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schwerpunk

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

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Demonologist said:

This mapset of course has its flaws and issues (I remember some misalignments scattered across the maps and unpegged doortracks in map18), but overall I think it's worth attention and provides unique experience. I see that you're still accepting stuff, maybe I should unbury DB again and cook something up, I have one 'fiery' idea... Making no promises though.
Great work!

Hey, thanks for the kind words. I feel that a some reviewers weren't prepared for just how experimental and exploratory this wad is meant to be. Or perhaps they aren't interested in our brand of weirdness. Either way, I've enjoyed the feedback so far (I may feel differently when they get to my map, hehe), as it'll help us strike a middle ground for the next edition.

Of course, the most important aspect of this venture for me is the open attitude toward exploring new ideas, and that's not going away. On that note, feel free to shoot something interesting in this thread's direction!

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Wow so those reviews over at the Megawad club are pretty embarrassing. Here is a pretty big overhaul to Support Storage. One of the Crate mazes has been removed, the map is no longer orange, & the cyberdemon battle is not as avoidable. I will have more updates as the reviews keep coming in.

Also I would like to say that the stock Doom 2 music is fine for all of my maps.

Just out of curiosity did anyone here think this map was actually good, or have any problems with the texture choice? Schwerpunk seemed to like the map in his review & pfl only complained about an abundance of ammo.

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@ Jaws In Space: I enjoyed all of your maps with a special mention for Up Town. Mapping with restrictions in the like of "limited textures allowed" can give a newbie styled map look "by default". Have you read this one comment in which one would rate your maps as the bottom line ? That's another example of what I was stating to be "needlessly rude". But don't worry, my map will win this honnor on the next set :) that is, if it ever gets the approval seal :) But I have a good idea for it (I dream for a berserk-punch stressful maze with some Archviles and some occasional "respawning" pistol guys. [something easy :)]).

@ schwerpunk: Hey, your map is great. Much as your writing; very zen, precise and clean. And open minded. I admire you. So there will be a bugfixed version I see. Would that be something like DWMMP1.1 ?

Now, I know I'm out of bound but, anyone tried the Stardate 20X6 ? I'm finishing it on UV. Insanely hard.

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Jaws In Space said:

Just out of curiosity did anyone here think this map was actually good, or have any problems with the texture choice?

I liked it for the same reason Demon of the Well sorta liked it. And I haven't any problems with textures.

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pfl said:

Mapping with restrictions in the like of "limited textures allowed" can give a newbie styled map look "by default". Have you read this one comment in which one would rate your maps as the bottom line ? That's another example of what I was stating to be "needlessly rude".


Map 5 has like 10 total textures all of which are flat and have zero detail and it doesn't play/look like total garbage. The main problem with Jaws in Space's maps in this is that they're just bad maps (save for Up Town which has some cool stuff going on for it, but still has some problems in the conveyance and contrast departments). As I said in the WAD streams, the maps do not fail because they're "monochrome", they fail because the fundamentals of good map design (layout, structure, and gameplay) are not properly executed. The maps would not be improved in the slightest (Up Town is again excluded from this) by adding more textures.

Furthermore, you know what is really rude? Letting someone live in a bubble shielded from criticism, because you're apparently just not allowed to call shit, shit. We've got to hug them and tell them their works the best and that they can ignore all those elitist pricks who actually expect quality out of a map, or else someone might realize they're not the most special snowflake in the world.

Edit: Also Map 03 is literally just a scrapped Tom Hall Alpha map retextured with TANROCK8. (Like line for line not like, "this looks like an Alpha map.")

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Just as a bit of advice, it's not good practice to take someone else's garbage layout, slap a new coat of paint on it and call it a new map. When a map gets tossed out it's because it's shit or at BEST inadequate. You'd be better off studying the fundamentals of map design before attempting anything that relies on an advanced design concept(this project).

That advice goes to any new mapper, really.

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Jaws In Space said:

Just out of curiosity did anyone here think this map was actually good, or have any problems with the texture choice? Schwerpunk seemed to like the map in his review & pfl only complained about an abundance of ammo.


Support Storage was an average level for me gameplay-wise, and in terms of the minimal texture use there didn't seem to be consistently enough to make the level interesting. While you had good moments like the blood fountain, the curved staircase past the Imps + rocket area & the dining room table area, most of the map was just a dull 'crate maze' of sorts that reminded me a lot of E2M2.
And the Cyberdemon at the end (optional!) just made me scratch my head. I didn't think it was terrible by any means, just kind of meh/average. I certainly like the idea of the one-colour minimalistic texture design of your maps, just not always the gameplay design elements of them. Brown Room however had that bastard of an ending, which I really liked!

