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schwerpunk

[RELEASE] Monochrome Mapping Project (latest fix August 1st, 2013)

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Obsidian said:

I've got a little idea for a map for this, but I'll need some resources: anyone know where I can get some completely black and white wall and floor textures? There aren't any in the stock textures and I don't really know where to look.

By the look of Da Werecat's screenshot and saying, it seems he has some. Try sending him a PM. Nevermind, looks like he's already helped you out. Props to Da Werecat for his contribution. :)

sawd: Super awesome!! You really took the line 'coloured lighting is also allowed' in the OP and ran with it. Very creative. Are you just using the two textures?

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@FractalXX: I would recommend anyone working with Doombuilder 2 to set up their UDMF configuration and use that. It's insanely easy to set up coloured sectors and use scripts to change textures. (There's a tab under sector options that lets you directly set the colour of the sector using RGB. So much cleaner than the old way.) It doesn't take long to get used to using the new format, and it's really convenient.

@Sawd: I like the way you're using the dark lighting in your map there. It complements the eerie green glow from the walls. Can't wait to see what you do with it!

@schwerpunk: Just played through on UV. Seemed a little easy, but it's very WIP as you said. I liked the layout of the map and it was interesting and coherent. I liked the drastic change between the open white room and the more confined dark halls. Once you finish this, it should be pretty awesome.

By the way, anyone try out my second map here? It's a little more traditional than the first one, but it's a decent quick romp. Is here

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Membrain said:

By the way, anyone try out my second map here? It's a little more traditional than the first one, but it's a decent quick romp. Is here

Whoa, somehow I missed this in hubber bubber of the last page. Playing it now.


1) I like the progression of seeing mobs up higher, then getting to that level, only to notice there's another level above that.
2) Good health & ammo balance on HMP (I hovered around 30% hp for most of it, and never had enough ammo that I could just spray).
3) You show a staggeringly good understanding of thing placement. A little while after passing through the 'red' door you show a glimpse of a medikit tucked away to right - a sight for sore eyes! But grabbing it takes you into the line of sight of some (I'm guessing) deaf hitscanners that were previously out of view. Treacherous fun!
4) This was fun.
5) I had to laugh at this part. **
6) I really like the look of your rooms. There's just something aesthetically 'right' about your design that I can't quite put my finger upon. Like this, for example.

Nice, effective use of scripting, too.

P.S. what do you call it? So I can add it to the OP.
P.P.S. thanks for the feedback on my own map, too.

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Membrain said:

@FractalXX: I would recommend anyone working with Doombuilder 2 to set up their UDMF configuration and use that. It's insanely easy to set up coloured sectors and use scripts to change textures. (There's a tab under sector options that lets you directly set the colour of the sector using RGB. So much cleaner than the old way.) It doesn't take long to get used to using the new format, and it's really convenient.


I guess you're right, and it sounds good. I have a feeling, that I'll set up the UDMF config, and make another map for this project... if that's allowed.

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FractalXX said:

I guess you're right, and it sounds good. I have a feeling, that I'll set up the UDMF config, and make another map for this project... if that's allowed.

Not only are multiple entries allowed, they are encouraged. Looking at the progression of maps so far I'd say we're learning from each other as we go along.

Maybe the day will come where we'll tire of this project, pack up all our WADs for the /idgames database, and call it a scene. But not today. Not for a good while, either, hopefully. I'm still having too much fun!

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schwerpunk said:

3) You show a staggeringly good understanding of thing placement. A little while after passing through the 'red' door you show a glimpse of a medikit tucked away to right - a sight for sore eyes! But grabbing it takes you into the line of sight of some (I'm guessing) deaf hitscanners that were previously out of view. Treacherous fun!


Ah, yes. That and the room with the hazard floor holding a number of health bonuses made my friend threaten to break a mirror on my behalf. So, I would say success!

schwerpunk said:

5) I had to laugh at this part. **


That looks much more red when I tested it. I'll add some coloured torches to make sure it's more obvious I've also been working on adding secrets to both my maps, so once I do that I'll post the newer versions.

Oh, and the map is called "Abstraction Complex." Thanks for the feedback!

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Membrain said:

That looks much more red when I tested it. I'll add some coloured torches to make sure it's more obvious I've also been working on adding secrets to both my maps, so once I do that I'll post the newer versions.

