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NiuHaka

Doom Ascension Mod: Recruitment & Announcements (Image Heavy)

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Recruitment: Currently recruiting for texture artists.

If you are interested in joining the team you can contact me here or contact us at the Doom Ascension Website. Don't be shy, we are very laid back. This is just a hobby after all.



DoomAscension.com

Doom Ascension is a Doom mod intended to be used with the Doomsday Engine. This mod replaces all 2D sprites with 3D models and all textures with new high resolution textures.
This project is a non-profit venture that is held together by Doom hobbyists who are in it for the love of the greatest FPS in video game history. The Ascension Team is currently looking for more help in making this mod happen in a more timely manner. Bellow is a list of tasks that shows what is needed, what will be needed, what is currently being worked on and what is finished. Tasks labeled as "Opened" are needing help. Tasks Labeled as "Closed" are not currently needing help. Tasks labeled as "Finished" are, well, finished...

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Thanks to Downfall *Information on the band may be posted soon* there will be a remastered high quality music mod and a remastered high quality sound mod added to the Doom Ascension project. These mods are part of the Doom Ascension project but are headed by Doomworld member and A-Team member Dee.

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The Ascension Team (A-Team):
Project Manager & Time Waster: NiuHaka
Person of Untainted Perspective: ToshikoChan
3D Modeler & Designer: NiuHaka
3D Modeler: bcwood16
3D Animator #1: NiuHaka
3D Animator #2: (Closed)
UV Mapper & Texture Artist #1: NiuHaka
UV Mapper & Texture Artist #2: Kracov
UV Mapper & Texture Artist #3: (Closed)

Texture & GUI Artist #1: NiuHaka
Texture & GUI Artist #2: Dee
Texture & GUI Artist #3: Benoit Spacher
Texture & GUI Artist #4: (Opened) Must be able to emulate the established style of textures in the Doom Ascension Project.
Texture & GUI Artist #5: (Closed)

MD2/DMD Exporter #1: 4mer
MD2/DMD Exporter #2: (Closed)
Doomsday DED designer #1: 4mer
Doomsday DED designer #2: NiuHaka

Mod Tester #1: (Closed)
Mod Tester #2: (Closed)
Mod Tester #3: (Closed)

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More screen-shots can be found here.













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Here is an example of the High Res Textures.

Doom Texture (Actual size).


Ascension High Resolution Texture (The image bellow is shown at 50% its actual size).


Ascension High Resolution Textures in-game through the Doomsday Engine.

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I really want to say that you have done something truly amazing; taken a small, small game sprite and filled in the blanks while making these models almost perfectly. thank you.

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That's awesome. The models are looking great so far, and I'm curious how the textures are going to be tackled.

One really important thing to keep in mind, that's easy to overlook when making replacements for them, is to remember which textures tend to be considered interchangeable in maps. CEIL5_2, for instance, is frequently used as a flat for the brown concrete BROWN96, the brown rusty metal SUPPORT3 and METAL, and sometimes even METAL2 (though I think CEIL5_1 or RROCK03 is a better fit for METAL2 as far as IWAD textures go). Some amount of vagueness has to be preserved in multipurpose textures/flats like these, in order to make them still serve all their purposes.

Then there are the number of different textures that use similar or identical patches. For instance, a ton of textures in Doom use SUPPORT3 somewhere in them. The existing hi-res texture pack, last I checked, has nearly as many distinct SUPPORT3 interpretations as there are textures using it, because of all the different artists who contributed without sharing each others' work.

If you can keep multi-use textures and consistency in mind, and the textures are on par with the quality of the models you've shown here, this will really be something to see. :)

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esselfortium said:

That's awesome. The models are looking great so far, and I'm curious how the textures are going to be tackled.

One really important thing to keep in mind, that's easy to overlook when making replacements for them, is to remember which textures tend to be considered interchangeable in maps. CEIL5_2, for instance, is frequently used as a flat for the brown concrete BROWN96, the brown rusty metal SUPPORT3 and METAL, and sometimes even METAL2 (though I think CEIL5_1 or RROCK03 is a better fit for METAL2 as far as IWAD textures go). Some amount of vagueness has to be preserved in multipurpose textures/flats like these, in order to make them still serve all their purposes.

