Vanilla Doom Actions tutorial map

[kid marscat]

hey guys! I made a vanilla Doom II tutorial map that features all linedef and sector actions, separated by function (doors, floors, ceilings, crushers, etc.) and type (walk over, switch, gunfire, etc.), mostly to serve as reference for new mappers trying to work within the limitations of vanilla Doom II.

 

more info, screenshots and download here: https://kidmarscat.itch.io/vandacts
 

i'm not entirely sure if this has been done before, but since I couldn't find anything online like it, I decided to go ahead and make it. i'd really love to get some feedback on its usability, so that it can actually be helpful to mappers. it's of course recommended to look at it on a Doom editor first to see how these actions are laid out and implemented. otherwise, i hope it's useful!

 

Current Version: 1.1 – Added action numbers to the right of each room outside the gameplay boundaries. An automap pick-up is available at the start of the map so that this information is readily available from the start.

Edited January 16, 2020 by kid marscat
Updated map (1.1)

[Kappes Buur]

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/themes/TeamTNT/boom/boomedit

[kid marscat]

9 minutes ago, Kappes Buur said:

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/themes/TeamTNT/boom/boomedit

 

yeah, it's kinda like that (and it was partially inspired by that, and Duke Nukem 3D's _SE and _ST maps), but exclusively showing vanilla Doom II actions, and in a format that is less exploratory and more functionally structured.

Edited January 15, 2020 by kid marscat
fixed linguistical ambiguity

[P41R47]

Do you added the recently found mikoportals?
If not, check this out:

I'm quite interested in your wad, specialy as a resource wad for ideas and tricks as i really like the vanilla modding.

[kid marscat]

1 minute ago, P41R47 said:

Do you added the recently found mikoportals?
If not, check this out:

I'm quite interested in your wad, specialy as a resource wad for ideas and tricks as i really like the vanilla modding.

 

I considered adding a section with those kinda "extended Doom engine tricks", but decided against it as there are better resources for that sort of thing available in the wiki and elsewhere, which also have the benefit of contextualizing those tricks beyond what's possible to explain only using lines and sectors in a general purpose tutorial map. More importantly, in my experience as someone who just started making maps, it's been easier for me to find guides on how to pull off extended tricks than basic Doom engine stuff. Things like "what kind of linedef actions are triggered by monsters", "what crusher actions result in barrels turning into piles of guts" or just implementing simple things like stairs or a donut action seem to be less documented than those tricks as they're not as interesting to talk about.

[P41R47]

4 minutes ago, kid marscat said:

 

I considered adding a section with those kinda "extended Doom engine tricks", but decided against it as there are better resources for that sort of thing available in the wiki and elsewhere, which also have the benefit of contextualizing those tricks beyond what's possible to explain only using lines and sectors in a general purpose tutorial map. More importantly, in my experience as someone who just started making maps, it's been easier for me to find guides on how to pull off extended tricks than basic Doom engine stuff. Things like "what kind of linedef actions are triggered by monsters", "what crusher actions result in barrels turning into piles of guts" or just implementing simple things like stairs or a donut action seem to be less documented than those tricks as they're not as interesting to talk about.

 

Anyway, a good vanilla maping actions like this is something starters really need, so i think its really good that you take your time to made it. Thanks!
But a section showing the neat tricks that could be achieved in vanilla engine surely will be revealing and mindblowing for some, as they really are excellent ways to exploit the original engine to do different things, and might inspire them to use them and even, enhance them further.

[Linguica]

Good work, I always like to see new tutorial stuff.

[kid marscat]

8 minutes ago, P41R47 said:

 

Anyway, a good vanilla maping actions like this is something starters really need, so i think its really good that you take your time to made it. Thanks!
But a section showing the neat tricks that could be achieved in vanilla engine surely will be revealing and mindblowing for some, as they really are excellent ways to exploit the original engine to do different things, and might inspire them to use them and even, enhance them further.

