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Fritz442

Obhack 007.1 Released (Random Map Generator)

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Obhack is a random map generator for Doom, Doom2, Heretic and Hexen.

As the current maintainer of Obhack, I will try to answer all questions and comments here on this post.

Download - http://samiam.org/slump/




Added: Monster Enclosures(small monster traps with triggers) to all Doom based games.


New parameter: 'Monster Enclosures' in gui, to turn enclosures On or Off.

A few more minor fixes resolved.

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Cool, I'll check it out.

Also, you may want to update the date on the "About" page so it's 2006-2011 since it's still showing 2006-2007.

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This update is quite awesome. I created a Doom2 episode with it and here are some shots from the first map:
We start in a generic techbase textured mostly with SLADWALL, but after throwing a switch and opening a door, we enter what I can only assume to be some kind of mine tunnels.
http://img222.imageshack.us/i/36462842.png/
http://img830.imageshack.us/i/19908968.png/
http://img821.imageshack.us/i/96241018.png/
The third room has two exits. One takes us into an ASHWALL2 textured tunnel.
http://img254.imageshack.us/i/55410456.png/
At one end of the tunnel, we emerge on a rocky ledge that we've already seen from below when we were exploring the base.
http://img248.imageshack.us/i/42482964.png/
At the other end, we enter a cave system, but bars are blocking our way forward.
http://img191.imageshack.us/i/18801162.png/
A side passage leads us to a grueling battle, and...
http://img703.imageshack.us/i/27283058.png/
http://img824.imageshack.us/i/49218287.png/
Back in the mines, we take the other passage.
http://img709.imageshack.us/i/34054603.png/
http://img715.imageshack.us/i/55167482.png/
Now the bars are raised and we can explore the rest of the caves.
http://img109.imageshack.us/i/27130659.png/
The tunnel forks, with one passage taking us to a blue key, and the other back into the mines, through a series of tough battles, and finally to a Plasma Rifle.
http://img690.imageshack.us/i/13503694.png/
The blue door is back in the base. Here's where we entered the mines.
http://img375.imageshack.us/i/57938196.png/
Behind the blue door there is another series of tunnels, this time in brown.
http://img338.imageshack.us/i/93296717.png/
We also fight our way through a brown stone fortress to reach our goal.
http://img40.imageshack.us/i/25277464.png/

And here's the episode.
http://www.zshare.net/download/8521030111fc9f56/

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Oh on the subject of enclosures, especially those connected to a wall...sometimes the monsters are facing away from the player when it's triggered.

Might it possible to do something with the texture alignment in future versions?

@Solarn: You can just give us the exact parameters and seed to generate it ourselves.

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@Solarn: You can just give us the exact parameters and seed to generate it ourselves.


This information is actually kept in the wad. In Solarn's case the parameters were:

-- Settings --
seed = 5269
game = doom2
port = nolimit
mode = sp
length = episode

-- Adjustments --
size = huge
maxsize = huge
steep = steep
puzzles = more
mons = swarms
health = normal
ammo = more
outdoors = some
iweapon = basic
switches = both
keytype = skulls
roomsize = random
lighting = random
enclosure = true

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Oh on the subject of enclosures, especially those connected to a wall...sometimes the monsters are facing away from the player when it's triggered.



Might it possible to do something with the texture alignment in future versions?




Yes, Mr.Chris, the enclosures are a work in progress. I am constantly making many changes
and improvements to them.

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Pretty cool, I had no shells and made a dash to a shellbox, and as I grabbed it the walls raised and zombiemen surrounded me. Good thing my SSG was at the ready.

I'm not sure, but when it made a full level set with "random" lighting, it seemed like mostly dark levels. I'll double check.

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Xtife: So, whats different about obhack compared to oblige?

Obhack is 'Oblige ver.2' with some modifications and added features.

phi108: I'm not sure, but when it made a full level set with "random" lighting, it seemed like mostly dark levels.

Yes phi108 that can happen, on 'random' setting since the room lighting is randomly choosen, you can get level sets that are all dark or all bright for that matter. But most of the time you will get different(random) light settings throughout the levels.

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As an idea, I think outdoor lighting should be consistent in one level either bright, dim or in between (normal) or could be an "episode" level setting (unless that already existed for v2).

The little underpasses in between outdoor sections should always be slightly darker than the outside areas, as it looks a little silly for it to be brighter than the surroundings (IE 128 lighting but 144 for the underpass spot)

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Xtife said:

So, whats different about obhack compared to oblige?


