Support NeoGAF

[The Real Abed]

I'm pretty sure there's more than that. For instance, in MAP13: "Downtown", there's a curved staircase that has a Pinky cache hidden inside the building (for reference, I believe it's the large building on the far east portion of the map). When you reach the top and claim the power-up (I think it's a rocket launcher?), the Pinkies teleport in from the cache to ambush you.

I must have missed those. They're so tiny. I was just browsing through all the maps on the Wiki trying to count the levels that used them. I forgot about the demon cache in Downtown. I'm guessing there's a few more I missed. I only noticed the large ones. There's probably a bunch of smaller ones scattered around. Point is there aren't that many in the official games, but pretty much every third-party level has one or two.

Fists are silent in Brutal Doom in order to accomodate stealth gameplay.

That's what I was thinking of then. I haven't played DOOM without Brutal DOOM in forever. And I never use the fists unless I'm out of ammo.

But in this case I can't rely on sounds to trigger the teleport, since the room is empty when entering and the player is very unlikely to shoot. The imps are supposed to teleport in right when the player picks up the keycard. I just changed the texture to a flat non-patterned one which has less noticeable seams.

You don't put the sound tunnels into the blue key room. You put them much earlier in the level where there are guaranteed enemy encounters and only open the door to the teleport linedef when you walk onto the key platform. The enemies would already be prepped and ready to pounce.

 

[lazygecko]

All of these methods feel really... roundabout and Macgyverish. Makes you wonder what kept them from just implementing functions that just trigger monster teleports straight away.

 

[Shadow Hog]

That would require Thing Tags, which weren't added until Hexen AFAIK.

 

[The Real Abed]

All of these methods feel really... roundabout and Macgyverish. Makes you wonder what kept them from just implementing functions that just trigger monster teleports straight away.

That would require Thing Tags, which weren't added until Hexen AFAIK.

Yeah, this. DOOM and the DOOM engine up until the geniuses at Raven (Hexen) and the people at Velocity (Strife) came along was really really limited. One trigger does one thing. There were no scripts. No multiple things (Except for a single trigger that supposedly lowered one floor while raising another but I could never figure out how to use that one) happening at once. It was all based on using your head. Even Heretic didn't do much new. It was Hexen that really added some new stuff like hub worlds, silent teleporting and scripting.

It always struck me as strange that Carmack didn't just program in a rudimentary scripting system or a simple "teleport monster from nothing" trigger since he was the one programming it, but it's Carmack and I assume it was just technical and memory limitations at the time.

Don't modern editors let you use Hexen style triggers and scripting features in DOOM levels? I know you can do some stuff in modern DOOM levels that you couldn't do originally because of the expansion of the engine code. I know I've seen DOOM levels with Hexen enemies too (But I think in that case (DOOM:One) they just copied the enemy from the Hexen WAD into the DOOM PWAD as a new enemy) but I don't know what the actual limitations are. Hell, not a single official DOOM engine port had slopes back in the day, but modern source ports can implement them if you want.

 

[Shadow Hog]

ZDoom supports Doom maps in Hexen format, yes - although at this point you'd be better off using UDMF if you were gonna expand on the Boom format, since it does everything Hexen format does and then some.

 

[lazygecko]

Pretty sure GZDoom Builder allows for much more flexible and advanced scripting in some of the more advanced formats. I was just a bit perplexed that such seemingly simple things were not innately possible in the original engine, and they instead achieved their goals by basically creating Rube Goldberg machines in the level design.

 

[Shadow Hog]

If you think this is Rube Goldberging things, you clearly haven't seen Boom's voodoo doll scripting yet.

 

[daedalius]

You can also get them, with a few altered textures and a new Doom 2 episode, with Doom 3 BFG edition.

Of course I have that... on 360! damnit

 

[The Real Abed]

$10 or even $5 is nothing, guys. Just buy the game, extract the WAD and go to town.

 

[lazygecko]

I checked out the Visplane Explorer feature in GZDoom Builder. I don't know much at all about visplanes, but I guess it roughly means the amount of stuff that is being rendered onscreen by the engine. Since the values it shows are X/128, I'm guessing 128 is the vanilla limit?

