Oblige v0.94 Released

Would be nice to have a link to the project website as well as the download link.

Nice! but couldnt find source code download :(

The source code is on the project website that I linked to :-)

Wow. That's all I can say. The architecture in a Oblige map now might actually be mistaken for a REAL map. I'd post a screenshot if it wasn't for me being too lazy to make one. (and yes, I do know how) Back in .85, it still could be easily seen as just another slige map, thanks to the (starting sector counts as a secret) glitch. I'm guessing version 1.00 will come out once support for the boss levels (like E1M8 and MAP30) is available and traps are back in.

EDIT: You may be wondering why I didn't say this in the news post. That's because I was still generating my first full megawad with the new version. It finished a little after I posted the news.

Wolfenstein3D? Was not expecting that.

EDIT: Here are some screenshots I took with it:

http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u49/EANB/DOOM0012.png
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u49/EANB/DOOM0010.png
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u49/EANB/DOOM0009.png

Question - Does it use custom textures?

YARD (Yet Another Randomizer for Doom).

I like it, though.

Does it still do the strictly compartmentalized type of level generation? I like Oblige but the whole "nothing but square rooms" thing gets a little old.

It still does, although it appears to be moving toward non-square rooms.

It also appears to use some kind of prefabs- like pentagrams or structures with lites on them.

No matter how much of a "cool" toy this is there is a whole lot more potential for abuse than I'd care for. Sadly thats the way it goes with random level generators.

Needs a feature for level size, and crate amounts.

John Smith said:

No matter how much of a "cool" toy this is there is a whole lot more potential for abuse than I'd care for. Sadly thats the way it goes with random level generators.

There's no more room for "abuse" with this than with a procedural texture generator or those computer programs they teach to write classical music.

yomoneyboat said:

Needs a feature for level size, and crate amounts.

It does have a feature for level size. Either small, regular, or X-Large. You must be using the older version.

Nice! I especially like when there are creates in slime pits and themes that change from area to area (much like a level from a jokewad i saw about community building a single level). The monster traps are awesome though, for a level generator.

Wow someone must have been watching very closely, as I was in the middle of putting the release together.

Announcement thread:
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=40644

Source is there now (though most of the interesting stuff is in the included LUA scripts). Linux package I am preparing now.

There a few custom textures in the wads, e.g. waterfall and lavafall. They are only patches (not using TEXTUREx) hence they should work fine with every port and vanilla too.

At the time this news was posted and I was updating the DB there was no source download. I'll add the link back in now that the source is there, thanks :D

i hate random map generators.
i fail to understand why this should be good news.
yes, it is a release of some kind in the doom scene, and that is great;
nevertheless, i see this as counter-productive.

I see no problem with this, as long as it's used for personal amusement. It's not like they will flood the archives as randomly generated maps are banned. The only doom site that would actually post that stuff was the Doom Wad Station.

I think this is quite cool actually. :D It's one of the few level generators that supports Hexen, Heretic and Wolf 3D. :)

The Lag said:

i hate random map generators.
i fail to understand why this should be good news.
yes, it is a release of some kind in the doom scene, and that is great;
nevertheless, i see this as counter-productive.

Don't like 'em? Then don't use 'em! Simple as that, really.

yeah, i know.
i was just expressing my opinion while i was drinking a few beers.

The Lag said:

i hate random map generators.
i fail to understand why this should be good news.
yes, it is a release of some kind in the doom scene, and that is great;
nevertheless, i see this as counter-productive.

I don't think anyone seriously sees random map generators as competing with real maps made by a human. Or are you saying that programmers should spend their time making maps instead of writing map generators?

Allow me to express my own opinion that next time you drink a few cups of shut the hell up.

Huh, I like this release!

Hexen support is better, but first needs some kind of exit from episodes. I generated one episode, and it seemed to have been 6 levels of walking around, with no way of getting to the second episode. Another thing: Permanently closing doors are bad :(. It makes getting somewhere hard. And finally, weapons need to be placed according to class. Right now I can go into levels as a fighter and find pieces of the Wraithverge and such.

ler said:

Another thing: Permanently closing doors are bad :(

Was the door a secret door (same texture as surrounding walls)?
I just found a bug using the wrong door type on secret doors, but all the other doors seem OK.

Episode endings are broken in all the games. It will be fixed eventually.

As for weapons: well I'm not sure the best way to do them. I could make, for example, the Fighter's weapons have the fighter-only bit set, but Oblige will still make separate quests for every class's weapons. Originally I had them all (e.g. the weapons for key '2') in the same room and close together, but it was too easy to pick up the wrong one (bad for COOP games). Suggestions?

You could always make it so that when, say, a key 2 weapon for a fighter is made in a room, another little place with the weapon raised up or whatever is right next to it (but like not so next to it that you could accidently run into it instead of the fighter weapon) for another weapon, and then another place for that weapon. It'd be like a line of weapons in fully classed coop but it'd just look a little funny in singleplayer. Separate quests are okay, it's mostly the fighter-only bit and whatnot not being set for singleplayer, which is a little annoying and not really a good thing to keep.

I can't complain... a megawad a day for 10,000 days isn't bad.

After a while i get some stair-related errors during builidng :( and heretic has lots of HOMs

you should support duke3d next, heh

Ajapted said:

Wow someone must have been watching very closely, as I was in the middle of putting the release together.

Eh. After I saw that the site wasn't updated yet, I wanted to make sure that a new release really wasn't out, so I checked the actual projects page. In other words, it wasn't so much watching very closely as it was probably stumbling into it.

I really enjoy this little tool for filling in those times when I want something new and don't want to go download anything to try. It does a really decent job.

I posted this over at NewDoom already, and I figured you guys might like it too.

I was playing around with the Oblige theme definition stuff today and came up with a pretty decent configuration for the doom2 starport theme.

Basically what I tried to do with this was simplify the theme as much as possible, using only a small set of textures, all of which would look relatively good adjacent to each other. It includes brick8, metal2, bronze1, brown96, browngrn, zimmer1, brick10, tekgren2, stone4, stone6, bigbrik1, and bigbrik2.

I've also changed the switch puzzles so that all of them use barred doorways instead of the rather ugly (sorry Ajapted ) setup where it puts sp_hot or whatever texture matches the switch on the walls next to the door that the switch controls.

UPDATE: Keycards now work! Thanks for the hint, Ajapted. I also changed the key door prefab so that it doesn't put huge key lights on the walls next to the door, too, only inside the frame.

UPDATE: Added a whole bunch of new wall prefabs, for computers, tekwall stuff, pipes, etc.

Without further adieu, essel's doom2 starport/brick theme definitions:

http://sl4.dmclub.org/wasd/d2scripts.zip

To use, make a backup copy of the Scripts folder that comes with Oblige, unzip this folder and put it in the original one's place, and set your game mode to Doom II.

To uninstall, just delete or rename the new Scripts folder, and put your backup copy of the original Scripts folder in its place.

You should be able to use it without breaking Doom I compatibility, but please note that only the Doom I themes will be modified.