So you've released a new version of Support Storage.....I may consider playing that as some kind of bonus video at some point, or just for my own curiousity. I'm also liking how you're providing some interesting mapping details in the comments on my Let's Play parts on your maps!

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Oh god I just watched alfonzo's play of my map. Don't know if I should laugh or cry for that switch hunt farce I put him through... (My face was colored in red because of the shame.)

Remind me NOT do that kind of shit in few years.

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Tarnsman said:

Edit: Also Map 03 is literally just a scrapped Tom Hall Alpha map retextured with TANROCK8. (Like line for line not like, "this looks like an Alpha map.")


Man, I thought it seemed very "Hallsian", somehow--all those little right-angle mazey bits. I think I mentioned that at some point while referring to the map in the DWMC thread. A few different players have also noted that JIS' maps tend to look like they (whatever their origins) were originally built to be normally-textured maps, and then had the monochrome treatment applied to them after the fact. I'm not overly familiar with the DooM alpha (let alone its rejects), but I feel pretty safe in assuming that the actual monster/thing placement isn't copied over from Hall's map, as well.

Vis-a-vis what I thought of the map, Jaws in Space, I thought it was butt-ugly but I didn't find the gameplay unreasonable or entirely without interest. While the mazey layout robs the map of most of its potential for any really dynamic encounter, I still felt compelled to use the chainsaw a lot (which I view as a rare treat) and had to keep attacking the big cluster of monsters in the darkened area from different angles, and each time I'd run low on munitions and end up having to retreat to some other part of the map to get more, some of the big monsters (HKs, mostly) would end up following me out and harassing me later on. It added a little bit of pressure and unpredictability to the combat, which has been rare in the rest of the megaWAD up 'til the point I've played. I had no idea there was a cyberdemon in the map, though (played on UV)....he must've been part of the 4% or so I left behind when I accidentally exited.

This aspect worked out better here than in a later, similar map (can't remember the name, but it's the second silver base you made) because there's not much to impede monster movement. That later map is riddled with switchdoors and is generally much less interconnected, meaning most of the monsters just end up hanging around their own neighborhoods.

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@ Jaws in Space: I just played the updated version of your map, and wow, it's amazing how a change of texture alters the feel of the map. I saw some misalignments (inserting some vertices should fix that), but still found the gameplay engaging and challenging. Yeah, it's not the Citizen Kane of maps, but who cares? It's still fun and it's flow-y, and it doesn't waste my time. So yes, I think it's good. Also, at this point, I really wouldn't change anything, just take note for things you'd want to do differently in the next MMP. If you want to go for more mass appeal (and I don't blame you - bad reviews hurt) for your next entry, then the Megawad Club is probably the best place to get feedback.

I'm not really sold on the LITE retexturing, but maybe I'm just feeling nostalgic for those old brown walls.

P.S. full confession: I've never even tried going after the cybie without cheating. I suck at those.

@ SuitePee: Thanks for your continued and detailed feedback. My .txt file of notes for future projects has grown to almost ten kilobytes since incorporating your reviews!

@ pfl: "DWMMP1.1" seems logical. As long as our bugfixes don't continue to 2.0 I think we should be able to avoid any confusion. ;)

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Jaws In Space said:

Here is a pretty big overhaul to Support Storage.

One of the most memorable places on the map is gone.



The interconnectivity is worse now.

The new texture scheme... I don't know.

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Might as well say this now after watching Alfonzo's stream of the this project.
Map23 has a horrendous gameplay issue in the boss room where the player can be telefragged simply by either
1) Cacodemon is spawned and can teleport to the voodoo doll room where the player is punished for falling off the player area.
2) even more hilarious, if a dead monster falls of the map it too can telefrag the player.

I would suggest the best fix is to remove the telefrag punishment by making the floor at the base 20% damaging and inescapable.

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cannonball said:

Map23 has a horrendous gameplay issue in the boss room where the player can be telefragged simply by either
1) Cacodemon is spawned and can teleport to the voodoo doll room where the player is punished for falling off the player area.
2) even more hilarious, if a dead monster falls of the map it too can telefrag the player.

Looks like I am to blame.

I've allowed monster telefragging to prevent monsters from stucking in each other (which they did constantly).

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cannonball said:

Might as well say this now after watching Alfonzo's stream of the this project.
Map23 has a horrendous gameplay issue in the boss room where the player can be telefragged simply by either
1) Cacodemon is spawned and can teleport to the voodoo doll room where the player is punished for falling off the player area.
2) even more hilarious, if a dead monster falls of the map it too can telefrag the player.

