Doom Pictures Thread 2023

[Dragonfly]

2 hours ago, Deadwing said:

It's also better not to abuse them too much as well, right?

 

As a general guideline I'd suggest only use it on things that feel absolutely necessary to slope - in the examples I posted recently, the obelisks, rooves, shadows etc felt so much more "real" than they otherwise would have, so it felt like a good justification. There's the sloped parts by the exit gate that are definitely more arbitrary but it does help draw attention to "hey, yeah, this bit's important, look at me!".

 

It's worth noting that it is awful for performance reasons, plus it also makes maps much larger in terms of filesize (who cares about that much anymore though?)

 

If the player can't get that close to them I'd suggest using 2px spacing between each line instead of 1px; this helps with optimisation as you'd imagine. The brutalist structure with the angled portions are an example of this 2px spacing.

 

I would strongly advise not putting them in playable spaces where the player can actively walk though, as in DSDA-Doom, PrBoom, etc etc, the player's camera view gets extremely bumpy when traversing up and down them, which feels awful. :P

Edited December 18, 2023 by Dragonfly

[Darkcrafter07]

Why wouldn't devs add slope support? Duke 3D did them fine and even worked faster than Doom, well ACE engine also runs faster than Vanilla.

[Dragonfly]

6 minutes ago, Darkcrafter07 said:

Why wouldn't devs add slope support? Duke 3D did them fine and even worked faster than Doom, well ACE engine also runs faster than Vanilla.

 

At what point do you stop adding features? Or should every port become a GZDoom clone?

 

There's definitely merit to different ports having different capabilities and sensibilities, I'd say adding slopes to DSDA etc is a slippery slope (pun intended) that probably isn't worth sliding down.

Edited December 18, 2023 by Dragonfly

[Deadwing]

4 minutes ago, Dragonfly said:

 

As a general guideline I'd suggest only use it on things that feel absolutely necessary to slope - in the examples I posted recently, the obelisks, rooves, shadows etc felt so much more "real" than they otherwise would have, so it felt like a good justification. There's the sloped parts by the exit gate that are definitely more arbitrary but it does help draw attention to "hey, yeah, this bit's important, look at me!".

 

It's worth noting that it is awful for performance reasons, plus it also makes maps much larger in terms of filesize (who cares about anymore though?)

 

If the player can't get that close to them I'd suggest using 2px spacing between each line instead of 1px; this helps with optimisation as you'd imagine. The brutalist structure with the angled portions are an example of this 2px spacing.

 

I would strongly advise not putting them in playable spaces where the player can actively walk though, as in DSDA-Doom, PrBoom, etc etc, the player's camera view gets extremely bumpy when traversing up and down them, which feels awful. :P

 

Great to know!
I'll try to pull some of these myself and see if I can get good results haha :D
With even mp3's in wads I wouldn't worry much about filesizes lol

Really nice to know some of these are 2px as well, it still looks a lot beautiful

[MFG38]

10 minutes ago, Dragonfly said:

I'd say adding slopes to DSDA etc is a slippery slope (pun intended) that probably isn't worth sliding down.

 

Well, for what it's worth, dsda-doom did add support for the UDMF format recently and I believe that includes support for actual slopes.

[Captain Toenail]

19 hours ago, jaeden said:

Some new evil and fiery WIP screenshots...

Looks epic. I like the fire barriers.

 

On 12/16/2023 at 10:58 AM, SiMpLeToNiUm said:

Avast ye scurvy Doomers!!

Yarr this be a fine vessel

[Darkcrafter07]

2 hours ago, Dragonfly said:

 

At what point do you stop adding features? Or should every port become a GZDoom clone?

 

There's definitely merit to different ports having different capabilities and sensibilities, I'd say adding slopes to DSDA etc is a slippery slope (pun intended) that probably isn't worth sliding down.

Why is that having a feature that GZDoom has making it GZDoom too? Is Duke Nukem 3D and Eternity engine are GZDoom? The point is practicality, ease of editing and performance, you don't have to wank over millions of such microsectors in order to imitate a damn slope.

[Egg Boy]

14 minutes ago, Darkcrafter07 said:

Why is that having a feature that GZDoom has making it GZDoom too? Is Duke Nukem 3D and Eternity engine are GZDoom? The point is practicality, ease of editing and performance, you don't have to wank over millions of such microsectors in order to imitate a damn slope.

