Chaos Zone: new release

[Tets]

The long-awaited new release of Chaos Zone is finished and up for downloading. New to this version is the level select, available after clearing the game on any difficulty, and a little treat for those who are into collecting emblems. There is also a new sky for Dark Palisades (which I still need to do a bit of work improving) and some new areas have been added to the zone. Boss acts have been extended into Sonic CD-style boss acts, as in a very short level leading up to the boss itself.

Next release will hopefully contain a new zone and preliminary work on special stages to replace the emeralds-lying-about-in-random-space thing I have going on now.

So, here you have it, Chaos Zone download page.

 

[Hyperknux]

Wow I like this. nice on Tets :)

 

[Callum]

Awesome. Good job :)

 

[Morph]

I am very impressed by the beautiful environment!
I think the best part is the frigid peak zone. I like the changes between cave and mountainclimbing atmosphere. :D

The only thing disturbing me are the background music-themes of the first two zones. It's not that they are bad chosen! I really like them... they are just too loud. Nearly five times louder than the normal boss music or the sound between the acts. :|

 

[Super mystic sonic]

I've always loved Chaos Zone, and I still do. Get going and make a vulcano zone, airschip zone, and moon zone.

If you are gonna make a space zone, try making a spring that launch you to another planet farway. By using lower gravity, and a underwater red spring.

 

[Monsteriestyn]

On the new boss level, the teleport at the end is a 1-shot only. Meaning in netgames, other people can't go in, and if the one inside dies, then no one can get in. You might want to fix that before it's on the addons.

 

[Dark Angel]

This Is Awesome!

Great work! This is really neat!

 

[ZarroTsu]

Very nice level pack tets. I hope it gets lots of unlockables =3

Also, for this and other packs with unlockables, please use every-other or every-third unlockable slot. It makes the secrets list look neater :P

 

[hedgehog_neon]

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH


FUZZY

 

[Sun]

More Chaos Zone bugs/unfixed crap :P.

MAJOR BUG: The Aero Shrine Act 1 Sonic Emblem doesn't record in status. This is because the "emblem" is actually a NiGHTS star. You can tell its a NiGHTS star bacause when you grab it, a 10 thing from NiGHTS appears, and you have 10 points on your score.

REDWALLs. These is also "real" REDWALLs, and not the renderer's fault.

Not a bug, but do we really need that barrier there? All it does in make the area to right weird looking when you at the left area.

Heres the breakable wall at the start of Metal Wasteland Act 1. It doesn't have THZCRACK on it, and the tunnel that you go though via breakable wall a bit farther ahead with a Magent shield also doesn't have THZCRACK.

Black line under the CASTLE* texture. This isn't the only one that's like this, but strangly, the one next to a black line one doesn't have a black line. Mystic has gotten past this problem, so you should too. However, personally, I think the CASTLE* textures should be removed mainly because it makes Aero Shrine look like it is an "Eggman" level, which its not.

 

[Mystic]

Black line under the CASTLE* texture. This isn't the only one that's like this, but strangly, the one next to a black line one doesn't have a black line. Mystic has gotten past this problem, so you should too. However, personally, I think the CASTLE* textures should be removed mainly because it makes Aero Shrine look like it is an "Eggman" level, which its not.

Incorrect, I haven't. Look again. That's an OpenGL renderer error that there isn't any way around. The only reason it's more obvious there is because you're so close to the flag. You'll see that error on every banner flag in OpenGL. It is not fixable, and is on the list of ignored errors. You can actually notice that kind of thing in the official maps as well.

 

[Sun]

Black line under the CASTLE* texture. This isn't the only one that's like this, but strangly, the one next to a black line one doesn't have a black line. Mystic has gotten past this problem, so you should too. However, personally, I think the CASTLE* textures should be removed mainly because it makes Aero Shrine look like it is an "Eggman" level, which its not.