I would suggest the best fix is to remove the telefrag punishment by making the floor at the base 20% damaging and inescapable.


.....Oops.

//_-

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Good thing you spotted that cannonball! I would not have liked to have dealt with that telefragging oddity in my Let's Play run of the final map.

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Okay, so that last update was pretty half assed. So this one I put some time into. Hopefully this is a little more enjoyable now that it is no longer orange, has variation in lighting & some lighting effects, & has some changes in ceiling height. As far as I'm concerned this is the version that should be in the bug fix release, unless of course you spot any bugs. :P

Also I turned the crate maze into real crates, let me know if you guys think this is okay. I think it works fine since the crates are grey like the rest of the map.

@Da Werecat: The memorable room is back in.

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Bumping to ask any ETA on that MMP "patch" update schwerpunk? (also to keep this project on the first page)

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Judging by the reviews we've been seeing, it seems to me that doing up some stuff to make the maps more interesting visually might be in order. I've been thinking of how to do this without making the project's intended, original goal of focusing on gameplay and flow become muddled. One solution I thought of would be to make a number of monochrome textures that carry a single theme to them.

For example, would would have the Urban textures that pop up in the first project, as well as a few "natural" textures that would evoke rocks, grass, and such. We could do a few tiles/panels for techbases, too. One of the main points that should be addressed, though, is making sure that we have only a minimal amount of textures and that they provide only the information which they are supposed to be conveying. That is, our "rock" textures mean just one thing: This part of the level is "natural." That way, we keep the main idea of the project in the spotlight while also appeasing the community as a whole.

Also, we really should have more dialog on things like music. My maps in particular keep getting the lack of music mentioned, when the only reason the music was left out was so that we could organize that afterwards. :P Not exactly a huge deal, but definitely something to take advantage of next round.

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@ SuitePee: Presently, the ETA is July 14th at the latest. So far we've got fixes for MAP03 and 04. With a definite fix required for MAP23. Default music will also be added back into the mute levels. But other than MAP23, I don't think anything seriously game-breaking has come up.

@ Membrain: I agree, Membrain. I'd prefer that the textures suggest (or "evoke," as you put it) rocks, techbase, etc., rather than outright limit them to those uses. That way the imagination of the mappers & players is still still the primary tool for making sense of the environment. Now, were you talking about including this in the upcoming fix, or for the next MMP?

Re music: Yeah, we didn't start talking about music until way into the megawad concept, and then all too briefly. Personally, I like the lack of music, but it's obvious that a lot of players miss it.

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schwerpunk said:

@ Membrain: I agree, Membrain. I'd prefer that the textures suggest (or "evoke," as you put it) rocks, techbase, etc., rather than outright limit them to those uses. That way the imagination of the mappers & players is still still the primary tool for making sense of the environment. Now, were you talking about including this in the upcoming fix, or for the next MMP?


That's exactly where my mind was going. In this case, though, it may be a very good idea to keep the next version of the project limited to UDMF format, just because it gives us the ability both to use scripts (which are sometimes necessary due to the limitations the palette forces on us) and to modify the way flats are rendered, which no other map format allows for. True, this makes the project become limited to one source port, but on the other hand, we are also able to test our maps much more thoroughly and hunt down any issues more easily.

I would definitely hold off on this until we do another iteration of the project, as the maps we have right now are far too varied to expect our mappers to redo them with the new textures.

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schwerpunk said:

Default music will also be added back into the mute levels.

Umm. That's not what I meant when I was talking about assigning more music tracks.

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@ Membrain: I'm not too thrilled about limiting the project to UDMF (as much as I personally adore the format), but that does seem like the most universal format. Necessary question: It's a bit early to start assigning jobs, but who here has the talent and inclination to soup up these textures? I can draft up some ideas of my own down the line, although I think our trains of thought are pretty well in synch on this upcoming matter.

Da Werecat said:

Umm. That's not what I meant when I was talking about assigning more music tracks.

You want to make them all custom music? That works, too. Preferably, each author would sign off on music for their map(s).

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I wouldn't mind doing up some prototypes. It won't take me too awfully long, and I can get some specs together so that we can potentially add textures after the fact in case someone else wants to do some. (Another good point for UDMF is the shared pool of textures/flats, such that only one version of an image need appear in the wad to be used anywhere.)

Honestly, I'd prefer to keep things open like before, but it's obvious that such a stipulation is confusing and doesn't really help the project any. I'd be open to any map format, but I will say that UDMF and, specifically, ACS availability allows for more interesting maps. My maps in the first project would have been very annoying to make work without scripts.

