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Tristan

Doom 2 In Name Only - Now (supsiciously) on a load of gaming articles

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It looks good, but I agree with Antroid, for the purposes of one map, it makes more sense to fix that one map, which shouldn't be too difficult to do anyway.

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is it not? Well it aint happening anyway so cant be arsed to look into it. Guess the ball is in xaser's court now

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Meanwhile I tried to make the map22 music louder.
here's the result
It is the loudest I can make it without the balance of volumes between different instruments and whatnot being disturbed. I haven't got the best ears for this sort of thing but from comparing the old and new one nothing seems broken in the latter, only it's a bit more loud. Eris, try it out, you've obviously better qualified to judge whether I fucked it up.

In my opinion the loudest part of the song is too loud in comparison to the rest of it and the quieter parts could use some beefing up to similar volume but I decided not to meddle for now.

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mouldy said:

is it not? Well it aint happening anyway so cant be arsed to look into it. Guess the ball is in xaser's court now


It is - I totally misinterpreted how the pic is used in the game.
I think it looks swell.

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_bruce_ said:

It is - I totally misinterpreted how the pic is used in the game.
I think it looks swell.


ah thanks, it was just a test. It could be done better and be more in keeping with the original probably. Something for a different project perhaps

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Just spotted a minor texture misalignment in Catacombs. But I'm not gonna tell where it is :P (it's not something totally invisible like an ashwall, instead a texture with a very specific structure implied, and I'm not telling only because I think it looks as realistic with the misalignment as it would without)
There's also a case of flat wall right at the start, to the left immidiately as we get outside.

Also, why are the two coffins near the giant skull'n'shades switch impassable? They're down in holes in the ground and I wouldn't have even noticed them had I not investigated what had been blocking my movement. Realistically they really shouldn't be blocking. Is there any sort of deeper meaning to it?
(it might look like I'm picking on map22 but in fact I only look at it so thoroughly because I like it so much, I was also trying out how my louder music sounds, it's fine now btw)

On a more upbeat note, I still frikkin love this wad. I haven't seen all maps yet and many I've only run through briefly or without monsters (in fact, apart from my own maps, plus map01 and map23 I haven't even tried beating any of them yet), but I haven't seen one I didn't like visually and atmospherically. And don't get me wrong, the ones I felt needed some fixing are also awesome. They're all really interesting one way or another. There should be more community projects forcing people to implement strong concepts in their maps, instead of vague abstractions. I mean, vague abstractions rule and all, but these sorts of maps that are actually built around representing some place (or concept) while retaining the classic look (no new textures for everything, manageable detail levels, etc) are often so much more interesting to just even walk through. To me, at least.

Edit: just realized what the catacombs track was reminding me of so strongly. American McGee's Alice - menu. It seems very similar in some ways, no?

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Eris Falling said:

And damn that fucking flat wall! Seems to be really difficult to fix

That's actually a really trivial thing to do.

screenshot of a primitive solution
2 is a new sector. Nothing else required (well, apart from making sure 1 has the right texture).

Did you give the louder version a listen? Is it alright? I'm personally pretty satisfied with the volume after hearing it ingame.

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Cheers, I'll try it out tomorrow.

I did listen briefly to the louder MIDI, but I'll have to check it in-game to see how it compares.
I would've done it myself but the track volumes change over time, and Anvil doesn't support that so I didn't want to screw things up

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My magical software apparently understood what I wanted and aplied the loudening correctly. I could only really make sure of that at the end where the music box or whatever it was fades out: it still does in the louder version.

I also caught a bug in map05.
screenshot
These two linedefs (the ones selected) aren't impassible (the ones on the right side are) and the bars texture is aligned visibly differently on the front and back side. Normally that wouldn't be an issue but in a case like this it's very apparent if you only look for a second second.

Edit: bug and a half in map08.
screenshot1
Misalignment on the right, and the button behind the thing on the left can be pressed through said thing, creating a big bug and lots of confusion in this room:
screenshot2
namely, it causes a door to open which you actually have to press to open other things. Such as the barrier circled in a pleasantly toxic green. That one has no textures on it's sides so as it's lowering you get to see everyone's favorite bug with the floor texture filling in the entire shape when the floor lowers below the camera level.

