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Khorus

Strife: Mothership [WIP]

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How's it going?

I've been casually working on my third Strife project for just over a year now. Because I wanted more Strife shit, goddammit.

I have two fully finished maps and a bunch others in various stages of completion. I've learned some lessons working on Absolute Order when it comes to hub based mapsets, so I should be able to reach my vision for this one. Don't expect this any time soon, I have plenty of maps to go, but I felt like sticking my head out as I'm not around here as often as I used to be.

Anyway, here are some screenshots and a random mapshot.

If you want to look at and play my earlier Strife mapsets, check out the Absolute Order and Raiding the Dam threads.

Love,
Khorus

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You little ripper! I was hoping that AO would result in some more Strife material by other authors, but given the opportunity I'd take a Khorus mapset any day. Screenshots are looking swish - particularly that first one! Love the bulky architecture.

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What a wonderful day to hear that Khorus is making another Strife PWAD! Looks cool, dude.

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Bookmarked for after I finish the original Strife :-D

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This might be veiwed as a bad\inappropriate\troll post but one thing that bugs me about many Heretic pwads, projects like Jimmy's Square or this one is that they look like sets of retextured Doom levels. Well duh, Doom uses almost the same engine you'll say, of course they will look like that. But I think Heretic and Hexen authors managed to create their own design styles that are quite different from what we see in Doom and pwads, so I believe it's possible to get rid of that "retextured" feel. But this is very subjective in any case I guess, so don't take me seriously.

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I know what you mean Memfis, and I agree to a large extent. But I also feel like Doom has more of a monopoly on different styles since it's much more of a popular game. Like a Doom map doesn't have to look or play like the iwad maps to feel like Doom, but Heretic/Hexen/Strife maps that aren't like their respective iwads end up feeling like much more of a deviation from the look and feel of those games.

Anyhow this looks pretty good, retextured Doom maps or no. Is it ZDoom specific? Crispy Strife is a limit removing port that is more-or-less active (no new changes other than what goes into Chocolate Strife).

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plums said:

Is it ZDoom specific?

The editor shot shows that it uses the Hexen map format. And Absolute Order was ZDoom-specific too, partly because DECORATE was needed to make stamina/accuracy upgrades available without having to use conversations and weird hardcoded stuff.

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This looks great! I'm glad you're making more Strife maps. Will you do a soundtrack for this set as well? I liked the music for your previous releases.

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Alfonzo said:

You little ripper! I was hoping that AO would result in some more Strife material by other authors, but given the opportunity I'd take a Khorus mapset any day. Screenshots are looking swish - particularly that first one! Love the bulky architecture.

kmxexii said:

What a wonderful day to hear that Khorus is making another Strife PWAD! Looks cool, dude.


Thanks, guys. :) You've both been big supporters of me and my work over the years which I really appreciate.

VGA said:

Bookmarked for after I finish the original Strife :-D


Ha, great! While there are some dud maps, overall I think Strife has some excellent level design. Have fun there. :)

jute said:

This looks great! I'm glad you're making more Strife maps. Will you do a soundtrack for this set as well? I liked the music for your previous releases.


Thanks, I'm still enjoying making maps for Strife. And good to hear you liked the music, very few mention it. I've been thinking about a possible "audio cue system" for this mapset where there is a silent track playing in the background, but when the player triggers an event/line, a new track plays out once and then the silent track plays again. Not sure if that's possible, though. Gez? :)

plums said:

Anyhow this looks pretty good, retextured Doom maps or no. Is it ZDoom specific? Crispy Strife is a limit removing port that is more-or-less active (no new changes other than what goes into Chocolate Strife).


Not sure Doom retextured conveys it well, I haven't made a Doom map in 2.5 years. But yes, Gez is correct; Zdoom specific. I am using some slopes and 3D floors here and there for things like water, piping and minor architecture. Hopefully within the realms of taste.

Memfis said:

This might be veiwed as a bad\inappropriate\troll post but one thing that bugs me about many Heretic pwads, projects like Jimmy's Square or this one is that they look like sets of retextured Doom levels. Well duh, Doom uses almost the same engine you'll say, of course they will look like that. But I think Heretic and Hexen authors managed to create their own design styles that are quite different from what we see in Doom and pwads, so I believe it's possible to get rid of that "retextured" feel. But this is very subjective in any case I guess, so don't take me seriously.


Best for last! Of course I take you seriously and not like a troll, it's an interesting point and I'm glad you made me think about it.

I have my preferences for how I build architecture for Doom engine games which, as Alfonzo pointed out, is big, clean shapes. And I build those around gameplay situations, a small example is in the second screenshot; there is a wooden pole to let aggressive players circle around cover.

