Congestion Controlled Again

Now that is a release! wow, huge fanfare. :)
happy birthday!

Happy birthday brother. Only wish I had time to play your level ;)

As always, very nice level!

And happy birthday ^_^

Bloodshedder, Opulent, Joel, Boris - thanks very much for your wishes!!

Bloodshedder - thanks for posting!

Joel - I know that you are busy these days, no problem...

Opulent - I have some free time these days, and I also finished the level a few days before I was supposed to upload it... hence the "extras" supplied with it :) I figured I'd make this one a little more memorable for everybody. Btw, what did you think of the level?

Boris - thanks for the comments on the level and also on the screenshots of it (a few days ago). I actually wanted to send you an email, but the link on the forum post shows an @doomcenter.com address... is that the correct one?

Karthik said:

Boris - thanks for the comments on the level and also on the screenshots of it (a few days ago). I actually wanted to send you an email, but the link on the forum post shows an @doomcenter.com address... is that the correct one?

Ooops, nope that one doesn't work anymore. Try boris -at- slipgate.org

Great level :) Was a lot of fun to play, and look at. Once again, excellent job Karthik :)

Oh yeah, titlepic is fucking awesome, too :) Did you do that?

Carnevil said:

Oh yeah, titlepic is fucking awesome, too :) Did you do that?

RTFM

boris said:

RTFM

I'm making conversation, dumbass

Carnevil said:

I'm making conversation, dumbass

Well maybe you should have started with it a couple days ago, BECAUSE NOW NOBODY LOOKS INTO THIS THREAD ANYMORE.

boris said:

Well maybe you should have started with it a couple days ago, BECAUSE NOW NOBODY LOOKS INTO THIS THREAD ANYMORE.

Heh... me still does :)

boris said:

Well maybe you should have started with it a couple days ago, BECAUSE NOW NOBODY LOOKS INTO THIS THREAD ANYMORE.

And me cos I've been offline a coupla days...me downloads.

boris = owned

boris: so uncalled for. Can you actually prove that no one looks at this topic? I haven't even played the level. So then I'll be coming back to say what I think of the level..but honestly, what made you think no one looks at this topic anymore, anyways? I don't think it's up somewhere when the last time someone looked at a certain thread. Only when last someone posted in one.

Tai said:

boris: so uncalled for. Can you actually prove that no one looks at this topic? I haven't even played the level. So then I'll be coming back to say what I think of the level..but honestly, what made you think no one looks at this topic anymore, anyways? I don't think it's up somewhere when the last time someone looked at a certain thread. Only when last someone posted in one.

I can answer that. Normal people MOVE ON.

Hey, now. Not all of us have the time to play levels as soon as we hear of them. I for one just played this level. I found it pretty cool, and rather easy, but also rather weird. The first weird thing I noticed was the sky; I get out into the outdoor section and then just stand there gaping at the sky for a second. How the heck did he make it move?

Then there was the Quake 2 secret. Before exiting, I checked the automap and found that there were several monsters I'd missed. IDDT revealed a whole new area I'd missed: the Q2 area. After running around with no luck, I actually opened this thing in WA to find how to get there. It kinda pissed me off that the lift "switch" that gets you to the supercharge room looks no different than the one opposite it. But the weird thing is that when I pressed the switch that was supposed to get that pole blocking the teleport out of the way (to the Q2 area), I couldn't hit it. I heard a sound and assumed the pole was gone, but I went back and it was still there. Again pissed off, I walked through the pole and teleported to the Q2 area... but then when I got back, the pole was gone. Hmm...

Now, I opened the file in Wintex to see how the sky thing was done. As I suspected, there was a dehacked entry, but there were also a few other data lumps. What do MAPINFO, "GUIMO," and CCT2 do? Which one controls the moving sky? And which one changed the par time at the end to 8:17, and showed me a story screen afterward? Which programs edit these mystery data lumps?

in your last paragraph..what the heck are you talking about? O_o

How the heck did he make it move?

That's one line in the MAPINFO lump. You only see it move when you play the level with ZDoom.

I couldn't hit it. I heard a sound and assumed the pole was gone, but I went back and it was still there.

You have to shoot the switch[/B][/quote]

Now, I opened the file in Wintex to see how the sky thing was done. As I suspected, there was a dehacked entry, but there were also a few other data lumps. What do MAPINFO, "GUIMO," and CCT2 do? Which one controls the moving sky? And which one changed the par time at the end to 8:17, and showed me a story screen afterward? Which programs edit these mystery data lumps?

RTFM.

netnomad312 - Boris already answered your questions, but there are a couple of things I wanted to add:

Firstly, thanks for playing the WAD :)

The wall face that lowers the teleporter (to the supercharge) has a candle in front of it (maybe when you were playing, a demon's corpse could have fallen near it?). There are only two candles in the entire level, and both are used to mark secrets.

There's also a reason the pole wasn't there when you teleported back - it's one of the small enhancements I made so that the level could also be played in Deathmatch mode. You see, there's a DM start in the Quake II area. A player who starts off there would be trapped if he tried to get back to the rest of the level. So when you walk into the teleporter to go back, you'll automatically raise the pole even if no one shot the switch previously - one of the linedefs just in front of the teleporter does that.

The entry CCT2 in the WAD doesn't do anything. It just contains some text saying "Wow. You actually opened up the WAD file?". I put it in there as a joke :)

The GUIMO entry is the MOD music which will play in ZDoom.