Luckily both map05 and 08 are by an_mutt so with any luck we can get him to fix these. And Eris, don't miss scifista's second fix of citadel (don't grab the first, not fully fixed one by mistake! I know you). That's one thing to cross off the List.

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Antroid said:

I also caught a bug in map05.
screenshot
These two linedefs (the ones selected) aren't impassible (the ones on the right side are) and the bars texture is aligned visibly differently on the front and back side. Normally that wouldn't be an issue but in a case like this it's very apparent if you only look for a second second.

Honestly, I did that on purpose to make moving down the stairs a little easier and so you don't get snagged on the rail as easily.

EDIT: now that I think about it I should probably just those midtextures if I don't want them to get in the way. Logical thinking!

And I'll get to the other bugs some time this week - I basically put all of map 08 together in a couple days (ask Eris, I kept him up to speed with my progress as he was antsy to get the Beta bug testing started. :V) and haven't looked at it since it was posted...

... which reminds me:

MAP 08 WAS BASICALLY A SPEEDMAP AND ANY FEEDBACK WOULD BE REALLY NICE AS IT IS PROBABLY IN NEED OF SOME

It's still being worked on (even though I just said I haven't looked at it in over a week), and I'll probably work on fully tightening up the gameplay and thing placement by the end of the week. Once I'm done with getting my Switch-y-room map to a testable standard, I mean.

EDIT: I should note that basically everything that's been said about my maps so far (namely the Map 17 brightness oddities) were spotted by myself back when the original Alpha was released and combed over by people in the community, and I've already made what changes I felt were needed. I thought I had posted them but it turns out I didn't, so I'm going to give maps 05 and 17 one last going over this weekend and then post the updated (and literally the final) versions of them.

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I liked 08 just fine other than that bug and a half. Can't feed you back about the gameplay though because I'm just running through maps with cheats at present. Good to know you're planning to go over 17's brightness a bit. Also, knowing Eris, you might have posted them but he just missed them :P


Meanwhile, I was trying out map11 and I couldn't for the life of me shoot the switch tagged 77 without jumping or crouching or other preposterous tricks. Even with a single shotgun's burst, it looks like the puffs are coming from the switch, but no, it doesn't ever hit it. Although if I jump and shoot right before landing I do hit it so it's working and there's no blocking lines. I would suggest lowering that switch a tad.

Although the SSG hits it just fine, and the plasma does for some inane reason, and I even managed to hit it with a rocket. The single shotty or pistol though? No fuckin' chance. At least here in zdoom.

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Antroid said:

I am very confused about how is it even possible to make a map and not notice stuff like this (the last one Eris didn't screenshot, it's the very end. What's up with the floating towers, btw?).

This is a highly problematic response, as dangerously close to "why didn't you produce perfect results the first time?" It's still a beta version of the map, and I already explained in my previous post that I don't red-flag these sorts of things mentally when I scan through the map, so it slipped my radar. You obviously feel stronger about this issue than I do, which is fine -- I suppose it's similar to my own automap pickiness. For example, it drives me up the wall when mappers don't use "secret" and "hidden" flags to control the look of their automap (especially when it spoils trap closets, eeeugh), but plenty of mappers don't naturally notice (much less look for) that type of 'mistake' since it shows up in tons of places. That's why we run these things past other folks, after all.

Now, by all means, report this kind of stuff -- the tiling for sure needs to be addressed in one way or another now that it's been pointed out -- but don't act surprised when a bug or imperfection slips through during the testing phase of a beta product, and certainly don't place the blame on the developer for not automagically catching every error that happens to arise. That's going to make the developer in question much less inclined to listen.

[EDIT] It's worth editing in that I do appreciate your thorough testing here, don't get me wrong. I'm just soapboxing as a software dev, since these sorts of conflicts often lead to vicious cycles of folks refusing to report bugs and then expecting them to get fixed. That's clearly not the case here, since you're doing the contributing part (and quite a lot of it, really), so perhaps I'm being too preachy.

