ukiro Posted November 22, 2017 In just over a year from today, DOOM turns 25. I have been playing and modding the game for almost as long, well over half my life. While I haven't released anything in an extremely long time, I would like to make an effort for this anniversary. I'm guessing I'm not alone in this, so let's collaborate! I have created a large amount of textures that I'm fairly proud of. You might have seen me tease some screenshots here over the past couple of years. I would love to see them put to good use for this anniversary, so if you're a mapper already working on something for the 25th anniversary or you'd like to get involved, let me know what kind of mapping you're into, ideally with links to your work, as well as any conceptual ideas you might have. Maybe we end up with a megawad or maybe it becomes something smaller, or maybe it ends up being a bunch of different releases: Let's just make sure it can be ready for release by December 10, 2018. Either DM me here or mail me at [myusername]@[myusername].com. Disclaimer: I will exercise some scrutiny in terms of who I engage with and if this proves popular I might not be able to involve everyone, sorry! But the texture WAD will be released publicly for anyone to use at some point. Screenshots: Spoiler 39 Share this post Link to post
Payload4367 Posted November 27, 2017 Those textures look real nice. Will this project be in Boom format? I'm interested, but have never used anything but UDMF. 0 Share this post Link to post
StormCatcher.77 Posted November 27, 2017 I also wanted to ask about the format. Although I can not guarantee participation in the project now. The pictures look great! 0 Share this post Link to post
ukiro Posted November 27, 2017 I’m hoping for boom or vanilla primarily for now, as I’m and old school bastard. After the public release of the textures you can build whatever, of course. If you want to give boom mapping a try, mail me some work references and we’ll talk! 1 Share this post Link to post
Payload4367 Posted November 27, 2017 1 minute ago, ukiro said: If you want to give boom mapping a try, mail me some work references and we’ll talk! I'm gonna try Boom mapping this week and see how it goes. I've glanced at it, but it seemed like a lot of different stuff at the time. This is my most recent release. video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKd9aWxB_3g&t=114s idgames link: https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/megawads/drkenctr 1 Share this post Link to post
Mechadon Posted November 27, 2017 (edited) These texture really are gorgeous ukiro, I've enjoyed every screenshot you've posted of them :). I wish I had more free time to work on projects these days, otherwise I would volunteer to do a map. If I manage to figure out a way to clear up some time, I will send you a message. Good luck! 3 Share this post Link to post
Catpho Posted January 30, 2018 Sorry for bump but i am really looking forward for darkening e3 this anniversary project :) Got anyone yet? 0 Share this post Link to post
Pegleg Posted January 30, 2018 (edited) I agree with @Catpho. What is the status of this project? I particularly like the vanilla or Boom aspect of this project. Edited January 30, 2018 by Pegleg 0 Share this post Link to post
ukiro Posted January 30, 2018 Progress is… at least not entirely missing, but certainly not stellar. A couple of additional people have been given access, but I think they're all busy with other projects because it's been very quiet. I travel an insane amount for work which keeps me away from hobbies like this. For example, this month I've been in Stockholm, New York, Los Angeles, New York again, Park City, New York once more, Stockholm again, and now writing this from Milan. One month. An approach I might pursue is to divide the 900+ textures into curated small sets to force creativity within limitations, in a "50 shades of graytall" kind of way, and assigning each subset to a map number, and opening that for applicants more broadly. This would achieve several things: It makes sure all textures get used, it forces creative use of textures, and it allows me to direct use a little bit to how I intended them to be combined. The set is a little too diverse to just work with any combination: Afterglow sent me a map where he tries out the textures and it has like 100 of them in a single map, which looks hideous no matter the quality of the individual textures. He's more than capable of making something stunning with them of course, but that map highlights the need for some restraint and curation in texture choice for them to look their best. So a launch project that enforces this could be useful as a benchmark for what the textures can accomplish, and if combined with targeting vanilla compatibility means the textures have to do more of the heavy lifting as you can't just throw 4000 sectors in there. Also, vanilla will mostly force the maps to be a bit smaller, which could mean better odds of them getting done (unless visplanes make you contemplate throwing your computer into the sea of course, a very real risk). 3 Share this post Link to post
Catpho Posted January 30, 2018 6 minutes ago, ukiro said: Progress is… at least not entirely missing, but certainly not stellar. A couple of additional people have been given access, but I think they're all busy with other projects because it's been very quiet. I travel an insane amount for work which keeps me away from hobbies like this. For example, this month I've been in Stockholm, New York, Los Angeles, New York again, Park City, New York once more, Stockholm again, and now writing this from Milan. One month. An approach I might pursue is to divide the 900+ textures into curated small sets to force creativity within limitations, in a "50 shades of graytall" kind of way, and assigning each subset to a map number, and opening that for applicants more broadly. This would achieve several things: It makes sure all textures get used, it forces creative use of textures, and it allows me to direct use a little bit to how I intended them to be combined. The set is a little too diverse to just work with any combination: Afterglow sent me a map where he tries out the textures and it has like 100 of them in a single map, which looks hideous no matter the quality of the individual textures. He's more than capable of making something stunning with them of course, but that map highlights the need for some restraint and curation in texture choice for them to look their best. So a launch project that enforces this could be useful as a benchmark for what the textures can accomplish, and if combined with targeting vanilla compatibility means the textures have to do more of the heavy lifting as you can't just throw 4000 sectors in there. Also, vanilla will mostly force the maps to be a bit smaller, which could mean better odds of them getting done (unless visplanes make you contemplate throwing your computer into the sea of course, a very real risk). Damn,you are busy.And that amount of textures...Im fine with the idea of a "50 shades of graytall" thing,and your other ideas sound interesting (maybe except the vanilla thing,i would prefer limit removing but hell im not a mapper yet).Glad to here progress! 0 Share this post Link to post