Oh, and the map is called "Abstraction Complex." Thanks for the feedback!

You're quite welcome. Thanks for the fun map.

Re torches: do what you like, but it was pretty obvious to me what it was supposed to be, even before trying to use the door. You could just up the level of red. You could even make it 'absolute' red if you wanted to remove all doubt, lol.

Did you test it in hardware mode? I played it again and it looks a lot redder in GZDoom with vid_renderer 1.

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Ah, that does look a lot better. What were you using when you took the screenshot where it was yellowish? I might be able to do something about it, if needed.

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Membrain said:

Ah, that does look a lot better. What were you using when you took the screenshot where it was yellowish? I might be able to do something about it, if needed.

That was ZDoom. I'm not sure if it's just my own config, or if it's like that for everyone, but absolute colours work (i.e. Sector_SetColor (tag,255,0,0);) flawlessly.

Examples from my own map: one, and two (using ZDoom; software mode, obviously).

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Alrighty, just finished doing some work on both my maps. They now have secrets, the lighting's been intensified just a little bit on the key doors, and UV has been balanced just a tad to make the final fight more doable. The new versions are at the same URLs as the old, so the OP is already updated. ;)

Also, took a few pictures of Coagulation to bring it up to par with the other descriptions.

The starting area in its initial state
The back "yard" where the bridge eventually gets built
The building that leads to the other side of the bridge
The final switch room

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Obsidian said:

Absolutely loving Fractal's map. =D


Wow, thanks. o.O

A question... if i include music, too, would it matter if it's WMA, MP3, or MIDI?

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FractalXX said:

Wow, thanks. o.O

A question... if i include music, too, would it matter if it's WMA, MP3, or MIDI?


If it's for ZDoom, you can probably use MP3. Not sure about WMA.

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I'm almost positive that WMA would not work, sadly.

EDIT: Seems I'm wrong here. I recall it not working a while ago, but that may just be faulty memory.

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Membrain said:

Mind if I post up another map? (I just really love the concept of this project!) This one is the longest and hardest of what I've made so far. It's a little on the unforgiving side.

Can get it here.

Pic1
Pic2
Pic3
Pic4
Pic5

The more the merrier! We need prolific (and quality) mappers like yourself to give us something to talk/think about, while us more plodding mappers ruminate over every linedef. :P

P.S. I'll provide feedback on your map and update the OP later this afternoon, as I'm just heading off to college now.
P.P.S. Even the pic# format matches the OP - you are just a dream contributor.

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Just finished playing your map, Membrain, and boy am I glad I didn't try it earlier, first thing in the morning. I ended up having to turn it down to HNTR, but somehow I beat it. I will admit to only actually meaning it once when I cursed your name aloud.

Okay, well, what to say: 1) I think the detailing was the most advanced in this latest entry. You seem to have picked up a few tricks as you've been going, and really used the binary pallet to its full effect. Great, chunky geometric designs all around. Abstract, but still somehow concrete, probably because of the following factor. 2) This one also has the the strongest theme, I feel. The elements of vertical progression of your second entry (Abstraction Complex) are made into the central focus of this entry (which I've named "Unforgiving Side," after the notes in your post, and in the absence of your christening it otherwise). I especially like that the vertical progression was stuttered, so that little 'sidequests' were required.

If I had one criticism it's that Unforgiving Side seems a bit... I don't know, schizophrenic. You may only have two textures to work with, but the side areas are done in very different styles from each other. I realize this contradicts somewhat with what I said above; it's more of a general feeling than anything I can concretely point to. It could also be that this is more exciting (and less confusing) to veteran Doomers, but I felt it somewhat overwhelming.

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Yeah, it's definitely the toughest, meanest map I've ever made. I find myself only just able to beat it on UV, so I can see it taking a very late spot in the map order should we end up with enough maps to compile.

Oh, almost forgot. The name is "Shortwave." I keep forgetting to mention the names I use in the mapinfo. Sorry about that!

Hrm... I'll have to think about restructuring the map a bit. I tried to give it a feeling of having an outdoor area in the south, where the tower is, and a more congested industrial/base area to the north. I agree, though, that it could use some work with regard to solidarity.

