Mars base Alpha

I decided to take a break from this project (1/2 days) so I can finish Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. But there's something that's on my mind.
The bad looking blue room in this wad was... well, bad. I said that I tried to emulate a bluish darkness you sometimes get at night.
What I want to know is, is this even possible? If so, how much sector brightness and blue/red/green color do I need to use?
Any ideas, anyone?

Colored lighting looks much better in OpenGL renderer (GlBoom/GZDoom/Zandronum OpenGL mode) rather than software renderer with its limited 256-color palette. Colored lighting affects player's weapons, which usually looks bad on weapons that fire a red/yellow muzzle flash. Perhaps only use a value that resembles gray (R,G,B values similar to each other) but with slightly bigger amount of blue. Set all the numbers high (above 200), so that they won't take a notable effect. Then reduce sector brightness appropriately to resemble night (but not too dark, darkness tends to be annoying gameplay-wise). Slight colored lighting + slight darkness might work. I suggest to complement the impression of the effect via other means. Maybe use a night sky (possibly blue-ish?) - if the player can see it above him, his perception of the whole area would be influenced. Also, use only grey-scaled textures. Textures with colors often get screwed up, specially in software renderer if your color shade doesn't match any color in the Doom palette. Grey textures are always colored lighting friendly.

scifista42 said:

Colored lighting affects player's weapons, which usually looks bad on weapons that fire a red/yellow muzzle flash.

Muzzle flashes are fullbright. They shouldn't be affected by colored lighting, at least in ZDoom-based engines.

ZDoom: (software renderer)



Zandronum: (software renderer)



Fullbright or not, colored lighting always takes effect in software renderer. Not OpenGL renderer, though.

GZDoom: (OpenGL renderer)

I tried using various settings with bad results.

1st Try: Red+Green:300, Blue: 320
Result: Too dark for comfort.

2nd Try: Red+Green: 400 Blue: 425
Result: Looks like all the other rooms (maybe a bit smoother).

3rd Try: Red+Green: 400 Blue: 500
Result: Looks WORSE than before. Looks like some one colored the grey room with a blue pencil in a rush.

4th Try: Red+Green: 400 Blue: 600
Results: Looks redish green. Don't know how that happened.

EDIT: In all 4 tries, Sector brightness was set to 120.

Wait, what? How do you even set the color values? None of the numbers should be higher than 255 (or FF hexadecimal). 255,255,255 (FFFFFF) mean unmodified color, lower numbers means desaturation of the specific color (red, green or blue), which is how colored lighting works. I thought you were using the lightcolor sector property, which is FFFFFF by default (format RR GG BB). If you were using ColorSetter or Sector_SetColor, then you shouldn't use higher numbers than 255, either.

I'm using Sector_SetColor
I haven't learned (or known about) lightcolor and ColorSetter.
I'll adjust it later.
In the mean time, I think I'll see if I can reduce my noob-ness a little.

I have bad news. I wasn't able to reduce my noob-ness.
I need help again.
How do I make lifts in Zdoom (Doom in UDMF)?
Any advice is appreciated.

http://zdoom.org/wiki/Plat_DownWaitUpStay

Use this action either normally on a linedef, or in ACS script.

Alternatively: http://zdoom.org/wiki/Generic_Lift

The blue room problem was delaying actual work on the wad.
So, I decided to leave the room blue (I've grown to like it) and work on the actual mapping.

Here's the new link: *See Further*

Here, I made a blue key door and fixed the texture problem in the starting area. The secret area has a misaligned texture which I will fix soon.
It also has a room with yellow lighting (which surprisingly, looks more or less like how I pictured it in my mind) and the demon horde problem has been made bearable.

Some health and ammo was removed for better aesthetics as well as better game-play.

Tell me what you think.

I made some progress since my last post. So far, I think the new rooms look more or less like how I pictured them in my head. Here are some screenshots!












The yellow light is supposed to emulate 100 Watt Blubs.
What do you think?

P.S: If you haven't guessed already, a crate maze is under construction.

Honestly, everything looks dull. The long corridor is particularly offensive. Nobody plays Doom because he enjoys walking through such corridors, and you should aim for a more efficient and appealing design. The repetitive crate placement is similarly wrong.

scifista42 said:

Honestly, everything looks dull. The long corridor is particularly offensive. Nobody plays Doom because he enjoys walking through such corridors, and you should aim for a more efficient and appealing design. The repetitive crate placement is similarly wrong.

I wouldn't worry about dullness. I'm planning to change crate textures and the screenshots showcase just the start.

