Oblige Skies

[SulfurOccult]

part of me is a little enraged. these generated sky textures are way better than any sky I have ever made :)

[leileilol]

Ajapted said:

This attempt at Silhouetted Skyscrapers needs some work:

all that's missing is gorillas tossing explosive bananas at each other

[Creaphis]

That cityscape is... interesting. It would look better if the buildings could seem three-dimensional, of course. Hey, since this IS Oblige, you could generate a cityscape out of lines and sectors. Then, just implement the code to render it from one perspective, throw a hazy filter over it and call it a sky. Aside from the huge extra amount of work that would take, it seems like a good idea.

leileilol said:

all that's missing is gorillas tossing explosive bananas at each other

Ha ha, yeah...

[andrewj]

Experiment with diagonal corners in rooms:


You can also see symmetry in some of the big rooms.

Damn, feels like I've been working on this rewrite forever, and it's still quite a way off to making playable maps again. One thing's for sure, these maps will be quite different to play than the old OBLIGE.

[esselfortium]

Wow, looking good! Was that curvy staircase generated by Oblige, or is that some sort of prefab?

[myk]

Are the diagonal room elements controllable? They're obviously a plus but they would also end up being too artificial if used indiscriminately. If layout themes are possible they could be used more or less often according to the type of level desired. For example, a "UAC facility" or "Romero style" type could use them more often, an "urban area" less so (more rectangle-based rooms make sense here), and a "cave system" could use rather irregular areas all around.

[andrewj]

This experiment puts the diagonals in every room, naturally it will need more logic to decide when to use them (like you say, good for Tech themes and no good for Cave themes).

I'm concentrating on the Tech/Base theme for the upcoming W.I.P release and probably won't do any other themes until after that.

@essel: curvy staircases are not prefabs but generated by Lua code. Prefabs probably wouldn't work since it has to handle different height differences (therefore different number of steps) and different entry/exit points.

[esselfortium]

Ajapted said:

This experiment puts the diagonals in every room, naturally it will need more logic to decide when to use them (like you say, good for Tech themes and no good for Cave themes).

Well, actually, cave themes would work best with as many curved and odd-angled walls as possible, as long as there's no sharp edges sticking out anywhere. :P

[CodenniumRed]

The best skies are based on modified photos from real-life skies. ;) Same with skyscrapers.

[Vegeta]

Is this going to support new skies for Heretic and Hexen? I know that on Hexen things are a bit more complex because of MAPINFO, but on Heretic it'd be only a palette conversion of whatever Oblige use as base to build the skies.

[40oz]

CodenniumRed said:

The best skies are based on modified photos from real-life skies. ;) Same with skyscrapers.

The following release of Oblige electronically connects to observatories in various parts of the world and takes real life photos of the sky and modifies them so that they repeat correctly every 256 pixels.

Those maps look excellent by the way, I'd love to play one! Even if they are not fully functional, I'd really enjoy taking a quick tour of the future of oblige maps. :)

[andrewj]

CodenniumRed said:

The best skies are based on modified photos from real-life skies. ;) Same with skyscrapers.

Yeah, though taking a real-life snap of Hell's sky is a bit tricky... :-)

@Vegeta: Heretic and (I think) Hexen should be easy, the Lua code will be responsible for sizes and what palette colors to use. OBLIGE doesn't create MAPINFO lumps yet, but will eventually.

[TomoAlien]

Oblige just gets better and better. Keep up, great work!

[40oz]

Ajapted said:

OBLIGE doesn't create MAPINFO lumps yet, but will eventually.

It would be pretty sweet if Oblige could generate map names too. Maybe a little map title for every map for it's generic theme?

Maybe if a list of mapnames that would suit each different theme were made in advance (I wouldn't mind coming up with a bunch), Oblige could just pick some names out of the list and use them for the MAPINFO lump. I've come up with tons of map names that I wanted to use for a potential megawad I'd always wanted to make but was never near motivated enough to map for.

Tech:
Power Surge
Supply Depot
Engineering Station
Steel Foundry
Generator

Hell:
Skin Graft
Torture Chamber
Bloodstains
Meltdown
The Absolution

More to come if you so desire :)

[esselfortium]

JohnnyRancid said:

Hell:
The Absolution

No man, that's where Toonami was broadcast from.

[andrewj]

JohnnyRancid said:

It would be pretty sweet if Oblige could generate map names too. Maybe a little map title for every map for it's generic theme?

Oh yes, random map names would be fun to have! Even better if certain theme or prefab choices could reflect the name, e.g. using BLOOD1 as the main liquid for a level called "Bloodstains" or similar.

EDIT: lolz, generating good names is not that easy (as these "Techy" names show)

# Name 11: Old Military Warehouse
# Name 12: Dark Power Base
# Name 13: Space Plant
# Name 14: Nukage Station
# Name 15: The Dark Control Center
# Name 16: Large Plant
# Name 17: Ghostly Tower
# Name 18: Dark Plant
# Name 19: Center
# Name 20: The Power Generator
# Name 21: The Old Generator
# Name 22: The Infested Nukage Station
# Name 23: Space Plant
# Name 24: Ancient Space Station
# Name 25: The Lab
# Name 26: Plant
# Name 27: Big Hi-Tech Warehouse
# Name 28: The Old Military Center
# Name 29: Dark Tower
# Name 30: Lab
# Name 31: Decrepid Power Base

[40oz]

Would you like my help? Give me a day or two I could strum up a huge list, I'm sure.

[andrewj]

JohnnyRancid said:

Would you like my help? Give me a day or two I could strum up a huge list, I'm sure.

Tech names are fairly well covered now.
Some Hellish names, City/Urban names, and Gothic/Hexeny names would be helpful.

The name-gen code is currently very simple, a generic adjective (dark, big, etc) followed by a specific adjective (power, nukage, military etc) followed by a noun (base, complex, etc). Other patterns, like "the X of Y" are possible but haven't been added yet. So I'm mainly interested in the adjectives and nouns, but cool individual names (not generated) like "Power Surge" are good too!

[gggmork]

Heh, you could potentially end up with 'The Power Generator' and 'Power Generator' as two different level names only differing by 'the'.

[andrewj]

gggmork said:

Heh, you could potentially end up with 'The Power Generator' and 'Power Generator' as two different level names only differing by 'the'.

Yeah all too possible.

What I should do is pick all the nouns (etc) for every level at the same time and make sure they are all different.