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Urthar

Dimension of the Boomed

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Want to build your own maps with the resources used in Dimension of the Boomed?

 

Here's the original Boom/MBF Resource WAD: BOOMQTEX

For making maps that are compatible with custom mods use: ZMODQTEX

 

BOOMQTEX Reference Guide For Mappers

 

Texture Naming Convention

QM   - Medieval Textures
QR   - Runic Textures
QT   - TechBase Textures
QF   - Flats
QA   - Animated

 

Monsters

Shambler  - (Type 84 replaces Wolfenstein SS)
Spawn      - (Type 72 replaces Commander Keen)
Scrag       - (Type 88 replaces Icon of Sin)


Decorations

Small Flame          - (Type 55 replaces Small Blue Firestick)
Torch                  - (Type 56 replaces Small Green Firestick)
Large Flame         - (Type 57 replaces Small Red Firestick)
Gargoyle             - (Type 43 replaces Gray Tree)
Gargoyle Torch    - (Type 85 replaces Tall Techno Floor Lamp)
Light Globe         - (Type 2028 replaces Floor Lamp)

 

Ambient Sounds

Ambient Computer - (Type 78 replaces Hanging Torso, Brain Removed)
Ambient Drone      - (Type 75 replaces Hanging Torso, Looking Down)
Ambient Suck       - (Type 77 replaces Hanging Torso, Looking Up)
Ambient Buzz       - (Type 76 replaces Hanging Torso, Open Skull)
Ambient Portal      - (Type 74 replaces Hanging Victim, Guts And Brain Removed)
Ambient Fire         - (Type 73 replaces Hanging Victim, Guts Removed)
Ambient Marsh      - (Type 79 replaces Pool Of Blood And Guts)

 

---

 

ZMODQTEX Reference Guide For Mappers

 

Generally, I recommend building maps with BOOMQTEX if you're using Boom format, and then converting to ZMODQTEX afterwards. This is because quite a few entities will appear as (?) undefined in the editor, and will only appear correctly in-game.

 

Monsters

Shambler              - (Type 500)
Spawn                  - (Type 501)
Scrag                   - (Type 502)

Spider Mastermind - (Type 503)

 

Decorations

Candle              - (Type 504)

Light Globe       - (Type 505)

Small Flame       - (Type 506)
Torch               - (Type  507)
Large Flame      - (Type 508)
Gargoyle Torch  - (Type 509)
Tall Blue Torch   - (Type 510)

Tall Yellow Torch - (Type 511)

Tall Red Torch    - (Type 512)

Gargoyle           - (Type 513)

Stump              - (Type 514)

Tree                 - (Type 515)

 

Ambient Sounds

Ambient Fire         - (Type 14001)

Ambient Portal      - (Type 14002)

Ambient Drone      - (Type 14003)

Ambient Buzz       - (Type 14004)

Ambient Suck       - (Type 14005)

Ambient Computer - (Type 14006)
Ambient Marsh      - (Type 14007)

 

Edited by Urthar

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This looks amazing, looking forward to giving it a try soon! I take it the Quakey screenshot you recently posted a while back is from this wad?

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holy cow these levels are stunning. love the aesthetic, love the technical effects (horizontal doors, light fixtures, deep water, etc. things that normally seem phoned in for the sake of being technically interesting in doom, but feel absolutely at home in a quake-themed set). Haven't played through it fully yet (doomin' on the job -.-), but from running around the levels this looks amazing. Enemy placement seems a tad dense+nonchalant in general (see: bloodstain), but I'll wait for a full playthrough before deciding to complain about that. those shambler thingies are terrifying by the way.

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Just quickly fired this up, and it's incredible Urthar! Outstanding job! The Quake assets translate really well, and there's some great attention to detail with your design. I definitely be playing this some more....

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I'll definitely give this a spin! The Quake aesthetic is something I've always really liked, and I think it works pretty well in Doom too. It looks like you've done a great job at utilizing it here :)

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FDAs for first 3 maps

Map01 was an interesting experience. It really felt like exploring a complex system where everything is connected in logical ways. The architecture had that real world feel, it all seemed very believable. The cyberdemon was good at putting pressure on me and nothing was boring or out of place.

