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andrewj

OBLIGE 3.43 Released

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This does produce some surprisingly playable maps, many of which are better than a good number of the maps that I have downloaded from idgames. My only gripe so far is that every map I have played has been absolutely spammed with pain elementals. Is that something that other people have experienced or is it just bad luck? ('cause I don't like pain elementals much)

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I've played about 70 oblige maps since 3.43 was released (if you can't tell, I like it !), usually small with either "hordes" or "crazy" monsters, and haven't run into an abnormal number of pain elementals.

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Neither have I, but the monsters are varied to about 3 types per room, so I'm assuming you played a map with a giant room that only had pain elementals and few other types of monsters.

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I really love this, but am still not sure how to increase the monster count in a LUA file (so like, to have more monsters that normally appear in the crazy setting - probably at least double the normal amount). I'd like oblige to do a megawad of bfg-only maps with tons of health and ammo and monsters. I set prob=100 for soulspheres, megaspheres, and cell ammo (and raised the cluster numbers for cell ammo) and I see that it puts lots of them in maps with powerups=more and health/ammo=heaps. But how to make more monsters appear? I raised the numbers in the monster quantities section in defs.lua but it didn't seem to add more. Also, I tried setting pref / add_prob / start_prob to zero for all the other weapons so that only the bfg would appear, but always ran into a script error when trying to make a megawad (it worked fine for a single map). Then I tried setting the other weapons to 1, but the bfg didn't appear in some maps. But yeah, this is really really cool!!

ps - how to make a backpack appear? I can't see it listed in doom.lua

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40oz said:

I'm assuming you played a map with a giant room that only had pain elementals and few other types of monsters.

Actually, no, the first time it happened, it was a pretty big map with what would seem like normal monster placement - with the exception of if you replaced every demon in a normal map with a PE. I mean, they were everywhere. Every second door you opened had a couple of PEs in the room beyond spawning lost souls.

I played a few more maps and, although not as extreme, there still seemed to be a lot of PEs.

However, I have just got back from being out and played a few more maps. This time things have been more normal.



Oh, one thing that I should mention that I like is the themed door/swiches combinations. eg, find a door edged with wood that doesn't open and you know that you are looking for a wood switch somewhere. Nice.

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The first map I played had PEs as the first 2 monsters, and I was soon bothered by a couple more, but since then, I haven't had that problem.

Anyway, I really like this new release. Though playing a bunch of "small" maps, they don't really seem very small...
Is the map size not totally working yet?

And I'd like a "cramped" setting, for maps that are about as cramped as the final oblige II maps, with maybe more hallways and smaller or more twisty/weirdly shaped rooms.

Can't wait for the extrafloor/3d floor support!

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@gggmork: glad you are enjoying this version. I never knew Windows could block EXEs from zips (that's pretty fucked up). "Size" is the overall size of the map (you'll see that small maps fit inside Oblige's minimap, but larger maps don't). Some buttons don't do anything yet, "Detail" is just an idea to have plainer or more detailed maps. More clutter will definitely come later when prefabs are implemented again.

@Erik: soon I will implement "light brushes", which can light up a shape on the map (like an area in front of a wall light). This combined with occasional light effects should make for better lighting in levels.

@leilei: heh @ Nuts mode. I'm not doing DM or CTF maps right now, if ever, I think for them looks and gameplay are much more important because people play DM levels over and over and over, so everybody would rather play good human-made levels than mediocre generated ones.

@Enjay: I reckon you just got really unlucky with all those PEs.

@TimeOfDeath: increasing number of monsters depends on the monster setting. Changing the ones in defs.lua (MONSTER_QUANITITES) will work unless the setting is "Mix it up" or "Crazy". To change the Crazy amount, edit scripts/monsters.lua, search for calc_quantity, and replace "rand_irange(30,80)" with "100" (no quotes). Backpacks and other powerups are not added yet. The BFG has special code preventing it appearing too much -- the way to get around that is to edit doom.lua, find COMMON_WEAPONS, and then rename "bfg" to "bfg2", also rename it in the COMMON_THINGS table too.