StormCatcher.77 Posted January 30, 2018 Wow! It's cool to be in travalling all time. For my life I traveled only few times outside the siberian taiga... It seems that we are all very busy. I have not forgotten about the project, and I still hope to find time this year to join. I originally thought that the textures would be divided thematically, for example: a technobase, ancient ruins, a city, the middle ages ... and so on. You can invent many of them. I would like to do a technobase for the project. They at me are better leave. And I prefer Boom and big, detail maps. Of course, I will not give up on any of your conditions. By the way, does the rule "one author - one map" work for the project or can two or more be done? 0 Share this post Link to post
40oz Posted January 30, 2018 37 minutes ago, ukiro said: Afterglow sent me a map where he tries out the textures and it has like 100 of them in a single map, which looks hideous no matter the quality of the individual textures. He's more than capable of making something stunning with them of course, but that map highlights the need for some restraint and curation in texture choice for them to look their best. The topic of dilluting texture usage in mapping, particularly for community driven projects has been on my mind for years. When I make textures, they're usually made with some purposeful intention that isn't always clear to the end user. This is a huge problem for projects that use cc4-tex textures because, if you can imagine this example, I'll see support textures with inverted crosses on them in a techbase of some sort. I suspect the mapper looked at their selection of support textures and just picked whichever texture looked the coolest, even though no human would build inverted cross metallic frames in a chemical plant. I had this kind of problem working on Mutiny, as many mappers put urban brick textures in their computer labs, and COMPWALL machines as windows on their buildings. Honestly, there's no way I could have made the mappers see the textures in the same way that I did, but at times it certainly drove me crazy that many of the maps turned out to be this ambiguous blend of everything at once when I curated the texture set to allow for a large variety of map styles. This is often the case with projects that are resource driven, such as the BTSX "samey" epidemic and any community project that relies on popular texture packs for individuality. For my own personal project, I've attempted to segregate my texture assets into different wads per map or per episode, which narrowed my selections and made mapping much easier, but I also struggled with the problem in that each individual texture wad was never 'finished.' It was always lacking in something and I would always have to go back to the image editor to make semi-duplicate versions of textures to fill in what was missing. The result is that I can almost never get around to ACTUALLY MAPPING and the project is the slowest moving thing I've ever bothered to work on. I'm motivated to come up with more resource driven mapping projects such as yours or Mutiny, but this dillemma is really something. I'm really not sure how to exercise creative control without ruining everyone's fun. I think people view the importance of thematic consistency and focused color schemes in a different priority level than I do and it shows in projects that I manage that I anticipate to be much better. (Don't get me wrong, I was very happy with how Mutiny came out, but I got pretty excited in the beginning and my expectations went out of reach before it even got started) 0 Share this post Link to post
Memfis Posted January 30, 2018 Maybe some document with texture usage guidelines could be written? Of course you can't expect people to see all these graphics the same way you do unless there is an explanation. 0 Share this post Link to post
ukiro Posted January 30, 2018 2 hours ago, StormCatcher.77 said: By the way, does the rule "one author - one map" work for the project or can two or more be done? Collaborative stuff is certainly encouraged, but since I've opted to have some control over who has access for the next 10 months, there is a limited set of users… if you have someone in mind, let me know though. 2 hours ago, 40oz said: I also struggled with the problem in that each individual texture wad was never 'finished.' It was always lacking in something and I would always have to go back to the image editor to make semi-duplicate versions of textures to fill in what was missing. The result is that I can almost never get around to ACTUALLY MAPPING and the project is the slowest moving thing I've ever bothered to work on. If it's any consolation, I started this set 17 years ago... 35 minutes ago, Memfis said: Maybe some document with texture usage guidelines could be written? Of course you can't expect people to see all these graphics the same way you do unless there is an explanation. This is already being done but it's a dilemma: Jan van der Veken has made some texture combinations that I never thought of that look fantastic, so I certainly don't want to impose rules for everyone, or pretend that I'm the ultimate arbiter of their use. What I really would want is for everyone to have an eye for aesthetics, contrast and creativity similar to his, but since that is a rather rare gift I think the curated sub-sets could be a good start, so that when others want to use the full set they have a bit of inspiration for themes. 1 Share this post Link to post
kdoom Posted February 13, 2018 Nice work. Textures and map(s) look great. As for this dilemma about what textures should be used together, if a mapper isn't good at that choice, then said mapper probably isn't that good at mapping...just my humble opinion. How many mappers do you have working on this set? 0 Share this post Link to post
ukiro Posted February 14, 2018 3 hours ago, kdoom said: How many mappers do you have working on this set? About 10 people have been given access, but there is no formalized project. Some people have build a few maps while others are still wrapping up other stuff or just playing around a bit to give me some feedback. Whether we end up aligning on some common goal is still uncertain. If you've got the mapping itch back and have some half baked maps to retexture or feel like cooking up some new ones using these, let me know: [myusername]@[myusername].com. 4 Share this post Link to post
ukiro Posted February 16, 2018 5 hours ago, Tormentor667 said: Ola Bjorling???? No, Ola Björling. Umlauts, man. 2 Share this post Link to post
ukiro Posted February 23, 2018 Supplice is at over 3x this count but I'm pretty happy having broken into 4 figures, and without too much reliance on color variations and animations (though there is some of that). 0 Share this post Link to post