Incorrect, I haven't. Look again. That's an OpenGL renderer error that there isn't any way around. The only reason it's more obvious there is because you're so close to the flag. You'll see that error on every banner flag in OpenGL. It is not fixable, and is on the list of ignored errors. You can actually notice that kind of thing in the official maps as well.

There isn't any in the official maps. They USED to be in them, but they aren't there anymore somehow. This happened somewhere in the late mrtf_mult1094-vx WADs.

 

[Tets]

Terribly sorry about the sudden absence from the internet. The morning after I released this latest Chaos Zone version, my computer "broke", for lack of a better explanation. Only now have I had the opportunity to access the internet from another source. Incidentally, I should be getting a new motherboard and CPU tomorrow, which should take care of my problems.

As soon as I get my PC back to working order I'll start fixing these bugs that have been reported. During my time away from the computer I have also been planning out some new ideas, mainly involving the inclusion of special stages at long last, and a beefed up version of Arid Ruins.

I'd also like to address some of the comments posted here. FLB seems to be scouring my level pack for bugs, I've had a good number of reports from him in the past and it seems to be a continuing trend. To start off, those redwalls are in newly designed areas and are due to brain farts. They will of course be taken care of.

Any NiGHTS star things you encounter are leftover from when I used them as placeholders, there are in fact actual emblems for each level, I've tested each one and they work properly. I thought I removed all of bad ones, but a few might have sneaked back in when I restored backups, which happened very frequently due to Zennode destroying some maps.

Any barriers that seem pointless are probably there to prevent the renderer from drawing too far, which results in the HOM effect in software.

Some breakable walls are not immediately evident in the pack because when I built them there were not many textures available in the main wad to signify that a wall is breakable. In most cases I used other methods to draw attention to those areas. Those walls will be retextured where I see fit.

Mystic already covered this one, but the OpenGL renderer error seen on the CEZ banners also can be seen in a lot of other places. Grass borders, for instance. Or basically almost any place where a middle texture is used. This has been happening for years and will continue to happen until the OpenGL renderer stops sucking.

As for the boss teleporters, CZ64, thanks for bringing that to my attention. That too was due to a brain fart. Though I don't like the idea of officially supporting co-op in this level pack, I understand that it is a popular mode of play, and those will be fixed as soon as is possible.

Finally, I've been told that the boss levels are a bit boring, what with no badniks or anything special in them. This will be remedied as well, I have plans for them.

 

[Tets]

Double post, but it has been three days so I think it's justified.

I've uploaded a bug fix version of Chaos Zone that eliminates most of the issues reported thus far. The NiGHTS thing in Aero Shrine act 1 has been removed again, I took care of all the missing textures I could find, fixed the teleporters, and made a few other minor changes. It's available at the same place as always, the site linked in my first post or in my sig.

 

[True Hyper Sonic]

Nice. Good job.

 

[Sun]

The "Nights Star" is gone, but you didn't put an actual emblem in there :P.

Or is it in a whole new location?

 

[Tets]

Yes, as I said, there isn't meant to be one there. Each emblem for each character has been available since the first release in which I added them. The NiGHTS thing was a placeholder for an earlier version. The emblem locations changed several times after that. Sorry, your princess is in another castle.

 

[Shadow Hog]

I like it. Given me some ideas as to how to do multiple paths in Incomplete Xmas Zone, without having to go too overboard - considering your level is fairly linear, but has multiple ways to go over the same exact rooms. Nice.

There is one issue I had with the whole thing, though. That snow level? Yeah, I don't like the bottomless pits, particularly the big one at the beginning of the first level. It seems an odd choice of difficulty increase to have a fairly easy starting stage (no pits you can't escape), yet the second stage has bottomless pits galore. Personally I'd replace them with floored pits that you'd merely have to backtrack a bit to get out of, but it's really your call, not mine.

Otherwise, this was great. Liked the custom music - any others being composed for the stages that lack them? Just curious.