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[Krispy]

Really, any certain size to shoot for?

[Nomad]

GreyGhost took the initiative (thank Satan!) and is taking care of the base map. The letters will be larger than the ones in 13 years by roughly half. Trust me, they're pretty big; lots of room for building, and keep in mind you can use space outside the letters too!

I think he's going to do a couple variations and we can all "vote" on which one everyone wants to use.

After that, I will email/PM everyone the FTP information for the project and we can get started!

[Capellan]

Tthere needs to be an agreement about which sublevels can use which sector/line tags (so that a line in letter 'y' doesn't effect a sector in letter 'm')

edit: or is the idea that each letter is completed before the next is started? Because that ... is almost certain to fail :)

[Krispy]

Good Idea. How about each letter gets 50 tags. 2 gets 1-50, 0 gets 51-100, Y gets 101-150, etc. If my math is correct, it should go up to 650.

[Nomad]

I doubt 50 tags would be needed for any one of the letters. Closer to 20-25 might be more reasonable.

[Krispy]

Back to size: I hesitate to start without a clear goal.

[esselfortium]

There's no sense in restricting tag usage, I don't think. Doom format has over 32,000 of them you can use, and Doom Builder 2 has an option in the preferences dialog that automatically replaces already-used tags when copying and pasting, so whoever compiles the pieces together (assuming they're worked on independently) can enable that.

[TimeOfDeath]

esselfortium said:

and Doom Builder 2 has an option in the preferences dialog that automatically replaces already-used tags when copying and pasting

dayum, that's useful!

[GreyGhost]

Nomad said:

I think he's going to do a couple variations and we can all "vote" on which one everyone wants to use.

I'll upload some more over the next couple of days, then the projects first major drama can commence. :)

[Nomad]

OK, here's what GreyGhost has done so far; he also did a couple variations that could allow us to use "TWENTY" instead of 20 if we can get some more mappers on board!

Option 1:


Option 1.5:


Option 2:


Option 3:


Option 4:


Option 4.5:


The idea behind the first one (and Option 1.5) is that it's supposed to look like a coin. My biggest concern with those is flat alignment could be a problem. I'm leaning towards number 3 right now, but the second one might be okay if we go with doing "TWENTY."

He said he's open to suggestions, so if anyone has any other ideas go ahead and shoot!

Also, I'd say average letter size would be about 1000 square units for the regular letters, and as you can see the actual "DOOM" letters are a big bigger, so you've got a decent amount of room to work with!

[Krispy]

1000 square units?! You could hardly fit one player in a box that small! Units are measured in pixels, so that's a 31.6 by 31.6 pixel room. I must be mistaken. please clarify.
P.S. I like option 2.

[Phobus]

You're mistaken. 1024 units would fit 4 spider masterminds side-by side, and a 1024 unit square would fit 16 of them in a grid. To clarify this further, the standard GATE# teleport floor/ceiling textures are 64 units square.

We're effectively working on a 1024 project with scope for expansion, which is cool.


Option 1.5 is a really nice concept, so I'd like to try that, but I'd say it might be difficult to work on. If we're going for one of the non-circular options, I vote for 2 :)

[Whoo]

I think doing the layouts on Option 3 would be the easiest, but once everyone is done we could always rotate and move around the letters to look like Option 1, which I like a lot.

[Krispy]

Phobus said:

You're mistaken. 1024 units would fit 4 spider masterminds side-by side, and a 1024 unit square would fit 16 of them in a grid. To clarify this further, the standard GATE# teleport floor/ceiling textures are 64 units square.

I hate to sound like a geometry douche, but a teleport platform is 64 by 64 units (or pixels), making it 4,096 SQUARE UNITS. I wasn't wrong about the other comment BUT back on topic, the rooms are actually about 1000 by 1000 units, making them about 1,000,000 SQUARE UNITS. Just to be absolutely clear.
Gettin' started!

[Phobus]

Yes, you're right. I'm saying units square though, rather than square units, which means you're being very pedantic here. Admittedly, Nomad did say "square units", so your very literal interpretation was correct, even if it made no sense contextually.

