TNT: Revilution - Shifted to open development (alpha release)

Eris Falling said:

Soundblock, I only played pitchfork so far so I can only speak for that map, but to be honest, it didn't seem that great. I'm agreed with AD, the layout is pretty basic, and I believe you can do better.

Well, in that case I doubt you'll find The Divide to be a much stronger offering. They're both maps I had fun quickly whipping up over the last couple of weeks, which I guess is what the question boils down to; time. I could make better maps if I chose to spend more time on them before calling them done. As things stand I've weighed my investments against the risks, and tried to make a couple of maps that might fit into my idea of what a project like this might entail (though I must admit my exposure to things TNT beyond the genesis of Eternal Doom has been quite limited). Regardless, I seem to have missed the mark. Since my offerings so far seems to be out of favor with a large portion of the most active participants, and because I at current do not want to make a wholehearted investment into this venture, I guess its only right for me to bow out of TNT Revilution.

It was a fun little stint. I wish you all the best of luck with completing the megawad.

Soundblock said:

The Divide (divide.wad)

Okay so I've finally had a go at this map. I've got to say that I wasn't too impressed, the big issue here is that the layout is very simplistic, there's a lot of hallways & very boxy rooms. The map doesn't have all that much in it that is visually interesting.

This is the best looking area in the map, but again this area is nothing but squares. The gameplay of the map is very berserk heavy that's perfectly fine, but if we were to include this map into the project it would be a very early map & the problem with that is SFoZ911's map is an early berserk heavy map, it wouldn't be very interesting gameplay wise to have two berserk heavy maps so close to each other. As it is I don't see us using this map, a map like this would fit beautifully into Icarus Alien Vanguard, but we are doing what if Team TNT was still making maps in 2015, so it just lacks that visual flare of modern maps.

If you are struggling with the vanilla limits I would suggest that when making your maps that you completely disregard the limits & just make a beautiful looking map with crazy architecture. Then once the map is finished start working you way backward to make the map vanilla compatible. That's what I do & it's worked well enough so far. Your recent release of Plasma Plant was one of the reasons the I came to you when seeking mappers for the project, I thought it was a great looking map & it show that you have the ability to make great looking modern maps while still keeping the feel of a classic map. These recent maps of yours while having some interesting areas here & there seem to simply be products of the 90's.

Soundblock said:

Well, in that case I doubt you'll find The Divide to be a much stronger offering. They're both maps I had fun quickly whipping up over the last couple of weeks, which I guess is what the question boils down to; time. I could make better maps if I chose to spend more time on them before calling them done. As things stand I've weighed my investments against the risks, and tried to make a couple of maps that might fit into my idea of what a project like this might entail (though I must admit my exposure to things TNT beyond the genesis of Eternal Doom has been quite limited). Regardless, I seem to have missed the mark. Since my offerings so far seems to be out of favor with a large portion of the most active participants, and because I at current do not want to make a wholehearted investment into this venture, I guess its only right for me to bow out of TNT Revilution.

It was a fun little stint. I wish you all the best of luck with completing the megawad.

Ah okay that's too bad, thanks anyways for trying to help us out. Will you be using your maps elsewhere or would you like us to put them into Convilution our side project?

Ehh, I've played the first three maps from Revilution.wad and honestly in my opinion Soundblock's maps are more interesting due to the unpredictability and unique design decisions. Maps 01, 06 and 08 seems are just... generic modern maps where you press a switch and a nearby door opens, you take a key and monsters ambush you, all architecture already seems familiar from other popular wads, etc. No imagination, no surprises, nothing. But I guess that's the state of modern mapping and that's what people want, so oh well. I'll just stick to techincal feedback then instead of stating my unpopular opinions.

06
- Stairs surrounding sector 32 have easily noticeable inconsistency in how the flats are placed on them, I found it distracting.
- On the way back from the blue key you might not even encounter sergeant with the thing number 352 due to the block sound lines. You actually have to walk up to him if you want him to notice you.
- In the starting room I think it would be more fun if sector 170 didn't block you. I don't see any good reason to hinder the player's movements there.

08
- The use of COMPBLK textures in sectors 80 and 108 is rather strange IMO. Big pitch black parts on walls = hmm.