@everyone else: cheers!

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andrewj said:

@leilei: heh @ Nuts mode. I'm not doing DM or CTF maps right now, if ever, I think for them looks and gameplay are much more important because people play DM levels over and over and over, so everybody would rather play good human-made levels than mediocre generated ones.

Actually for CTF maps I was thinking about a intelligent layout-distance-ease-flow simulator and have the battle simulator extended to spawning points near weapons with simulated opponents designing violent regions of the level

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andrewj said:
I'm not doing DM or CTF maps right now, if ever, I think for them looks and gameplay are much more important because people play DM levels over and over and over, so everybody would rather play good human-made levels than mediocre generated ones.

Looks shouldn't matter, given the continued popularity of some DWANGO levels :p

You'd have to define separate rules for 1on1 levels and FFAs, though, and maybe some distinctions for team play. DM rarely works the same way on all those. CTF would probably be kind of pointless mostly because it needs more people and you'll rarely get 6 dudes into an auto-generated level, but it probably wouldn't hurt as a curiosity or as a way to generate some random ideas...

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I think Oblige could make ideal CTF maps to be honest, what with the large environments and symmetrical rooms.

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andrewj said:

@TimeOfDeath: increasing number of monsters depends on the monster setting. Changing the ones in defs.lua (MONSTER_QUANITITES) will work unless the setting is "Mix it up" or "Crazy". To change the Crazy amount, edit scripts/monsters.lua, search for calc_quantity, and replace "rand_irange(30,80)" with "100" (no quotes). Backpacks and other powerups are not added yet. The BFG has special code preventing it appearing too much -- the way to get around that is to edit doom.lua, find COMMON_WEAPONS, and then rename "bfg" to "bfg2", also rename it in the COMMON_THINGS table too.

Thanks for the reply. Changing calc_quantity to 100+ made some really awesome bfg slaughter fests on the "crazy" setting, especially in some areas with really cool architecture/floor-height differences. I might as well quit mapping now, it's almost a waste of time. A couple questions though - sometimes some rooms/areas still feel a bit empty of monsters. I tried changing calc_quantity to a really big number, but it didn't seem to add more monsters than a smaller calc_quan number. Is there code that prevents too many monsters from being added too close to eachother? There's still much space for monsters to fit, but how to add them in? It looks like the monsters get added in a group of 4 (or less for tougher/fatter monsters), is there a way to increase the number in a group (or decrease the empty space between each group)? Also, it seems that less monsters get added if you make the crazy_prob number higher for cybers and spiderdemons? Is there a way to have lots of monsters while using a high crazy_prob number for the bosses?

I dunno if I did something wrong, but I kept getting script errors when I changed bfg to bfg2 and changed all the other weapons/ammo prob numbers to 0. But it's not a problem because renaming bfg to bfg2 and just changing the other weapons' id numbers in the COMMON_THINGS table to the bfg's id number worked, without changing prob numbers (also changing all the ammo id numbers to the cellpack id number), so every weapon/ammo is bfg/cells. Also, I changed the smaller ammo pickups (clips, shells, idividual rockets) to the backpack's id number, so now the backpack shows up (I'll prolly change the berzerk id number to the invul id number).

Thanks for the help.

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With one of my mostly outdoor megawads I generated, I had to deal with at least 40 or 50 cacodemons in one level but I was able to survive due to the ammunition and health. I did have to go indoors since one one side there was at least 10 revenants in sight of me along with some chaingunners and imps/dark imps on the other side of the nukage pits where most of the cacos came from.

I also had to quickly expend my BFG ammo to soften the army of cacodemons before resorting to rockets and finally the super shotgun.



The reason you don't see many from this shot is because most of their corpses were in the starting sector and the first indoor area I had to deal with them in.

Good fun on 'Hordes' if you are well armed. :)

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im an absolute noob, so i wouldn't know, but wouldn't some people use this, then upload it as there own work?.....i hope not...


but on the other side, can this create bloody-fun-to-play-on maps?

