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Mechadon

[WIP] Vela Pax (on hiatus)

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I think I might be running into a potential problem with this map. I'm a little worried that I'll be busting through the 65536 SEGS limit. The other day I thought I would be ok, but now that I'm closing the gap, I'm not entirely sure. Aside from splitting the map or removing chunks, is there any way I can compress or lower that SEGS count? I'm using zdbsp as my nodebuilder. Any suggestions are quite welcome.

It may turn out that I'll be ok in the end though, but I'd like to know my options should I hit that cap.

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ZDBSP supports compressed nodes but only ZDoom-based ports can read these. You could also switch to UDMF but again that changes your available ports to ZDoom-based and Eternity (though UDMF is not implemented in Etrn yet afaik).

As far as I understand it, 65536 is the hard ceiling for limit-removing ports such as PrB+, there are no options to extend beyond that.

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Hrm, I was afraid of that. I've been trying to cut down just a bit on the complexity of these newer areas so I won't bust through that limit, so I guess I'm just gonna have to keep doing that. Switching map format for increased limits would sorta suck at this point. I wasn't sure if PRBoom+ supported compressed nodes or not (but now I do!). Thanks for the help as always SuperJ :D

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In all honesty I am not 100% sure either. I read about SEGS a while back and I researched again today on the wikis, forum and e6y's changelog but came up with the same answers.

I made a post in the PrB+ thread to see if Andrey's interested in raising the limits. Hopefully the compressed node format should be fairly trivial for him to code in.

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Super Jamie said:

ZDBSP supports compressed nodes but only ZDoom-based ports can read these.

Vavoom probably can as well, and it's on Quasar's todo list for Eternity.

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Gez said:

Vavoom probably can as well, and it's on Quasar's todo list for Eternity.


I believe Doomsday does as well. Well technically, it ignores the existing nodes and builds it's own.

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That's not the same thing at all! :p

But okay, on the end user viewpoint, it means that "it works".

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Well since this is aimed for PRBoom+ at the very least, unless it gains support for ZDoom's compressed nodes format in the near future, I'm stuck at 2^16. To be on the safe side (or if/until PRBoom+ ever supports compressed nodes), I'll just have to keep that limit in mind. I think as of right now, I've got about 5000 SEGS left to work with and the layout is probably 97% complete :P

I never thought I'd be making a map where I'd have to worry about the SEGS limit, heh.

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Mechadon said:

Well since this is aimed for PRBoom+ at the very least, unless it gains support for ZDoom's compressed nodes format in the near future

Doubtful.

Mechadon said:

I never thought I'd be making a map where I'd have to worry about the SEGS limit, heh.

You never thought you'd stop mapping for Skulltag. :p

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Gez said:

You never thought you'd stop mapping for Skulltag. :p

Heh, well to be fair, I'm on an "extended" hiatus from Skulltag projects :P

Also...



I just finished the layout too. Depending on how many extra off-map control sectors, voodoo doll conveyors, and monster-holding rooms I need to make (probably a decent number), I'll likely have to shave off some bits here and there to stay under the limit. I did have to skimp on some of the last areas I worked on, but all in all I think they came out looking good enough.

I'm gonna do lighting tomorrow and then I'll throw up some more screenshots. Thankfully I made all of my light gradient sectors ahead of time.

*faints*

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Gez said:

Doubtful.



Which is a pity. This is currently the biggest problem plaguing limit removing Doom mapping, the solution is already there but nothing happens... :(

Especially for PrBoom+ which already has zlib included for PNG support.

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Do you know how to use zlib1.dll which comes with SDL_image.dll? For win32 I can LoadLibrary and GetProcAddress, but...

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Graf Zahl said:

Which is a pity. This is currently the biggest problem plaguing limit removing Doom mapping, the solution is already there but nothing happens... :(


The compressed nodes only slightly extend the inevitable. Hence why the likes of UDMF exist.

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Well, I'd hardly call 25-30% 'slightly'.

But there's another thing they provide that may be even more important: Full vertex precision!

On the other hand I wouldn't hold my breath for any of the 'classic' ports to ever implement UDMF...

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That 25-30% extra wiggle room would really be nice right about now :P

Welp it took me about 5 hours, but I finished up the bulk of the lighting (save for some transfer lights I'll have to do). I'll try to finish it all up tomorrow and then posts some new shots.