Jaws In Space said:

Will you be using your maps elsewhere or would you like us to put them into Convilution our side project?

The rejected maps will be reserved for my own purposes, in case I find a use for them in other places.

Plasmaplant was indeed a limits removed map (which took me the better part of 6 months to get into shape). I don't see how I could have backwards engineered it to fit into vanilla limits after the fact. Your work method seems a daring one, with much to-and-fro, which I'm not sure I would've been able to follow, was I to try. I'm still just re-familiarising myself with mapping for vanilla, and not finding it very easy (not that it ever was).

I'll hang on to the resources and keep an eye on the thread for a while. If the bug bites me and I feel I absolutely have to make another effort to make the cut, I'm sure I will let you know...

Memfis said:

Ehh, I've played the first three maps from Revilution.wad and honestly in my opinion Soundblock's maps are more interesting due to the unpredictability and unique design decisions. Maps 01, 06 and 08 seems are just... generic modern maps where you press a switch and a nearby door opens, you take a key and monsters ambush you, all architecture already seems familiar from other popular wads, etc. No imagination, no surprises, nothing. But I guess that's the state of modern mapping and that's what people want, so oh well. I'll just stick to techincal feedback then instead of stating my unpopular opinions.
- Stairs surrounding sector 32 have easily noticeable inconsistency in how the flats are placed on them, I found it distracting.
- On the way back from the blue key you might not even encounter sergeant with the thing number 352 due to the block sound lines. You actually have to walk up to him if you want him to notice you.
- In the starting room I think it would be more fun if sector 170 didn't block you. I don't see any good reason to hinder the player's movements there.

08
- The use of COMPBLK textures in sectors 80 and 108 is rather strange IMO. Big pitch black parts on walls = hmm.

Wtf are you talking about? There's not a single button in my map that need to be pressed in order to progress(not including exit duh). Also just like in Sverro's map there is an optional key in a secret. I get it, you don't like modern mapping, it's okay but don't talk out of your rear.

I do agree with you that Sverro's maps are a little bit more interesting and classic, I enjoyed them too and I think they play very well(played them both, really enjoyed the devide) but they do need a little touchup when it comes to visuals.

10
- Monsters around the red key don't need the "deaf" flag I think. I was fighting and many of them just stood still because they didn't notice me.
- The "go down" sign didn't quite work for me. I was playing in 320x200, from far away I noticed the usual warning sign for poison and that's how I interpreted it. So I spent a while hesitating to jump down and wondering where I'm supposed to go. I think if you're going to make a new sign, you should make it so that people definitely won't mistake it for an old familiar sign.
- You can hear the 3D bridge clacking when you walk over it. The control sector needs to be moved somewhere far away from the bridge to hide these sounds.
- Demons behind the yellow door are rather pointless. Back off a little and they won't be able to reach you snice they can't navigate the stairs there.
- Some bullshity monster placement was noticed, like I teleport to sector 198 and instantly get raped by the imps there. Or when I took the sector 121 lift and two chaingunners attacked me from below before I could even notice them.

13
- Hmm, rather evil chaingunner in sector 168, maybe that's too much considering he might kill someone 2 feet from the exit.

15
- Maybe add a switch sound to linedef 2036 like it's done with similar pressable walls in other maps.

SFoZ911 said:

To be honest, I don't really remember if it's under the limits. I haven't touched it for a while now. I hope the testers/quality controls guys will break it apart to find those overflows!

It's mostly under limits, couldn't find any seg overflows but I did see this:



Really good map btw.

31
- The sky horizon effect is done incorrectly for the pyramids, quite noticeable from above: http://i.imgur.com/IKu8cTD.png
- Some monsters in the illusio-pit behind the blue bars can see you even before they rise, seems silly.

18
- Red door doesn't work!

Map01 seems kind of out of place... it looks so much better than the others. You might also want to check the thing difficulty flags on that map. 6 monsters on easy and 5 on medium is probably way easier than intended ;)

Visuals are my (only) strong point with mapping, so I can probably tweak a few things here and there while making changes to other maps. I don't think the visual quality is that bad across the wad though, and we're still sorting out gameplay stuff with some maps, which is more important

I played both of Sverre's maps and liked 'em -- wonderfully oldschool, and they could totally be great with some tiny tweaking.