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You got me thinking: What is the general amount of interest in compiling these into one WAD? Just polling you guys, because we've got some good buzz, and great entries so far, but having it on one WAD would mean we'd have to settle on a sourceport (G/ZDoom most likely, by the majority of the entries so far).

If there is any interest in making this into a mini-megawad, what should be our secondary theme? I mean we could go techbase-to-Hell, or whatever, but that's not as meaningful when we're limiting our textures and/or colour pallet. Alternatively, we could always just throw them all in without a theme other than progressive difficulty. That works, too...

So, 1) just checking the pulse on furthering this project, and 2) looking for ideas/suggestions on a secondary 'gimmick' (to put it unflatteringly).

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I know the usual approach with this sort of thing is a megaWAD, but without any target source port and such a range of ports used, it might be better just to have people upload these to the archive individually when/if they want to.

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I agree, aiming for G/ZDoom would be our best bet. It's what I, and at least a few of the other contributors, use.

@schwerpunk: Specifically, I think ordering the maps by increasing difficulty is a good idea. Of course, it's not always obvious which map should go after another based only on difficulty, so I would say we go by difficulty, then by map size, and, if neither of those give us a clear order, we can sort the maps by the weapon/monster appearances. (Higher-tier weapons and monsters go later in the map order)

For a project that's focusing on gameplay/ambiance over visuals, I'd say we try to stick to an abstract theme. I have a bit of an idea for an intermap that would link the maps together. Some of our maps are using more colour than others, so it'd be interesting if the megawad reflected that in a sort of "descent into monochrome." Monotony is hell, after all. (Not that the lack of colour has made anyone's map any less fun!)

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This is one of the more complex "art pieces" I've made, probably unfinished, no exit or monsters but only used 1 texture. Its a grid of squares with acs scripts doing random stuff: a rotating tapered light that randomly alternates between clockwise/counterclockwise/stillness, light inversion blinking that turns off/on randomly, floors that go randomly down or up in a pattern, ceilings that go randomly aligned or perpendicular to the floors.

For zdoom.

http://filesmelt.com/dl/zdLightCrap1.wad

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gggmork: Quite a delightful little wad, especially for a purely experimental entry. Something like this would be great as a centrepiece of a room in a more traditional WAD, too. You mention it's 'probably unfinished;' what would you add to it, or modify, if you were going to?

It has been added to the OP -- taking us to update #4 -- along with a teaser screenshot that I took (didn't want to give away the gimmick).

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If you want me to make it a hub, I can try, maybe with warps to each other map or something but would have to know how many warps. Blending art w/ gameplay sometimes doesn't work so well due to slowdown and monsters being picky about walking over little bumps etc. I think I can make it so the scripts all stop/pause when you exit from the hub (or exit from that part of the map to instead add gameplay to the same map), so they don't cause slowdown (if scripts playing in a hub are "rememebered" when outside the hub anyway).

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Hm, a hub level really does sound like a cool idea, especially if you think you can make it work, gggmork. Would be neat to have to solve a puzzle, and seeing LightCrap change over time to reflect scripts triggered in other maps... Hm, hm, hm... this is starting to sound a little above my pay grade, so I'll let you tell me if that's feasible or not, then we can tentatively work around that.

We could always cheat, and instead of making it a true hub level, we could just copy-paste a new version of it between every other map(s). That way you could just copy over the scripts you want to remain unchanged, and modify/add whatever other ones you want. It would be a fake progression, so people could skip maps, and still be able to complete the miniWAD, so that's kind of a plus...

On the note of turning this into a mini-megaWAD with warps between levels, it might be useful to establish a stylistic standard for warps back to the hub, so players know where they're going. I've been using the following simple script to denote within-level teleporters, and I think it's pretty clear. Maybe we could set up something similar for to-hub warps.

script 1 OPEN
{
    Sector_SetColor (15,0,0,255);
    Light_Glow (15,255,112,8);
}
Perhaps it should be purely black & white, considering it's going to be the default among several levels, or perhaps it should cycle glowing through the three different colours, to differentiate it from any other coloured lighting that players might add to the their levels. (Although I really do like -- I think it was Membrain's -- idea of levels becoming increasingly colourless as they progress toward the end.)

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