ObHack is a fork of the Oblige 2 (Oblige 0.97) codebase, with a lot of features added which haven't made it in to Oblige. For example, ObHack has Hexen support, secret areas as well as secret levels, more flexibility in the level size, more random number seeds (including allowing text in the seed), offline level generation, monster traps, deathmatch and CTF support, etc.

Oblige 3 has (possibly) better architecture, real boss levels (newer ObHack releases, however, do have boss monsters in the "boss" levels), more monster and weapon flexibility, real "cavern" areas, preliminary (albeit buggy) Quake level support, among other things.

The style of levels is different. I find ObHack's maps more cramped and confined, with more little hidey holes for monsters; Oblige 3 makes more spacious maps with more resemble a map a human would make.

Another option is the older Slige, which only supports Doom, and makes simpler levels. It's a different style of random map.

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samiam said:

Another option is the older Slige, which only supports Doom, and makes simpler levels. It's a different style of random map.


The sad thing about Slige is that it is a bit confusing to mod, a lack of outdoor areas and using Doom2 it is lacking about a third of the monsters available to be placed.

Using the preview/WIP version of Oblige v4 posted on the Oblige forum back in late December, I can see it holds a promising outcome later this year if it ends up having an official release later this year. One of the things I have noticed is the "Nuts!" monster quantity option which pretty much gives you heaps of monsters in either the AV or nuts.wad style. It gets hectic, but what can you expect from dealing with dozens or even hundreds of monsters at once?

Another thing I like is the placement of items and weapons, which is nicer and not as cluttered if you use the "More" or "Heaps" options for health and ammo in v3.

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Mr.Chris: As an idea, I think outdoor lighting should be consistent in one level either bright, dim or in between (normal)

Yes I agree, I have been working on this to get outdoor lighting more consistent, with Random settings.

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Mr. Chris said:

Using the preview/WIP version of Oblige v4 posted on the Oblige forum back in late December, I can see it holds a promising outcome later this year if it ends up having an official release later this year.

Not sure, but I think (based on his to-do list and svn logs) ajapted dumped it and is going back to v3 algorithms. He can always change his mind, though. I've compiled the latest revision and it generates some test levels -no ammo, no monsters and HOMs everywhere.

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Yeah I wasn't satisfied with how V4 was turning out, that approach was not fine-grained enough, so I'm migrating towards a more V3-like approach of "self contained" rectangles but with some large differences too (e.g. keeping in mind the layout possibilities for true 3D games like Quake).

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It's about time I showed up <g>

I've been breaking ObHack again. But first... gotta say I've been real pleased with v007.0, just fetched v007.1 to try ...I see you've been busy thinking up new ways to kill snoopy marines :D The interiors improved radically as of 0007.0, more fun layouts and much better-looking. The new prefabs are really looking good.

I'm still sometimes getting this error after shutdown:
=======
OBHACK caused an invalid page fault in
module OLE32.DLL at 015f:7ff6f0dd.
Registers:
EAX=653c7aa8 CS=015f EIP=7ff6f0dd EFLGS=00010202
EBX=00000000 SS=0167 ESP=007efd68 EBP=007efd78
ECX=005c09ec DS=0167 ESI=00000000 FS=6027
EDX=81c41b60 ES=0167 EDI=00000000 GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
8b 30 ff 56 08 eb e7 55 b8 00 00 00 00 83 3d 08
Stack dump:
653c7aa8 007efd98 00000000 005c0980 007efd9c 7ff4cfbb 00000000 0048f058 00000000 7ff6f3df 007efd98 00000000 005c0980 007efdcc 00445737 00d02000
======
When it does this, it fails to update the logfile, but doesn't do anything else "bad"; the WAD is still fine. Sometimes it doesn't get around to producing the error until much later, when I shut down Windows!

Today I found a bad seed. I've been making 'em sequentially starting with seed 0000 and am now up to 0037. However, 0036 produced a strange (reproducible) error and failed to build anything. The logfile and a screenshot of the error are here: http://www.doomgold.com/doomstuff/0036_error.zip

I'll check later whether the newer version trips on the same settings.

======

I actually kinda like the random outdoor lighting -- it's like sometimes you go into a new area and it's timewarped into a different day or night. It may not be logical but it works for me.

Fun map features I've gotten:

-- a blue switch that controlled THREE doors. (Surprise!!!)
-- a map with 1400 monsters, 6 cybes, 14 viles, and an ocean of nukage. (This was on "Swarms" setting. Made a great episode finale.)
-- finally got a cybe and big-spider fight!