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peterPROSTHETICS said:

im an absolute noob, so i wouldn't know, but wouldn't some people use this, then upload it as there own work?.....i hope not..

Oblige, if I remember correctly, dumps an extra text lump into the resulting WAD file, so most of the time people will know if an uploaded WAD was generated - the people responsible for such hijinks are usually publicly lynched.

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I think DM maps are actually easier to make than SP maps, the principles are well understood (level "flow" etc), so it's something I might get back to someday.

TimeOfDeath said:

Is there code that prevents too many monsters from being added too close to eachother? There's still much space for monsters to fit, but how to add them in? It looks like the monsters get added in a group of 4 (or less for tougher/fatter monsters), is there a way to increase the number in a group (or decrease the empty space between each group)?

Yes small monsters are added in a group of 4 per "seed" (each seed is a 256x256 block on the map). 9 might fit, but it runs the risk of some monsters getting stuck in walls, which is no fun. I assume you play on UltraViolence, in the lower skill levels there are less monsters.

Also walking monsters are never put in nukage or lava.

Also, it seems that less monsters get added if you make the crazy_prob number higher for cybers and spiderdemons?

Spiderdemons are huge monsters which need four seeds (512x512 on the map), that may explain why there is less monsters overall

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Ok thanks. Is there a way to decrease the amount of empty space between each seed, by changing something in one of the lua files? It looks like there's always a ~128 unit gap between each seed, or I guess it's ~64 units of empty space around each seed? I wouldn't mind some monsters stuck in walls if it meant filling some empty space.

Also, is there a way to make the bosses use only 1 seed instead of 4, using an lua file? If so, I'd replace the spiderdemon's id with the cyber's so the spiderdemon wouldn't get stuck.

Sorry for all the questions, I'm just addicted to this, it's so fun! I've tried looking through the scripts but that stuff is over my head.

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I still wonder if the following rather simple setup would work good (but it'd be quite different from how it currently is, just something to think about.. or not):

Have a list of every single 'thing' in the game with a number you can enter beside each:

MONSTERS:
former humans: 55
chaingunners: 27
imps: 85
cacos: 25
etc

HEALTH:
stim packs: 28
medkits: 10

POWERUPS:
megaspheres: 2
invulns: 1

LIGHTS/TREES/ETC (or maybe not these things since they're architectural):
candle: 30
tree: 25
bla bla:
etc:

Then simply randomly pepper each thing throughout the map in a completely random location (not stuck in a wall etc). It'd be easy to retweak the numbers to whatever feels right for you, and you could do specific things like have reverents and berzerk only, or have no plasma guns, or really densly packed weak monsters, etc.
Even with specific thing settings like that, their random placements and unique map architectures would make each map generated with those settings have unique gameplay. Plus you could just generate something different in a few moments instead.
Or maybe the lua files already permit something like this since I havn't tried messing with those yet. Not even 100% sure if this approach would be better/worse (or a pain to implement/modify).

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NEW MODULE: "Monster Control"

The module lets you control how much of each monster should appear in levels. It works best with the "Crazy" setting (on other settings the Mastermind does not appear).

Note too that monsters are sometimes skipped on levels (to add more variety to the levels), and this module does not change that.

Right click and select "Save Link As" (or equivalent), and put the file in the "mods" folder inside Oblige's folder.

LINK: http://oblige.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/oblige/trunk/mods/mon_control.lua

P.S. I might make one for weapons tomorrow :-)

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Cool stuff Andrew :)

On the "Outdoors" tab, might it be possible to have more choices going in this order?

-Indoors
-Rare
-Less
-Normal
-More
-Lots
-Outdoor

?

Weapons module? That's interesting, I hope you end up doing it for Skulltag too..

Oh wait, I can probably do those :3

Quick edit: Skulltag monsters will need a modified version of the original module since I don't know what I need to edit so it is also usable aside this one.

Edit #2: To think of it, I think it's possible to have a "None" choice into the controls..heheh. I hate Archviles and Pain Elementals..

