' first part. 

And like always, I know it's a bit depressing to think about how long we have been working on this, but we won't give up until it's done. I never even considered giving up on this, too much time and effort to be wasted. I can't ask any of you to keep waiting, but if you guys are still here in the future, the game will be ready at some point, that is for sure.

Mega Luigi wrote:...By the way, I heard about Asia Market's new in-development game inspired by Shadow Genesis! This is wonderful news for us, it's quite amazing...

I checked http://dhw.wolfenstein3d.com/ and AsiaMarket has 0 posts there.  AsiaMarket has only 7 posts on this wolf3d.darkbb.com forum.  What's the game going to be named?

Thank you for going back to work on the second part of Shadow Genesis!

Well, just to be clear, we are not involved at all with it, but the released demo goes by the name of "Vision of Time & Fate". It will definitely be interesting to see what comes out of, especially for us, since it's based on our work too, but we don't have any other information about how is it going or the current status. 

As long as we are alive, we will continue working on it. And thank you as well for checking on Asia!

Dear Shadow Genesis Team,

I'm still an admin of https://wolf3d.darkbb.com.  Now, Wolf fans are spending even more time at http://dhw.wolfenstein3d.com/ than The Wolf 3D Haven.  The Wolf 3D Haven isn't getting very many posts anymore and I don't know yet about it's future.  I want it around.

I appreciate the enthusiasm for continuing Shadow Genesis!  Do you still plan to have releases of Shadow Genesis beyond just the Part 1 Beta?  Possibly you might want to join http://dhw.wolfenstein3d.com/, click on "Addons/Mods/TC's" and create a thread for us to follow for future updates for Shadow Genesis in case The Wolf 3D Haven crashes again.  I'll subscribe to the thread there.  Take your time to upload the next game file.  Have fun!

I don't remember if you had noticed, but OMJ has been banned from both The Wolf 3D Haven and Diehard Wolfers years ago.  I noticed there was a mod of his that was listed on The Diehard Wolfers Wiki where the reviewer typed,  "OMJ says that this is his last mod.  Time will tell. ..."

-stathmk

Heya, nice to see you around, hope you've been doing well
 
It's not just here, Discord is killing most forums in every kind of community. Although it's obvious how old boards like this one are outdated in terms of functionality, I still find a board very useful, even if to keep resources and tutorials. People now like throwing stuff in Discord and good luck figuring out it evens exists if you miss it.

Shadow Genesis is not dead, just slow as always. This second half has a lot more peculiarities than the first one, that slows us down a lot. Specially it has a lot of choices you can make but you have to code and map all possibilities, even when only one is taken. It makes everything look... way slower than it should be. Also writing dialogues... 1 min of dialogue can take over an hour to be made. Some people make a map with that time  

I'm finishing my last main level now, and might give Luigi a hand finishing his to speed up the process later. We talked about releasing another beta in the meantime but unfortunately the levels being out of order and maps that have to be skipped due to being unfinished will be loads of work just to get everything connected and a major spoiler. We considered giving the game an optional mode to play it as chapters like the original game, with the price being not playing the levels that transition from one chapter to another. Not sure that will happen, but would make a second beta a more plausible thing.

WolferCooker had already suggested that we should join DHW. I'm particularly not very fond of that idea. Really don't know if that's gonna happen, but regardless, the project won't stop. It won't be finished this year, that's for sure, and odds it will be finished next year are extremely low.

We are aware OMJ is gone, haven't heard of him in years actually. Heh... whatever.

Anyway... we will try to keep this updated a bit more often. At least once a month we will come here to at least say "we did nothing this month".

I think Luigi said those already, but some general changes we gonna do include:
-Complete overhaul the artifact of life. It's an useless feature, let's face it. Always was. Nobody plays a game without saving and loading. 
-Random drops will remain but will be decided when the enemy spawns, not when they die. And those will be affected by the chosen difficulty.
-The difficulties themselves will be altered. The damage proportion between them will be a lot smaller at the very least. It's impossible to make a game challengeable in all difficulties when one of them deals 5x more damage than the others, the difference will likely be something like Death Incarnate dealing double the damage of Can I play Daddy tops. We still want to make more differences than just damage and looting between them, but we will focus on that after the levels are done in 2050.