EDIT: Finished a number of textures that should still keep the original project goals in mind while also offering more variation. Here's some examples.
Pic1
Pic2

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For Support Storage I would like the music from E2M2.
For Control Center I would like the music from E1M2.
For Brown Room I would like the music from E2M1.
For Outpost Gamma I would like the music from E1M3.
For Town Hall I would like the music from level 10 of Doom2.
For Up Town I would like the music from level 18 of Doom2.

I've got a few plans for the bug fix version of this wad. Support Storage is finished, the latest download is in my last post. I haven't decided if I will do anything to Control Center yet, there were a few complaints, but is also my best reviewed map so far & I'm pretty happy with it now, so we'll see. Nothing will be changed for Brown Room. I'm in the process of making quite a few changes to Outpost Gamma, especially since this is my worst reviewed map so far & happens to be my 2nd favorite. I changed the textures to blue since everyone was complaining about it being another silver map by me. The only other thing I'm really doing is adding more varied lighting & opening up the layout a little bit. I have no plans for Town Hall, I really hate that map and I don't want to work on it ever again. Up Town will see a few changes, mostly so it will be easier to identify doors & lifts.

As for the next wad, I will continue to make vanilla compatible maps. One thing these reviews have taught me is that I still need to get the basics of mapping down before I move on to things like scripts & stuff, I don't even know what UDMF means. I'll still post my maps here just so all my maps are in one place.

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Membrain said:

EDIT: Finished a number of textures that should still keep the original project goals in mind while also offering more variation. Here's some examples.
Pic1
Pic2


Yes yes yes yes yeeeeeees! That's more the visual style I'd like to see if MMP2 is in the works!

I'm halfway through this project so far, and so far The Primitive remains the pick of the bunch for me. I found it odd that Membrain and FractalXX's styles overlapped with Coagulation + Abstraction Complex/Mono Asbest (visually). Seems like some of the maps are just about experimentation rather than trying to make a super solid level, which is fine by me as long as they offer something technically interesting (like Coagulation or Tessel Dose).
That being said there's been nothing crap so far, just some maps that feel kind of 'meeeh'.

Hoping that MAP23 fix gets done soon, and that the next 11 maps I play start to blow my mind on a more consistent basis!

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Suitepee said:

I found it odd that Membrain and FractalXX's styles overlapped with Coagulation + Abstraction Complex/Mono Asbest (visually).

The initial goal of the project was to experiment with those two textures.

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Da Werecat said:

The initial goal of the project was to experiment with those two textures.


I feel like this is the most overlooked part of the project, most likely due to the fact that it wasn't enforced for any submitted maps. I will admit that it got pretty grating to hear, over and over, that those two textures are used too much. (My girlfriend even piped up about it, as she had been listening from the other room, unbeknownst to me.) It was mentioned no less than ten times in the video for Abstraction Complex, and almost as much for every other map that had that style. Those maps keep getting points taken off for following the rules of the project as they were presented to us, which seems very against the spirit of fair reviewing. I have thus far enjoyed every LP of the project quite thoroughly, as everyone has so far proven to be entertaining and otherwise quite fair. It just seems like people aren't even bothering to read the first post of the project and are concentrating on the flaws inherent to following the rules rather than looking at what the maps are doing within the constraints of the project goals.

I keep getting the feeling that each different reviewer is looking for something entirely different in these maps. We've got many people just looking to see Doom broken down to its most basic elements, with flow and gameplay taking center stage, and then another group looking to see weird, crazy visual effects and experimental gameplay in every single map, which isn't what the project's goals began as. While I am not trying to knock maps like Dada and Monochromatic Nightmare, whose mappers are very talented and creative, they, as well as the majority of the maps submitted for the project, didn't keep to either the initial rules nor the spirit of the project. On the other hand, those maps that did have a unique visual theme and still retained good gameplay have shown where we should probably be taking the next iteration of the project. Really, on could say that they did a better job at following the rules than the actual rules did in a few cases. :P

But, it's not that big a deal and it does highlight the fact that the community isn't looking for that sort of project and does require an amount of visual flair, even in projects that aren't about the graphics. All in all, a good learning experience, and I'm not nearly as upset as this post may make me out to be. You guys are all awesome and I'm very happy to have been a part of this project and in the crosshairs of the reviewers, save for these tiny issues. :)

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I've taken into account your viewpoint for my future Let's Play videos of this project Membrain. I even talk about this in my upload of LP'ing the Tan Temple just now.

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