But I definitely think it extends beyond immediate architecture and texturing, I build progression for Strife maps very differently than I do for Doom. Especially now, I allow for much more space, exploration and choice to let the player slow down a bit. On the mapshot for instance, the bottom left section of the map with the large water section and cave is entirely optional, but going there will let you pick up a weapon earlier than otherwise. You can sneak there by going through the cave and navigating some tricky jumps, or trigger an alarm through the more obvious direction and dash to the weapon.

These are some random thoughts, but if you had something more specific to bring up I'd be happy to talk about them. :)

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Cool to see a strife map in progress, i was wondering once if theres any strife wads at all but seems that there is. I even started my own strife map once, im developing it really slowly once in a while i open it up and develop it further, one day it will be done and i'll definitely release it.

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Khorus said:

Thanks, I'm still enjoying making maps for Strife. And good to hear you liked the music, very few mention it. I've been thinking about a possible "audio cue system" for this mapset where there is a silent track playing in the background, but when the player triggers an event/line, a new track plays out once and then the silent track plays again. Not sure if that's possible, though. Gez? :)

Not possible with the music system, since there music is always played looping and it isn't necessarily paused by pausing the game (for example, by calling the console or the menus) so if you try to be clever and script an interruption of the music after X tics, where X is the length of the track in tics, it's likely to go out of sync is the player pauses or saves and reload.

What you can try, however, is hack it with an ambient sound effect. A global ambient sound will be played at full volume without positioning, so it'll be kinda like music. However, it will not be affected by the player's music volume setting.

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Gez said:

Not possible with the music system, since there music is always played looping and it isn't necessarily paused by pausing the game (for example, by calling the console or the menus) so if you try to be clever and script an interruption of the music after X tics, where X is the length of the track in tics, it's likely to go out of sync is the player pauses or saves and reload.

What you can try, however, is hack it with an ambient sound effect. A global ambient sound will be played at full volume without positioning, so it'll be kinda like music. However, it will not be affected by the player's music volume setting.


Argh, bummer. The ambient sound trick is promising, though. I can mix the music levels to the sound effects.

Solid Snake said:

Cool to see a strife map in progress, i was wondering once if theres any strife wads at all but seems that there is. I even started my own strife map once, im developing it really slowly once in a while i open it up and develop it further, one day it will be done and i'll definitely release it.


Kaiser has done a couple, too. Well worth checking out. And you should definitely finish that map. :)

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Ah! So this must be the Strife project you told me about. Glad to see some shots at long last and I certainly cannot wait to try this out as Absolute Order is the fucking nuts, sunshine. I bet bottom dollar that the game play will be just as good.

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I expected for an actual, mothership, 0/10 IGN


...just kidding, I'm waiting for more infos! Promising stuff.

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Khorus said:

Argh, bummer. The ambient sound trick is promising, though. I can mix the music levels to the sound effects.

You can have a script that will start music when you go for a specific encounter and then is turned off when the monsters in that encounter are all dead.

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I've been working pretty solidly on this for the last month, and it looks like that will continue on. 3 maps fully finished and playable, and I've done some story and dialogue writing. No dialogue in game yet, I'll need to figure that out later.

However, I have decided not to do a custom soundtrack for this project. It wouldn't be easy to fulfill my vision for what I wanted to do, so I figure it will be easier on my workload to not have to create over a dozen fully fledged tracks on top of level design, dialogue etc. Besides, the Strife soundtrack is pretty great as is.

But there is some very exciting stuff in the works for the mod that I can't wait to see finished, more on that later.

Springy said:

Ah! So this must be the Strife project you told me about. Glad to see some shots at long last and I certainly cannot wait to try this out as Absolute Order is the fucking nuts, sunshine. I bet bottom dollar that the game play will be just as good.


That it is! I'm glad you enjoyed AO, this will blow it out of the park. Trust me. :)

Katamori said:

I expected for an actual, mothership, 0/10 IGN


...just kidding, I'm waiting for more infos! Promising stuff.


A 0/10 from IGN would be a badge of honour. ;) Thanks, I hope it will be to your liking.

kristus said:

You can have a script that will start music when you go for a specific encounter and then is turned off when the monsters in that encounter are all dead.


Problem with that is the music would either loop or be cut short. I wanted it to be like half-life where the track plays out once and then goes back to silence, so it could be used to make an impact on a scene.

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kristus said:

Well, you can do that too. Just time it to stop when the track has played.

Music continues playing while the game is paused, but ACS scripts can't run while the game is paused, so the music can't be timed to a script.

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