Jan

lol ... I'm just not seeing it. - None of the windows look as if you can jump through them (?) - There's only one linedef that opens the door to the outside, but that linedef is on the outside as well. - The teleporter from the nukage area takes you to the outside area, right in front of the door, but then to reach that teleporter ... you need access to the outside area in the first place, through the 5-point star teleporter. A hint? :)

- I liked the new starting area, much better than the old linear"one. The odd angles, the skylight and the pillar feel very E1. - I found the midi horrible, in OPL as well as in wavetable emulation. Sounds like something out of a mediocre megawad. - I couldn't find a way into the outside secret area with the soulsphere. Even after looking at the map in my editor, I remain puzzled. There doesn't seem to be a way to open the door from inside the building. - In general I found the level rather large and complex and it didn't really give me a sense of location, I felt as if I couldn't "wrap my head around it" like I can with most of the original E1 maps. - Sometimes you use some odd ceiling heights, which screws up the vertical texture allignment with textures that don't tile well. For instance, the COMPTALL room right of the starting area is 136 high, instead of 128, some sladwall corridors are 72 height instead of 64 etc. For the rest, I mostly agree with all the points in Mithran Denizen's review.

Oh well, I can't really get worked up about that. The important thing for me is that now there's a correct way for people to use the DE2 textureset if they want to. If they don't, that's on them... *shrug*

Seems the texture wad made it into /newstuff :) http://ftp.gamers.org/pub/idgames/graphics/dark2tex.zip

Actually, I think some levels do somehow match their names. Hangar contains a hangar of some sort, Toxin Refinery has the central nukage pit, Military Base kinda looks like some kind of fortified structure, and there are more examples in E2, E3 and Doom II. Also, if you're going to do a "Biosphere" level and not do anything with the theme ... umm what exactly is the point of calling it a "Biosphere" level? Just call it "yet-another-strictly-E1-themed" level. My opinion is: if you're going to include this as a concept that id could have made but eventually left out of the game, you shouldn't restrict yourself to a strict E1-style. As a thought experiment, imagine that Romero would have started to work on the biosphere level, do you think he would have said: "oh, vine textures and such and so aren't in the shareware wad, so I can't use them"? I have a feeling that he'd be a bit more pragmatic about it: does it work in this level, or doesn't it? I never suggested anything else than making it an integral part of the map, that however doesn't preclude making it a stand-alone room (or several rooms). The nukage pit in E1M3 is a stand-alone room too, for instance. One thing I've also considered is that you could make the rooms initially inaccessible or only secret-accessible, treat them like the outdoor areas or the giant nukage room in E1M7.

Another idea I had is that other than plants the biorooms could contain "wildlife" as well, nobody says that a *bio*sphere has to be plants only right? You could then systematically make "dangerous places" of these greenhouses, populated with only one kind of monster each (imps, demons, caco's), requiring keycard access, and possibly some kind of "airlock" double door before entry. Now I realize that this is a very concept-levellish idea, so it would probably be best suited on a secret level.

Sure many other texture combinations work. With startan1 and green vines Or without vines It's just a concept level by the way, I made it to provide an idea to the people doing the actual maps for this project. I whipped it up in like 20 minutes or so. The concept in this case is: having greenhousy rooms where plants *could* be grown. Whether they use startan, starg, or brown vines or green vines or no vines at all ... well that's up to the mapper :)

That's thinking too far ahead IMO. If you're going to use vines, simply use the ones that look best against the other textures you are using, regardless of whether they are hydrated are not. That is: if you use startan textures, green will probably look better (contrast), but if you use starg textures, the brown ones will look better.

You know, I think the concept would still remain standing even if you removed the vines and trees. Just a dirt floor, a starg1 room, and skylights would do it.

Well the explanation is detailed, but that's just my explanation of the architecture according to my own imagination. The actual architecture is dead simple, and not overly detailed at all. If you called a level biosphere, and gave the player this kind of level ... it would put the player's imagination to work, and that's something you want to achieve, because the original id levels did just that. See what I mean?

Hey guys, I did a quick mockup of what I think a biosphere area could look like. I'm thinking of greenhouse-like rooms, with open ceilings through which sunlight falls in, in a mushy green startan wall texture and a dirt floor. You could also use midvine* textures to cover the walls with vines, the occasional tree stub etc. Computer panels could be put in as "climate monitoring systems" Also you should be able to look into the greenhouse room from the corridors in several places. Something like this: You could have several similar rooms like this in the level and interconnect them with regular E1 style corridors, or whatever you fancy. You can download the wad file here http://www.weirdchill.org/static/misc/_biolab.wad

@ellmo: I didn't mean to be "harsh" with my criticism. If you felt it that way, I'm sorry. As I said, in general I like what I see, I was just trying to give you some more constructive feedback instead of just saying "yeah that really looks good man". Anyway, I made some quick mockups based on your screenshots of how I would do the courtyard: http://www.weirdchill.org/static/misc/mockup19a.wad http://www.weirdchill.org/static/misc/mockup19b.wad They run on E1M9, feel free to use it or not.

