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Everything posted by Bad King John
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No doubt asked before, but why do some single level authors position their level at other than Map 01? I've just reviewed one at Map 20, and they lost a star from me because of it. Did the author think his level is only seen at its best after playing through the 19 previous stock Doom II maps? It's been said that it's to get a particular piece of background music, but I've seen cases where the author is clearly expert enough to incorporate any music they want into their wad - in fact the author of the one I just reviewed has done exactly that with some of his other levels.
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Has the case of map making on Linux improved anything as of late 2016?
Bad King John replied to Katamori's topic in Doom Editing
It would take me much more than seeing the sky in an editor pre-view to make me use Windows. -
LoL! You should get out more! I've been playing levels and reading the comments in the /idgames Archive database quite a bit lately and there are some very "selfish" commenters out there. 0/5 or 1/5 for otherwise OK levels, just because someone did not like the style, is very common, which is a shame. The system could do with some kind of meta-moderation as some other web-sites do. Having read some reasons in this thread for making a single wad at other than Map01 (although I don't find all of them compelling), I would not take a star off for that reason in future.
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Spare the self-congratulations please, it's unpolished. No attention to aligning textures; the 5-star reviewer must have missed the computer texture door track in an otherwise marble wall - which moves with the door like every other door track. Some boring long passages with a trooper round the next corner. There are interesting bits but it needed more work.
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I've made comments on four or five levels in the Archive Database. The first two comments I made showed up immediately after I submitted them, but since then my comments seemed to disappear into a black hole, although my Star Rating votes were taken into account (ie I could see a difference made to the average). What's going on here? AFAIR the comments that "stuck" were on more recent levels - so are comments disabled on levels over a certain age (although the comment box is still there) ?
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Veteran mappers - What is your method before you start a level?
Bad King John replied to t3hPoundcake's topic in Doom Editing
I start with a particular trick or feature I have in mind - like cacos rising out of a pond or a chapel full of worshiping monsters. I then build other rooms and passageways around it, leading to and from it. -
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People who code, and that loosely includes Doom level designers, are not your typical human. Powers of two make perfect sense to [most of] them.
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Has the case of map making on Linux improved anything as of late 2016?
Bad King John replied to Katamori's topic in Doom Editing
I'm not sure what you mean by "free look in 3D mode", perhaps because I've never used Doom Builder, but you can certainly get a 3D look and walk-about in Eureka. Nor am I sure what you mean by "automatic texture alignment". In Eureka's 3D view you can align textures by selecting one and then : c : clear offsets on highlighted sidedef x : align X offset with wall to the left y : align Y offset with wall to the left z : align both X + Y offsets to the left X : align X offset with wall to the right Y : align Y offset with wall to the right Z : align both X + Y offsets to the right It only takes a few seconds going round a room doing this, and I'm not sure I'd want this to be totally automated as I prefer to keep some control. When I did Doom editing some years ago you had to work out texture alignments with pencil and paper! I'm wondering what version of Eureka you have tried. As Scifista42 pointed out, you cannot expect (or condemn) an editor just because it does not have the same interface as one you used before; conversely I expect I'd have an interface learning curve to climb if I tried Doom Builder. Same goes for moving to Linux from Windows generally! -
Has the case of map making on Linux improved anything as of late 2016?
Bad King John replied to Katamori's topic in Doom Editing
"I mean, couldn't even draw a sector in Eureka Editor" Eh? Go into sector mode (by pressing "s"), put the cursor into some empty space, and then press the middle mouse button. A default sector is created. Or in vertex mode (press "v") select an existing vertex (left mouse) and then move the cursor around in empty space pressing the space-bar everywhere you want a new vertex, with a final space-bar click on another existing vertex. New sector created joined to old one(s). Have you RTFM? - the README.txt file that comes with it? I use Eureka all the time, v1.07 on Debian Linux. -
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The highlight (the "Ballet") I suppose is strafe circling three C-demons in a big arena; but I got bored and cheated. Apart from that, not enough ammo or health, glaring texture misalignment, silly sounds, and boring minimalist architecture. God knows why they made three maps out of this. The claimed "legend[ary] status" Level 2 finish is choosing between two buttons, one of which crushes you; but after 20 years the "legend" has yet to take root, it seems.
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Well crafted underground level, good monster/ammo/health balance (UV). Monsters pop out of closets a lot. Reminds me of the tighter parts of Cataboom (last map I commented), but this is architecturally unvaried and lacks the theme looked for at 5 star level. Lot of back-tracking, but I didn't mind. Bonus for no archviles.
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Big map, good Roman architecture, creepy atmosphere. Not a maze; it's complex but with pointers. Things tend to jump out of closets and there are some fights in claustrophobic places, not everyone's taste, but open fights too; gameplay could be better. Some neat devices, like Caesar's tomb. Took over two hours at UV.
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Some commenters in the /levels area deliberately give crappy levels a 5 star rating. That seems to be because they find them so pathetically interesting and funny that they want others to look too - It's so bad that it's good! they are saying. For example "The D!" (doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/d-f/d2) is a level with no monsters, no exit, and you cannot even walk round all of it; and the author says we should not modify it either! It deserves zero stars and should really be deleted from the database. Yet, in an attempt to be funny, someone gives it 5 stars and says that the inaccessible area " represents a desire, one which we cannot access. This teaches us how to cope with failure. ... this wad ... teaches us how to view Doom - indeed, life - in a whole new perspective" I also get a laugh from looking at really bad levels and have been picking some low star-rated levels out for comment myself lately. However it is a mistake to give these crap levels high ratings. This is because other reviewers will correctly give low ratings, so the resulting overall star score will just be average, which is not going to induce others to look at the level for either how bad or how good it is.