There is just one little spot by the eastern window overlooking the central outdoor courtyard which shows up as red for me, with values going above 128. I was thinking about possibly optimizing this for the sake of consistency. I tried removing one of the window sectors on the other side where you can see part of the inside room, but that didn't seem to make much of a difference, so I'm unsure what the proper way of doing things is here.

I'm not even sure if it's worth bothering. If it's saved in Boom format, it's not going to run in anything that doesn't support it, right?

Also I'm getting better at creating stuff without a bunch of unwanted artifacts now. The best way of extending room layouts seem to be to draw the new sector, then select the sector it's connected to first, then the new one and merge them, so it will inherit the properties from the sector that was selected first. Makes work a lot easier in many situations.

 

[Shadow Hog]

If you're in Boom format, you're already targeting limit-removing source ports (of which Boom is one), so you should be okay ignoring that.

But yeah, the vanilla visplane limit is 128. What makes it go up is every time the renderer has to change how it's drawing the floor or ceiling. Changes in texture, lighting or elevation will cause it to require another visplane. This can be frustrating if you're trying to make anything detailed in a vanilla map; even something as basic as a checkerboard pattern of two separate textures (as opposed to one texture of a checkerboard pattern) is a guaranteed way to shoot way over the limit and crash the game.

 

[lazygecko]

Any way I can change the ingame map title to something other than the original "Hangar"?

 

[Shadow Hog]

Edit the CWILV[map number - 1] lump (eg: CWILV00 for MAP01), for intermission screens.

Do a DeHackEd file that changes the map name, for the automap.

Use a MAPINFO lump, for advanced source ports that can read it and thus auto-generate both of the above.

 

[lazygecko]

Which method is the most common and recommended for compatiblity?

MAPINFO doesn't seem to link to any actual tools.

 

[Shadow Hog]

MAPINFO is just a text-based lump in the WAD file. You'd use SLADE to whip one up.

For best compatibility with all Boom source ports, though, making a custom CWILV00 graphic and making a quick DEH file to handle the map name in the automap (WhackEd should prove useful there) is probably best. You can then supplement that with, say, ZMAPINFO for ZDoom-based ports (maybe rip the graphic it auto-generates for the intermission to use in CWILV00), although you don't haaaaave to.

Oh, fair warning with DeHackEd - your new map name string can only be about three characters longer than the old one before things break. I believe WhackEd will stop you before you go over the limit, but it's been a while since I've tried.

 

[lazygecko]

Just doing something as rudimentary as a map change was a lot more complicated than I thought. I see that a lot of non-megawad maps just skip the process as well. So I guess I won't bother with it this time.

Anyway, I guess the map is pretty much done at this point. Halfway through development I also started rewatching the Devs Play series with Romero commentating through Episode 1 so I could try and apply the same design principles. I tried to roughly replicate a couple of the more memorable "beats" from the first couple of maps. And since I primarily looked at the earlier levels I also kept the monster pool strictly to humans and imps. Chaingun and rocket launcher are available as secrets with variying degrees of difficulty finding.

I actually ended up stripping down some finer details and homogenized the texture distribution throughout the rooms to give it a more authentic vanilla feel. It was kinda tough to balance visually given that this is pretty much 3 vanilla levels in one (over 500 sectors, whereas most E1 maps are between 100-200 sectors). It's big but also fairly linear and only a little bit of backtracking, so a seasoned Doom player could probably blast through this in about 4-5 minutes I suppose.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/66640537/phobosfacility.zip

 

[The Real Abed]

I remember back in the day I would spend hours in WinDEU and WinTEX making my own levels. Creating my own textures in MS Paint. Converting MIDI files to MUS files. Those were the days.

 

[Shadow Hog]

Glad to hear you're at the point where you can release a public beta. Might want to make a thread in WADs and Mods on Doomworld, too - I know I've seen you there, and they'll have better gameplay feedback than I will.

