Advise for my crap please. Thank you! ;)

[Breeder]

I was wondering if any of you who have been mapping for a number of years would be interested in taking a look at my most recent work.

This is part of a long drawn out project which I have trashed, restarted, and trashed again, only to begin a new. I realize the palette needs some work, that many areas of the map still need detailed, and that the textures are a total mess in some places.
Likewise the current weapon set is taken from the Quake 3 weapon set for DOOM II. That is just filler till I complete the actual weapons for my project.
The enemies of course are taken from the Alien Breed series as well as a couple from the Colonial Marines TC for GzDOOM. Those that do not face angles are that way because that's how my sources are. I have to deal with it till I can find a graphics artist to draw up some new frames.

As for the weapon and enemy behaviors, those are not completely finished yet either. In short I spend most of my time mapping, and then occasionally mess with the other aspects of this project. On top of that I don't really have a map in my head that I'm basing all this off of, rather I am basically free styling and trying to fine tune what ever comes out.

With all that in mind, please understand that this is in no way meant to represent my final work, and that I am uploading it here in order to get some feed back in regards to my mapping skills primarily. Though again there are many parts of the maps that are just filler and not completely fleshed out yet. Also the enemy and weapons placement is purely experimental at this time too.

Aside of mapping advice, if any of you see some textures that you feel I should keep (I've got a pretty good idea as to what needs to go), ideas you set forth here that I should expand upon, or any other sort of advise be is constructive or destructive, please send it my way. I feel some what like a lost sheep amidst all this and any advise would come in useful.

Also, for the note, this is meant to run on Odamex, so please do not review this in OpenGL on another source port, that will not give me the feed back I am looking for, thanks is advance!


ReadMe included.

http://files.drdteam.org/index.php/files/get/tv7NFLCDMM/ab3d-03-24-13.zip


http://aros-exec.org/uploads/newbb/153_514fc0bb7d5ed.png

http://aros-exec.org/uploads/newbb/153_514fc27fd6861.png

(Mod edit: Please post less gigantic screenshots if you want to embed them directly! Thanks!)

[Da Werecat]

Looks like your palette assembling method is quite unorthodox.

[Breeder]

Da Werecat said:

Looks like your palette assembling method is quite unorthodox.

Feel free to elaborate, I could REALLY use advise in that department!

[NoWaves]

Lets just say I when this is finished and patched a bit, I wouldn't be suprised to see this win a Cacoward this year. You could fix the door tracks though, noob mistake, but the maps (ESPESCIALLY the first) are anything but. Keep on doing what you're doing in the design area, and you should be good.

[Xaser]

You'll have an easier time attracting folks by posting some screenshots of the wad in question. It'll greatly increase the chances of someone to give it a download if there are neat things to potentially catch someone's eye.

[Darch]

Pretty good mapping. I know the weapons are not final, but I suggest you put some muzzles and change the sound of the chaingun, it resembles a fan the way it is now.

The textures are very nice, but the enemy sprites are too cartoonish for this kind of texture, IMO. I liked both, but they don´t fit together very much.

Also, I didn´t find any medikit.

Overall, looks like an very promising project, especially in the mapping department.

[Da Werecat]

Breeder said:

Feel free to elaborate, I could REALLY use advise in that department!

Well, I don't know much about 'proper' ways of palette editing. I never liked InkWorks and never tried anything else. When I need to mess with colors and/or special effects, I just open the color tables as RAW images.

What got me curious is that colors in your palette aren't sorted in the usual way. So it's highly unlikely that you've picked them manually. My only guess is that you've crammed all of your graphics in a single image and made your graphic editing program calculate a decent palette for it.

[Breeder]

Da Werecat said:

Well, I don't know much about 'proper' ways of palette editing. I never liked InkWorks and never tried anything else. When I need to mess with colors and/or special effects, I just open the color tables as RAW images.

What got me curious is that colors in your palette aren't sorted in the usual way. So it's highly unlikely that you've picked them manually. My only guess is that you've crammed all of your graphics in a single image and made your graphic editing program calculate a decent palette for it.

Bingo, you got it. As you can tell, graphics and palettes are not my area of expertise. Help welcome! ;)

[Breeder]

First off, thanks to everyone who took the time to look this over and provide me with honest feed back! :)

Darch said:

Pretty good mapping. I know the weapons are not final, but I suggest you put some muzzles and change the sound of the chaingun, it resembles a fan the way it is now.

The textures are very nice, but the enemy sprites are too cartoonish for this kind of texture, IMO. I liked both, but they don´t fit together very much.

Also, I didn´t find any medikit.

Overall, looks like an very promising project, especially in the mapping department.

I'm having a bit of a time trying to find a happy medium. :/

My project is a tribute to a series of games that originated on the Amiga called Alien Breed. The developer Team 17 shared a bunch of there resources free to the public a number of years ago on Aminet, so I have been using them as my bas.
On the down side, most of the contents in the archive consisted of textures and enemies from Alien Breed 3D part 1, which was far more cartoony than it's predecessors and it's sequel. Sadly though the sequel, Alien Breed 3D II did not fair to well in the texture department as you will be able to see in it's video posted below, and it would appear that many of it's enemy sprites were not included in the archive.