Map02 was weird. I was constantly running out of ammo while encountering more and more roaming enemies. Cacos and revenants made me really uncomfortable. If that was your aim (makes sense, it goes well with the oppressive atmosphere and unsettling music), I guess you totally succeeded. Personally, I was glad when I died and therefore was freed from playing the map. Well, I like Doom a little more fun and colorful in general, so it's not surprising that this stuff didn't excite me so much. It is also quite possible that I simply missed some important ammo stash.

Map03 felt like a return to that exploratory nature of Map01 and the ammo balance seemed less stingy than on Map02, so I had good fun with it. Unfortunately I died in that shambler fight, and I don't feel so optimistic about trying again since I don't even know how that monster works (I only played Quake with cheat codes as a little child, so I don't remember anything). If I were you, I would introduce new monsters in a safer environment and closer to the beginning of the map. But I guess you're expecting people to already know the mechanics, which makes sense since it's a Quake themed Doom WAD, and most doomers probably know Quake better than I do.

Impressive work overall. While it's not my style, I can certainly appreciate the effort you put into architecture, nonlinearity, numerous secrets, ambience and all that. Faster running in slime was a cool touch too, I wanted to stay there forever. :)

edit: maybe a small align problem on Map01 -> http://i.imgur.com/pvNRHQx.jpg Not that anyone will notice...

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As a person who likes Quake 1 stuff, I must say that this is just some incredible stuff, Uthar! You really nailed the Quake theme with the variety of textures and boom trickery. The custom shambler monster is a nice addition as well. Keep it up!

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Cant wait to play this! I loved wtmdg :)

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Thank for the kind words and feedback, and indeed these are the maps from the screen-shot thread.

Thank you for the FDAs, which are worth their virtual weight in gold. I can see there's quite a few changes I want to make based on them, and the accompanying commentary.

Now, I originally created the resource WAD with the vague notion of starting a community project of sorts, and the maps built thus far are tests that the resource is functional.

So would people be interested in creating maps for this?

It wouldn't be immediate, since there's still some work I need to do to make sure that Wizard Manse, and Elder World type maps can be built properly, and there's one more additional Quake monster I want to add.

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This looks awesome! I hope it goes forward and at some point a community megawad is created for this :D

I adapted my Black Ops mod for this project, tested with Doom Retro, prboom+, load it last
http://www.yourfilelink.com/get.php?fid=1302347

(smooth weapon animations, black gloves, gameplay unchanged)

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Urthar said:

So would people be interested in creating maps for this?


It's a fantastic idea, but if I were you, I'd probably start from a different angle than the usual community project approach. Your mapping has a way of looking like quake for reasons other than the textures used. Also it looks like the resource pack uses a lot of interesting/innovative effects that I think most people may overlook. I wouldn't want to see those go to waste. There's a lot of great mappers in this community, but you have a heightened sense of awareness when it comes to lighting, spacing, and texture alignment. We love people like joe-ilya but I couldn't see him doing this project justice no matter how much you nagged him. Maybe there's a fair way for interested mappers to provide a resume before securing mapslots in the project?

You did excellent work assembling this resource pack together. I don't know quake very intimately -- are these direct rips from the game, or did you make your own variants and stuff? I have an ambitious project in mind that has cool texture effects and high emphasis on lighting. I'd love to use this for practice, if I may? :)

Another quick thing, what are peoples thoughts on the sped up chaingun? The 300 max bullets was a good compromise. I always felt the chaingun could serve to be a little faster.

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Hi Urthar, I just finished playing through this. What a wonderful set of maps you've created! I was stunned at how well you pulled off the Quake aesthetic in the Doom mapping format. Especially the lighting, which I would say is one big part of the Quake look that is very difficult to replicate in a Doom map. The architectural spaces in this were very well done, like the tall and open spaces in MAP01, and the desolate caverns in MAP03. The fake sliding doors, nice midtexture usage, and neat lighting tricks were also awesome to see. Oh and I really liked that you included the ambient sounds in here too. Really gorgeous mapping work all around!