 

[Frenden]

I want to work on a total graphic conversion. What's the best spriting resource for Doom y'all know about? I'm thinking Freedoom documentation might be a good place to start.

 

[Shadow Hog]

Whatever image editing tool you already are comfortable using, for sprite-making.

SLADE for inserting the sprites into a WAD. You can insert raw PNG files and then convert them to Doom Image Format from there (although A: you can leave them in PNG format if you're targeting ZDoom or a derivative thereof - in fact, with a little set up, SLADE can call PNG-optimizing software to shrink the filesizes - and B: if you're not targeting ZDoom/derivatives exclusively, it'll help to have them using the target game palette before inserting into a WAD, because SLADE's true-color-to-paletted conversion isn't the prettiest). After that, you can do all the sprite offset manipulation required to get things to not bounce around weirdly in-game.

That's about it?

 

[Frenden]

Whatever image editing tool you already are comfortable using, for sprite-making.

SLADE for inserting the sprites into a WAD. You can insert raw PNG files and then convert them to Doom Image Format from there (although A: you can leave them in PNG format if you're targeting ZDoom or a derivative thereof - in fact, with a little set up, SLADE can call PNG-optimizing software to shrink the filesizes - and B: if you're not targeting ZDoom/derivatives exclusively, it'll help to have them using the target game palette before inserting into a WAD, because SLADE's true-color-to-paletted conversion isn't the prettiest). After that, you can do all the sprite offset manipulation required to get things to not bounce around weirdly in-game.

That's about it?

Awesome, thank you.

 

[lazygecko]

The Golden Souls 2 trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JloLcZZUz9s

This is how you do a Doom/Mario crossover.

 

[Nerdkiller]

The Golden Souls 2 trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JloLcZZUz9s

This is how you do a Doom/Mario crossover.

Is that a midified version of American Idiot playing in the background?

 

[Skab]

it certainly is

 

[emptyroom]

Hello All,

been playing a lot of Doom 2 lately, bought the classic complete on steam. I find that it is awfully dark, and the picture is stretched considerably on my 1080 monitor.

What is the best source port that preserves original Doom, but is optimized well for my monitor.

Don't know if I want all the bells and whistles of something like Doomsday.

Also, would I be able to get my save files out of the Doom 2 steam folder into the source port??

Thanks for any help. Relatively new to this kind of tinkering.

 

[Rizzi]

Hello All,

been playing a lot of Doom 2 lately, bought the classic complete on steam. I find that it is awfully dark, and the picture is stretched considerably on my 1080 monitor.

What is the best source port that preserves original Doom, but is optimized well for my monitor.

Don't know if I want all the bells and whistles of something like Doomsday.

Also, would I be able to get my save files out of the Doom 2 steam folder into the source port??

Thanks for any help. Relatively new to this kind of tinkering.

Chocolate Doom if you want the most Doom experience. GZDoom or ZDoom are pretty good options otherwise.

 

[lazygecko]

I use GZDoom with widescreen resolutions, but with ugly texture filtering off and most of the fancy extra effects turned off. The most pronounced difference from the original is probably that the lighting/color handling is higher quality.

This is what it looks like in my GZDoom configuration:

And this is what it looks like in PrBoom+

 

[emptyroom]

Great! Thanks guys, think I'll checkout zdoom. I could barely find the blue door in the crusher because of how dark it is.

I was surprised at the condition of dosbox when I bought the collection. Had to edit doom2m file before the game would even run.

 

[The Real Abed]

Yeah, turn filtering off. Chunky pixels and low resolution textures are not meant to be blurred together. If you turn filtering on for DOOM but still use the original textures and sprites, it just looks muddy.

I've been experimenting with one of the other filters for textures only though (Not sprites or text) but I prefer normal chunky pixels.

Basically using filtering makes it look like an N64 game. Which is bad. Sorry, Nintendo, I love you, but you introduced the world to bilinear texture filtering too soon. Go look at the original DOOM 64 on an N64 and see how it's so blurry and muddy. But then play it on a source port like DOOM 64 EX and turn off the filtering and it's much better looking because it looks more like the original. It's like the N64 must not have had a way to even disable the filtering for anything.