Initially I set out to create a remake of AB3D for the classic Amiga using the BOOM engine, but I found the BOOM engine to be too limited to pull it off. In fact, even with advanced ports such as GzDOOM there would be some things that still could not be fully duplicated (to my knowledge). The Amiga hardware was very powerful and far ahead of it's time. While the PC and Mac world were stuck with 16 colors and later 256 colors on the screen at once, the Amigas were capable of thousands, as well as advanced scrolling effects, lighting, true multi-tasking etc. etc. In short, if you were a Mac or PC owner back in the day, you were like the poor kid on the block who had to make his Star Wars toys out of sticks and yarn (I had to endure that reality my self for a while). ;)
Needless to say, just getting Alien Breed 3D's images to work with a restrictive palette of 256 colors has been a pain in a butt on it's own.

Anyhow, since I abandoned the idea of recreating Alien Breed 3D, I decided instead to try to make a tribute to the entire series (minus the latest installments), hence the reason I ganked a face hugger and xenophobe from the Colonial Marines TC as those were actually enemies in the original top down Alien Breed games (I, II, and Tower Assault). As for the textures that came in the Aminet resource pack...

...well the dimensions are a bit to small to be realistically used in a modern FPS, and I'd be stuck with only a handful of textures which I think would get a bit redundant considering that we are no longer in the early 90's and our eyes demand a little bit more even with old school engines such as DOOM. It is for that reason that I am dumping most of the old textures and am working in new ones. I realize they look kind of strange in relation to the cartoony enemies, but I really don't know what else to do, unless some graphic artist came along and provided me with a feasible solution, which I'd be totally open to as I'd love to make this project look as best it can in any way I can and am always open to help from the outside, especially from current or previous Amiga users and fans of the Alien Breed series in general.

And for those wondering what the hell Alien Breed is, well here ya go! ;)


Alien Breed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-aSztV1QLo

Alien Breed II:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgHNUp8DbZI

Tower Assault:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3dkPTcSWYg

Alien Breed 3D:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKxcE5pCgiI

Alien Breed 3D II:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7L5yFKMaWo


And just for kicks, a few more of our other DOOM clones:

Genetic Species:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPi73lQ9cFg

Nemac IV:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JtYff1b5xI

Gloom:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BELCO16pwNM

The funny thing is that now a days we've got the likes of Quake and Quake II being ported to the classic Amiga's 680x0 CPU and built in AGA graphics. Coders of the old days would be crapping their pants.

[Da Werecat]

Breeder said:

As you can tell, graphics and palettes are not my area of expertise. Help welcome! ;)

I'd say it works already.

[Breeder]

Da Werecat said:

I'd say it works already.

I want to rework it anyhow at some point, but first I need to talk a few things over with the Amiga community and get some input as to what they'd like to see in this.

Before I get to that point I'd like to ask though if I would benefit by keeping the colors in order of shade and color rather than allow them to be placed so randomly in the color chart?

[Breeder]

Xaser said:

You'll have an easier time attracting folks by posting some screenshots of the wad in question. It'll greatly increase the chances of someone to give it a download if there are neat things to potentially catch someone's eye.

Will do. (added to my initial post).

[Breeder]

Darch said:

Pretty good mapping. I know the weapons are not final, but I suggest you put some muzzles and change the sound of the chaingun, it resembles a fan the way it is now.

The textures are very nice, but the enemy sprites are too cartoonish for this kind of texture, IMO. I liked both, but they don´t fit together very much.

Also, I didn´t find any medikit.

Overall, looks like an very promising project, especially in the mapping department.

Thank you, and I agree about the contrast between the sprites I am using vs the new textures I'm trying to implement.

As for health, I change the link in my first post and spread a few items here and there. Also I should note that there is a bit of exploration involved. Some items are hidden and in some cases, you can move past a section of the map without grabbing a key that might be in the area first. Such keys are not needed to complete the level, but come in handy if you want to complete the level via a different path, or access locked doors that contain weapons stashes.

Granted, this theme has not been implemented heavily within this map yet, but there is a bit of it.

[Breeder]

For those curious or who feel they may be able to help/advise.

Here are the original sources I have to work with as provided by Aminet, but converted to PNG format (audio bits excluded).

http://files.drdteam.org/index.php/files/get/DLn8RZeoix/ab3d-aminet-gfx-resources.zip


Origin:

http://aminet.net/search?query=alien+breed

[Merry Widow]

It does not look like crap to me!

[Da Werecat]

Breeder said:

Before I get to that point I'd like to ask though if I would benefit by keeping the colors in order of shade and color rather than allow them to be placed so randomly in the color chart?

If you're planning to implement multiplayer support, then it would be best to organize your palette, because there are some colors that are reserved for player sprite recoloring. There also could be some port-specific pitfalls, but I'm not sure.

[Breeder]

grouchbag said:

It does not look like crap to me!

Thank you for that! It is my intention for the finished product to not be crap either. :)

[Breeder]

Da Werecat said:

If you're planning to implement multiplayer support, then it would be best to organize your palette, because there are some colors that are reserved for player sprite recoloring. There also could be some port-specific pitfalls, but I'm not sure.

Thanks for the heads up Da Werecat, I'll certainly keep that in mind.

[Cire]

Nice. I don't know if it's the intention, but making this run as a stand-alone game would be pretty neat imo.