Some other things I really enjoyed was seeing the Quake blues make an appearance. Those always looked nice against Quake's heavy usage of browns and other dark colors. Doom's blues definitely would not have looked nearly as good. The tweaked COLORMAP was also a very nice touch, and I wonder if that's partly what is making these maps look so Quake-like. The faster Chaingun was also very much appreciated and fun to use!

I only have a couple of minor complaints. First thing is that I hit one snag in MAP03 when identifying a key switch:



The markers completely blended into the background for me because the red of the markers doesn't stand about very well against the browns. I had no idea this was even a key switch until I pressed use on it and noticed the hud message. I didn't seem to have this problem in any of the other maps.

The other thing is the Shambler. I found him very overbearing to fight against, and he was the source of most of my deaths during my playthrough. I think its the combination of the high damage he does, the fast attack animation, and the lack of visual cues. If he was used more sparingly, I think it might not be a big deal. But I found myself fighting them when other monsters were around blocking me. I realize that with bex your going to be limited in the ways you can implement him. I guess the only thing I could suggest is maybe increase his pain chance or slow down his attack animation a bit.

I was surprised that the Vore didn't make an appearance in this seeing that there was a really quality sprite remake of that monster done a while back. Not that I'd want to fight another monster with homing projectiles :P. But it'd be cool to see if you could find a niche for it.

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40oz said:

Maybe there's a fair way for interested mappers to provide a resume before securing mapslots in the project?


Well it's early days, but that could be the way to go. I'll talk to people it the meantime, and draw up some definite plans perhaps in a months time. Maybe submitting a single test room of a recognisable Quake location would be the way to go.

You did excellent work assembling this resource pack together. I don't know quake very intimately -- are these direct rips from the game, or did you make your own variants and stuff?


They're mostly from QUAKE101.WAD which is a commonly used Quake texture resource, plus some direct rips from the original pak files. (Happily, SLADE3 can read pak files and export Quake graphics.) There some additional work in making them Boom friendly and implementing special effects.

I have an ambitious project in mind that has cool texture effects and high emphasis on lighting. I'd love to use this for practice, if I may? :)


By all means :)

---

Mechadon said:

I only have a couple of minor complaints. First thing is that I hit one snag in MAP03 when identifying a key switch:


I'll try to highlight them better, there's other problems I need to fix with that room anyway.

The other thing is the Shambler. I found him very overbearing to fight against, and he was the source of most of my deaths during my playthrough. I think its the combination of the high damage he does, the fast attack animation, and the lack of visual cues. If he was used more sparingly, I think it might not be a big deal. But I found myself fighting them when other monsters were around blocking me. I realize that with bex your going to be limited in the ways you can implement him. I guess the only thing I could suggest is maybe increase his pain chance or slow down his attack animation a bit.


That's probably more a result of my overbearing encounter design. I tried to make as close as possible to his Quake version - He's immune to blast damage, but quite vulnerable to point blank SSG and very weak against plasma weapons. I lowered his hitpoints quite a lot, and he sort of feels right at the moment. I can tweak him a bit, but I can't lower his damage without boosting his hitpoints massively, because he would become too vulnerable to infighting.

I was surprised that the Vore didn't make an appearance in this seeing that there was a really quality sprite remake of that monster done a while back. Not that I'd want to fight another monster with homing projectiles :P. But it'd be cool to see if you could find a niche for it.


I certainly considered the Vore becuase she's quite iconic, but I literally have no idea how to make her work in dehacked, but if someone more skilled than myself works out how to do it, then she would make an interesting additional to the Revenant.

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Oh I forgot to mention, you may want to consider adding an updated obituary message in ZDoom for the Shambler. At the moment it says your getting killed by a Spider Mastermind, heh.

Urthar said:

That's probably more a result of my overbearing encounter design. I tried to make as close as possible to his Quake version - He's immune to blast damage, but quite vulnerable to point blank SSG and very weak against plasma weapons. I lowered his hitpoints quite a lot, and he sort of feels right at the moment. I can tweak him a bit, but I can't lower his damage without boosting his hitpoints massively, because he would become too vulnerable to infighting.

