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Cire

Zauberer

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Angry Saint said:

Now I read that the demo was the first hub without the guardian of steel. Maybe for the Zauberer demo we could put a complete hub.

Yes, the demo is unwinnable by design. They probably already kinda went over the top with four levels for a demo of a commercial game where usually there would be between one and three levels. An entire hub would be nice, but Hexen wasn't a shareware game and making a full episode available was probably felt as unnecessary.

The downside is that you get stuck in the hub and cannot fully explore the two available guardian levels either because some switches that should allow further progress were in the Guardian of Steel hub.

You can still complete the hub with the no clipping cheat. Also there's the cheat code that runs game scripts which can be used to toggle switches that are unavailable. I think it's doable with some trial and error, but honestly I only managed to open one locked door in the hub that way :)

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Yup, that's true MrFlibble.
Since were going for an egyptian theme, I've found a couple of texture packs (one of them are for Quake) and a TC which licenses seems free/ish, perhaps the authors (RADAR, SimonOC and Mouse) would be willing to relicense and donate some of those Resources to Zauberer, if they can still be contacted? Besides the texures in general, I would be especially insterested in the Khopesh sword and the Scepter of Was from Chosen. Being able to use some of those Resources would save us months of work.
https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/graphics/mummytex
http://www.simonoc.com/pages/artwork/tp_egyptian.htm
https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/a-c/ch133
EDIT: For the demo, I have the following ideas for level names:
Main hub is called "City of Men-nefer" and is the central district of a city, with the following four sublevels being the other districts to the city.
The central districts has exits to the following sublevels:
"Palace of the gods"
"Palace district"
"Temple district"
"Grand Temple of Sekhmet"
"Lower city"

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The GPL2 texture pack is really nice! The textures for Doom Legacy seem to be based on another PWAD (?) though.

I'm a fan of Ancient Egypt and I like your concept for the levels and game design. Powerslave is a solid proof of concept that the Egyptian setting works pretty well with 2.5D FPS games.

I never played Chosen but I heard that this is a great TC.

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Yes, I saw that it's based on Osiris TC, which I guess means that permission needs to be confirmed from Glen Payne and Marshal Bostwick too. Cool that you like our ideas. Yeah, my friend who designs the story and game setting is also a huge fan of Ancient Egypt. :)
I Think we have come up with a pretty unique story and game design with this kind of setting of post-apocalyptic Ancient Egypt. I will have to add the rest of the story on my GitHub website, only the prologue is there at the moment.

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I just thought that maybe you could create additional textures from photographs of Egyptian temple or tomb walls, and possibly decorations and items from photos of real Egyptian pillars, statues and items etc.? I suppose that at least some of the photographs available on the web are released under licenses that would allow to use them as sources for textures.

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Yup, that's a good idea. I Think the Doom Legacy texture and sprite pack can be used? Here are the important quotes:
"Glen Payne, Marshal Bostwick for letting anyone use the sprites and graphics from their OSIRIS TC"
"Authors may use this wad as a base to build levels, have fun.

Let me know about your wads, so I can link to them from my Egyptian doom resources page


You MAY distribute this PWAD, provided you include this file, with
no modifications. You may distribute this file in any electronic
format (BBS, Diskette, CD, etc) as long as you include this file
intact."
So I Think the authors of those Resources would only be happy if they get used in a Project such as Zauberer?

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It is my understanding that with projects like Zauberer, it needs to be firmly established if the original authors created their work, which they have declared free to use, from scratch or not. So I guess they need to be contacted directly for more information, and if no confirmation is obtained, I suppose it's better to err on the side of caution.

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That's rather bad news. That texture pack is really good and we can't seem to find many other similar packs. The problem is that this Project risks to stall. The only other option would be to make the textures from scratch or convert photos somehow and we would need someone to take up and work a lot on such a task.
EDIT: Just so everyone know, I'm taking this seriously, and if for a fact the case is that the texture pack can't be used and I can't obtain permission, I, regretably, can't and won't use those textures.

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Thanks, that's good news! I Think we can certainly use those! ^^
EDIT: OK, I guess we'll have to scrap the idea of using those Resources I posted earlier. Instead, it would be really nice if someone could take up the task of making textures from scratch that looks similar to the textures in the Doom Legacy texture pack, possibly from photos as MrFlibble suggested since it's that style were looking for.

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We have been talking about this, and as is evident by some of the concepts I've posted Before, we're not going for a pure Ancient Egypt style, but some other themes mixed in too, like post-apocalyptic future, steam-punk, a Little fantasy etc. Just like many of id Software's games like Doom and Quake, we Think that's what made them memorable. I hope most members agree with this too.

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That would certainly make sense to not limit the game with one theme.

For Egyptian assets, I remembered that the open source Cube engine games have some Egyptian texture sets, although you might need to check the licenses for those (IIRC some assets have a different license to them, but not sure). There should be no problem contacting the author to clarify the details anyway. You might also find textures for other themes in those sets too. I'm not sure how well they convert to the Hexen palette though, but it should be doable.

BTW, maybe you would consider having some Ancient Greece themed levels as well? I have a feeling that this setting is generally underused in FPS games - I can only name the Ancient Greece episode in Daikatana, Will Rock (one of my favourites), and a Duke Nukem 3D TC called Secrets of the Acropolis (incorrectly named Secrets of the Necropolis at ModDB).

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I started a small Hexne map, using the stock hexen textures. If interested, when finished I plan to donate it to Zauberer.

The theme is "Ice Prison", it can be a nice hub or episode start.

Work is slow as I'm also working on other projects.

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MrFlibble: Thanks for the suggestion! Perhaps Zauberer would benefit from having a different palette? Preferably one that is compatible with Hexen's I guess?

Angry Saint: Cool, thanks, that would be appreciated!

Sodaholic: Yeah, I also Think so.

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There are four main themes we want in Zauberer:
Ancient Egypt
Medieval Castle
Steampunk
and Ancient Egypt/Hell

My story and game designer is in the progress of putting together a complete game design document for Zauberer.

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One weapon design we wish to have: A steampunk version of Brutal Doom's plasma rifle, shooting yellow plasma instead of blue.
I was thinking we could have a red and a yellow flame as pickup sprites for the mana pickups. And a Health pickup replacement similar to Brutal Doom's "Demon essence".

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Rather incomplete at the moment unfortunatly. We have some textures, sprites, sounds, a logo and perhaps some other things I forgot. If you want more exact info about what is done I can check for you.

I also want to confirm that we can use the tp_egyptian texture pack by simonoc that I posted about earlier. It's GPL2 licensed so it should work right?

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Ok, so for the moment it's better to map using only original Hexen resources.

My plan is to finish the map, and then eventually one hub. My map is for Vanilla Hexen (I use Chocolate Hexen for testing). I don't know the Zauberer target source port.

I see we are quite in the initial stages and so much is yet to be defined.

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Yup, pretty much. Thanks for helping with maps! :) Yeah, I do Think most people want Vanilla Hexen compatibility.

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Shouldn't this topic be pinned like the Blasphemer one is, so more people can notice it's existence in case it gets lost among the other Freedoom threads?

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Death Egg: Yeah, I agree about this, I tried to find a way to do it myself, but I guess it's something the moderators will have to do.

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