Release clean up

wesleyjohnson said:

9. I was hoping that "Doom" on the floor of the secret room would be gone. It is so anti-immersion that it puts me off. Then that room could have some shape, like service corridors with tech textures, or a series of niches with stuff in them. The big room with stuff everywhere is too plain. Giving that room a better shape would be a good excuse for removing the "Doom".

Strip out all cutesy things like this with extreme prejudice, IMO - especially if it says "Doom".

fraggle said:

Strip out all cutesy things like this with extreme prejudice, IMO - especially if it says "Doom".

An infinity sign! Perfect replacement and relevant. Redesign room into something small but impressive.

MAP19 is broken. Please test on boom202(best) or prboom202.
http://i.imgur.com/OTtwCOk.png

Hey, an idea: the BEX format lets you specify par times in the DEHACKED lump. Since you're playing through all the levels, can you provide a list of your time for each level so that we can use them as the par times?

fraggle said:

Hey, an idea: the BEX format lets you specify par times in the DEHACKED lump. Since you're playing through all the levels, can you provide a list of your time for each level so that we can use them as the par times?

Will have full demopack soon.

Map\Time :
MAP01 - 0:43.26 (0:43) K: 19/27 I: 5/5 S: 0/1
MAP02 - 3:43.40 (3:43) K: 58/59 I: 25/49 S: 0/0
MAP03 - 6:27.77 (6:27) K: 88/94 I: 68/79 S: 1/3
MAP04 - 5:52.23 (5:52) K: 142/142 I: 56/62 S: 1/2
MAP05 - 6:54.54 (6:54) K: 107/119 I: 0/5 S: 1/11
MAP06 - 5:57.91 (5:57) K: 99/120 I: 4/12 S: 0/0
MAP07 - 3:08.63 (3:08) K: 27/27 I: 1/1 S: 1/1
MAP08 - 9:27.03 (9:27) K: 90/90 I: 20/21 S: 0/3

MAP10 - 0:18.51 (0:18) K: 0/25 I: 1/9 S: 0/1
MAP11 - 15:08.00 (15:08) K: 205/233 I: 39/67 S: 3/11


MAP14 - 7:18.23 (7:18) K: 49/62 I: 1/1 S: 1/1


MAP16 - 7:54.00 (7:54) K: 89/101 I: 8/8 S: 3/3
MAP17 - 6:36.17 (6:36) K: 64/78 I: 6/12 S: 1/2
MAP18 - 6:42.74 (6:42) K: 94/94 I: 39/42 S: 3/3

MAP20 - 11:59.29 (11:59) K: 102/113 I: 25/38 S: 0/0

MAP22 - 27:00.20 (27:00) K: 95/95 I: 0/0 S: 0/2
MAP23 - 1:51.89 (1:51) K: 39/439 I: 2/57 S: 2/14

MAP25 - 23:52.34 (23:52) K: 133/143 I: 31/45 S: 3/6
MAP26 - 11:04.69 (11:04) K: 168/171 I: 32/43 S: 3/5



MAP30 - 8:03.80 (8:03) K: 56/70 I: 8/25 S: 0/4
MAP31 - 7:11.29 (7:11) K: 27/37 I: 0/4 S: 0/2

Catoptromancy said:

MAP07 - 3:08.63 (3:08) K: 27/27 I: 1/1 S: 1/1

I didn't even believe this would be solvable at all. o_O

How many tries did it take?

All maps are beatable. The only reason there is missing maps is because some were updated and broke my old demos.

Map07 is much easier than a few maps.

Given that some are missing, what were your times for those levels in the previous version? Presumably the levels probably haven't changed so much that the old times will be that inaccurate.

http://pastebin.com/cbVw8pbG

Ill demo up map19 next.

I tested Map19 with prboom, the closest I got on Linux.
I cannot identify the location of that PNG, which is going to make it difficult to locate. Could you tell me what is in the PNG, it looks like some open space with a Sky texture.

I have no idea why that particular Prboom would find a sky texture. I think last time it found two texture names run together, that the other ports did not, but did not recognize the combination as a valid name.