@ellmo I do like those screenshots, but I have some nitpicks. In the first shot: - starg2 is never used in E1, and starg1 only rarely. - On the staircase, your ceiling heights follow the floor heights on the steps. Romero never did this in E1. - The ceil3_6 lights look weird when tiled like that. - Use flat20 or flat5_5 for window floors and ceilings, definitely not floor7_2. In the second shot: - I always try to avoid having to y-align star* textures, and put in a support2 separator when the ceiling height changes. - I can't remember a single place in E1 where floor0_2 was used. In the third shot: - The courtyard looks a bit cramped - I don't like the staircase leading up to the door, the shape is weird and it's too cramped for a staircase - The nukage pool is too small, again because it's too cramped. - Tech pillars in an outside courtyard? I wouldn't do it ... especially since it's already too cramped ... are we seeing a pattern here? :) - floor0_1 and browngrn? I've never seen that combination. IMO browngrn fits better with a more "orangy" texture like flat5 or floor5_3 If it were me, I'd clean up that whole courtyard: ditch the stairs, ditch the tech pillars, apply a different floor texture and make the nukage pool a bit larger and central.

In early versions of Doom, the code to raise/lower floors was buggy, especially after reloading a savegame. I remember the donuthole in the outside area of E1M3 suddenly dropping 64 units on me after it had already been raised from the nukage, leaving me trapped there. I didn't know about the idspispopd cheatcode back then, so I was always paranoid in that area. On other occasions I've seen the donuthole rise into the sky.

Ooh I love the OPL3 emulation.... that's something every source port should have IMO. It feels so "oldskool". Even back in the day, I preferred the OPL3 FM synth sounds of my AWE32 over the wavetable version. It gives the Doom music a distinct dark futuristic sound, reminiscent of the soundtrack of 80's sci-fi movies like Bladerunner and Terminator. One thing though, in chocolate-doom the volume of the music way too low, even with the music volume at 100% and the sound effects at 50% I can barely hear it over the sound effects. To compare, I tested vanilla doom in a dosbox with the same settings, and the music sounds a lot louder then. Edit: thought it may be useful to mention my OS too, I'm using Ubuntu 10.10

Now that looks really nice! Be careful not go overboard with the detail though, let the textures and the angles do the work for you.

Doesn't mean you have to replicate it IMO :)

Oh, and another thing ... I could jump over the nukage moat in "E2M2" by straferunning, taking a shortcut to the exit.

I played through the first two levels, and ran through the others with -nomonsters. The good: - Definitely feels like the Shores of Hell - Texture choices are well in line with the theme - First two levels were fun to play, haven't played the others yet. The bad: - It's very VERY "hommagy" (and I choose my words carefully) ... entire sections of the original levels have been "recreated" - The dimensions and proportions are way off, the rooms feel too big and bland

Yes, it should evoke some memories of Hunted Down (dodead E1M9)

Links to some screenshots: Edit: sorry, links are dead ... there are newer screenshots in posts below

Oh that sucks ... another reason to stick to my trusty ol' WinDEU then :D

I use Linux too, but for all my Doom editing I run a VirtualBox instance of Windows XP. Both WinDEU and WinTex run fine in VirtualBox, and I guess DB2 would too. The actual wads are on the Linux filesystem and are shared with Samba so that VirtualBox can access them. My buildscripts are all on Linux too.

I have already returned to mapping (several times the past few years actually). The question is: will I end up with something releasable ;) Re finishing dodead: as printz said, classic6 is actually the long lost dodead E1M5 level, finished by Anthony Soto. Perhaps I should put it in dodead.wad and re-release it, and fix the blue key bug in E1M6 while I'm at it :p Speaking of dodead, I am currently working on a few maps that are dodead-ish in style, but more "modern" looking as my mapping skills have evolved a bit since 1997. I may release it in a small map set as the spiritual successor to dodead. I hesitate to call it dodead2 because it won't be a full episode, just 3 or 4 maps.

The man kinda has a point... so stop bitching and start delivering! I think too many people think that there is some kind of magic formula to make id style maps when there's no such thing ... You could write down all the tricks and rules that Romero followed, and still make a sucky map.