 

[lazygecko]

The most jarring thing to me about the filtering is that while all graphics within the textures and sprites look muddy and blurry, the edges around them still look very sharp and jagged, which makes for a very uneven overall look. The higher the resolution, the worse it gets.

 

[emptyroom]

On turning off filtering. with something like zdoom will I have to edit config files or is there an an actual config window on launch or in game?

 

[lazygecko]

In regular ZDoom there is no filtering to begin with since it uses the original 2.5D rendering style (you can tell if you enable mouselook and shift the camera vertically). In GZDoom you go into the OpenGL options in the menu, then texture options and turn off filtering from there.

 

[Shadow Hog]

Just to be clear, ZDoom is a software-based renderer, kinda-sorta based on the original vanilla EXE's, while GZDoom is an OpenGL renderer that does a very good job of mimicking the vanilla EXE's quirks while adding some of the perks of hardware rendering, such as perspective correction (ie: you can look directly up instead of shearing a screen up/down) and true-color rendering (Pinkies won't turn tan in the distance in dark area).

Personally I prefer using GZDoom, since hardware-based rendering takes a lot of overhead off of the CPU; Reelism in ZDoom (or GZDoom when using its optional software renderer, which effectively just makes it ZDoom again) is almost unplayable.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

GZDoom is my preferred way to play. With Brutal Doom installed!

 

[Shadow Hog]

Just to be clear, I don't recommend using Brutal Doom if you're still new to the game. It's a gameplay modifier - something you use to spice a game up when it's gotten stale, not something you leap right into from the word "go".

Also don't recommend using it for your first time through custom mapsets as a result, for similar reasons.

 

[lazygecko]

I played through all of Bloodstain with Project Brutality (mod of Brutal Doom) which was insanely unfair but ultimately possible. With lots of quicksaving before each encounter on the later maps, the whole game took on this fast paced die-and-try-again Super Meat Boy/Hotline Miami dynamic and I kind of loved that.

The most prohibitive thing about running Brutal Doom (or any of its derivatives) with custom wads is that triggers from Cyberdemon/Spider Mastermind kills tend to glitch out. So you often need to cheat to get through some parts where some door won't open or something.

 

[emptyroom]

Thanks for all the info. I have tried brutal doom but I want to replay the originals before I dive too deep into.

I did try zdoom however enemies are idle and just walk in the same spot until you shoot at them or get near them. Strange.

 

[Shadow Hog]

Thanks for all the info. I have tried brutal doom but I want to replay the originals before I dive too deep into.

I did try zdoom however enemies are idle and just walk in the same spot until you shoot at them or get near them. Strange.

Not really that strange; that's the default idling behavior in vanilla Doom. Enemies won't react until they see you (IIRC their field of vision is roughly 180°) or hear you using a weapon (including swinging your fist silently, curiously, but not including having a chainsaw revved up albeit not in active use).

There's also "Ambush" enemies, which won't wake up if they hear you, only if they see you - but if they did hear you, their field of view is expanded to a full 360° around them, meaning they'll be able to see you from behind. It's a flag map makers can set on any monster they place in their maps; in gameplay, you're probably not going to notice the subtleties between the two most of the time, and once they've aggro'd to you, they're functionally identical.

 

[lazygecko]

The little details in Project Brutality never cease to surprise me. Like, a few weeks ago I discovered that if you sometimes perform melee finishers on Cyber Barons, you can reprogram them to fight on your side. And just now I saw that one of the rockets from my rocket launcher rammed an imp all the way to a wall before it exploded, True Lies style.

 

[emptyroom]

Not really that strange; that's the default idling behavior in vanilla Doom. Enemies won't react until they see you (IIRC their field of vision is roughly 180°) or hear you using a weapon (including swinging your fist silently, curiously, but not including having a chainsaw revved up albeit not in active use).

