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esselfortium

[Megawad] Back to Saturn X - April Fools! Real E2 pictures on page 9 :)

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Not enough brown Essel. I see some orange in those shots, I'm disappointed.

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KiiiYiiiKiiiA said:

Having played through episode 1, I couldn't help but feel that such an amazing and unique texture set was crying out, nay, deserved, to be part of a total conversion, with all new monsters done from scratch. I know, I know, that is a stupendous amount of work, but an opportunity was missed to do something completely new and unique, rather than what was, in effect, a vanilla megawad with different scenery.

I agree, though I usually do when it comes to projects like this because I love seeing new IWAD's be created. Among other projects I'd love to see get new monsters to finish off the set of new textures/weapons/etc are Supplice and Soulcrusher.

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I don't get the confusion. It looks just like chocolate ice cream. There's no such thing as too much chocolate ice cream! Unless you have Doom Diabetes, I guess. I'm sorry if you do.

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cannonball said:

fifty shades of brown

that is actually the spinoff audiobook in which rottking narrates his e2 playthrough.

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I'm a little surprised some of you guys forgot April Fools is today-- er, yesterda-- um... several days ago. Those pictures were all the same room shown from different angles. Kyka, you're worrying me.

Anyway, while we're all gathered here, have a couple of actual E2 screenshots! I don't want to give too much away, but these ought to give at least a partial idea of what kinds of settings you can expect to see in episode 2.


Vader - The Theory of Broken Circles


Tarnsman - Unbaited Vicar of Scorched Earth


Esselfortium - Eureka Signs


Xaser - Beneath a Festering Moon

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I generally regard the deadline for April Fool's jokes as 12PM on April 1st. I'll make allowances for timezones, but this...

Anyway, great shots. My faith is restored.

needs moar gray

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No, I think at least some of us got that you were screwing with us, but we were having fun with the brown jokes too. At what point in this project's development cycle has any person said a thing in complete seriousness?

Seriously though, those screenshots are awesome.

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Eris Falling said:

I generally regard the deadline for April Fool's jokes as 12PM on April 1st. I'll make allowances for timezones, but this...

Anyway, great shots. My faith is restored.

needs moar gray

It's not really an April Fool's joke if you're expecting it :)

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Set a new gold standard in Tech Bases in the first episode. Looks like there'll be some new gold standards set here in the second. Can't wait.

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I was going to say your first shots looked pretty dull/WIP, but then you posted more and i was happy again. Glad to see things are picking up again.

EDIT: Arrrgh you fooled me, but to be fair i don't really pay attention to April Fools any more.

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Not Jabba said:

At what point in this project's development cycle has any person said a thing in complete seriousness?

everyone who realized the bog imp had to come back.

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Haha good job Essel at fooling us! And yes, I am impressed by the new screenshots, they look awesome! Can't wait for the release.

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esselfortium said:

I'm a little surprised some of you guys forgot April Fools is today-- er, yesterda-- um... several days ago. Those pictures were all the same room shown from different angles. Kyka, you're worrying me.


Oh essel you're simply too clever for me.

But consider, O clever one, those 4 fake screens you put up for April Fool's are, in a real sense, not fake at all. Because truth is that those 4 screens capture perfectly the underlying reality of this whole project. A largely undifferentiated mass of levels that pass by in a homogenous blur from one to the next. A lot like those 4 screens do. And to think, you were trying to be funny.

Don't get me wrong, as I said, the textures are really very good, and the levels from episode 1 were also very good in and of themselves, but the project does, and will probably continue to suffer from, well, a kind of perfectionism that somehow manages to remove the individuality and uniqueness from the levels as a whole. So, in short, this project could have been and should have been much more than this. Silly thing is, you will probably never see this.

Anyway, I've said all I am going to say. I'd better let you get back to being much cleverer than me. Thanks for your post. :D

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KiiiYiiiKiiiA said:

the textures are really very good

I think they would be very good for a game with more advanced engine and more "serious" artwork, but for cartoony Doom they are too detailed/realistic or something like that. I can't quite put it in words but they just don't work for me most of the time. Maybe if all sprites were made from scratch as well specifically to match the visual style of btsx, it would look much better to me, but as of now the whole product is a bit of a mishmash in my opinion. The last screenshot looks so cool at first glance but then I see these simplistic Doom sprites and limited architecture/detail (I mean if you compare it to more modern games with 3D engines that allow much more stuff like slopes, 3d floors etc, I'm not saying that it is bad in Doom's context) and the whole thing collapses.

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Yeah the ongoing joke of making fun of their work is in poor taste, but oh man... why can't you guys just take this project for what it is; A bunch of hobbyists getting excited over a texture set, and making maps with it.

It's like complaining about Thanksgiving feast because there's too much turkey, that someone else roasted for you and you just showed up to eat it.

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At this point I feel the need to respond as, aside from taking a great deal of interest in BTSX in any case, I'm particuarly drawn to criticisms from those who feel that the maps blend together for their lack of distinction. Sufficed to say that I disagree with this criticism on the whole, but not because I think it necessarily incorrect.

KiiiYiiiKiiiA said:

those 4 screens capture perfectly the underlying reality of this whole project. A largely undifferentiated mass of levels that pass by in a homogenous blur from one to the next. A lot like those 4 screens do. And to think, you were trying to be funny.

Don't get me wrong, as I said, the textures are really very good, and the levels from episode 1 were also very good in and of themselves, but the project does, and will probably continue to suffer from, well, a kind of perfectionism that removes the individuality and uniqueness from the levels as a whole.

