Dimension of the Boomed

[Revenant100]

Urthar said:

and additionally the Doom2 sprites aren't directly converted to the custom palette in BOOMQTEX.

To be clear, I've already taken the non-direct palette conversions into account. I defer to your eye as to whether I missed any aspects, but my goal is to stay as faithful to the original custom palette artwork as possible and ensure nothing gets lost in the translation.

[Urthar]

I've created a tutorial on sliding doors here: https://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-editing-tutorials/92655-sliding-doors-in-boom/

BOOMQTEX minor updates:

DSPISTOL & DSITEMUP sfx added.
Shambler sfx increased by 2 dB, and priority raised to 90/120.
Shambler aggression slightly lowered.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

Urthar said:

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

It seems to be working fine on my end. Granted, Samsara Ranger's arsenal is balanced differently from its original counterpart, so it may have an impact on the difficulty. My only disappointment so far is that I was under the impression that this mapset was supposed to be a faithful port of "Dimension of the Doomed".

At first, it seemed so... until I got down the first elevator. Ouch! :S

[Darch]

I played the first map and this is just incredible. Keep up the good work!

[Urthar]

Yeah, I borrowed bits of the originals, and that helped me get a feel for recreating the style of Quake, but my intention was always to create something new. Some inspiration also comes from contemporary maps by the current Quake community, who have created some incredible stuff.

---

So, back to the technical/tutorial stuff. I wasn't sure how exactly I should approach this, so I just started turning QEDIT into the start of a map, and took a whole bunch of screen shots. Hopefully it give some insight to my method and serve as a guide to some of the technical aspects as they turn up.

---

This room from Quake's start map served as my reference guide. And for all the maps, I would regularly go back to the original and to see what id did, and try to recreate something like that.


So Quake tends to be pretty boxy, with relativily clean flat floors that don't impede the player, but they often liked to get creative with ceilings. So the first step was to create a chunky sloped ceiling with some cross beams.


id would often suspend these cross beams (and other structures) below the ceiling to create nice shadows, and I want to create a similar impression. I'll create a new texture on the fly to do that.


And my intention is that the TEXTURE2 lump should be used this way by mappers to create new textures from existing patches. Now for myself that presents no problem, but we need a naming convention so that new textures can be easily updated into the main resource file, and duplicates are avoided, and I'll detail that in the reserved post in the near future.

So after reloading the map in GZDoomBuilder, I can apply the new texture to the cross beams, and adjust the overall proportions of the room:


I'm happy with ceiling for the time being, so it's time to add some wall lights. The torch sprites are offset so they float about 64 units above whatever floor they're on top of, and have a 16x16 bounding box in game, so to get them centred in these alcoves I need to add a sector and drop their floor down a bit. The lower walls of this little hole are left untextured. This is a 'flat-bleeding' hack that I think most mappers are aware of, and it will basically hide the hole.


So a quick copy and paste gives me 6 torch lit alcoves. Since this is going to be a fairly well lit room, I'll set the brightness of the majority of sectors to 160, and that'll act as my default ambient for the time being. I'll use sector special 17 in the alcoves to make them flicker, and I'll add tiny sliver sectors to the front of each alcove to control the amount of flicker. So the general room is at 160 brightness, the tiny slivers are at 176, and the alcoves are at 200. I'm also setting the ceiling trim sectors to 144 to darken the walls a little bit to counteract the Doom engine's fake contrast.



There's a bit of a fast forward here, but basically I've added a few pillars, lowered part of the central floor and added a few steps. Additionally I've added some very simple sector lighting to create hot spots in front of each torch, and a stained glass window behind the player. My original intent with the pillars was to create some visual interest, and create the opportunity to draw some nice looking shadows.


However, I realised with 7 light sources in the room there's going to be so much light bouncing around that any shadows would be too subtle and complex to bother with, so I probably only need to cast hot spots to 'sell' the room.


So I now have steps and ceiling beams that share the same sidedef, which can create texture alignment problems, so I'll quickly jump into SLADE and knock up a quick step texture to solve that issue.


