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Mechadon

[WIP] Vela Pax (on hiatus)

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Wooo progress update/shameless bump. I'm sure everyone is sick of seeing these now :P

I'm putting off making fixes/updates to MAP05 for a bit while I wait on some more feedback. So for now I've started on MAP01 again. Speaking of which, there's still room for one more tester if anyone is interested.

MAP01 has it's origins as the beginnings of a failed speedmap that I started roughly a year ago. I didn't really have an aim for that map as far as it's gameplay went, but I was certain it was going to be a classic techbase style map. That much hasn't changed now that I've picked it up for this project. I took some really early screenshots since I'm sure that's the only thing you guys are probably interested in:




Sky texture test
Doombuilder shot

As per usual, ignore any HOMs, unclipped mid textures, and the lack of lighting. There's a little bit too much brown in those shots to give an approximation of the texture theme I'm working with, but it's close enough. There will be a lot more silver STARTAN, TEKGREEN, and some more gray tones mixed with COMPBLUE, computer textures, SHAWN higlights...you know, a typical techbase palette. I'm going to try and work in some more unique architecture in there so it doesn't feel like the same ole "Doom techbase". I'd love to hear some input on the sky texture. I think it brings out the bright, outdoorsy atmosphere I was shooting for. Overall I think it will be a brighter map than MAP03 or MAP05.

Gameplay will start out as a standard MAP01 fare with low-level infantry monsters but it will progress to a couple higher-tier monsters and weapons towards the end. But it will still be paced a little slower than the other maps. Right now I'm planning for it to have a linear flow but I may change my mind and inject some non-linear bits in there, much like what I did with MAP05. That much is still undecided though and I'll probably just figure it out as I go.

Anyways, this is about 2 days worth of work and it seems to be coming along very well. I'll stop rambling on now. I'd love to hear some comments :)

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I'm surprised no one's said anything so far. Those shots are gorgeous! I love some of the creative ways you've used the classic Doom II textures in these shots. Keep it up!

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Thanks a lot guys :)

I just hit 10K sidedefs on this so I figured it would be a good time to post a few more shots.




http://mekworx.phenomer.net/mekastuff/pics/screenshots/vela%20pax/Screenshot_Doom_20110107_214823.png
http://mekworx.phenomer.net/mekastuff/pics/screenshots/vela%20pax/Screenshot_Doom_20110107_214841.png
http://mekworx.phenomer.net/mekastuff/pics/screenshots/vela%20pax/Screenshot_Doom_20110107_214955.png
Doombuilder shot

Most of the stuff I've been building has been focused on indoor, cramped style rooms. I'll be moving on out to some open, outdoor areas too though.

Something a little bothersome is the flat I'm using for the STARG* textures. It's tan but it looks pretty close. Well, it looks pretty close to me. I've been known to get my colors completely off before. I can't seem to find a suitable enough flat for it though. I tried RROCK20 (which is what I'm using for TEKGREN*) but...eh, it doesn't look as good. I like that panel-style flat with my STARTANs.

I do love me some STARTAN though <3. I've really enjoyed working with it so far. SiD has been a big inspiration for this map so far. (well ok, this isn't *TAN...whatever).

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Those brown ceilings underneath the STARGRN/STARGRY textures look incredibly out of place to me, because every other flat/upper texture combo fits so well. I'd have suggested RROCK20 as a replacement, but you've already said you didn't like it. Try a darker grey texture of some sort (FLAT1 perhaps?) as the lower parts of those upper textures are shadowed green/grey. The alternative would be to try one of the GRASS textures, which I find go admirably in similar situations with BROWNGRN.

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Jimmy91 said:

Yay, impossibly-placed ceiling computers :D

I did that just for you Jimbo ;D

Essel suggested using FLAT1/GRASS1 for the STARGRY and STARG textures respectively. They match the darker edges of the division lines on the STAR* textures pretty well (in most cases) but they look really off in relation to the rest of the texture colors to me. There's also my super nitpicky concern of keeping the same texture of the flat across both STAR* textures; I want to keep them consistent. So that's why I'm using the tan-colored version of the FLOOR0_* set along with the silver version with STARGRY. Tan was the closest color to match STARG in my eyes. I think at this point I may just resort to inserting a green recolored FLOOR0_* and be done with it since I've already sort of bent the rules with new TEXTURE1 entries and some new liquid fall textures :P. I dunno, would it be a horrible thing if I did that?