I certainly considered the Vore becuase she's quite iconic, but I literally have no idea how to make her work in dehacked, but if someone more skilled than myself works out how to do it, then she would make an interesting additional to the Revenant.


You may be right about the Shamber. I don't think its bad if you've got a way to get out of its line of sight. But it felt like a lot of the time I was stuck, and before I knew it I had been blasted two or three times. It's essentially a super fast attacking Archvile without the visual flame cue, and I think that's why I found him frustrating to fight against. The problem may resolve itself when/if you implement lower difficulty settings (I will readily admit that I'm not an amazing player, so I might enjoy the Shambler encounters more on HMP).

Just a thought; since your using the MBF format, try experimenting with the BetaSkullAttack codepointer on the Shambler. I haven't used it before, so it may not work how you want it. But it is supposed a hitscan-like attack that is similar to the Archvile attack, I think. If it does less damage, you could call it multiple times to get the desired attack damage you want.

The Vore would be difficult to replicate in dehacked now that I think about it. The best you could probably do is have it fire Revenant rockets, in which case it would just be a redundant Revenant. I wish there was one or two more monster projectile attack codepointers in MBF :/

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You'd better focus on the resources and the mapping, DEHACKED does not allow for more monster variety without cannibalising the Doom monsters. There is a distinct lack of code pointers and projectiles.

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The second lift you see (not the one you ride down after the Quake E1M1 start room, the one you see just after that) is bugged. After raising once, it then lowers all the way to the lowest neighboring sector, and from then on will only raise to the floor level of the lamp sector behind it, rather than climbing back up to the gallery.

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Played MAP01-02. As someone who used to nurse a quake obsession, this is tremendous. In 01 I felt like I was at the bottom of a great big machine, and you even implemented the little crawlways (textured with wires/cables). In 02, which is a really impressive playground, I had Mechadon's problems with the shamblers. One sniped me through a crowd of enemies, and I couldn't even see it; and frequently they hit me 2x before I could run for very close cover.

The often incidental, clumpy, slightly haphazard combat hasn't bothered me yet. I tend to like incidental stuff. I need to wear headphones for the rest; the atmosphere is too good.

EDIT

Played 03-04. Delightful. Quake sure came up with some cool themes given how haphazard some of its design was, and you've translated a few into Doom remarkably well.

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I haven't finished this yet, but even though I wasn't a big fan of Quake (blasphemy), these maps are wonderful. In fact, it deserves a grammatically-terrible run-on sentence! From the ambient sounds to the hidden sectors allowing the use of two different textures on the same wall - top and bottom, you know what I'm talking about (or maybe they're just tall custom textures? Just now thought of that), to the micro-sectors and floor/ceiling transfers for light trickery, the use of custom-fitted midtextures, and of course the sliding-door texture trick that, as far as I know, Alexander S. came up with (correct me if I'm wrong), this is as much fun to kill stuff in as it is to dissect from a technical point between monsters. I've spent just as much time figuring out the mapping trickery as I have fighting stuff so far!

...I will say the Shamblers are kind of a buzzkill though. Big mean Christmassy-looking fuckers

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Octavarium said:

I haven't finished this yet, but even though I wasn't a big fan of Quake (blasphemy), these maps are wonderful. In fact, it deserves a grammatically-terrible run-on sentence! From the ambient sounds to the hidden sectors allowing the use of two different textures on the same wall - top and bottom, you know what I'm talking about (or maybe they're just tall custom textures? Just now thought of that), to the micro-sectors and floor/ceiling transfers for light trickery, the use of custom-fitted midtextures, and of course the sliding-door texture trick that, as far as I know, Alexander S. came up with (correct me if I'm wrong), this is as much fun to kill stuff in as it is to dissect from a technical point between monsters. I've spent just as much time figuring out the mapping trickery as I have fighting stuff so far!


Cheers :) There's a 1998 map by Nicholai Main, that demostrates sliding doors in Boom format, that I ran across in this post:

https://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-editing/41089-trying-to-duplicate-sliding-doors-in-prboom/

Nicholai used some sector hackery to hide the real door, but I realised I could use line action 242 to achieve the same effect more cleanly.