Edit:
I found something at the edges. I have reworked the map edges of map19 and am testing how it well it works with PrBoom. It really needs a better edge treatment altogether.

The burning city sky looks horrible on this map, and there is little I can do to hide it.

Par times are now in Git. Once you play through the other levels let me know and I'll add those.

For the lulz, I took the Ultimate Freedoom levels and tried to load them with regular DOOM. To my surprise, I saw there were some textures used which are not known in the original game.

I know this is not a requirement at all, but is it going to change until the 1.0 release? In the end, it'd be cool to know that you can also play the Freedoom levels in Doom if you want, even though I guess the primary goal will remain to make the maps fully playable in general, first. ^^

In general, after playing the first few levels of ep.1 for the first time ever, I am surprised that map design is quite decent, to say the least. The only thing that really just plainly sucks are the enemy sprites... Please tell me they are not final yet. The zombies for example look like undefined pixel garbage, to be honest. xD

NightFright said:

For the lulz, I took the Ultimate Freedoom levels and tried to load them with regular DOOM. To my surprise, I saw there were some textures used which are not known in the original game.

I know this is not a requirement at all, but is it going to change until the 1.0 release? In the end, it'd be cool to know that you can also play the Freedoom levels in Doom if you want, even though I guess the primary goal will remain to make the maps fully playable in general, first. ^^

I don't think there's any plan to do this, but it's a good point to bring up. We currently build and ship a WAD containing all of the levels (freedoom_levels.wad) - if these will only work with the Freedoom IWAD there doesn't seem much point in building it.

In general, after playing the first few levels of ep.1 for the first time ever, I am surprised that map design is quite decent, to say the least. The only thing that really just plainly sucks are the enemy sprites... Please tell me they are not final yet. The zombies for example look like undefined pixel garbage, to be honest. xD

Nothing is final in Freedoom: it's constantly evolving/improving. But the zombie sprites have been around for a long time now - since the early days of the project. They're one of the common criticisms.

The problem with those sprites is that they were originally drawn on paper and scanned in. This creates a whole heap of problems: for example, it's really difficult to accurately crop the edges of the sprites without leaving "sparkly" white pixels that stand out. Another is that the colors can have a "washed out" look. Freedoom's player sprites were drawn by the same artist who did the zombies, but the player sprites had their contrast manually adjusted and fixed later and look much nicer as a result. The zombies never got that treatment...

Realistically the zombie sprites are probably going to stay the way they are unless someone with the appropriate skills puts in the time and effort to either fix them up or replace them. Replacing them will be a lot of work (think: manually drawing out ~50 or so sprites per monster) and I suspect it would probably be possible to make some big improvements just from editing the ones that are already there.

I found this old thread to show what I mean. Check out the image in the OP.

fraggle said:

for example, it's really difficult to accurately crop the edges of the sprites without leaving "sparkly" white pixels that stand out.

Transparency->color to alpha.

There is not much to change on Map09 and Map13 this year (of my annual visit of maps).

On Map19, I am getting the itch to make major changes in the lower levels. Most of it is itchy.

Have done some more work on the castle.
Tried to hide the map edges, but that is hard to do with a castle that has 260 units of height over the surrounding land.

I removed that maze at the end, and the redid the cave into a drain channel, to fit the theme.

The underground rising stairs (straight and circular staircase after the blue/red/yellow lockbars) cannot be seen rising, and are thus pointless.
Their ceilings are also higher than the ground they are supposed to be under.

It is pushing 720K, so I am looking to reduce size a bit.
Starting at the previous map is interesting, but that is large map to support walking across a bridge. The land around the bridge does not match after walking across either. Instead, could start the player on the bridge looking at the castle, with a limited copy of some of the previous map behind them (instead of separate and a total copy).

Any opinions.

Edit: Several days later .. no opinions ...

Am re-working the underground portion of the map. The main stairway was going through the same 3d space as another room. Most of the corridors were repetitive empty space.
My effort to reduce the size has increased it to 745K.
Have given the towers some underground foundations, and have worked in some decent castle stairways.
Have been trying to save any interesting rooms of the original map.