Another issue I have is the way the pillars cut through the ceiling beams. So I'm going to create a fake wall that has a upper and lower sidedef so I can apply two different textures to a single wall. Potentionally I could also solve this issue by creating another custom texture, but I try to avoid relying on that too much.


To keep the automap looking clean, I'll set these exterior linedefs to 'Impassable' and 'Show as 1-sided on automap' and hide the interior ones with 'Not shown on automap'. Then I'll copy and paste this fake wall sector around the other pillars.


I'll add a lighting sector gradient here to create a hotspot for the stained glass window, and add some simple sector shadows to the teleport pad, and that should be enough detail to 'sell' this starting room to the player.


The last issue to solve now that the shadows from the teleport pad cast some odd looking shadows on the ceiling. So I'll fix that with some transfer lighting using a few dummy sectors, and line actions 213 and 261.


So now I have a reasonable looking starting area, that will help me get a feel for how the rest of the map should look, and I can start thinking the general layout of the map as a whole. But before that I'll go back and replay 'Ebon Fortress' and 'The Wizards Manse' for more reference material.

In the next tutorial thing, I'll get to grips with the mid-texture trickey of wall lamps, with some rambling thoughts on the subject of Quake layout.

---

BOOMQTEX updated TEXTURE2 lump with new textures.

Downloads:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/a6pvto2jmlejf8x/QEDIT02.wad
http://www.mediafire.com/file/uu25a16bubbz3hp/BOOMQTEX.zip

Edited April 25, 2018 by Urthar

[roadworx]

damn, this looks pretty good! i'm gonna download & play it right after i take my shower :)

[VGA]

roadworx said:

damn, this looks pretty good! i'm gonna download & play it right after i take my shower :)

Bad decision. You are gonna cream your pants with the Quake aesthetic in Doom, so you will have to take another shower.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

Out of curiosity, are the levels designed with jumping and crouching in mind?

[Urthar]

No, since these maps are MBF format, jumping and crouching aren't intended.

[scifista42]

^^ These maps are Boom MBF-compatible, which clearly implies that they're supposed to be played without jumping and crouching, because Boom MBF didn't support those features (and PrBoom-plus, which this wad has been tested with, doesn't have those features either). The only question that remains open is whether jumping and crouching in these particular maps has an actual potential to break anything. In case this has never been tested, it'd be safer to assume that it could break something.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

I do not use Boom, so I did not know. And since this mapset is heavily inspired by Quake, I was not sure.

But for the mod's final version, could you please make a widescreen HUD addon?

[Urthar]

Like Doom, vanilla Quake had limitations, in particular the dimensions of a map couldn't exceed 4096 units. When you look at the original maps in an editor they often have a tightly wrapped design, in which the player revisits the same spaces from different vantage points. And in making my own Quake style maps, I try to keep both of these things in mind.



Initially, I try to plan the layout to stay inside a 4096x4096 area, but because this is Doom, I don't worry when I stray over those boundaries, since I can't use things like 3D floors in Boom format, to reuse vertical space in the same way as Quake.

Another aspect of the original Quake levels, is a certain clunkiness. They typically don't have a strong underlying architectural plan, and you get the impression that they were built in a relatively free form manner, and it gives the maps a distinct character.

So to try to emulate that, my approach is to build a test room, put a few exits in, think vaguely about what I want the level to do, build a few more test rooms connected to the first, check the overall dimensions of what I have so far, think vaguely about the overall layout and try to leave myself space to connect things together later, build some more test rooms, and so on...

I'm not sure it's method I'd recommend to anyone, but it's kind of fun.

So, back to QEDIT, I tidied the start room up a bit, and since I want to demonstrate wall lamps, I'll place one directly opposite the first door, which should nicely outline it's darkened frame when the door opens.

I notice at this point I have a T-junction which is tactically interesting in forcing the player to deal with threats from opposite directions, so I create two more and end up with a H shape, which suggests that the map as a whole could have a figure of 8 layout.



So the first step here is to create a darkened triangle alcove in the wall that's 256x128. I've exaggerated it's depth here, but it will end up just 1 unit deep and should blend seamlessly with the custom mid-texture that I will hang in front of it.