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andrewj said:

NEW MODULE: "Monster Control"


Cool how new modules can be added like that. I tried that a bit and it has weird behavior. Like:

'playing style: crazy, monster control: scarce (for all)'
quite often floods the map with invisible spectres. but viles/cybers seem more common even though set to scarce.

'playing style: scarce, monster control: insane (for all)'
seems to be about the same as normal scarce probably.

'playing style: crazy, monster control: insane (for all)'
is pretty much the same as crazy, however viles/cybers are much more common

It might be less confusing if you could choose EITHER a general 'monsters' playing style (none, scarce,less,normal,more,hordes,crazy,mix) OR the monster control module (which might be better with hard values to set like '57' imps or whatever).

But bothering making that might not be worth the time because so far I like the normal 'crazy' maps more than stuff I generated with the monster control module. Plus my ideas suck and should be ignored. The module kinda seems to affect like-monster groupings more than general monster density.

TimeofDeath has probably tweaked some sort of insane monster packed rocket jumping bfg fest by now, heh.

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I should have mentioned that the settings in the Monster Control module are not absolute, but relative, e.g. "Scarce" does not mean scarce in the level but scarce compared to the other monsters. So having them all the same won't do anything.

@Chris: more choices for the Outdoor setting might be good, noted.

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As promised....

NEW MODULE: "Weapon Control"

Lets you control how much of each weapon appears in the levels.

Like with Monster Control, the settings are relative to the other weapons (so having them all the same will not do anything).

Note about BFG: currently it does not work properly, because certain levels get marked as "allow_bfg" and it never appears on any other levels. I will fix this in the next release of OBLIGE.

Right click and select "Save Link As" (or equivalent), and put the file in the "mods" folder inside Oblige's folder.

LINK: http://oblige.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/oblige/trunk/mods/weap_control.lua

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Noted, heheh.

I'm also too lazy to modify the monster controls so I can alter all the custom DECORATE monsters I added to the doom.lua file.

How do I get a Monster Control module to only show for the Skulltag engine? I tried the "for_engines = { skulltag=1 }," line further down in the file but it makes the standard module not show up...perhaps if I added that to the mon_control.lua too that they both show up, no?

Edit: Fired a mail your way, let me know what you think

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Yeah for_engine (etc) makes the whole module appear or not appear, you can't control options like that. Enhas simply made a separate module (in the same file) which only has the new options.

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I have seen this problem in many oblige levels so far. It often create a 16 units width "hole" in the outside areas to the border where the border meet another border or a building. It is a minor problem, but oblige often generates level with this "problem".


peterPROSTHETICS said:

im an absolute noob, so i wouldn't know, but wouldn't some people use this, then upload it as there own work?.....i hope not...


You could say it was attempted in 2002 with slige

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I am guessing with the psycadelic theme, it is pulling Doom textures to use when playing in Doom 2...it is not happenning with me with Skulltag since the original Doom textures are present in Skulltag.wad

That sky is awfully trippy, does it come in yellow, bright green/blue/orange/etc too? :3

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After playing this thoroughly, I have some requests for you to consider and/or disregard:

- I also like the idea of an all/none option for "outdoors"

- I'd like for "Bright" lighting levels to sometimes generate even brighter levels. They don't seem to reach real sunny-day brightness.

- I would definitely like greater monster density, especially with smaller enemies like SS, imps, humanoids, and lost souls.

- I realize that "Psychedelic" is "just for fun", but if you're thinking about eventually dropping it, let me discourage you. The more theme variety the better.

- DM and CTF support would be really great.

- Heretic, Hexen, and Strife support would be great, since these games (especially Strife) could definitely benefit from more maps to play. It would be very interesting to play a huge monster-packed Strife level.

And finally: how do you edit/create themes?

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Ho about an option in the modules for "never"? I set the monster module for SS Nazi's to "scarce", because that appeared to be the lowest amount, while several other monsters were set to "Heaps", and some SS Nazis still sneaked into the mix. Granted it wasn't a lot but I would REALLY prefer to not see them at all in the mix.

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