Why even map for Doom then? Just make a new game in Unreal Engine :)

[Pechudin]

15 minutes ago, Darkcrafter07 said:

Why is that having a feature that GZDoom has making it GZDoom too? Is Duke Nukem 3D and Eternity engine are GZDoom? The point is practicality, ease of editing and performance, you don't have to wank over millions of such microsectors in order to imitate a damn slope.

Dunno I kinda like the pseudo-slopes better than the actual slopes.

[Darkcrafter07]

1 minute ago, Egg Boy said:

Why even map for Doom then? Just make a new game in Unreal Engine :)

That's a bit too extreme but really a good question you raised.

 

1) Because you want to create something new inside the limitations engine provides;

2) Because you want your game to work on slower machines, maybe even on DOS and 486;

3) Because you don't want to make it overdetailed like modern games are, keep it simpler;

 

A golden middle is what I seek here.

 

2 minutes ago, Pechudin said:

Dunno I kinda like the pseudo-slopes better than the actual slopes.

They do have an interesting look and you have an option to "skew" your textures too, it comes at more cost to handle though, both for mappers and engines (performance).

[Egg Boy]

5 minutes ago, Darkcrafter07 said:

That's a bit too extreme but really a good question you raised.

 

1) Because you want to create something new inside the limitations engine provides;

Such as the limitations provided by DSDA Doom?

[myolden]

12 minutes ago, Darkcrafter07 said:

A golden middle is what I seek here.

 

This is fine I guess, but you have to understand that the "golden middle" is going to be different for everyone. Do what you want but don't expect every source port or community member to conform to your ideals. 

[Dragonfly]

Overcoming aforementioned limitations is a massive part of why Doom mapping is fun, and these "boom slopes" as it seems like we're calling them now is just another drop in the ocean of the countless ways we as a community have surprassed the engine's percieved limitations. Whether you or others love it or hate it, I as a mapper am not too bothered; ultimately I enjoy both the process and the result, and that makes it worth toying around with in my opinion. :)

 

I've had "heated discussions" in the past (slopes.txt, if you know you know 😅) as someone saying how GOOD slopes are in ports such as ZDoom, I completely understand the appeal. Same goes for all those other advanced features like 3D floors, polyobjects, etc. But I also get the appeal of using alternative methods to achieve similar results in places you wouldn't expect to see them. We've been wowed by the emulation of more advanced tech in similar ports for decades, such as swinging/rotating doors achieved with a whole bunch of instant raise/lower trickery, "deep water" achieved with HOMs, room-over-room and faux-3D bridges with self-referencing sectors... to name a few.

[Laocoön]

I like a good slope, and they are fun and satisfying to make. My computer is not at all optimised for gaming and I usually don't have performance issues (lol).

Here are some of mine.

Spoiler

 

 

 

I primarily use them for arches, but some can be walked on.

 

[plums]

I think George Fiffy aka "King REoL" was the first person to do Boom slopes? This is from The Uprising, 1998. These maps also featured Hexen-style breakable windows.

 

 

 

 

Later maps got more elaborate, this is from 1999:

 

Interestingly he made a single ZDoom map, which had both ZDoom-slopes as well as multi-sector curves. I guess it was tricky to get parabola-shaped curves with ZDoom slopes back then (ZDoom 1.23), or at least he couldn't figure it out.

 

Of course computers back then were orders of magnitude slower than what most people use today so lots of people complained about terrible performance. A common theme in King REoL innovations lol

[yakfak]

ramps in doom are like ramps in celeste uhhhhh the games are so iconically blocky

[esselfortium]

Slopes are just another kind of nonorthogonal walls. I don't think they're too non-Doomy at all.

[Lutz]

Personally, I don't care one way or the other about how slopes are accomplished, but I will say that modern editors make it a heck of a lot easier to create "Boom Slopes."  Speaking as an old man, part of the wow-factor of Boom Slopes back in the day was not only the visual appeal, but the understanding of the stupid amount of effort that went in to creating them -- a process that generally involved creating sectors in an editor that did NOT want you so make anything off the 8 pixel grid, plus a whole bunch of typing in numbers by hand (for both floor/ceiling heights and texture offsets).

[Dragonfly]

Having lightly dabbled in the tools of old, yeah, the stuff that was accomplished back then was almost comical in how complicated or long-winded it was to implement. Very impressive for sure! Even Doom Builder 1, which is where I got my start back in 2005, seems extremely primitive by today's tools!

[Gez]

2 hours ago, plums said:

I think George Fiffy aka "King REoL" was the first person to do Boom slopes?

