march 11 , 2010
start map is finished. i was organizing all of the wads that i have, then i remembered one map i started [but obviously never finished] for the zdoom random map pack. i think it was released last year or in 2008 [edit - here it is]. i never told the dudes i wanted to do a level because, knowing me, i knew i wasn't going to finish it, and i didn't :)
i only made a very small thing. i thought it would be nice to turn it into a start map. i wasn't going to do one, since now zdoom has a new mapinfo format that lets you have different skills and different parameters for each skill, and doing that is obviously much easier than having a whole new map as a start map, but because it was just so damn easy to turn it into a start map i thought why not. screenshots below. also, check out the new status bar. still needs some small tweaking, but its pretty much done :)
so far this [and e0m1.wad, which i'll write about later] are the most "zdoom" levels i have so far. i shall turn pmap4z and valley into zdoom levels once i am finished with the gameplay on them. detail is not something i am worried about right now, and its much easier to do it afterwards, but wont go crazy with detail either.
i also managed to do the song for this level. ambient music is very easy to do, and i think it fits very well too.
march 2, 2010
note: pagebreeze [the freeware html editor i was using] corrupted the old updates. when i opened this page, i got nothing but a bunch of □□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□ and instead of downloading the original file from kotogoto site, or copying the text and pasting it from firefox [it looked normal in there], i uploaded this page without thinking so those are gone. but whatever, below a small explanation of whats happening in case you didnt read the old updates:
i have a bunch of unfinished doom maps. these need some work, but they are pretty much finished. some are very messy, others are near complete, and a small number are finished, but lack gamepaly. i originally wanted this to be boom only maps, but said fuck it and went with zdoom only.
maps will be put together in a random order, no theme progession like most episodes. and unlike pablo maps from the past, i will try very hard to turn these into real levels.
i feel like mapping fever will stay for a while, mostly because whenever i play diablo [or torchlight, or arcanum, fallout1/2] i really get inspired. and because i have been wanting to finish these maps for a while now. specially diablo1/2. i really think they are pretty much doom with experience points. sure they look diferent, but how does this not say doom to you?
but anyway, since they will be for zdoom, i wont go crazy with detail or scripting madness. crazy detail is nice, and if done right is just amazing, but i get bored. they will be simple and good looking, at least thats what i hope. and enough of this.
pmap4 progress - this level started as a e2m1 themed map, then i glued another map, which was a red cave gstone themed map, and it slowly grew and grew. i decided to send it to this project, but i'm still not happy with it so i keep editing it and editing. the boom version will be for the community project, but a zdoom version thats much bigger [and i'm sure its going to end up being very different too] for the unfinished maps thing i am doing now.
so it seems i'll never end up with a version of this map that makes me happy. i re-made the start area, and its pretty neat but its not working for me? i also re-designed some rooms to make it all seem more connected to each other, added windows here and there so the player can see other areas, and in some parts, you can explore some of the caves and you'll get a reward [some armor bonus, shells, ect]. the layout is not really the prolem though. i really dont know what is. maybe i'm just obsessed and just want to add more and more, kinda like that big wood5 zdoom map from a few years ago [e0m1 if you remember].
lets see if this makes any sense. what i want to do is to have the e2m1 area on its own, hopefully on the center of the map. this way the cave and the gstone parts are surrounding it, so the player will teleport [at the begining of the map] to the gstone parts, then go back to the e2m1 area through a stair or something. think of an arrow with the tip broken pointing down, inside a circle. the arrow is the e2m1 area, the circle is the cave/gstone parts.
played this map co-op with my brother and its fun, but because its a bit big, dying and having to start from the beginning gets boring. recorded a demo to later take screenshots, but because i edited the map afterwards, the demo is all messed up now. but instead, look at the funky new bigdoor1! ok so its not that big of a change... but the status bar is looking different [still working on it btw, decided to replicate this hud] :)
valley.wad - this map was born from pmap4. i had made an exit area that would take the playre to the surface [because pmap4 is a big cave map] and because that level is too big already, i decided to take that big chunk and make a map on its own. while valley is not as big as pmap4, its getting there.
but so far i am quite happy with this map. i havent converted it to zdoom yet, but it should be easy since everything is pretty straight forward. its simple scripting [like have one switch to make monsters appear, open a door, make a bridge and such]. and then its more detail because a lot of areas are pretty empty and its done. oh yeah, gameplay too :)
one thing i cant wait to work is a section of the map thats only puzzles & traps instead of enemies. i think with zdoom i could turn this into a much more fun part, rather than just crushers and jumping to next area, press switch and so on, though it might just end up being crushers with my crappy imagination :)
then there is a brick5 level, which is very brown. i already have two wood5 maps [they might end up being one in the end, but who knows], so another brown map seems kinda lame. but i am not creative with textures. i do want to change the look of that map, then again, its such a pain to do so when you already have so much done and you are used to seeing the structures with that texture. tried taking screenshots, but they all make the map look boring. in-game though, its pretty neat [i hope].
then there's the music. i dont know what to do with it. use the original doom soundtrack? i wrote a song for pmap4, but the sound is too, i dont want to say new, but the thing is the quality is too good compared to midis and i dont think it fits on doom. then i thought about writting the music on a tracker, but i havent used those in a while. i tried to get into them last year, but i only got one song made and nothing else. and now i forgot the stuff again :D
i could write midis, but i cant do them for some reason. .xm files on the other hand, one can have different "parts" on them and with the awesomeness of scripting, use those specific sections on certain parts of the map, so its not just the same thing all the time. just like in unreal.
and before i go away, i played some of my old maps [pdsp15, pd-evil, pd-lost, evlp, whouse] and man, those are pretty neat maps. these maps pretty much all had the same floor height. some of these maps had some funky things in them, but none are any good i think. i will try to do a new map with that same theme.
p.s - there are and will be [always] many spelling and gramatical errors.