To preface the point I want to make, I genuinely do think there's merit to the argument that Get Out of My Stations (and specifically that episode, as the subsequent two and particularly the last are deliciously varied from what I've heard) marches along to the same beat in design from start to finish without much call for change, and I would have loved to see more switchup in layouts in particular. It's simply that, for me at least, this is only a criticism that can really be made sweepingly on its surface, and without much regard for how BTSX plays not just as a Dooming experience but as a high quality project pieced together by many hands over a long period of time... and with an empassioned and meticulous approach.

Now, I'm not exactly keeping my finger on the pulse of progress most of the time, but I still feel confident in saying that the majority of minds behind BTSX share similar ideas on the more broader and overarching points of design, namely in architecture and flow/layout.* It would be quite unfair to say that Essel's Toxic Map Dictatorship seeks to suck the personality out of the maps on these grounds -- they're more or less a likeminded bunch. The intricacies of their styles can be found when you decide to dig a little deeper, and while ordinarily I think it would be sensible to point out you can only really become better equipped to identify such intricacies through either experience of mapping or merely working closely with these folks on the same project for so long, BTSX is a megawad that gives you every incentive to find these differences. It's too cool! It wants to be big! And through sheer scope and ambition seeks to be regarded with as much interest for the process of creation than as a massive mapset in which to blast demons.
Thanks to playing the maps several times over and taking an interest in the project over the last year, I've arrived at the point where I can glance at the maps from whatever angle and find a wealth of difference between them, much as I can weed out Aro's maps from a pcorf mapset a little better now than I could before... I simply think that with enough time, many of those who hold this criticism of the megawad might come to look at it similarly as well.

So yeah, I recognise the argument that BTSX E1 feels very homogenous and repetitive, but I think that the nature of the project encourages a more invested interest in design with repeated playthroughs, shedding light on all the smaller differences and making the entire thing, in consequence, feel quite varied on the whole.

*Incidentally, there's no way I could look at a slice of Ed architecture and not know immediately whose map I was playing. He sticks out like a black dot on a white canvas... a canvas made of awesome.

Memfis said:

I think they would be very good for a game with more advanced engine and more "serious" artwork, but for cartoony Doom they are too detailed/realistic or something like that. I can't quite put it in words but they just don't work for me most of the time. Maybe if all sprites were made from scratch as well specifically to match the visual style of btsx, it would look much better to me, but as of now the whole product is a bit of a mishmash in my opinion.

Hm, fortunately for me I can't agree with this point no matter which way I tilt my head. If anything, I think the texture style compliments Doom's sprite artwork better than the stock material in places, heh.

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KiiiYiiiKiiiA said:

a kind of perfectionism that somehow manages to remove the individuality and uniqueness from the levels as a whole. So, in short, this project could have been and should have been much more than this. Silly thing is, you will probably never see this.

Just to reiterate yet again because I'm not sure where this idea keeps coming from, there is no such homogenization process as what you're describing. Or do you mean "playtesting"?

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To clarify from my point blank abrasive post, I can see where BTSX may not work for people given the breadth and depth of tastes of the Doom community, but a lot of the whining I've seen does little credit to all the individuals who've worked on this project that aren't Essel, and is frankly insulting.

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Captain Ventris said:

"Essel's Toxic Map Dictatorship" is gonna be an Episode 3 map, right?


More to the point, is essel the final boss?

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Eris Falling said:

More to the point, is essel the final boss?


The final boss changes every five minutes based on a random seed.

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Captain Ventris said:

"Essel's Toxic Map Dictatorship" is gonna be an Episode 3 map, right?


Unfortunately, I don't think Guided By Voices have made a song with that title.

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Guest DILDOMASTER666
KiiiYiiiKiiiA said:

A largely undifferentiated mass of levels that pass by in a homogenous blur from one to the next... a kind of perfectionism that somehow manages to remove the individuality and uniqueness from the levels as a whole


w t f a r e y o u b a b b l i n g a b o u t

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Okay... I kind of have a theory about all this, but it's hard for me to word, so bear with me.

BTSX is a Vanilla mapset that doesn't use Vanilla textures, but is not a total conversion either - it's in a weird middle ground. The people saying it's really samey and homogenous I think want either (a) more out of it, to make it a TC, or (b) less, to make it more like a classic mapset.

See, I think people are used to playing Doom with extra textures rather than all the textures being outright replaced. I guess the sheer amount of new content is kind of stifling in a way? Those people probably just want to be able to see the textures they're familiar with, and the clean, modern-looking new textures in BTSX just don't provide the same aesthetic as Doom. (Which of course is the point of them. They're very modern and clean, whereas Doom's aesthetic was based on textures made with graphic editors of the early 90's and amateur photography (like the shotgun and SKINLOW), so it was kind of unpolished and downright shoddy in places.)

I don't think it's down to the textures being boring or monochrome or whatever (while there's actually quite a lot of brown present in the shots Fisk just posted, they're clearly not all brown). It's just that they're all new. I postulate that if there was a BTSX-equivalent mapset using Adventures of Square's resources, which currently has about 1500 new textures, I'd also get complaints saying that the maps look the same, because all the textures are new and have a distinctive and consistent aesthetic style. Granted, Square's textures make Doom look like an acid trip in Legoland, but I think the principle is the same.

Now, in terms of the layouts being the same, well, the playtesting and bugfixing definitely went on for a while. :P Areas were reworked quite a bit to either improve them or strip them out to fit into Vanilla's limits. The opening area in my E2 map had jimmyrocks which made Vanilla shit itself, so they were taken out. I guess it's just stuff like that. A lot of modern mapping trends can break Vanilla, so after a while the edits added up into a mapset that might seem meticulously and formulaically put together as if only one, two, maybe three people worked on the whole thing. Individual facets of mapper's styles don't always shine through because many of us have mapped for Boom or more advanced ports, and there's simply less than can be done in Vanilla. So there's definitely a certain degree of perfectionism going on, but there has to be. :P

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