Then there are the number of different textures that use similar or identical patches. For instance, a ton of textures in Doom use SUPPORT3 somewhere in them. The existing hi-res texture pack, last I checked, has nearly as many distinct SUPPORT3 interpretations as there are textures using it, because of all the different artists who contributed without sharing each others' work.

If you can keep multi-use textures and consistency in mind, and the textures are on par with the quality of the models you've shown here, this will really be something to see. :)


Well, any textures that are created for this project will undoubtedly be funneled through my trusty Phothoshop/Intuos which means even if someone makes something that doesn't match up at first it will end up looking right in the end. You have no idea how much I love doing this stuff so there is no way anyones loved works of art won't get destroyed by me. It is the only way to make this work IMO.

Textures will be one of the easiest parts of this project which is why it will be one of the last things completed. Also remember that flats need to be at least slightly different from textures in order to make it easy to tell the difference between the floor and the wall. This is why not a single flat matches perfectly with any patch. It is true though that keeping what you said in mind is very important. Mappers put heavy consideration into pairing the flats with textures.

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If you need to convert models from md3 format to md2 format I may be able to help you.

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And another thing to add to the complexity, you could make higher-framerate animations of the monsters, and modify the monster states to run at higher framerates. Perkristian's smoother weapon animations have an example of how to do it in Doomsday for weapon states. Then you could choose suitable frames from the animations to make low framerate, "vanilla" animations that don't require state redefinition.

Or you could do just normal animations for now, and someone else could try new animations if they want.

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Oh man, I wish I could help out for music or writing or something. Nevertheless, this looks like a fucking awesome idea. I'll be following this closely.

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4mer said:

If you need to convert models from md3 format to md2 format I may be able to help you.


I hope you're right. I also hope that my MD3s are good and kept the animation information without warping the model. As of right now I have no way of testing my MD3 models. I'll send you a PM.

Vermil said:

Why not work with the DHTP for the hi-res textures or at least base off it?


Two reasons:

First, Because the DHTP is much more loyal than I'm willing to be which means that there is still a strong sense of "cartoonism" (yes, I make up my own words) about them. I love the DHTP and I think it deserves to continue on its path of pureness.

Second, because this is a hobby and I need something to do with my spare time other than playing video games. I kind of want this to last a couple of years. Lets hope I don't get bored of it. *crosses fingers*

phi108 said:

And another thing to add to the complexity, you could make higher-framerate animations of the monsters, and modify the monster states to run at higher framerates. Perkristian's smoother weapon animations have an example of how to do it in Doomsday for weapon states. Then you could choose suitable frames from the animations to make low framerate, "vanilla" animations that don't require state redefinition.

Or you could do just normal animations for now, and someone else could try new animations if they want.


Hmmm most of that went a little over my head... which is why I'm recruiting help. Technical details start to put me to sleep and putting me to sleep is a good way to kill the project... or have me hand the reins off to someone else.

Let me see if I understood you. A 3D weapon must conform to the placement and animations of the default 2D sprites? That doesn't make sense to me at all. Well, I'll jump that hurdle when I get to it... or recruit someone else to do it.

Mr. Freeze said:

Oh man, I wish I could help out for music or writing or something. Nevertheless, this looks like a fucking awesome idea. I'll be following this closely.


Noted.

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just a random note... this project will make for some BADASS multiplayer!

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I think I'm gonna bookmark this page and your site. This is something worth keeping track of. Will there be new maps too? Or just 'hi-res' versions of the originals?

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Clonehunter said:

I think I'm gonna bookmark this page and your site. This is something worth keeping track of. Will there be new maps too? Or just 'hi-res' versions of the originals?


I was hoping nobody would ask this question. Let me think, how should I answer this? Not even the rest of the team knows this but there are loose plans to create a TC. BUT that will not happen until everything on the site is finished. These mods (monster, weapons, items, decorative objects, textures & graphics) will be released as they are completed and nothing else will be worked on until they are done. These mods will all be available to the public before we start on assembling a team of level designers, programmers and anything else something like that would require.

There are a few hints (labeled in blue) on the site of things that will be created as bonus material and it has not been decided yet if those will be shipped as separate mods or if they will ship with a TC.