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Yep, it's still there in 007.1, except it behaved a little different. Here's the logfile:
========
SEED = 0036

Settings =
{
ammo = normal
enclosure = true
game = doom2
health = normal
iweapon = hardcore
keytype = both
length = episode
lighting = bright
maxsize = huge
mode = sp
mons = swarms
outdoors = lots
port = nolimit
roomsize = random
seed = 0036
size = huge
steep = random
switches = both
traps = more
}
[snip the usual grind-and-crunch]

Problem occurred while making level:
...EDITORS\OB-HACK\OBHACK-WIN-007.1/scripts/builder.lua:1514: assertion failed!
Saving Config...
=======

Note different lua:number in this version's error.
(007.0 produced a different one, 14something. Same each time, tho.)

And it only made it to map04, instead of map07, before falling over. But it was still at about 20%. Do you need to see the whole logfile?

I've set it to work on another seed and it seems to be fine again. Just doesn't like 0036 for some reason. Maybe I should try it with different settings too (tho I've grown fond of the ones I use :)

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Oh, one other minor bug I've noticed:

On the two barred doors, the unpegging is backwards. You don't often get to see 'em move but once in a while the switch is close enough, or has a view through some far window, and then you can see it. Harmless, but looks funny.

I've also noticed that wherever there's a strip of "wrong" texture pasted into a wall, it's actually the backside of where another wall joins. This is sometimes useful for navigation, and occasionally creates unique effects. In one case I had a whole flaming wall, which was actually quite neat in context (it was in a dungeon-like area, with caverns going off it).

Very rarely I've had a whole floor that's blood, thank ghod it's not "hot" too, since some of 'em have been big long areas! Interesting nasty look, tho. It's doing pretty well on the various themes.

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Here I am talkin' to myself again...

A friend says of ObHack that he misses crushers. Seems to me that could be fairly easy to implement, structure-wise -- just turn one of those tall table-like things into a crusher. Maybe pick a "table" at random to set up that way, and have a nearby walk-line or even a switch to turn it on. (It probably should have an off-line too, as crushers running full-time can really drag old machines.) Maybe turn on when you walk under it, and turn off when you leave that "room" (maybe just one of the accessways, if there are more than one), that way it's both a surprise and you can somewhat control it, if you need to, but you might need to hop sharp in a crowd, too. AND it couldn't be used as a cheap way to kill monsters at a distance. (Unless you jump over the walls, or go out the wrong door, hehe).

I have "unkillable ghosts" turned on, and my maps get so many free-roaming Archviles that having a bunch of squishoids would be a disaster, so crushers definitely needs to be both a user-option and at least generally with some control over when it starts/stops running. Of course, surprises are always good, too :D

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The thing is to limit levels with crushers that have Arch-viles.

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Yeah, that works as a simple solution. Tho when you make ginormous maps, it's pretty rare that there are no viles. Maybe one map out of 20.

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Hi Rez, good to hear from you again. And thanks for the bug reports.

Rez: Today I found a bad seed 0036.

I found this assertion error just after I sent out 007.1, so it's fixed in 007.2.

If want to test this, open the 'planner.lua' file and scroll down to around line 357:
"if GAME.cell_size == 8 then GAME.cell_min_size = 6" Replace the 6 with 7.
"if GAME.cell_size == 8 then GAME.cell_min_size = 7" and remake 0036.

I actually kinda like the random outdoor lighting.

At first I kinda liked it too, but I agreed with Mr.Chris, to looks better being more consistant.
This is also fixed in 007.2.

finally got a cybe and big-spider fight!

Who won?.... I would love to watch that fight. LOL

Oh, one other minor bug I've noticed: On the two barred doors, the unpegging is backwards.

I have repegged these so they don't melt into the floor. Also in ver.007.2 I have added many new switches and door/bars combos to Doom based games. On a gigantic map I have seen up to 13 locked doors now.

A friend says of ObHack that he misses crushers.

Yes I have thought of that too, but at this time I'm working on a few other things, but will keep it in mind-maybe later.

As far as this 'invalid page fault' error, I have been updating and working on Obhack for almost 2 years now and have never seen this error, I have run it on multiple different machines, in XP and Win7 in both 32 & 64 bit versions, have built(as you can probally imagine)literally thousands of maps, over and over testing different things and I have not seen this error. I'm not really sure what that error means either.
Have you run it on any other machines? Has your friend encountered this error?