For Pitchfork, I'm thinking it would be cool to employ a "beef gate" strategy for the tall central hallway north of the start -- rather than have ared key unlock the exit, it'd be neat if it was unlocked but the rocket launcher was moved to one wing of the level (far left?) while all the rockets are on the right half of the map, making it so the goal is to grab enough munitions to be able to punch through the defenses surrounding the exit. Bonus points if there's a few more revs near the exit to make it practically suicide to go otherwise.

As an aside, visually it's all good except for the top-left area with the nukage; the brown brick tiles too much to where the room looks bare. That and the 24-high NUKEDGE doesn't work as a tiling wall texture either. But those are small potatoes.

For Divide, I think the hallway gimmick will work awesomely if traps were added along the way -- i.e. you run down a hall and suddenly you're surrounded from both sides. As-is it's very "shoot-in-front-of-you". That plus repopulating the hallways on the return trips from getting the keys will make it rock -- the map's short enough that the backtracking won't overstay its welcome.

As an aside, I wasn't able to find a use for the radsuit past the yellow door. Dunno if I missed something, but a nuketunnel that practically requires the suit would be a cool place to hide an extended secret.

Neither of the maps are eye candy but IMO that's just fine. The oldschool simplicity works heavily in its favor. Could totally see these going as MAP01/MAP02 with SFoZ's map coming a bit later.


tl;dr: i liked these, and hope they get used; come back Sverre D:

Actually Sverre you should take you maps over to this project https://www.doomworld.com/vb/wads-mods/67447-final-doom-the-way-id-did/ your maps are amazingly like what you would find in an oldschool TNT wad so they would be way more fitting for that project instead of ours.

Since we're in open development now, I thought I'd say that I'm roughly halfway finished with my map. I hope to have it in testable shape by next weekend.

"Pitchfork" is nice-looking. I don't think it needs any healing items or armor whatsoever, however. Maybe a token stimpack or two near the mandatory nukage crossings. The map would still be easy, but it'd have a nice austerity tension.

900+ monsters on that map29
meanwhile Have@It has only 755...

Memfis said:

- Monsters around the red key don't need the "deaf" flag I think. I was fighting and many of them just stood still because they didn't notice me.

Deaf flags removed.

Memfis said:

- The "go down" sign didn't quite work for me. I was playing in 320x200, from far away I noticed the usual warning sign for poison and that's how I interpreted it. So I spent a while hesitating to jump down and wondering where I'm supposed to go. I think if you're going to make a new sign, you should make it so that people definitely won't mistake it for an old familiar sign.

How about putting the sign on a more visible area? Like this:

Memfis said:

- You can hear the 3D bridge clacking when you walk over it. The control sector needs to be moved somewhere far away from the bridge to hide these sounds.

Fixed that.

Memfis said:

- Demons behind the yellow door are rather pointless. Back off a little and they won't be able to reach you snice they can't navigate the stairs there.

Maybe some imps would work better?

Memfis said:

- Some bullshity monster placement was noticed, like I teleport to sector 198 and instantly get raped by the imps there. Or when I took the sector 121 lift and two chaingunners attacked me from below before I could even notice them.

Lines 1051 and 1570 now will block monsters.

I think the sign could probably be bigger. It's a tiny little sign in a huge space, and like Memfis said, it looks basically like the usual poison sign.

esselfortium said:

I think the sign could probably be bigger. It's a tiny little sign in a huge space, and like Memfis said, it looks basically like the usual poison sign.

And/or color it green for "go"?

Soundblock said:

And/or color it green for "go"?

But it isn't a "go" sign, it's a warning sign.

Oh, so it's not even supposed to be a hint for the player to go down? I guess I misunderstood it twice then...

I've always viewed that sign as a warning about crushers, but then I play at a resolution that lets me see clearly further than about 10 feet.

We can maybe conclude that the sign is a bit poor :P Would anyone be able to make a better one?

What amazing timing. I've been playing, creating a bunch of signs lately. A Crusher sign was one of the more useful ones.