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I believe that new maps and such should certainly be the last of our concern at this point. The whole idea of the project is to create a much improved set of models and textures that is much better than the ones currently available for doomsday. They will all be public release, so naturally everyone will already be mapping using these textures and models anyways, so its kind of eliminating the purpose of a tc if everyone is using the models in their projects as well. However, if we decide to do that i'm also a really good mapper so put me down as future mapper as well! :D

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I wasn't quite sure if I was sold on the beveling of the hi-res STARTAN shown here until I looked at it a bit longer and did a direct A/B comparison in Photoshop. Scaled down to the original texture's size, it's much closer to the original than I expected. I really like the amount of effort that was put in to make the placement of scratches and damage match that of the original texture, too.

Looks great :>

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I can't honestly say that I'd use this to play Doom with. (That's just the way I am, I love doom in it's original context) but I certainly appreciate the amount of painstaking work going into creating something like this. I anxiously await seeing videos and screenshots and stuff in the future though. You're clearly very talented.

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40oz said:

I can't honestly say that I'd use this to play Doom with. (That's just the way I am, I love doom in it's original context) but I certainly appreciate the amount of painstaking work going into creating something like this. I anxiously await seeing videos and screenshots and stuff in the future though. You're clearly very talented.


I take this as quite the compliment. When a purist such as 40oz is showing interest and appreciation you know you're doing something right.

As fun as it was showing the things I've created, I have got to say that the thing I'm most excited about is showing off some of the things the other team members are working on... Maybe that's because I don't feel like putting too much time into anything until the MD2 troubles are conquered but I can hardly wait to display the other team members works.

*sigh* reliance on MD2/MD3 could reveal itself to be our greatest struggle and our greatest weakness. Art through adversity, right? I sure hope so.

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NiuHaka said:

*sigh* reliance on MD2/MD3 could reveal itself to be our greatest struggle and our greatest weakness. Art through adversity, right? I sure hope so.

While MD2 is a pretty poor format. Md3 is a lot better and definitely the one I would choose every time I could. MD5 that Doom3 uses is a quite nice format and even better yet in many aspects(and even if it's not legal to copy it yet, it is open source). But for some of the things you would want to do with death anims it would probably be a lot better with a morphing model format.

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Since this project started I have been constantly wondering what it would be like if we did a quake 3 TC and converted it into doom using these models, replacing all the music and textures, models, sounds, etc... just a random comment.. its been on my mind.

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While MD3 is obviously a better format than MD2, please show me the DOOM ports that utilize the features it offers. Unless I'm mistaken, when it comes to DOOM source ports all MD3 gets you (compared to DMD) is a non-quantized vertex representation.

This is why the Doomsday team has had little interest in the MD3 format. Supporting it doesn't really improve the situation much unless you go the "full hog" and completely redesign DOOM's map object animation system in order to use the features of MD3 fully.

Personally, I wouldn't waste my time going down the redesign road for anything less than a COLLADA 1.4 importer.

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DaniJ said:

While MD3 is obviously a better format than MD2, please show me the DOOM ports that utilize the features it offers. Unless I'm mistaken, when it comes to DOOM source ports all MD3 gets you (compared to DMD) is a non-quantized vertex representation.

This is why the Doomsday team has had little interest in the MD3 format. Supporting it doesn't really improve the situation much unless you go the "full hog" and completely redesign DOOM's map object animation system in order to use the features of MD3 fully.

Personally, I wouldn't waste my time going down the redesign road for anything less than a COLLADA 1.4 importer.


This is exactly right. The improvements between md2 & md3 seem great on paper but the only really good feature for me is the triangle count limit and none of my models will go above the halfway point of md2 because I want to be able to put more than a few monsters on screen at once.

I think the problem is that I use Maya and refuse to move to something else. The only ways that md2, md3 & md5 have been exported from maya is when people have created their own exporters and those files just aren't readily available anymore. There was a time that I wanted a md3tool for md3 to dmd but it seems muskoka md3 exporter isn't even working for me and i'm using the correct maya version.

In my mind, Doomsdays visuals are far superior to any other source port. I'm not going to switch source ports. I'm going to conquer this md2 problem somehow. *Shakes his fist at the sky* Somehow!

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The only thing I can possibly help out with is the music. This looks pretty sweet, definitely will be following it.

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