...I will say the Shamblers are kind of a buzzkill though. Big mean Christmassy-looking fuckers


I'm testing the Shambler at the moment with the attack-back flag switched off, and that seems to reduce his aggression and lighting bolt spam significantly.

Gez said:

The second lift you see (not the one you ride down after the Quake E1M1 start room, the one you see just after that) is bugged. After raising once, it then lowers all the way to the lowest neighboring sector, and from then on will only raise to the floor level of the lamp sector behind it, rather than climbing back up to the gallery.


Yeah, it glitches occassionally and I'm not entirely sure why, but I'll have a look at making it more reliable.

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If you don't mind my suggestion, I think the shambler could benefit significantly with one of three things:

1. A loud or distinct charge up sound before attacking, like the mancubus
2. Some kind of visible reticle when you're being targeted, like the archvile
3. Some kind of stomping sound when he's moving, like the cyberdemon.

The thing about the shambler is that in quake, you rarely deal with more than 5 monsters at once. Since there are so many monsters in these maps you have to grind through, you spend most of your time just dodging projectiles to stay alive. The shambler says fuck that and just snipes you through all the hordes. That said, I think the grindy gameplay (among other things that usually aren't great in Doom) actually works really well here, as I often feel more like I'm playing quake in these maps and less like I'm playing Doom. That's tough to do, nice work!!

Back to the shambler, I think the archvile blast is probably the most accurate application of the shamblers attack, but its tricky in Doom. You might have to try some things that are a bit innaccurate to the integrity of quake to make it work within Doom's gameplay style.

Speaking of which, I want to echo Ribbiks sentiments about how you made boom effects feel so natural in these maps. What's your opinion on some other "Doom Magic" things that didn't exist in quake but could potentially complement this style? Stuff like invisible floors adorned with candles like in UAC_DEAD, destructible windows and walls like in Eternal Doom, or spider webs in the corners like in Heretic? I think it could be really cool to see more vanilla 3D bridges or 3D midtexture architecture stuff in this too.

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40oz said:

If you don't mind my suggestion, I think the shambler could benefit significantly with one of three things:

1. A loud or distinct charge up sound before attacking, like the mancubus
2. Some kind of visible reticle when you're being targeted, like the archvile
3. Some kind of stomping sound when he's moving, like the cyberdemon.


1. He already has a charge up sound when he raises his arms, but I could increase it's volume and priority.

2. It's a reasonable suggestion, but I have no idea how to implement it in dehacked.

3. He does have an active sound in the form of a grunt. Again I'll look at adjusting the volume and priority.

The thing about the shambler is that in quake, you rarely deal with more than 5 monsters at once. Since there are so many monsters in these maps you have to grind through, you spend most of your time just dodging projectiles to stay alive. The shambler says fuck that and just snipes you through all the hordes. That said, I think the grindy gameplay (among other things that usually aren't great in Doom) actually works really well here, as I often feel more like I'm playing quake in these maps and less like I'm playing Doom. That's tough to do, nice work!!


I'm actually planning to tone the grind down, especially for HMP(normal) difficulty, where I want the maps to flow fast and smooth, but retaining the occassional horde battle.

Back to the shambler, I think the archvile blast is probably the most accurate application of the shamblers attack, but its tricky in Doom. You might have to try some things that are a bit innaccurate to the integrity of quake to make it work within Doom's gameplay style.


You might be right. I initially thought he might make a better Baron, but he's almost too different a beast to sit comfortably in the Doom bestiary. Still, since I switched off his attack-back flag he feels a lot more manageable, and even slightly more authentic to the original.

Speaking of which, I want to echo Ribbiks sentiments about how you made boom effects feel so natural in these maps. What's your opinion on some other "Doom Magic" things that didn't exist in quake but could potentially complement this style? Stuff like invisible floors adorned with candles like in UAC_DEAD, destructible windows and walls like in Eternal Doom, or spider webs in the corners like in Heretic? I think it could be really cool to see more vanilla 3D bridges or 3D midtexture architecture stuff in this too.


