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kildeth

NOVA: The Birth - v1.1 release now on idGames!

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Okay, sorry for being late with the blurb. Heh.

MAP01
Level name : Outpost
Author : PRIMEVAL
Music Track : "Pumped Up" by me, slightly ripping off Fight's song "Into the Pit"
Description : A quick and simple tech-base map that kicks off with a bit of action. Originally it was going to be the starter map for a megawad I wanted to make with custom textures, but I scrapped the idea with only this map finished. I didn't want to release such a small map by itself, especially one with custom textures, but when I heard about Nova, I quickly removed any custom textures used and donated it as stock, happy to have finally given it a purpose.


New paged, bada bing.

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I played a bit of the newest release, and with a little IDCLEVing, I can confirm that the new skies are working, at least on my end. Bravo, Plums!

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Feel free to test the f*** out the latest revision I posted guys cause we aren't going to get another chance and I want to make sure all the graphics and stuff work and nothing has been left astray somehow during compilation (unlikely as I was careful, but still possible).

Currently polishing up the info textfile. Might have both textfiles up later today for everyone to see. If no-one has anything to add after that, we could very well be entirely finished. :D

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kildeth said:

Are you going to provide author info as well, or just leave that part blank as some others have done?


Author info:
email - jswx06@yahoo.com
webpage - http://www.reverbnation.com/tenebraeaeternus
Other contributions: music for Reverie (reverie.wad), Unholy Realms (ur_final.wad), Plutonia Revisited Community Project (PRCP.wad), PsychoPhobia, Arcadia Demade (arcadia.wad), Alkylation (alk-ep1.wad), Flashback to Hell (FTH666.wad), Hadephobia (h_phobia.wad)

I might be missing some more there. And no other maps have been released publicly at this point.

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Yikes! Didn't realise what a mess the formatting of the textinfo file was. This will take awhile to clean up but it should look neat when finished.

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kildeth said:

This will take awhile to clean up but it should look neat when finished.


Should I help with this too? Fixing something like that is a pretty small task if you've got the right tools for text processing. Various Linux tools, mostly..

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plums said:

Should I help with this too? Fixing something like that is a pretty small task if you've got the right tools for text processing. Various Linux tools, mostly..


No thanks, I've already began doing it manually and I'm spell checking as I go through. It'll just take a little bit of time, that's all. Thanks anyway though.

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kildeth, again I must apologize for my crappy formatting and use of tabs earlier. I tried to get rid of them as I manually filled in information as the formatting screwed up at points (and as you can tell, there's still more errors in it!)

All I can say then on is I'm new to constructing an informative textfile myself, not just a new mapper ;). That ASCII art of course really sucks.

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@Hurricyclone - It's fine. Don't feel bad I can deal with it. =)

@Stygian - Oh thanks Stygian now we can complete the .wad file once and for all. I'll re-upload it with the fix once I get these text files and their formatting covered.

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@Stygian - Not sure if you were aware or not, but I had redone the deathmatch in your map because your placement was pretty much unplayable due to the large size of you map. Here is your update with the deathmatch as previously edited by me.

If you were aware & reverted because you didn't like my changes let kildeth know so he can edit the text file so I don't get credit for you deathmatch placement.

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I don't know if it's worth tweaking at this point, but I'm getting tons of slime trails at the start of the first map, especially once the door is open. Didn't see these before because I was running in GL mode, I guess.

Other than that it looks good, haven't found any problems.

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Text files should be finished later today. All that's missing is sgt dopey's entry for 'Warehouse District' and his author info. If he doesn't come back by the 21st, I'll just have to write the 'Warehouse District' blurb myself like I did for 'Suspend'.

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Well, it looks like the missing pieces are finally coming together. We might actually make this deadline!

All jokes aside, I just want to say that I am truly grateful to everyone who made this project a reality; everyone who put so much effort into making this the best megawad it could possibly be. It really has been a pleasure working for and with you all. While the last two years of work has been tiring and probably even frustrating, I am so proud that it has paid off and that I got to be a part of it.

Kildeth started this project off with a simple concept. And now, two years and a quarter later, I feel we have achieved something more than just a simple realization of that concept. I feel we have created a symbol of perseverance. Our hard work has paid off more than we should've believed possible. I never realized before how much work it must take to put together such a large-scale project such as this. I made my maps for this project a long time ago, it feels like, and though I did work on them almost up to the end, the fact that it took so long for people to finally have a chance to play the final product has not gone unnoticed by me.

Looking at my maps, it already feels like looking at old photos of myself. I feel a little disconnected, and question some of my choices. I've learned a lot in the process of making these maps, and I feel I've learned a bit since then, as well. I look at my maps and wonder: If I had the chance to make these maps again, how different would they be? Would the layout be any different? Would I have been able to detail it better? Would the fights be more challenging? Would I have been able to create that epic climax that I envisioned for Castle Bloodletting, but was too inexperienced to actually create at the time?

I'll never get the chance to answer those questions, and it's probably better that way in most cases anyway. A completed WAD in the /idgames archive is like a monument of history in the Doom community. What we have created will hopefully last a long time, which will allow us and others to scrutinize our work, possibly a bit too harshly sometimes. It's easy to look back and say, "What were they thinking when they came up with THAT?" In the moment, we make a lot of choices; some good, some bad. I hope we can look back on this project and remember when we were mapping newbies with fondness and nostalgia.

I feel like I've just graduated from my first year of Doom Mapping University. Soon, I'll be ready to start my sophomore year. Until then, thank you all once again. I'm looking forward to the release of NOVA, after so long. I hope NOVA 2, if the time ever comes, is just as fun to work on, if possibly a little more efficient. See you then.