Thanks for you interest, nonetheless. Means a lot when the community is so small now

Mario Maniac wrote:...WolferCooker had already suggested that we should join DHW. I'm particularly not very fond of that idea. Really don't know if that's gonna happen, but regardless, the project won't stop. It won't be finished this year, that's for sure, and odds it will be finished next year are extremely low.

We are aware OMJ is gone, haven't heard of him in years actually. Heh... whatever.

...but we will focus on that after the levels are done in 2050.

Please read http://dhw.wolfenstein3d.com/viewtopic.php?p=106376 including clicking on my link that ends in 7103 in the first post.  To make a long story short, more email suffixes are allowed now, and it's easier to join DHW without sending a request to me.  This is about The Diehard Wolfers Forum, not The Diehard Wolfers Wikia that was named that without BrotherTank's approval.  I haven't joined that Wikia yet.  EDIT 1: I had already posted a thread on The DHW forum a link that Bethesda or Machine Games started a project that is known as Wolfenstein 3 at least for now.  EDIT 2: We also posted that there will be a Rise of The Triad (1994 rendition) remastered with extra levels, a better level editor, and more features.  I think it will be called Rise of The Triad Ludicris Edition.  Rise of The Triad was originally going to be a Wolfenstein 3D expansion pack, but then the code was modified so much that they made a completely different game.  I like it, but I don't know if it's your cup of tea.

OMJ might now be in Hungary or in Brussels, Belgium.

The levels will be done in 2050?  Sure, whatever you say you 133-year-old man!  When I'm age 133, I'm more concerned about which painkillers to peacefully die with on a deathbed than making computer games for my grandson's grandson!  My granddaughter's granddaughter is prettier than your granddaughter's granddaughter!  I'm kidding about this paragraph!

I remember when they banned all third party emails...

...and that's exactly the kind of authoritarian attitude that makes me not want to go there. A place for the community... watch a few selected one being put on a pedestal is more like it.
Not trying to be offensive, that's how I felt about DHW. Fortunately from what I can see, the moderators have more common sense, maybe that's not true anymore.

So you're saying the few ones here are leaving to stay mostly active in DHW it seems. Luigi told me a few times he was considering joining there. I didn't even know this whitelist thing have been made I'm glad I didn't lol...
I'll keep that in mind though, thanks for the info


I was also joking about 2050   Don't worry, after a while, you won't feel... anything anymore

Ok so I have democratically decided we gonna post something at the beginning of every month. Luigi won't show anything this time because we're not sure who is who right now.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/368824598411870213/1125247411426705470/2023-07-02_23-04-02.mp4

It's low quality since it had to fit in discord. Just a quick test of features. You can see there are badly used walls and stuff.
I don't intend to make sense with my posts, conclude whatever you want. This is our "hi, we are still here."

I promise that's not a forest. More like a garden.

I just noticed that the link to download the beta version on the first page was not working and looked pretty strange, so I have fixed that. At this point, playing that beta version is not really gonna help us with testing since it's incredibly outdated, but it should still work for fun and suffering purposes 

LOL well at least it's something.

Mario Maniac wrote:Ok so I have democratically decided we gonna post something at the beginning of every month. Luigi won't show anything this time because we're not sure who is who right now.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/368824598411870213/1125247411426705470/2023-07-02_23-04-02.mp4

It's low quality since it had to fit in discord. Just a quick test of features. You can see there are badly used walls and stuff.
I don't intend to make sense with my posts, conclude whatever you want. This is our "hi, we are still here."

I promise that's not a forest. More like a garden.

Thank you.

First of all, I'm debating myself about how seriously I should take my Wolfenstein 3D mods archiving project.  I want to at least start a spreadsheet of mods with descriptions, level numbers, and links to download from uploads on my web space.
 
I’m guessing you know that Spear Resurrection and Spear End of Destiny have regular levels, spear levels, secret levels, and super secret levels.  I think that the Shadow Genesis VSWAP is coded so that it can’t be checked in an editor to find this out.
 