I'm not terribly on keen on fake 3D bridges, since they tend to look paper thin, and don't integrate cleanly with coop play, even though they have nice functionality in terms of layout interconnectivity. On the other hand I have no objection to any ammount of mid-texture trickery, so long as it gives the illusion of solidity.

I think some limited usage of invisible floors might work well in an atmospheric gothic map, but I'd stay clear of anything that resembles Heretic/Hexen more than Quake.

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-- Warning: I just wanna preface this by saying that sometimes I tend to get carried away with things when i get excited. The following is just some ideas I wanna talk about with you in case you haven't thought very hard about them. Ultimately, this is your project and it is important to me that I am not being too imposing and trying to take the wheel. --

Since you mentioned the idea of a community project, I've managed community projects before and I want to suggest a rather non-traditional approach. Since this project features a lot of advanced and unprecedented technical stuff that the general dw user-base probably aren't very familiar with; I suspect that your biggest challenge to face will be that your maps will be by far the best in the set. You're going to need some good and highly qualified mappers to truly realize your vision. I think you would get the best results out of people such as Mechadon, Octavarium, Lutz, Soundblock, ukiro, traversd, Vader, Tormentor667, AgentSpork, kristus, Obsidian, Angry Saint, Xaser, Marnetmar Breezeep, AD_79, Tango, and Pavera. (If you guys are reading this, I'm calling you out! Get in here!)

Notice how half of the mappers I listed are underlined and the other half is bold. I think you could arrange this project with a sort of segregation of duties. Your maps are a very happy marriage of good level design with innovative technical and aesthetic prowess. What you could do is seperate the mapping into two specific levels. Level 1 (bold) would be a focused uninterrupted approach at layout planning. Level 2 (underlined) would be the detailing, texture alignment, and other technical advanced boom stuff part. (Respecfully, I do think many of the mappers listed would be able to easily cross over into both departments. Please don't take any offense, it was for examplary purposes only.)

For the sake of keeping the duties segregated, it might be wise to create two seperate resource packs: one with the general walls, materials, and light sources, so that Level 1 mappers can get their general creative vision out, and the second pack which features everything plus the more technically advanced stuff, like the walls with the baked in shadows, the shadow cutouts used for those wall sconces, arches, offset flats, switchplates and other specific stuff that you wouldn't want to be erroneously misused. (from experience, I once created a texture pack for a community project where a mapper requested a flat to use as a floor switch. Once this was added, other mappers began using it as a teleport flat or ceiling light, the ambiguous usage would have been confusing from the player side.) In fact it might even be wise to seperate textures on a per episode basis -- You wouldn't want a mapper to use those tech base textures in an otherwise grisly grotto or nefarious chateau themed map for example. Perhaps a technically competent person who knows a lot about PNAMES and TEXTURE1 lumps would be able to chime in how to best go about that?

Since there's a lot cool tricks here, it might be wise to reserve a special "tutorial" post where you can educate Level 2 people on how you did the cool things you did, such as the shadows, deep water, sliding doors, scrolling sky, and other stuff you don't see in conventional Doom/Boom mapping. Maybe even include doombuilder prefabs for this stuff, and also for quakey stuff like those starting slipgates, archways, pressure plates, 3D midtexture switchpanels and 3D standing floor lamps like the ones in MAP01, just to guarantee they are 100% consistent across all the maps.

Below are some observations I made with your style of mapping that effectively captures the quake style and really works here. Feel free to correct or add to any of this -- these are your maps after all and I'm sure I'm missing or miscommunicating some important details here:

1. In general, translating vanilla quake maps into Doom isn't too difficult. The level of detail is cleaner and superior to Doom 1 and 2, but in general it's not far beyond anything you might see in The Plutonia Experiment or Memento Mori 2. Architecturally speaking (before lighting and boom effects) the maps should probably work in vanilla far below the visplane limit.

2. Quake seems to feature few abstract angles. Doom is full of zig zags, jagged/curved walls and sharp corners, where Quake seems to use a good bit more symmetry, orthogonal angles and 45° angles.