The DeHackEd patch is also written a little differently. For Doom Legacy, there are a couple of lines written in the normal DeHackEd way, and all they do is to change the level name in the automap. But after that there are a few lines written in BEX format (there is a text file that comes with Boom, which explains it all). They change the level name in the automap and also the par time to 8:17. The BEX lines work in all Boom-based and derivative ports that support embedded DEH/BEX patches.

The MAPINFO lump as Boris said, controls the scrolling sky, the story screen, etc. You can see the MAPINFO reference page at the ZDoom site. It's very simple to write and extremely powerful!

For all these (except the original DeHackEd style entries, perhaps), you don't need any special program - a simple text editor will do. Just write the content of the entry and insert it into the WAD. I found XWE very convenient to use for this purpose. Also, once you insert these entries, you can just click on the entry in XWE and edit the text in the right pane of the program directly.

This MAPINFO only works if you play the level in ZDoom - other ports will simply ignore it and you won't get any of the extra effects it adds.

Oh and one more thing. Apparently, the Vavoom engine also recognises a MAPINFO entry and will even try to interpret it. The problem is that ZDoom's MAPINFO and Vavoom's MAPINFO format are different, so the level doesn't work with Vavoom unless you delete the MAPINFO entry (atleast, the version I have - a very old one - doesn't).

Cool. I'll check out the mapinfo page in a sec. If it works in Vanilla Doom, I could definitely add that to my megawad. See, I was already planning to have a "faq" text file included with it, which gives mini-stories as part of each level's info section. Those levels which have story screens before them already (7, 12, etc.) have that text in the faq.

But even if it doesn't... it could be yet another cool feature for ZDoom users. Hmm... I wonder if some people would be pissed off at continuous story updates? I wouldn't, myself, because IMO if you know what's going on you can appreciate the levels better...

Anyway, thanks. :)

EDIT: Damn... ZDoom site isn't responding right now. One more stupid question: what edits BEX patches?

netnomad312 said:

One more stupid question: what edits BEX patches?

You edit them in a text editor.

Fredrik said:

You edit them in a text editor.

But then what do you start with? Is there a guide of some sort?

Fredrik said:

You edit them in a text editor.

What editor edits txt files?

netnomad312 said:

But then what do you start with? Is there a guide of some sort?

There is a text file called BOOMDEH.TXT (it comes with the Boom ZIP and I think even with some other ports that are based on it) which explains how to write BEX patches. For replacing the level names, look under the section "Strings" in it.

With BEX I don't think you can make story screens appear at any point in the game (only at the already predefined positions, after MAP06, MAP20, etc.), but with MAPINFO you can.

Yes... I checked out the MAPINFO page a minute ago. First and foremost, if you don't use any port and play in vanilla Doom, will it just ignore MAPINFO, or will MAPINFO screw it up? If that's the case than I'm not going to use it. I'm definitely not going to sacrifice vanilla compatibility for a couple little features.

Now, how to start a MAPINFO file... do you just start typing stuff in Notepag and end up with a file called mapinfo.lmp or whatever? If that's the case, then cool.

Let's say I wanted to display a story screen after level 1 with a certain flat on the background and a different music file than the one that normally plays after map06 or map20 or whatever. Can I do something like that, and what page do I find out how? (I can't make much sense out of that page)

http://zdoom.notgod.com/reference/mapinfo.html

boris said:

http://zdoom.notgod.com/reference/mapinfo.html

Yeah... I was only able to skim over that page earlier. Now, I'd need a map and a clusterdef for every map to acheive what I want, right? The map for par times and info, the clusterdef for the ending. My biggest problem is, what number do I put after "clusterdef?" The level number it's supposed to come after?

So basically what I'm seeing is this:

map MAP01 "The Gateway"
par 3:00

clusterdef <whatever number I'm supposed to use>
entertext <my message. do I need quote marks for it?>
music <I plan to put in an extra music lump that the game wouldn't normally use - I can still refrence it, right?>
flat FLAT19

Of course I'm sure I'm just being really stupid and I have half the stuff wrong...

Great level, I loved the Quake 2 Secret :)

netnomad312 -

Having a DEHACKED or MAPINFO lump in a WAD will not crash doom2.exe. That applies to ANY Doom engine for that matter - they will all only bother about lumps they recognise, and happily ignore the ones they don't (like my CCT2 entry, heh).

You do start off writing the entry in Notepad, it's that simple. You can call the file whatever you want, because when you insert it into the WAD with XWE, the extension will be removed, and you can anyway rename the entry.

About the map/cluster thing, I hope this example will make things a bit easier to understand:

Assume you're making a 32-map megawad with the story screen required to be shown after every 4 maps. Then you'd have 32 map definitions and 8 cluster definitions.

You'd write all the map descriptions first, with MAP01-4 having "cluster 1", MAP05-8 belonging to "cluster 2", and so on. Then you'd have a set of clusterdefs, from "clusterdef 1" through "clusterdef 8", describing the properties for each cluster.

A little bit of trial and error should get things working just the way you want them to. You do have to put quotes for the story text. Here you have to format things properly, because ZDoom won't word wrap the text for you; and you also have to make sure you space out the lines properly and that they don't exceed the screen's height :) Have a look at my MAPINFO entry for example.

You can reference any music lump in the MAPINFO.

And the par time should be specified in seconds, that is, your 3:00 should be written as 180.

mystery8 - Thanks!

Very nice design, I liked it but uv was very easy for me, an average doomer.

ravage said:

What editor edits txt files?

vi using cygwin: http://www.cygwin.com/ ;) All the cool kids are doing it!