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I reckon I'm a little over halfway done with MAP01 right now, so here are some new shots.



http://mekworx.phenomer.net/mekastuff/pics/screenshots/vela%20pax/Screenshot_Doom_20110126_174408.png
http://mekworx.phenomer.net/mekastuff/pics/screenshots/vela%20pax/Screenshot_Doom_20110126_174347.png
Doom Builder shot
Updated statusbar/stat font

About the whole STARG/flat issue, I finally just decided to make a green FLOOR0_* variant and be done with it. It looks much better than the tan version and I'm happy :). Granted it's another strike against my goal of using stock-only textures. But I really broke that rule at the beginning of the project when I added the water/lava fall textures. All of the new textures are based off of stock resources though so it should still retain that Doom textured feel.

I've updated the statusbar and the font that goes with it as well. I appreciate all of the feedback on it and I think it looks much, much better than when I first put it together. Check the link above to a screenshot of it.

I also looked into the whole music filesize business a few weeks ago. Turns out that with some tweaking, the file size differences between the modules and the .oggs I compressed was pretty negligible. The .oggs were about 2 megs smaller on the whole. In the end, I don't think that makes much of a difference considering the size of the wad (right around 40 megs at the moment). Then again maybe I could compress them further without too much loss of quality...I really don't know much about that stuff to be honest.

MAP05 is technically done now but I never bothered to post some final screenshots. So I'll probably do that later on.

And last thing - I recorded some Doom Builder footage of me working on MAP01 yesterday and sped it up by about 5x. It's pretty cool to watch I must admit. I attempted to upload it to youtube yesterday night but it was backtalking me with a bunch of unknown errors. I've never uploaded a video to youtube before but I'm going to give it another go later on tonight. I was able to focus long enough on mapping/recording for about an hour before I had to stop. If I can get the first video uploaded without anymore issues, I'll do some more recording.

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Looks good, though some of the floor flat transitions in the first new shot look a bit awkward. I'd suggest some sort of trim flat, like KDiZD's warning-striped variant of floor4_8, to use in a border that could possibly make the transition seem less sharp, but presumably the last thing you want to do is add even more custom resources to this :P

Also, the updated statbar numbers are much, much easier to read. I dig it.

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I'm excited to see what you do with the lighting.

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Actually I think I have a good idea on how I can make that flat transition look a lot better without having to add another flat. I'll give it a try and post a screenshot.

I think the lighting will end up being a lot like it is in MAP03, except maybe not as dark. Hopefully it'll work out well though.

I'm glad the statusbar number are easier to read. Next time I'm going to have to pay more attention to the palette I'm using. Thanks again for your help there essel :D

*edit*

Not that I needed another reason to pump more lines into this thing, but maybe this looks a little better. What do you think?

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That looks great, actually, though I'd maybe aim for a somewhat cleaner and more standardized pattern rather than the 'scattered/ripped out tiles' look.

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It looks a tiny bit weird to have the tile edges traced around, or whatever you want to call it, on the outside but not on the inside. And on the floor but not on the ceiling.

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Hmm, yea I agree. I'll mess with it a bit more, but at least it looks better than it did :). jerrysheppy, I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "on the outside but not the inside". I can certainly reflect that effect on the ceiling though, no problem.

I don't have any idea when I'll be able to get this video uploaded. I tried it again just now and it keeps giving me a "failed to uploaded due to unknown error". Google doesn't really help as I've come across 5 or 6 different "fixes" and none of them seem to be working :/

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woop woop woop new shots




http://mekworx.phenomer.net/mekastuff/pics/screenshots/vela%20pax/Screenshot_Doom_20110217_003459.png
http://mekworx.phenomer.net/mekastuff/pics/screenshots/vela%20pax/Screenshot_Doom_20110217_003611.png
DB shot

I've done a ton of work since the last update and there are bunch of new areas either finished or half-way finished. I'm trying not to post a pile of screenshots so there's a little bit left over for everyone to see while playing the maps. Anysmacks, I'm about 80%~ish done and most of what's left is just tying up loose ends with the layout. I'm gonna focus a bit more on some outdoor areas as I finish up since a large chunk of this map is mostly indoor areas. Comments are appreciated, as always.

I also updated the design page on my dumb blogosphere/website with final shots of both MAP02 and MAP05 as well as some other misc. information on the remaining maps. So uh, feel free to totally ignore that :)

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Sexy as always, Mek. The only problem I see immediately is the misalignments of the BIGBRIK2 textures, especially in shot 2.