The little rectangle at the apex will become the backplate for the metal light fixture.

At this point I also created two ledges looking into this corridor from beyond the secondary T-junctions, and I'm considering placing Mancubi into each one to create a nasty cross fire.



Now we create the sector gradient that will light up the mid-texure and additionally create the floor shadow. Due to Doom's fake contrast, I tend to tend to make these brighter for east-west walls. For a north-south wall I'd probably start at 176. The final box is 240 units wide and will connection with where the wall shadow meets the floor.



So I've made the shadow alcove 1 unit deep, added light transfers to make the floor shadow, and I've placed and aligned the metal light fixture mid-texture. I'll need to darken the inside faces next and add a cross piece to give it a bit more solidity.



Since these maps tend to have a huge amount of transfer lighting, I decided to reorganise my dummy sectors at this point, into a form that will be easy to navigate. I've got 12 of them now ranging from 192 to 112, plus a couple of specials.

I've darkened the inside of the wall fixture to 128, and used tag 17 to keep the floor at 144, and the ceiling at 192.



Here I've added the little cross piece, and created a sliver sector with 192 brightness since I don't want the 128 brightness sectors to affect the wall above the fixture, which would create a nasty dark stripe.



Fast forwarding a bit now. Like the torch sprites, the flame sprite here is offset to float above the floor, exactly on top of the fixture. I've also placed an ambient sound object that plays the sound of fire crackling. There's only six of these ambient markers at the moment and they replace six of the hanging body decorations. However upgrading the project from Boom to MBF means that I have additional SFX I could replace with more Quake sounds in the near future.

Also of note here, is that I've changed the Mancubi ledges into a key door and silver key alcove, since it occurred to me that it would be nice to give the player an objective right at the start of the map.

Naturally, I won't be leaving the surprise Shambler right outside the start room door. (...or will I? Muhahaha...)



So I placed a couple of arches here, again mostly just to quickly demo them. They're pretty straight forward really, there's a front mid-texture of the arch, a black silhouette of the same arch for the back faces, a black flat (AAVOID) for the ceiling, and a custom wall texture that fades to black that blends the inside of the arch with the wall.

I'm also using a the fake wall trick again here, so I can place this arch as high up as I want to.



Time for some asymmetry, I've placed a toxic canal in front of the key door, and I've extended the key ledge into an elevated balcony. And hopefully I'll be able to wrap both of these features around the level to create some multi-level exploration reminiscence of The Wizards Manse.



So that's it for now. I haven't touched much on lighting and shadow casting, so perhaps a future guide on that might be appropriate.

---

Downloads:

BOOMQTEX updated with new 'wizard' textures and patches.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/uu25a16bubbz3hp/BOOMQTEX.zip
http://www.mediafire.com/file/dxdc3dg4dga9rbd/QEDIT03.wad

Edited April 25, 2018 by Urthar

[Gez]

JohnnyTheWolf said:

Out of curiosity, are the levels designed with jumping and crouching in mind?

IMO Jumpless Quake is a heresy; however they weren't designed for that.

That said I have only noticed two passages that you can use only by jumping:

The first is on MAP01:


It doesn't break the flow, though, since the area it leads to is one that you can reach quickly from the start anyway. And it helps address the fact that the lift tends to break because of its light.

The only true shortcut I've found is on MAP03, where you can get the red key without needing the yellow key:



Jump on the two-tiered rocks there and you can then reach the alcove with the dead pinky, and from there run down the corridor to the red key.

[40oz]

Here's a silly thing, you don't have to use it, but you're welcome to if you'd like.

As an experiment, I tried ambiguously mixing some of Doom and Quake's related sounds. I used pk_doom_sfx.wad as a base for most of it. I ripped the quake sounds from quake101.wad (I suspect for some people, the two sound frequencies may be glaringly apparent)

If there are higher quality quake sounds laying around, I'll gladly use them and make new versions.

https://www.dropbox.com/home/Doom?preview=qsounds.zip

[EffinghamHuffnagel]

40oz said:

Here's a silly thing, you don't have to use it, but you're welcome to if you'd like...

https://www.dropbox.com/home/Doom?preview=qsounds.zip

Any Dropbox link that has the word 'home' in it will always take a person to their own Dropbox home folder.