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Got some new shots; now with 110% more lighting! Some of these are new areas and some are of old areas from past shots. Most of these areas are just rooms or inside structures; I was tempted to take more overview-like shots since the map is so sprawling and you can see so many different structures from just one point, but I figured I'd save those kind of shots for later.

http://mekworx.phenomer.net/mekastuff/pics/screenshots/vela%20pax/Screenshot_Doom_20100401_224812.png
http://mekworx.phenomer.net/mekastuff/pics/screenshots/vela%20pax/Screenshot_Doom_20100401_224939.png
http://mekworx.phenomer.net/mekastuff/pics/screenshots/vela%20pax/Screenshot_Doom_20100401_225023.png
http://mekworx.phenomer.net/mekastuff/pics/screenshots/vela%20pax/Screenshot_Doom_20100401_225107.png
http://mekworx.phenomer.net/mekastuff/pics/screenshots/vela%20pax/Screenshot_Doom_20100401_225224.png
http://mekworx.phenomer.net/mekastuff/pics/screenshots/vela%20pax/Screenshot_Doom_20100401_225254.png
http://mekworx.phenomer.net/mekastuff/pics/screenshots/vela%20pax/Screenshot_Doom_20100401_225424.png
http://mekworx.phenomer.net/mekastuff/pics/screenshots/vela%20pax/Screenshot_Doom_20100401_225610.png
http://mekworx.phenomer.net/mekastuff/pics/screenshots/vela%20pax/Screenshot_Doom_20100401_230042.png

I must have bumped up my resolution in ZDoom and forgot about it for my shot taking session, so the screenshots are pretty massive. I didn't realize it until after I uploaded them. That's why I put them all in url tags this time. Silly me :S

Layout, lighting, and detail are all done, more or less. The lighting came out pretty good overall, though I think certain areas might just come off really dark. I tried bumping up the global lighting by 16 units, but then I sorta traded my dark, industrial ambiance for a more washed out look...so I'm sorta undecided yet. I'll probably wait and see if it impacts gameplay in any way before I make a final decision. I redid a couple ugly areas and also optimized some other areas, so I was able to shave off a few hundred SEGS. Which is good, because I'm gonna need a little buffer for when I start to add things and gameplay bits. Speaking of which, I'm gonna take a break for a couple days and then I'll start working on the gameplay portion. Once the map is done enough for testing, I'm going to work on a couple of other side-projects. I'm supposed to be detailing Jimmy91's CC4 map for him and I've also got a few Supplice related things I need to do. Once those are done, I'll focus back on this. Most likely I'll start the reworking of Dominion of Madness next (may rename it actually).

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Yes, how dare you give us high-res versions of your Doomy goodness. Go to your room! :P

Looks very nice. With your overall lighting, don't be afraid to use brighter brights to make the darks look darker. For most things artificially lit, 255 contrasts really well with 128-160 surroundings, even up into the 192 range depending on textures.

Keep in mind ZDoom will render lighting differently than Boom, it can be hard to strike a balance if you are mapping with both ports in mind, as each has their strengths and weaknesses.

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Heh, thanks Super Jamie ;)

I approach my lighting in probably a sorta lazy way...especially with this map just because it was so huge and it was gonna take forever (and it did). I set my global, ambient lighting first (in this case it was 160, I believe) and that's the base from which I apply my lighting everywhere else. If it has sky under it, it will stay at that ambient light level (in most cases anyways). Then as I work towards inside areas, I try to gradient my lighting based on ceiling heights, lights, how close a structure is to the sky, etc etc. Most of the time that method seems to work out well enough. If it's a light, it'll sometimes get a couple of steps higher brightness so it sorta "pops" against darker backgrounds (in my case I went with 208). Everything else I try to keep an even gradient of 16 unit steps. Tends to work pretty good as long as I set my starting ambient light at the correct value. If I don't, the map sometimes comes out too bright or too dark.

In this instance, I was thinking more about how it would look in PRBoom+ and not so much ZDoom or anything else. As long as it looks good in PRBoom+, I'll be happy. I can always tweak for ZDoom if a certain brightness level looks really weird in it I guess.

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Looking really nice. I`m working on a map using only stock textures myself right now, but tbh it really sucks!

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darkreaver said:

Looking really nice. I`m working on a map using only stock textures myself right now, but tbh it really sucks!

Do you mean working with stock textures or your map? Heh, I seem to be enjoying the challenge of working with just stock textures. Atleast so far anyways, I've only done brick/techbase themed stuff so far. We'll see if I still like the challenge when I move on to other themes :P

Thanks for the comment :)

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Hehe, I meant using atock textures only =)

It`s a challenge, yesm but....argh, so few choices! Never tried it before. You seem to do very well with just the stocks :)

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MAP03 Substruct is done and ready for playtesting! Here's the last batch of screenshots I'll post for this map:





This is a very long, nonlinear map that's somewhere in the range of medium-to-hard in difficulty. The map takes me about an hour to finish up (with 100% kills and secrets) so it's definitely lengthy. There are about 800+ monsters on UV, though they are pretty spread out across the entire map. I sent it to Jimmy91 for his thoughts and his impressions were very positive, so I'm feeling a little bit better about singleplayer mapping. Although I'll feel better once this gets shipped off to a dedicated testing team :P

Speaking of testing, I'll probably hold off on full-blown testing until all of the maps are in presentable states. That might be a little while, but if your interested in helping please let me know!