3. Quake doesn't have many "courtyards" or "rooms." The maps are primarily race tracks with corridors, paths, with hubs/forks and platforming elements. This isn't to say that Quake is completely without it's fight arenas. But in general Quake is mostly indoors and inside caves and castles and stuff without much exposure to the skybox, and large flat planes for the player to move around on are pretty rare.

4. Large areas take heavy advantage of vertical space. There are generally 3 distinct levels

  • Above: Tall bridges/catwalks/ledges
  • Middle: General "ground level"
  • Below: Water/swamps/marshes/crypts
The above allows you to get a good view of surroundings and enables platform jumping/runfalling, the middle is where most of the speed and combat is,
and below is usually a hazard and pretty exposed to danger from monsters.

5. Unlike Doom, teklites, computers, fire, and illuminated gargoyle/lion/satyr faces are pretty rare. These things are light sources and should be used sparingly as there will be soft gradient lighting surrounding it, and too much of it will take away from the ambience. These things should generally be used to adorn around objectives such as important switches, weapons, and to ease navigation. (players are attracted to light)

I speedmapped a quick layout as an example (pics below, this probably isn't my best work, I just made this for demonstration purposes.) You'll notice that the layout has wide paths and thick bold architecture because it is primarily made of 64 grid sectors. I only switched to a smaller grid for doors, steps, switch plates, and some support beams. The purpose of this is for a tester to evaluate the worth and functionality and the quake-like authenticity of the layout without all the distracting bloom. If I went ahead and started going wild with the lighting, and the map doesn't perform at its best, I'll go through hell trying to correct things with all the detailing and intersecting lines that come with the soft light gradients and control sectors and other ridiculousness. This layout is intentionally designed to be pliable so that if there are any inherent gameplay hiccups, they will be able to be easily and quickly remedied without much headaches. This probably an ideal representation of what a Level 1 map submission should look like.

Once the map is tested and reviewed with DTWiD-like scrutiny, the map can be sent back for revisions, or moved into Level 2, which is where mappers more technically qualified can work on texture alignment, detailing, lighting, control sectors, and advanced source port stuff and other related Doom/Quake trickery. As long as Level 1 mappers use bold architecture with limited detail and good engineered design, this should be pretty easy for Level 2 mappers to focus on without compromising Level 1's design. I feel this is probably the best way for a community project such as this to yield fantastic results comparable to your skills. Wouldn't you agree?







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Looks very good from the screenshots, the obvious homages to the original Quake. Definitely going to play this soon but I noticed that you included your Mayhem 2016 map in it, may I ask why?

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I see you have quite of feedback to respond to, Urthar, so I'll try to keep mine brief: Would you be interested in incorporating the Minor Sprite Fixing Project into your WAD? I guess this applies to both the level set and the resource pack.

If you're not familiar with the project, these sprite fixes are essentially exactly what they imply: a collection of art corrections, restored graphics, and other cosmetic fixes to Doom's sprites. Since your WAD uses its own custom color palette, you've had to include the original IWAD art due to the required palette conversions, something which by nature overrides the sprite fixes. Normally, I'd just independently release a PWAD-compatibility patch as I've done for several other megawads, but yours is the first I've been able to catch while still in development, so I figured I'd use the opportunity to make this offer.

These sprite fixes are purely cosmetic, don't affect gameplay or compatibility, and you actually wouldn't even need to do much work to incorporate them as I've already done all of the work for you. Here is the fully merged graphics set that's ready to be copy and pasted directly into the current DOTB WAD (at least version A01):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4X6_GM5D7D_NXNKaURmYjlsTTg/view?usp=sharing

I've also already done the appropriate testing, and everything is working hunky dory:


I made sure to stay accurate to your manual palette adjustments, so things like the Commando's ammo belt, Arch-vile's fire, the light blues in the Cacodemons, plasma balls, tall blue torches, and so forth and so on all remained perfectly faithful to your original edits.

However, since the WAD is indeed still in development, I can only guarantee the sprite fixes are as current as the alpha you've released. You may certainly need to make further changes which would necessitate another update to the sprite fixes on my part. I'm willing to keep the sprite fixes up-to-date (which I'll be doing anyway), but I don't mean to incur any extra workload on your behalf, so the decision of incorporating them into your WAD is entirely up to you.