What will be included:

Crate towers that have hitscanners sniping you.
Lot's of sneak attacks.
Hidden weapons.
And a 4-way center camp.

So, you'll make a room full of crates that has hitscans on them, monters behind crates and hidden weapons?! Boy that's new... All that aside, try to be a little more ambitious than that.

KevinHEZ said:

So, you'll make a room full of crates that has hitscans on them, monters behind crates and hidden weapons?! Boy that's new... All that aside, try to be a little more ambitious than that.

Well, obviously what I'm trying to do has been done a million times by someone better. I just want to make a wad that looks and plays like how I want it to.
What I'm trying to do: Make it look how I pictured it in my mind and to improve my skills so that I can make a megawad I wanted to makee ever since I got a hold of Doombuilder.

I'm not even trying to be original here.

I made slight progress since last time.
As I stated before, I'm neither very good at Doom nor mapping. So I need some feedback.

Here's the new link: http://www.mediafire.com/download/ogv72fkihj3s8c2/abase.wad

Someone please tell me what you think of the map. What problems with texture, gameplay and lighting you noticed (other problems welcome.) and give your advice on how I should go about fixing it.

Thank you.

I've noticed the exact same problems as before. Misaligned textures, ugly colored lighting, and too big monster hordes (while being lowly-threatening to the player, easy to outmaneuver and tedious to kill). The stringy corridor-heavy layout, random dead ends and large bland rectangular rooms also give a bad impression. You've added some pointless borderline floor structures, which only cause the player to bump up and down when stepping close to them. Finally, new items and monsters don't make your map any cooler if you use them badly - that means, spam them around without a thought.

How to go about fixing it: Look out for instances of misaligned textures and fix them all. Remove colored lighting, preferably all of it, particularly in sectors that the player can enter himself, and in sectors with non-white and non-gray textures. Redo monster placement, so that it never takes too much time to kill monsters before moving to the next area, but it's still more rewarding to fight them rather than skip them. Use monsters in varied ways (traps, ledges), so that they would attack the player from more directions, not just from the front. Try to make size and detail amount proportionate throughout the map, no less and no more than needed: If you have too big rooms, scale them down. If you have too cramped rooms, scale them up (player needs enough space for comfortable movement). If you have too long corridors, make them shorter. If you have too bland rooms, improve their architectural shape (rectangles are sooo boring). If you have overdetailed rooms, remove detail. Place everything into the map with a thought, with the goal to interest/impress the player, give him challenge, while allowing him to have fun. Don't make things look monochromatic, and don't make things repetitive - keep the map stylish and fresh as the player advances. Mainly, if you feel something in the map is not so great, don't be afraid to scrap it and/or completely redo it for the sake of improvement.

After a really long break brought on by mapper's block, I decided to resume mapping. However this glitch that persisted since day 1 has been bothering me a lot recently.



Here,this shadow that cuts-in is not supposed to be here. It's supposed to look like this:



This is a screenshot of the other side of the starting room. Any ideas on how I can fix this?

You have unclosed sectors there, probably. Solution: Either manually redraw the surrounding sectors, or go to "Make Sector" mode, click the sectors and make them redraw automatically. The error is a result of incompetently deleted linedefs. You should never delete 2-sided linedefs between 2 different sectors. Always Join or Merge sectors before deleting linedefs between them, that's how you prevent unclosed sectors.

scifista42 said:

You have unclosed sectors there, probably. Solution: Either manually redraw the surrounding sectors, or go to "Make Sector" mode, click the sectors and make them redraw automatically. The error is a result of incompetently deleted linedefs. You should never delete 2-sided linedefs between 2 different sectors. Always Join or Merge sectors before deleting linedefs between them, that's how you prevent unclosed sectors.

Thanks. I'll try this out. The funny thing is, I didn't delete any lines while making this sector. I know this because I don't usually delete any lines, period. If I make a mistake, I usually Ctrl+Z and re-draw it.

I used make sectors to redraw the surrounding sectors automatically. It DID NOT fix the problem. Any more suggestions?

Merge the 2 sectors divided by the problematique linedef. Then redraw the linedef to split them again, and set proper light values. I did this, and it helped. I couldn't find out what was the exact problem, but at least it's fixed.

scifista42 said:

Merge the 2 sectors divided by the problematique linedef. Then redraw the linedef to split them again, and set proper light values. I did this, and it helped. I couldn't find out what was the exact problem, but at least it's fixed.

Yep! That fixed the problem. Thanks for all the help.