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Thanks Snakes :). Yea the alignment problems are something I'm aware of; it's especially problematic with METAL1. There are so many intersecting seams where those texture meet that it's nigh impossible to hide the misalignment seam. METAL1 especially just because of the shapes in it. So right now I'm just sorta trying to ignore them until I do lighting, heh.

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Regarding the two hexagon-tile screenshots (before and after detailing):

The "separated" hexagon tiles should go. It looks a little weird to have these sort-of wear-and-tear broken tiles laying around, in an otherwise immaculate and new looking structure. Also it looks weird to have these broken sort of tiles on top of more tile-looking floor... you'd think that underneath tiles should be structural stuff like wood or stone or even dirt.

edit: but for clarity, the after screenshot is definitely better. The main piece of the hexagon tiles should stay, IMO \o/

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Yea I've already changed that area so the hexagon tiles have more of a uniform patterned look instead of the "ripped out" look; it does look much better. I also reflected the effect on the ceiling. I've had some people say that the green looks a little too bright against the tiles. I didn't really have a reason to keep that flat there so I replaced it with FLAT1. Overall it looks much better :)

While I'm here, I still haven't been able to upload my time-lapse videos. Does anyone have any suggestions on what I could do? I get an "unknown error" message when I try to upload it to youtube. I've uploaded smaller test videos without any issues though. I can go into more detail if needed.

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Finished the layout/detail of MAP01 today...friggin' finally. Because I have no self-control, the map ended up being close to twice as big as I planned. It's not nearly on the same scale as MAP05, but it's a little bit bigger than MAP02 (as far as sidedefs go). So yea...I guess I lied about the map being smaller than the previous ones :P. I took some quick shots for anyone interested:





Some TEKGREEN and TEKWALL.
WOOOO CRATES!
A small portion of a larger STARTAN/BROWN96 room.
Hey look, more STARTAN!
Played with some ICKWALL here. It was fun.
A fancy computer decor that I totally didn't rip off from Espi's SiD.

This is the DB shot though I'm not sure why I'm posting it because it just looks like a big white globbish mess.

I'm happy with how it came out even though it turned out to be a lot bigger than I planned. I'm going to jump on the lighting next and it should be a lot less painful than it was in MAP05. Oh and about the time-lapse videos I made, I've sorta given up on uploading them to youtube, at least for the time being. I suppose if someone really wants to see them I can give it another try or just upload them in a .zip for something.

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Thanks guys :). After feeling my way through the first two maps, I can safely say that the style of gameplay won't be nearly as balls-to-the-wall as Sunder or something similar. Hopefully the difficulty curve will appeal to a wide range of playing skills, although I can't say that for sure until some more people actually play the maps. I'm also making sure to implement difficulty settings to make double sure I cover as wide of a playing skill as I can.

However, I think a large portion of the "difficulty" is going to come from the sheer size of the layouts. These maps will definitely be hard to enjoy if your the type of person who enjoys quick fire maps or who doesn't like to do lots of exploring. Playing them through without saving...well, heh, it would certainly be a challenge. So these maps are probably in that rare type of large, non-linear category which won't appeal to everyone.

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I've been thinking about releasing a public test candidate of the three complete maps after I finish MAP01. Generally I like to hold off on public releases until a project is almost done, but it's been over a year now since I started this project. I thought it might be a good idea to try and get some feedback from you guys as a whole before I start on the latter three maps. That way I can find out how good or bad I've been doing all this time :P.

What do you think guys?

Oh and just a small update but I finished the lighting on MAP01 yesterday. So I'll be going through and adding gameplay elements pretty soon.

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Mechadon said:

These maps will definitely be hard to enjoy if your the type of person who enjoys quick fire maps or who doesn't like to do lots of exploring. Playing them through without saving...well, heh, it would certainly be a challenge.


This sounds like it's going right up my lane then! Been on a big buzz over massive maps. :)

Screenshots look godly by the way. Looking at your large scale architecture alone has been very inspiring for my mapping, although I tried very hard not to steal ideas. ;)

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Oh good, then I think you might be able to squeeze some enjoyment out of these maps DeathevokatioN :). Maybe there are a few other people out there who like maps like these.

I think I've made the decision to go ahead with a 3-map beta release once MAP01 is done and tested thoroughly. So I'm going to go ahead and plan to do that unless you folks think it's a bad idea. I'm looking forward to getting some feedback and comments on the job I've done so far.

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