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40oz said:

Another quick thing, what are peoples thoughts on the sped up chaingun? The 300 max bullets was a good compromise. I always felt the chaingun could serve to be a little faster.


Sped-up chainguns = awesome. For a while, I've been considering using a 1.5x speed variant for any significant future project, where it still fits well against low-tier monsters but has extra utility against mid-tiers, and can work as yet another foil to SSG centrism.

I think they could benefit from a sound/sprite replacement, however (or at least a sound replacement).

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40oz said:

-- Warning: I just wanna preface this by saying that sometimes I tend to get carried away with things when i get excited...

...I feel this is probably the best way for a community project such as this to yield fantastic results comparable to your skills. Wouldn't you agree?


To be honest it's flattering that someone's this enthusiastic, but I think your proposed method might not be appropriate.

Separating map creation into two camps of level-designers and environment artists is certainly a common occurrence in professional game development with large teams. But one of the joys of Doom mapping is the creative control it grants to a single creator, and I can't really expect people who are volunteering their own time out of enthusiasm to adhere to a formal division of labour, and I'm wary of damping people's inherent creativity by enforcing strict art direction.

The other thing is, the number of people who have so far, expressed an interest in mapping for this project can be counted on one hand of a dimensional shambler, and that's if you include me. :)

Which I'm actually fine with, since a small project is inherently a lot easier to manage and bring to completion, and even having a single extra mapper makes a huge difference, since their differences in style and approach will create a lot more variety.

Now, the rest of your post, basically demonstrates have you already have a very strong handle on what you think a Quake style map should feel like, and how you would approach building it, and I'm definitely not going comment much, or correct any of it. Frankly, I say take that ball and run with it. I'm quite confident you'll produce something cool, that's inherently different to what I might do, and I'm quite excited about that.

That, said I do intend to use the reserved post at the top of the thread to explain some of the technical aspects of the resource, and guide lines on using the TEXTURE2 lump and other things. And I'll try to get that done within the week.

Additionally, if the project does suddenly explode and lots of people want to make a map, then I might well consider a more formal approach, and stronger direction, but I have no intention of doing so for time being.

SFoZ911 said:

Looks very good from the screenshots, the obvious homages to the original Quake. Definitely going to play this soon but I noticed that you included your Mayhem 2016 map in it, may I ask why?


Well I had this map lying around and it made an excellent test bed for making sure the Runic set of textures worked properly, and including it means that people interested in mapping for the project can open it in their editor and see how things work.

Additionally the 90 monster restriction I had in the original meant I had to comproprise in a few places, and revamping it allowed me to address that and add a few things.

If someone submits a really cool looking Runic map to the project then I'll probably shunt Ziggurat into a hidden easter egg or something, but for the time being I want at least one map in this style in the set.

Revenant100 said:

Would you be interested in incorporating the Sprite Fixing Project into your WAD? I guess this applies to both the level set and the resource pack.


I had a quick look at it, and the short answer is yes, I think it's pretty cool.

However, I don't want to incoporate it yet, there's still some additional sprite work I want to do, and additionally the Doom2 sprites aren't directly converted to the custom palette in BOOMQTEX.

Towards the end of the project I'll be more than happy to ingrate this into the final version, so long as it doesn't break VGA's Black Ops.

JohnnyTheWolf said:

Oh wow! Any chance this mapset will be compatible with Samsara?


I suspect not, due to the custom palette, but not having played Samara I can't really say.

rdwpa said:

I think they could benefit from a sound/sprite replacement, however (or at least a sound replacement).


I did test a different pistol sfx, by replacing it with a Quake gun sfx, and it worked reasonably well, but it's lower sample rate sounded odd when I tested the map with PKDoomSFX, (which I have set up to autoload in some ports,) but I recently discovered that QTest used higher quality sfx, so I'll have another look at that.

NightFright said:

I like the way you "quakified" the Doom statusbar. Great job!


Cheers :)

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