nova++

he sleepin...

I think the revisions to MAP01 are finished, now - I gave an extra detail pass over the whole thing because some areas just felt very boring to me and needed livening up. I've done this a bit to some other maps but will be going through and doing so a bit more intensely soon as well. (The green pillar things scroll downward and it looks super cool in motion) Back to MAP04 next... I intend this upcoming release to be sort of a... "incomplete but less beta feeling" kinda thing. Not the full map layout but the ones that are in there are polished and "release quality" or near enough... edit: Also I figured out what the weird sector in the last post was doing... it was a linked sector to another one to pre-alert some monsters that had become detached

This is quickly expanding to be adjustments to most of the early maps now. There's a lot of unneccessarily slow bits as was the case in MAP01 which I am adjusting... cacodemons are a lot of it, honestly. Sponges... Also, uncovering mysteries. There's this random secret sector in MAP03 that is in a completely inaccessible area. I cannot remember why, or what I might have been intending to do...

Some pictures from the revised MAP04 so far...

Lots of good progress revising MAP01. I think it hits a lot more consistently and steadily now, and I shaved like 10 minutes off of the runtime, which puts it much more in line with the other big maps. There was just too much stuff going on in between, too many monsters between the important areas, and it slowed things down. I think it's much more fun to play now. Also, I eliminated the old timer system in the final area because it was too obscure, replacing it with switches you have to activate that are simply very difficult to get to when the area is full of monsters. In general, I have used a lot of what I've learned in the later maps to refine it, more setpiece fun and trickery, in general it's just in a much better spot. I've also had some brainwaves for MAP04 to really take advantage of the gimmick of being an underwater base, should be fun if I can get that working.

Okay, I am OFFICIALLY back at it - I've got my editing setup ready to go again and am doing checkout stuff for it. I've got a laundry list of tweaks I want to make to MAP01 in particular as part of getting back into things. I already discovered at least my current version won't launch with DSDA-Doom and probably other more strict ports due to references to textures I deleted in the ANIMATED lump - I can't remember if those textures had been deleted in the current release version, I haven't heard anyone complain yet so hey 🤷‍♂️ I'll try my best to end the dry spell of releases soon enough, it's been too long

It is ALMOST that TIME again. Other projects and interests have been taking up my attention for a long time, but I am gearing up to properly get back into this again as those start to wrap up. I think I want to make the next release just the new HUD and the revised MAP04 before I go further with any of the new maps. I replayed MAP01 for the first time in months today and it just felt a bit... I dunno. It doesn't grab me as much as the later stuff does - the fact it was the first one made for the project does show. Perhaps revisions to that are coming in the future too. We'll see. I admit I had hoped to bring all this to proper fruition much sooner but so it goes. Doom isn't going anywhere.

MAPPENING is happening. I started playing with some ideas for map04 to get a feel for things again. I want to really make use of the undersea environment as mentioned, and I really like the idea of having these big tunnels of glass (it's ok, they're super strong bullet/plasma/rocket proof glass)

Re-testing some of the maps as it's been a while since I went through them, annoyingly it looks like GZDoom has issues with texture scrollers on the software renderer. Long story short when the total offset hits 32768 it freezes the scrolling, which, in the case of MAP11's fast scrollers, takes around 36 seconds. I've tested this in isolation as well and it's not just a quirk of that map... so consider that a known issue, and something that will have to be fixed on the engine's end, unfortunately. (I'll edit this post if anything else crops up in my playthrough) Edit #1: I don't like MAP04. I just don't. Okay, I don't hate it, but it's just not up to the same standards as the other ones, a lot of stuff just feels off about it. I think I am going to completely rework it in the near future, I will keep the setpiece stuff that I like, but the gameplay flow needs a complete overhaul. So it goes, I guess. I want to make more use of the undersea setting anyway, and I have some ideas for areas that would be pretty neat I think. Edit #2: I don't know if this applies to the release version, but a switch in MAP11 is straight up broken...whoops. I already know why at least.

It's been much too long, but HAPPENING is happening. HUD and status bar face! SquenchGuy, weary (but absolutely ripped) office worker, thrust into a world that to some extent he knew existed, but the depth and madness of which he could have never imagined. If I was feeling really mean, I could make the screen go all scratchy and bloody when his glasses get dirty. But I won't. The invuln face is my favorite. So I'm keeping it a secret for now... Mapping will happen again soon! I swear this time!

MAP17 reached the milestone of being playable start to finish today - the main question marks remaining are primarily ammo placement, and then visual tweaks/variety. Plenty to do in the latter case, this one is DENSE. Need to build out variety in everything from spider webs to cyberwalls to assembling the imp shooting gallery Lots to do... and still four more maps for this round

Against the odds, I have been mentioned (at the very end smushed into a corner with a bunch of other stuff) in the 2022 cacowards awwww yeeaahhh!!

👀

I am building things out of order again, starting with MAP17 this time around. I would say it's around 1/3 to 1/2 done, I am reluctant to show too much because it's really uniquely and strangely themed even by my standards,but this has made it really hard to find an appropriate music track for it which has been very demotivating because the soundtrack is so important to the feel of everything I have been making and it's just not the same when I can't find one that works right. Maybe I should commission something. I don't think I have it in me to compose something myself. edit: have a picture anyway, this one is suitably vague and concerning enough to pique the target audience's interest

Ok I FINALLY got that hackjob laptop set up in a place I can actually use it semi regularly, I just need to go through and install all the tools and stuff tomorrow, recover my configs, etc, and I can actually start mapping again.