They're all 62 units wide, so they'll fit on any standard wall texture.

Edit: I also did a couple of square ones. Here's my Doomification of a better-known sign.



Edit2: I just read back a few posts. If it's a sign size issue, I just did this.
The square ones are also 62x62.

The brown map is dead. Long live the green map. Just kidding, since we have received a bit of negative feedback from our testers about the massive size of map 29 we have decided to make some adjustments. First off we will be cutting out about 80% of the map & will basically be keeping the starting section only, of course the full map in all of it's glory will be playable in Convilution. Secondly since both green & brown versions of this map have their supporters we are going to go with the Wormhole suggestion first proposed by Xaser way back when this map was still part of Devilution. Sometime this weekend I should get around to making the map playable as there are some things that will need to be adjusted.

I noticed in the public alpha that map08 was the first version I sent in, I actually made a revised version which I sent in to be tested prior to the development going public, so here is a link to the second version of map08 with pretty much everything except death match starts added.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/4o31xp7nhiamy9j/NMSv2.wad

At some point I will chose a midi from the selection here.

That was a fun map, cb. I liked the rectilinear design, it had a classic feel that reminded me of some TNT metal maps. Gameplay was fast and furious, though I do have one gripe. First, my stats;

Kills - 93, Items - 81, Secrets - 66. End Health - 100, Armor - 118. Death Count - 6. End Ammo: Bullets - 100, Shells - 39, Rockets - 10, Cells - 51

That's a pretty high death count for a map with only 99 monsters. :D I died once at the start by staying in the first room, only to discover you did a variation on the theme of E1M3, so I got stuffed and then died when I tried to break out. I died twice at the room with the Manc sniper off the nukage tunnel, and 3 times dropping into the side corridor where a Revvie guarded the rad suit. That was a pretty dickish set-up, since that damned Revvie got a free shot every time I jumped, so naturally I give you a thumbs-up on that. :D It was also my fault for stubbornly trying to fight that battle with the SSG. When I switched to the PG I found in a secret area, everything went fine.

I like the way the map flows and interconnects. The only downside to me is the ending. On the one hand, climbing up the stairs and seeing out into the courtyard gave me a strange feeling of altered reality that I remember best from playing the Amiga game Breathless. I think it has to do with the way the sky texture mixes with all the colors in the courtyard, and the ominous feeling I got from the Mancs on top of the crates, and how they moved in the distance. It's a rare feeling, so kudos on that. Alas, this area turned into a campfest for me, since I'm not the guy to Rambo a room with elevated Manc and Revvie snipers, an Arachnotron on the ground, plus hitscanners, Pinkies, nobles, Cacos and a Pain Elemental. Other players might rush out and get some infights going, but I ended-up constantly backing down the stairs as one Pinky and Sergeant after another waddled in to battle. They just kept dribbling in like Chinese Water Torture. Once those were finally gone, it was the Cacos, and then the nobles, and then the PE. I killed all of them plus the Revvies before I finally ventured out. I found the Speed of Doom switch to access the final secret, which topped off my health after having it whittled down by the Sergeants.

All in all, a cool map with a genuine oldschool feel.

I recently played map22 in the game, and the map remindes me of maps from hell revealed,which is not a good thing.

The thing is I don't mind hard maps or difficult maps,I welcome them,but this map doesn't resemble anything from TNT at all,it remindes me of a Plutonia gameplay instead,and Zombimen thrown in this map like this is an attempt to tell me that this is a TNT esque map!!

If anyone have a different opinion,please respond to me,but I call it as I see it.

Can I make a small MAP02 and MAP03?

sincity2100 said:

I recently played map22 in the game, and the map remindes me of maps from hell revealed,which is not a good thing.

The thing is I don't mind hard maps or difficult maps,I welcome them,but this map doesn't resemble anything from TNT at all,it remindes me of a Plutonia gameplay instead,and Zombimen thrown in this map like this is an attempt to tell me that this is a TNT esque map!!

If anyone have a different opinion,please respond to me,but I call it as I see it.

Our current E3 is not final at all. There will be some cuts when we release our next alpha, Map 22 will be staying in, but in a seriously cut down form.