From here I'm moving on to Jimmy's CC4 map detailing; not sure how long that will take, but hopefully not too long. I'm also going to be doing a few things for Supplice, and then I plan on moving back to this project. Specifically, I'm going to start on the reworking of Dominion of Madness (which I'm going to rename for this project). Since DoM is the latest singleplayer map I've released in a long time, I would really benefit from some feedback on it. Some things I've heard already were that the final battle was a little weak and that there were some boring switch hunts. I plan on addressing both issues as well as detailing the map and probably expanding it quite a bit. If you've played the map and have the time, I'd really appreciate some comments :)

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Just to let all interested parties know, I'm going to be working on this again. I need to rest a couple of days before I dive back into Doombuilder, but once I'm back I'll start hitting this hard. I'm still planning on reworking Dominion of Madness next; I've already played around with a few areas and concepts so hopefully things will go smoothly.

To make this bump a little more worthwhile, I would love to hear some more feedback about the original map; you can find it here. Architecturally speaking, the updates may be a pretty big departure from the original speedmapped structures. I'm looking to make the map feel way more foreboding and massive. There will likely be many new areas and some existing areas will be opened up more. The theme will be very similar to the original although I am planning on messing with the colors quite a bit. Gameplay wise, it will have larger battles...maybe not quite slaughter-style, but close to it. Of course all of this is still up in the air. My ideas may change while the map is still in production (as they usually do). I'm also renaming the map "Horrendous Momentum", though this is a work-in-progress name for the time being.

Anyways, that's all I've got for the time being. I'll throw up some shots when I can :)

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Hey everyone! Just as proof that I'm working on this still, here's a very boring and uninteresting Doombuilder work in progress shot :D. Hooray!

http://mekworx.phenomer.net/mekastuff/wads/vela_pax/velapax-delirium-wip.png

The stuff circled in orange is what I've worked on so far. The stuff circled in blue is what I'm working on right now. Everything else is the original map, though slightly jumbled and stretched out to make room for the new stuff.

Work started off slowly and somewhat difficult. I was having a hard time trying to visualize what I wanted and then modify the entire map to make way for the new stuff. Thankfully I do have a finished base to work off of, but if my work so far is any indication of what lies ahead, then this map will likely be magnitudes larger and open-ended than the original.

For the past two days though, I've made some very good progress. I'm still wrestling with the texture scheme right now (I forgot how much brown Doom II has :P) and there aren't enough structures done to warrant an in-game shot yet. So I'll wait until I have some more finished areas done before I show anything off. Some feedback on the color scheme would actually be very nice once I get something up.

Oh and I changed the work in progress name of the map again; this time to Delirium. I noticed all of the other map names are one worded and Horrendous Momentum just sorta stuck out in a weird way. Plus I came up with that name last minute so I figured it wouldn't last very long anyways. I was looking for a cool synonym for the word madness (which is part of the original map's name) and came up with Delirium. So that's probably what I'll stick with. I really should stop stressing over the least important details :P

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Yea I know, DB shots suck :P. I just can't help myself sometimes. So this time, as promised, are some actual shots that aren't just a pile of lines and mspaint silliness!





http://mekworx.phenomer.net/mekastuff/pics/screenshots/vela%20pax/Screenshot_Doom_20100627_022705.png
http://mekworx.phenomer.net/mekastuff/pics/screenshots/vela%20pax/Screenshot_Doom_20100627_023051.png
http://mekworx.phenomer.net/mekastuff/pics/screenshots/vela%20pax/Screenshot_Doom_20100627_023156.png
http://mekworx.phenomer.net/mekastuff/pics/screenshots/vela%20pax/Screenshot_Doom_20100627_023213.png


No lighting done yet save for one or two bits I was experimenting with. Some areas are done more than others; I have a habit of starting one area but then going to another area half way through. That can make taking and posting wip shots a little difficult :P. I'd probably put my progress around 20-ish%. I'm starting to get a feel for what I'm want the map to have so the pace has picked up a bit. It seems pretty rare that I do hell maps and so far I'm really enjoying it!

So the basic theme is marble/wood/metal with lava, some red for highlight/contrast, and other bits mixed in. Structurally I'm trying to go for a epic and massive feel. So far I've struggled a bit with making the macro structures not so bare looking and I'll probably continue to fight with it a bit. But for what's done, I'm pretty happy with how it's looking. The original map was RED EVERYWHERE, but I wanted to tone it down for this update. The final map is going to be full-blown hell with lots of red/flesh/blood, so I wanted to save that color scheme for it. These shots also show off the new sky texture I made for this map a couple days ago; any thoughts on it? I'm also at the point where I'm comfortable with the texture palette (more or less) although there could be a little less brown at this point :P. There's just not a whole lot to choose from without really mixing up the texture theme. I was think about switching out STONE6 for STONE4 for some contrast, but I think it might be a little bit too much contrast. Well, at any rate, comments on the shots, texture palette, sky texture, or whatever are very much welcome!

Also, I think that GSTONE texture is gonna give me an ulcer :X

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Very nice work as always Mechadon - you have some very good ideas of how to use textures a bit more inventively, and I like inventive ideas!

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