There's also "Ambush" enemies, which won't wake up if they hear you, only if they see you - but if they did hear you, their field of view is expanded to a full 360° around them, meaning they'll be able to see you from behind. It's a flag map makers can set on any monster they place in their maps; in gameplay, you're probably not going to notice the subtleties between the two most of the time, and once they've aggro'd to you, they're functionally identical.

i don't know why I didn't notice this before. Well, this is embarrassing.

 

[Refyref]

The source port I use by default is Zandronum, which is a G/ZDoom fork that adds advanced multiplayer functionality and netcode. It used to be called Skulltag, but changes/drama happened.

 

[luka]

And this is what it looks like in PrBoom+

i have no idea why PrBoom+'s default gamma is so damned high and it really messes with people's first impression. it's actually my favorite port because i find it to be the most accurate outside of chocolate and doesn't have some of the minor things that annoy me about zdoom (like that obnoxious secret message you can't turn off). it's as 'pure' as you can get while still having access the the vast majority of wads out there. remember to hit f11 a few times to put the gamma back to an acceptable level

specifically, i use glboom+ running with gl surface in software mode. none of the gl ports, gzdoom and glboom included, seem to do the diminishing ambient light correctly - even in your gzdoom shot the lighting just looks too flat and uniform. the brightness of the farthest wall seems the same as the floor directly in front of you.

 

[Shadow Hog]

ZDoom updated proper, finally. No more people coming in, asking why every mod under the sun these days throws errors, and being pointed toward DRDTeam's SVN builds; all those features are now in the stable build.

You'll have to wait a little bit for GZDoom to update proper too, but Graf said it'll probably be in the morning. EDIT: Aight, here that is. Use 1.9.0 if your graphics card is so ancient it doesn't support OpenGL 3.0; get 2.1.0 otherwise.

 

[Frenden]

Man, I'd kill for a mainstream Doom Maker (ala Mario Maker) with democratized level editing tools and social level sharing.

 

[Shadow Hog]

Honestly, editing levels using GZDoomBuilder (which, despite the name, works fine for all sorts of maps, including vanilla) and distributing them on /idgames, as we already have, is plenty comparable.

Also quoting for new (50ppp) page, ICYMI:

ZDoom updated proper, finally. No more people coming in, asking why every mod under the sun these days throws errors, and being pointed toward DRDTeam's SVN builds; all those features are now in the stable build.

You'll have to wait a little bit for GZDoom to update proper too, but Graf said it'll probably be in the morning. EDIT: Aight, here that is. Use 1.9.0 if your graphics card is so ancient it doesn't support OpenGL 3.0; get 2.1.0 otherwise.

 

[lazygecko]

Man, I'd kill for a mainstream Doom Maker (ala Mario Maker) with democratized level editing tools and social level sharing.

There isn't really such a wide gap between players and map creators. I went from knowing absolutely nothing to finishing a fully featured map within the course of a week.

 

[Frenden]

Fair enough. But the editing isn't the problem, it's the social sharing and mainstream audience push that would change things.

Imagine every console and PC player creating, uploading, and editing maps. Mario Maker is just a nice package for the crazy Mario levels folks have been rom hacking for ages, but it opened up the experience, and greatly expanded the audience, to tons of folks.

It could be awesome.

 

[Ixion]

Fair enough. But the editing isn't the problem, it's the social sharing and mainstream audience push that would change things.

Imagine every console and PC player creating, uploading, and editing maps. Mario Maker is just a nice package for the crazy Mario levels folks have been rom hacking for ages, but it opened up the experience, and greatly expanded the audience, to tons of folks.

It could be awesome.

SnapMap is exactly what you're describing, but obviously it's for the new DOOM and it won't allow for complete customizability.

 

[Frenden]

Yeah. I'm aware. It looks neat--I'd much rather have a similar system for Doom "Classic" as it were.

 

[Refyref]

What you're describing is basically a viewer for the idGames archive that you can launch the game directly from. Basically, something that already exists, just easier to use.
Of course, you can always use wadseeker if you know the name of the files of the mod you want. It's usually tied to server browsers for a reason, though.