[C30N9]

Edit: I'm a liar don't add me.

[45th Parrallel]

I like option 3 and option 2

[Capellan]

2 and 3 are both A-OK.

If it ends up being "Twenty" instead of "20", then the best layout would probably be:

TWENTY
YEARS OF
DOOM

As it would keep each line about the same length

[GreyGhost]

Nomad said:

but the second one might be okay if we go with doing "TWENTY."

I'll do that as Option 4 and Capellan's variant as Option 4.5

Krispy said:

1000 square units?! You could hardly fit one player in a box that small! Units are measured in pixels, so that's a 31.6 by 31.6 pixel room. I must be mistaken. please clarify.

To clarify - the red characters are 924 units tall (apart from the numbers in Option 2, which I made a bit larger to compensate for their being skinnier) by 784 to 1134 units wide and the smaller O in Doom is 840 by 1760. If that's too small it won't take long to re-scale them.

I like 1.5 (needs fine tuning since I hadn't allowed for A being wider than its neighbors) but the coin layout won't be easy to work with. Whoo's suggestion is worth considering though there's bound to be flat alignment issues when the map sections are rotated and moved to different point on the grid, not insurmountable but would have to be taken into consideration when mapping.

[Nomad]

Yeah, I meant units squared. :P

Whoo's suggestion might be interesting, but I'd like everyone to keep in mind that they are both welcome--and encouraged--to work with the other authors to link their parts together. So I think it would be wise to pick our layout and stick with it.

Also I agree with Capellan's suggestion if we go that route.

[Krispy]

Done. Who do I send it to? I have both a doom builder prefab and a wad file.

[Rambosee]

Nice screenshot.
And I'll think I'll get off my fat ass and try to make S of YEARS.

[GreyGhost]

Nomad said:

Whoo's suggestion might be interesting, but I'd like everyone to keep in mind that they are both welcome--and encouraged--to work with the other authors to link their parts together.

If we opt for one of the "coin" layouts, mappers could work on pie slice maps like this which show where their neighbors are, but lacking a shared set of co-ordinates will make linking sections together without first merging them rather difficult.

I'd like to claim W if we switch from "20" to "TWENTY".

[Krispy]

I think that a coin layout would look cool in the automap, but it will look ugly in game. I just don't think it's worth it. Options 2 or 3 are better.
EDIT: About the comment below- That's totally cool. Things can easily be changed and taken out. All that was kept in mind. Just figured I'd get this all out of the way now as opposed to later.

[Nomad]

Looks great Krispy, but I greatly encourage you to wait for the base map to be decided on and distributed. Don't mean to be a dick but I've said that more than a couple times already. Part of the reason for this, if you had read the rules, is this:

-There will be a table specifying when weapons, monsters and special powerups may
appear. Getting all weapons and three cybers in the "1" is no fun!. Health powerups and stuff like that are left to the author's discretion as long as they respect the previous work.

I appreciate that you're gung-ho about getting started, but please be a little more patient!

GreyGhost made those other two suggestions, so we have two more options (I'll update the other post to have all of them as well)

Option 4:


Option 4.5:

[Phobus]

I'd advise that we stick to "20 YEARS OF DOOM" because it's 4 less mappers to rely on and at the moment we only have about 5-6 participants.

[GreyGhost]

Might stand a better chance of attracting contributors after a layout's been picked. The coin layouts look nice but are probably too impractical to work with (that mightn't stop some crazy bastard from spending his spare time trying to make them work :)) and Option 3 looks too much like "13 Years" for my liking. I'm currently leaning towards option 4.5, even if it means press-ganging a few more mappers.

[Nomad]

Yeah, I'm leaning towards 4.5 if we can get enough people, but otherwise number 3 is just fine. The actual detail will be what keeps it from resembling 13 years too much. :)

[Krispy]

Let's just vote already before I get a stroke and forget about this project. I vote for 4.5 and if membership is a problem we can make multiple maps it's no biggie.

[Rambosee]

I'll go for 4.5. Seems better.