American McGee had him beat. Look at the way to the exit room in both of these maps:

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/MAP14:_The_Inmost_Dens_(Doom_II)

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/MAP22:_The_Catacombs_(Doom_II)

 

But actually, the first Boom slopes were built by Alfred Ziggur, inventor of the Ziggurat, who time-traveled to ancient Mesopotamia in a stolen Ancient Alien flying saucer and whose knowledge of Boom wads helped shape local mythologies.

[Syoku]

[Dragonfly]

13 minutes ago, Syoku said:

 

Source? :o

[Syoku]

3 minutes ago, Dragonfly said:

 

Source? :o

I almost answered this seriously until I read who the poster was!

[xScavengerWolfx]

On 11/14/2023 at 9:01 AM, Dangerous Keen 4 said:

Doom3 - The Court (CLASSIC EDITION)
That will be one of the new enemy based on old model.
Doom2 used same methods *hell knight 
.so why not? :)
❤️ILOVE Pixel Art

 

Absolutely new behavior / properties

I have`t given it a name yet...

 

Thanks prfunky for "SickSphere" name Idea:D

.gives RANDOM Bonuses:)

Looking at your monsters in action i would name them something like "Cryptids" or "Nisse" Nordic gnomes. 

 

[NaturalTvventy]

[Syoku]

More Eviternity. This game is very evil.

[RjY]

3 hours ago, Gez said:

But actually, the first Boom slopes were built by Alfred Ziggur, inventor of the Ziggurat, who time-traveled to ancient Mesopotamia in a stolen Ancient Alien flying saucer and whose knowledge of Boom wads helped shape local mythologies.

 

Actually the fellow's name was James Roven but otherwise this is the cleverest, most oblique 1994 wad reference I have ever witnessed. Well done. Unless it was a total coincidence.

 

 

(ZIGGURAT.WAD of course, for those who do not mouse over links. But STONES.WAD did it even earlier...

 

 

Seriously folks I am amused by the apparent reinvention of KING REOL EXTREME DETAILING(TM) being a matter for such excitement -- I am sure I recall 20 years ago it was a complete laughing stock! Times change, I guess.)

[NeilForshaw]

On 12/18/2023 at 12:03 AM, DoomGappy said:

What's your method?

 

21 hours ago, Dragonfly said:

Oooh, this is awesome!

 

Is this something you can essentially automate and just map as normal? If so I'd be *very* interested in using this some time :D

 

Unfortunately if you're wanting to do it on an already finished map you're out of luck. Basically I used a program called "git" and whenever I edited a bit of level I would commit that (if you're not familiar with Git it is used for source control). When I finished the level I extracted all these different commits of the level and used wad2pic on each. Stitched the images as a GIF and there you go. I can go into more detail if needed.

 

I'm experimenting with having this more automated with a map I'm doing at the moment. I'll have to see how it turns out when it's almost "every save".

 

I remember years ago there was some tool that created an animated GIF that looked like the automap out of a completed level. I think it just simply added a linedef per frame in order of the linedef ID. Though wouldn't be quite as effective as manually taking snapshots I wonder if something simlar can be done on already finished levels. Wouldn't have textures being changed/heights being tweaked but still.

[fruity lerlups]

23 hours ago, Dragonfly said:

 

At what point do you stop adding features? Or should every port become a GZDoom clone?

 

There's definitely merit to different ports having different capabilities and sensibilities, I'd say adding slopes to DSDA etc is a slippery slope (pun intended) that probably isn't worth sliding down.

isnt the intention of DSDA doom meant to be demo compatibility for multiple engines/ports? I wouldnt be bothered if they added stuff like slopes, room over room dummy sectors, etc. as long as it maintained demo compatibility. Half the reason people dont use GZDoom is because of demo compatibility issues, not its bells and whistles.

[fruity lerlups]

20 hours ago, Egg Boy said:

Why even map for Doom then? Just make a new game in Unreal Engine :)

because you want to make a doom map with doom gameplay and assets and physics but with more expanded geometry?

I love like seeing absolutely gorgeous stuff made within the limits of the original engine's geometry but like also like stuff like Infested where an expanded geometry is used to recontextualize doom's sandbox.

Are you really saying you'd be opposed to like Prey portals, Serious Sam style gravity nonsense, non euclidean geometry combined with some clever classic doom combat?

Otoh, it is still way cooler to achieve the "how the hell did they do that" effect with the original geometry's limitations.