At any rate, if the consensus is that I ought to edit the map, I'm going to need time to sit down and figure out how to do a fix without mucking up the intended "you're really high up" feel of the area. The floaty tower bits at the end in particularly troublesome, since I'll need to hit that sweet spot where you can see the floating effect without getting the sky trouble. Though maybe in that case i'll just need to fiddle with numbers since there aren't any staircases to worry about.

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Xaser said:

I suppose it's similar to my own automap pickiness. For example, it drives me up the wall when mappers don't use "secret" and "hidden" flags to control the look of their automap (especially when it spoils trap closets, eeeugh), but plenty of mappers don't naturally notice (much less look for) that type of 'mistake' since it shows up in tons of places. That's why we run these things past other folks, after all.


I'm pretty much an "automap specialist", I always catch automap bugs and report them. I think I annoy the hell out of some people doing it, but yeah, the look of the automap is important too.

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Xaser said:

This is a highly problematic response, as dangerously close to "why didn't you produce perfect results the first time?"

I dunno, for me, a misalignment or even some broken optional action somewhere that you just didn't think to check while testing are one thing, but major sky tiling issues in open areas are such an intergral part of geometry that you might as well have left a required key out of the map, or forgot to make an exit anywhere, and also said "hey we can't all do perfect on the first try". I suppose it's just because I always look around every new area I've made immidiately, being especially careful when sky's involved, because there are all sorts of issues with Doom's sky that I can't allow to slip by, such as cutoffs, HOMs or tiling. Seeing sky tiling glaringly there like that, to me, almost gives an impression that you didn't run through your map ingame to see how it turned out even once (which, I know, can't be true, but still), because I can't really imagine missing sky tiling that obvious - if you look over the railings even briefly, especially in the end area, it's very hard to not notice.

But oh well! At least you're fixing it :P

Ragnor said:

I'm pretty much an "automap specialist", I always catch automap bugs and report them. I think I annoy the hell out of some people doing it, but yeah, the look of the automap is important too.

I hope you appreciate all the tedious work I went through to make the automaps of my maps look as clean as possible without any line that isn't informative of the playing layout (such as ceiling height variations ans whatnot)!

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@Antroid: I suppose we'll have to remain on different sides of the issue, since for whatever weird reason I don't group sky tiling troubles into the same bucket that you do. Either way, it's on the "things to fix" radar for this project, which is the important part. I'll take a look soonish.

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Eris don't miss the circle of death 77-tagged switch that needs lowering. I dunno if it's just zdoom but I feel like I should have been allowed to use a pistol for that.

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Ragnor said:

I'm pretty much an "automap specialist", I always catch automap bugs and report them. I think I annoy the hell out of some people doing it, but yeah, the look of the automap is important too.


I wondered if you knew about this? It might make your work a little easier.

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I was going to leave this until I added deathmatch starts to my other submissions but given this wad is being played on zdaemon tomorrow then here is the absolute final version of map12
http://www.mediafire.com/download/jt9ldeljrtiqz9d/cbfactoryfinal.wad
Fixed the sky tiling I foolishly created.
Some more gameplay and visual tweaks.
A few more multiplayer monsters.
Oh and different music now if you check the wad file, got sick of the tnt music :P

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Hey CB while you're here, since you're an expert, what sort of play compatibility do we need for TNS? Do they have to work with co-op/DM?

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Eris Falling said:

Hey CB while you're here, since you're an expert, what sort of play compatibility do we need for TNS? Do they have to work with co-op/DM?

The maps will work fine without multiplayer stuff but of course it's nice to bolster difficulty for when there are more than just one player ;)
I can't remember what I did for map15 but I think it was rather sadistic on multiplayer.

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Cool thanks
Did you want these changes available for TNS tomorrow? Because they've already made the news post linking to B5, but I guess I could release B6 as it is now, jumping the changes still to come and they could use that, but it could cause confusion

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Seriously though, that freaking switch on map11. I can hit it in prboom with a pistol, but in zdoom I shoot literally one pixel too low. Someone just lower it by 4 pixels! Eris you can do it yourself, I don't think we should even require Egregor's permission for that sort of thing.

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Earlier than originally intended
BETA VI
The list in the OP has been blanked save for any other uncompleted changes which will be ready for the next one (I presume)

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