[40oz]

Sorry, try this:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vr4uaxaahullqau/qsounds.zip?dl=0

[Urthar]

On 29/01/2017 at 11:57 AM, Gez said:

IMO Jumpless Quake is a heresy; however they weren't designed for that...

I was intending to add a ZMAPINFO to disable jump and crounch, but perhaps I should leave jumping at least, to the player's discretion.

---

On 31/01/2017 at 2:22 AM, 40oz said:

Here's a silly thing, you don't have to use it, but you're welcome to if you'd like...

I had a quick listen, and they're interesting but I'm not entirely convinced. I'll load them into a copy of BOOMQTEX and see how they feel in game.

---

In the meantime, I've created a brief guide to lighting, which you can find here:
https://www.doomworld.com/vb/post/1712364

I've also updated BOOMQTEX with a new monster (replaces Commander Keen,) and two additonal ambient sounds (Swamp noises - replaces Icon of Sin, Wind Tunnel - replaces Monster Spawner.)

http://www.mediafire.com/file/uu25a16bubbz3hp/BOOMQTEX.zip

Edited April 25, 2018 by Urthar

[Da Werecat]

I'm glad that the map layouts are mostly new. I expected something faithful, and while it would've been interesting to see the engine's limitations being worked around, I still prefer something original.

Great attention to detail. The architecture is complex, with intricate lighting, but it never feels too much. New palette is a nice touch and really helps to fuse the two worlds together.

If I had to nitpick (and I always nitpick):

- Doors sound strange, at least when they close.
- Platforms still sound like Doom.
- Warping effect imitation could use more frames.
- Blue water doesn't have a colormap. But maybe it shouldn't.

I only got to the second level, and it's very unkind. Not even sure if I want to continue, but maybe I'll give it another try.

[HyperLuke]

Even on hurt me plenty it is a tad hard, also revenants and macnubi in the first level with only a shotgun and chaingun. Other than that this is a great wad, keep up the good work.

[Urthar]

Da Werecat said:

- Doors sound strange, at least when they close.
- Platforms still sound like Doom.
- Warping effect imitation could use more frames.
- Blue water doesn't have a colormap. But maybe it shouldn't.

I only got to the second level, and it's very unkind. Not even sure if I want to continue, but maybe I'll give it another try.

Thanks for the feedback, I might be able to change some things. Is it the tech or the medieval doors that sound odd?

HyperLuke said:

Even on hurt me plenty it is a tad hard, also revenants and macnubi in the first level with only a shotgun and chaingun. Other than that this is a great wad, keep up the good work.

The alpha only has UV difficulty implemented at the moment, but even that setting is getting toned down a fair ammount for future versions. I'll look at making the rocket launcher in MAP01 a bit more prominent as well.

[HyperLuke]

Urthar said:

The alpha only has UV difficulty implemented at the moment, but even that setting is getting toned down a fair ammount for future versions. I'll look at making the rocket launcher in MAP01 a bit more prominent as well.

Alright, as long as the difficulty is fair.

[Octavarium]

Not my project so not my call naturally, but UV is supposed to be difficult... Maybe just tone it down on lower difficulties? Granted, I have a terrible memory even after only a month, but I believe I found the current (UV) difficulty about right for the most part. I was able to finish it at least, haha. Anyway, completely up to Urthar, of course. And yeah, I know different playstyles and skill levels for different people and all that subjective stuff... Just two cents on the matter

[Da Werecat]

Urthar said:

Is it the tech or the medieval doors that sound odd?

Tech doors. As far as I remember, a typical tech door in Quake has only one short sound that repeats when it starts and stops moving. It's just a different scheme. I guess some sound mixing will be required in order for the Quake sounds to work well with Doom doors.

Saw the shamblers. Seemed a little too thin at first, but I'm not sure now, maybe they're just small. Did you account for the aspect ratio correction in Doom?

Also remembered a thing I forgot: elevators tend to have an uncomfortably long delay.