I have v007.2 almost ready to send out, so it won't be long.
Again, Thanks for the input and keep them coming, I will try to answer all I can.

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First, I'd like to say this is just awesome, Fritz. I used to use Slige which, while cool, had mostly unplayable maps. Some of these turn out pretty damn good. Though I know any support at this point is going to be minimal or non-existent, it seems that regardless of the level you play, there's no real scaling of monster progression (i.e. cacodemons in level 1, etc). Would it at all be possible to implement something that scales up monster difficulty in progression of the levels? Secondly, I find that there's a lot of the same monsters used...it would be great to have some sort of check box where you can exclude or include certain monsters in a compilation. Finally, I find that random lighting provides odd results...large, outdoor spaces will be pitch black with brightly colored sectors of small to medium size right next to them.

Again, I'm really not complaining in the least, that's just my $0.02.

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Did I already mention the sector underpasses between outdoor areas should have a slightly lower light level than the current outside level already?

Ever thought of experimenting with outdoor shadows ala Oblige V3's "Outdoor shadow" module?

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Actually there IS scaling of monster progression, but it's not real obvious. I check every set with WadWhat, so I'm going by the actual monster count. The impression given by ingame assaults can be quite different, tho -- such as the start of an otherwise-easy outdoor map where 20 cacos come over the walls all at once. And sometimes chance of where the walls and windows wind up can lock the initial troopers away from you, while a dozen barons firebomb you from a ledge near the exit -- just outside your first window!

Usually a cybe wins a fight with a big spider, but if I remember right, this was two cybes, one spider, and a bunch of smallfry, and the spider wound up the sole survivor. Meanwhile I jumped out a window and ran for my life. :)

"if GAME.cell_size == 8 then GAME.cell_min_size = 6" Replace the 6 with 7.
What does this actually do? Just wondering why it caused the assertion error (whatever that is!)

I suspect the invalid page fault is failure to properly close the logfile, failure to release that file handle, or something like that (guessing by how it's sometimes delayed, and the fact that when it does this, it doesn't write a new logfile). WinXP will mask that kind of problem so you'll never see it. On Win98, it will cause a page fault. (Yes, my DOOMin' box is Win98 and DOS. Get off my lawn! :) Just for the record, my first foray into 007.1 didn't do it, tho 007.0 usually does (not always).

The new monster releases work quite well, per the first few I've seen. BOO! Eeep!! I don't think it's a problem that they face in random directions... just makes 'em less predictable, as the ones that are facing the wall bump around then come out as a second wave.

Looking forward to the new door/switch combos. I've had some really complex ones too, especially in the really huge maps. I do like how there can be 2 or 3 doors for one key or switch. Also there are sometimes two different blue switches, which makes me think I'm seeing things. :D

Anyway it's coming along great, and I love having new maps every day!

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Tried this yesterday and I must really say that it has a good taste! And it is really good for inspiration. Although some levels can be generated in the same way.

BTW what is the difference between Doom 1 and Doom 1 + Mr.Chris?

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Yes there is monster scaling, but as Rez stated it is not very obvious.
It seems a little more on larger maps and longer episodes.


As far as choosing monsters, I think that may be too hard to implement in v2 code,
I know Andrew has in on v3 of Oblige.


The random lighting has been changed in 007.2, to be more consistant outdoors.


Yes Mr.Chris, you did mention the underpass lighting, and I'm looking into that. The outdoor shadows in v3 are a little out of my scope...srry.


The GAME.cell_size & GAME.cell_min_size are size of the rooms, and the minimum size of '6' seems to be too small in random setting and caused the assertion error. And I have no problem with Win98, I used it for years until XP came out, I have not tested this in Win98.


The difference between Doom 1 and Doom 1 + Mr.Chris is that Dm-Mr.Chris has many more themes in it that he made(which are really nice), I make most of my Doom1 maps with his, I just left the original in.




I do have to say this, NONE of this would be possible if not for Andrew for his original work of Oblige, and Sam for his extension into Obhack. Thank you both for all your hard work before I took over maintaining this.

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I found out something that causes issues with the monster enclosures..I came across an arachnotron, a revenant and an arch-vile in one medium enclosure, the arach moved up with the door up to the revenant's eye level but the other two were able to attack me but not the arach.

Arachnotrons should never be used in enclosures unless it is at least 160x160 in size.

Monster cages should also have a slightly lower light level, especially inside.

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Thanks Mr.Chris, I've made many changes to the existing enclosures and added many more in 007.2,
I'll send it out soon.

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