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I would like to thank all those who played through my maps, your useful criticism and pointers have allowed me to become much better at mapping and give me the confidence to use more complex and larger structures.

I would like to thank the team behind NOVA for not only excepting one of my maps, but a total of three of them, this project surely engineered me into a better Doom mapper with substantial evidence to prove it.

Pre-NOVA map (an old horrible map I made called AIRBSE.wad):


Joined NOVA map (first contribution WTP.wad, version 1):



After Tarnsman kicked my maps arses and NOVA playtesters feedback (A personal project to try and use test the criticism given term.wad):



Which would lead me to create bigger and much better things (Temp.wad, one of my best works ever):


Without the NOVA project, I would have never improved as well as I did, I have to thank Cannonball for introducing me into this project I believe.

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Might as well step in too. This project got me into some real mapping and helped me make more. Special thanks to dobu especially for some good advice on my first maps, and kildeth of course for leading when possible and helping out with textfile compilation at the final moments.

Glad I made an interesting MAP32 for the project as well.

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Here it is again, with the textfiles and Stygian's new update.

https://www.mediafire.com/?eqj5ex92gj44jr4

I've adjusted the writing in the story screens as some of the text was going off the page. I've fixed that up but may still do some minor tweaking before the 22nd just to get them to look more balanced.

All that's missing now is sgt dopey's contribution to the text file if he shows up. Already commented on Warehouse District for him but I could replace my writing with his if he comes back and adds something. That and I've noticed that fiend-o-hell hasn't added any author info. I've emailed him about this so we'll see if he wants to add something too.

Feel free to check the latest file for anything I might have missed. Wouldn't want to leave anything out before release!

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Upon reading the text files, I've decided I would like to change my author credit to include my real name, like some of the others have done.

Please credit me in the text file as: Collin "Arjak" Pierce

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Nice inspirational reflection there Arjak, it was nice to read in light of the impending release. I'm excited to get this monkey off our back so we can focus on greener pastures as well—I think we have a pretty good mapset on our hands but the issues with it are those we've known for nearly a year now, and I'm sure most of us have made "better"/more comprehensive maps since. I must give my thanks to most of you for sticking through this and providing updates when called upon. This could've been a much longer/arduous process but once it's behind us it'll be a nice milestone for our little community.

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Thanks for the sentiments Arjak and everyone else. I would have wrote something as well but I've been busy meticulously checking through the wad and text files to make sure nothing has been left astray. :P

It has certainly been a journey being a first time mapper and attempting to lead my own megawad project at the same time, I certainly went straight into the deep end in that sense. All in all though, it's been a great learning experience and I feel pretty accomplished in the fact that we basically made a whole game based on the Doom II engine. I still haven't played Nova all the way through, but I'll have to get around to that when it's all done, as everyone else surely will.

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It's been a nice run. I've felt I've mostly focused on my own maps tho, and I haven't contributed much to anyone else's. In fact, I haven't even played through Maps 21-28, deliberately leaving them for me to enjoy when the final release is out. I have played Extorta Nova (way back in the day when there were only 11 maps) and Mediggo, which I think is awesome.

I'm up for Nova 2. Although I won't submit 5 maps... Having to juggle that many has, on many occasions, been more trouble than it's worth.

Also, thank you Plums for fixing the skies! I'm actually quite pleased with them (except Sky 2 which I probably should have given one more go).

It's been fun... Oh my.

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EvilNed said:

Also, thank you Plums for fixing the skies! I'm actually quite pleased with them (except Sky 2 which I probably should have given one more go).


Welcome! I think SKY2 looks quite nice. Very dramatic. SKY1 is a little pixelated, but that's doom graphics for you.

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I have an idea for the possible NOVA 2, how about we use a different IWAD than Doom 2 (Ultimate Doom, TNT or Plutonia) as the base for it (which would allow for more specialy themed maps with TNT or Plutonia or possibly easier sorting with Ultimate Doom)?

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Kildeth did say that for NOVA 2 it would be good to include all the other textures exclusive to Ultimate Doom/Plutonia/TNT which I think is a good idea. Otherwise Plutonia has the best resources of any single iwad IMHO. Or you could organize a 64-map set, 32 for TNT and 32 for Plutonia, and call it "Final Nova" ;)

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The problem with using another IWAD is that using Doom 2 (or UD) as a base is something that every person should have, while this may not necessarily be the case for Plutonia/TNT. Furthermore using Doom 2 textures gets people used to that set, and IMO a big part of mapping is learning nearly all the textures and how to "properly" employ them.

Then again, I'm also probably not going to do anything for NOVA 2 outside a beta test, so my concerns are a fart in the wind. I just think we should be as inclusive to new mappers as possible.

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Rather than using a different set of resources, why not choose a particular source port (say, ZDoom) and allow mappers to utilize features that are specific to that source port like sloped surfaces/scripting/DECORATE lumps etc? In addition, maybe let mappers take a stab at adding custom resources? Perhaps, we could arrange a map set for more intermediate mappers, in parallel to a "newbie" vanilla map set, which would allow for more freedom than stock textures and limit-removal. I don't know if that sounds like a logistical nightmare or not, but using a port with more features could be a way of increasing possibility without requiring a separate IWAD.

Does that sound like excessive work? Maybe it defeats the purpose of what we're trying to do, here.

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In all likelyhood I'm not going to start Nova II until June, so there's plenty of time to decide. I think we should stick to limit-removing setup though, to ease complication.

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Dobu makes some good points about textures. Nonetheless I think that there are some cool and useful textures from Plutonia and Ultimate Doom that might be worth including (waterfalls, skintek, other computer textures, etc.).

I strongly disagree with the idea of making this project ZDoom-oriented. But I think now is probably not the time to discuss such things anyhow, let's wait until closer to June.

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