[Urthar]

Da Werecat said:

Tech doors. As far as I remember, a typical tech door in Quake has only one short sound that repeats when it starts and stops moving. It's just a different scheme. I guess some sound mixing will be required in order for the Quake sounds to work well with Doom doors.

Saw the shamblers. Seemed a little too thin at first, but I'm not sure now, maybe they're just small. Did you account for the aspect ratio correction in Doom?

Also remembered a thing I forgot: elevators tend to have an uncomfortably long delay.

I might be able to tweak some things, but there are limits in both Boom format, and my own abilities, to how close I can recreate certain aspects of Quake.

The Shamblers are a little smaller than I'd like, but they're not going to change significantly at this stage. Did I consider aspect ratio? Nope, not even slightly. :)

[40oz]

hi

I made this map with DOTB in mind. Was wondering if someone would have an interest in taking over? I made it with standard Doom 2 format, it's pretty far from complete. I went kinda light with the detail to focus on the layout, gameplay and general structure of the map. The start area and exit could use some work obviously. I didn't use any of the resources or tutorials, and a lot of stuff could maybe use some touching up. Try not to fall in any pits or jump out of any windows. I'm hopeful this could be used as a base for a future DOTB map though.



http://i.imgur.com/SxLLnhY.png?1

https://www.dropbox.com/s/a34l1lf6herjiu9/dotb_40oz_01.zip?dl=0

[Urthar]

The map I downloaded from the Dropbox link appears to be a much earlier version of the one in the screenshots, so I can't comment much on it. It has some nice lines of sight, but still feels more Doom than Quake.

 

---

 

BOOMQTEX Updated:

Quick Reference Guide added to 2nd post.

New Monster (Scrag) replaces Icon of Sin.

Shambler damage output reduced, hitpoints increased.

Additional QTEST decorations.

Wind Tunnel ambient sound removed.

 

Edited March 18, 2017 by Urthar

[BoJustBo]

Just played this, I'm surprised how much I like quakes graphics when taken out of context like this. Back when I last played quake I mainly remember thinking about how much brown and blue there was.

 

Anyways, nice stuff. A bit too hard for me, they all felt like maps that should be near the end of a wad. I ragequit at the tiny room with a cyberdemon in it on map04.

 

Edit: Also don't the shamblers take a lot more punishment than in Quake (especially considering how weak the guns in quake are.)

Edited March 25, 2017 by BoJustBo

[DoodGuy]

How do you get the music working in PrBoom?

[Urthar]

23 hours ago, BoJustBo said:

Just played this, I'm surprised how much I like quakes graphics when taken out of context like this. Back when I last played quake I mainly remember thinking about how much brown and blue there was.

 

Anyways, nice stuff. A bit too hard for me, they all felt like maps that should be near the end of a wad. I ragequit at the tiny room with a cyberdemon in it on map04.

 

Edit: Also don't the shamblers take a lot more punishment than in Quake (especially considering how weak the guns in quake are.)

 

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, I'm in the process of toning things down at the moment, with a view to making these maps play more like an first episode.

 

It takes about 5 or 6 point blank Double Barrel Shotgun blasts to take down a Shambler in Quake, and I'm aiming for something similiar in this. Like Quake, the Shamblers are immune to blast damage, so that might have thrown you if you were using the Rocket Launcher on them.

 

How do you get the music working in PrBoom?

 

PrBoom-plus can play ogg files, so it should just automatically play the tracks. 

Edited March 26, 2017 by Urthar

[DoodGuy]

17 minutes ago, Urthar said:

 

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, I'm in the process of toning things down at the moment, with a view to making these maps play more like an first episode.

 

It takes about 5 or 6 point blank Double Barrel Shotgun blasts to take down a Shambler in Quake, and I'm aiming for something similiar in this. Like Quake, the Shamblers are immune to blast damage, so that might have thrown you if you were using the Rocket Launcher on them.

 

 

 

 

PrBoom-plus can play ogg files, so it should just automatically play the tracks. 

When I load the wad there is no music at all. It's wrong to play Quake-like levels without it's ambiance