How many regular levels, spear levels, secret levels, and super secret levels are in the Shadow Genesis Part 1 Beta?  I’ll want to put it on the spreadsheet.  Do I have your permission to zip the Shadow Genesis Part 1 Beta, this file at https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/368824598411870213/1125247411426705470/2023-07-02_23-04-02.mp4 , and Youtube’s teaser/trailer all into one folder into a rar file to put on my web space?
 
In this thread, I typed this:
= = = = = =
The levels will be done in 2050?  Sure, whatever you say you 133-year-old man!  When I'm age 133, I'm more concerned about which painkillers to peacefully die with on a deathbed than making computer games for my grandson's grandson!  My granddaughter's granddaughter is prettier than your granddaughter's granddaughter!  I'm kidding about this paragraph!
= = = = = =
Please read this article that I saw today about retired senior citizens that remember Alan Shepard, Sputnik, and Laika that are addicted to a Science Fiction game:
https://www.gamingbible.com/news/older-gamers-celebrate-their-retirements-since-they-can-play-starfield-364197-20230704
So, where do you live?  When do we get to pick you up for the car pool to go to our 133rd birthday party at the nursing home?  We’ll be addicted to playing the Science Fiction game from our deathbeds, discuss painkillers while our grandsons’ grandsons’ overhear, and then we’ll fall over dead!

The levels are in the gamemaps, that's not encrypted but the large number of unknown symbols may give that feeling.
The beta has 39 levels. This second part have levels that use more than one map, that won't be a reliable way to determine it anymore.
No secret levels of any kind, just 39 regular ones.
You can take the video yea. You'll have a collection of insanities at the end lol..
I should change my age to 13 to be young again... then I'll have an excuse to pretend to be John Carmack and ask for End of Destiny diffs and finally learn how to fixed.

Mario Maniac wrote:... then I'll have an excuse to pretend to be John Carmack and ask for End of Destiny diffs and finally learn how to fixed.

I do have the 1992 or 1993 Hint Book or Manual of Wolfenstein 3D from Apogee.  It does mention that John Carmack and Adrian Carmack are from different cities and aren't related.

Do you find this interesting: http://dhw.wolfenstein3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=3296

I don't know what you mean about John Carmack and End of Destiny diffs.  Please explain in your own words what you mean so that we're on the same page.  I have completed playing End of Destiny years ago.

Thank you for telling me about the 39 levels.  Some levels have more than 1 map?

So as it has been democratically decided by Mario, here's an update on something we have done. This is mostly related to bug fixing, as it happens quite often that we discover new bugs as we test things. Specifically, this is about our higher walls and objects. As you can see, there is a gate that's just floating around there. 





This took quite a long time to figure out the reason behind it. Some levels had random objects showing up as higher plane objects, even though there was seemingly no reason for that. The places where this happened were pretty random, although it happened always in the same tiles in the same maps. Fortunately, after some struggle, I was able to pinpoint that some of the structures were not being properly initialized, which explained the somewhat random occurrence of this bug. In fact, a lot of the bugs we end up spending hours and hours to fix are related to our higher planes. It's quite funny actually, as this feature is something that was originally going to be a feature implemented for my secret level. Later on, we decided we wanted to use it in normal levels too.



Naturally, wolf's code is not originally made to facilitate the implementation of features such as these, and neither are the features people implemented on top of it later on. For example, in this case, the directional 3d sprites have pretty much the same drawing routines as the normal objects doubled in the code. So, whenever implementing something like the higher planes, that means it is way more likely to have problems since you have to address the same thing in multiple different places. There were also similar problems with particles, such as rain/snow, which had to be fixed to work properly with higher planes. Sometimes it makes me want to consider reimplementing most of these things in a better, more modern way that suits our needs, but of course this ship has sailed and it would only cause troubles for us at this point.



I still think it's worth it though, since it allows us to achieve some much more interesting and complex designs such as this:

Mega Luigi wrote:...
I still think it's worth it though, since it allows us to achieve some much more interesting and complex designs such as this:

Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!  I like the way that the multiple stories tall walls remind me of Doom, Doom 2, and Rise of The Triad!  I thought that you'd like to know that yesterday that I got an email that the Rise of The Triad remaster with extra levels and features is now for sale!: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1421490/Rise_of_the_Triad_Ludicrous_Edition/