 

Thank you for appreciating it! It'd be interesting and useful to have a separate tutorial available for mappers that shows all the extended engine tricks in one map. I might try my hand at it if I don't see anyone do it in the upcoming months, but right now I'd rather focus on bugfixing and improving the existing map, and also go back to my regular gameplay-based Doom mapping. In a way, I only really made this map as a sort of personal cheat sheet for making the latter :P

[VanaheimRanger]

25 minutes ago, kid marscat said:

"what crusher actions result in barrels turning into piles of guts"

I have been looking for an answer to this.  Will your map explain?  I want to do a barrel chain that kills a full room of enemies at the beginning of a map for viles to revive later on.

[kid marscat]

Just now, guitardz said:

I have been looking for an answer to this.  Will your map explain?  I want to do a barrel chain that kills a full room of enemies at the beginning of a map for viles to revive later on.

Well, if you play the map and visit the Crushers section, all the crushers have barrels in them that show the result of activating that particular linedef, and then it's only a matter of finding that particular linedef in the map using an editor, and there's your answer.

 

(My only regret is not being able to put the number itself in the map without adding additional textures or making it non-vanilla compatible. I'm open to ideas on how to do this — I consider it the main issue with the map so far.)

[VanaheimRanger]

5 minutes ago, kid marscat said:

Well, if you play the map and visit the Crushers section, all the crushers have barrels in them that show the result of activating that particular linedef, and then it's only a matter of finding that particular linedef in the map using an editor, and there's your answer.

 

(My only regret is not being able to put the number itself in the map without adding additional textures or making it non-vanilla compatible. I'm open to ideas on how to do this — I consider it the main issue with the map so far.)

Nice, I am going to check this out tonight.  Maybe I'll learn some other things as well :)

[Alper002]

13 hours ago, kid marscat said:

(My only regret is not being able to put the number itself in the map without adding additional textures or making it non-vanilla compatible. I'm open to ideas on how to do this — I consider it the main issue with the map so far.)

Why not just put the numbers in front of the switches by way of sectors? Raising them slightly so they're clearly readable on the automap would be nice as well.

You might have to be wary about visplanes though..?

[kid marscat]

5 minutes ago, Alper002 said:

Why not just put the numbers in front of the switches by way of sectors? Raising them slightly so they're clearly readable on the automap would be nice as well.

You might have to be wary about visplanes though..?

 

Well, that's what I meant in the itch.io page by "visplane limitations" not allowing me to do exactly that. Even with the sectors being not raised, the visplane count goes to the roof just doing one corridor of the map. It has to be something simpler and less taxing to implement.

[Scypek2]

It would be fine as long as you made sure they can't be viewed simultaneously! From the screenshots, it seems that all the tiny crates can be seen at once. No wonder that raises the visplanes! If you made those nooks with actions a bit deeper to entirely hide their contents from further away, this could solve all visplane issues.

 

You could also choose to only display the numbers on the automap and not in regular view, by making them out of sectors outside the reachable area and giving them the "always visible" flag. That would generate no visplanes.

[kid marscat]

11 minutes ago, Scypek2 said:

It would be fine as long as you made sure they can't be viewed simultaneously! From the screenshots, it seems that all the tiny crates can be seen at once. No wonder that raises the visplanes! If you made those nooks with actions a bit deeper to entirely hide their contents from further away, this could solve all visplane issues.

 

You could also choose to only display the numbers on the automap and not in regular view, by making them out of sectors outside the reachable area and giving them the "always visible" flag. That would generate no visplanes.

 

The tiny boxes raise the visplane count by a trivial amount compared to the sector-based text. Case in point:

 

 

I can assure you the "in sector" approach doesn't work because I already tried it and it crashed no matter what I tried.

 

Really like the "out of sector" idea so I might try that instead. Probably give the player an automap too, if I didn't already. Will see about that today.

Edited January 16, 2020 by kid marscat
forgot to add comment, also tweaked

[kid marscat]

Updated the first post as I've completed implementing the out of sector action number info!

[Redneckerz]

Update:
I noticed the OP tried to upload the map to /idgames but ran into issues. I came by this a few days ago when checking out stuff on itch.io.

 

Recognizing the file name from earlier uploads, i decided to contact MarsCat and offer to put the map up on /idgames.

 

MarsCat was pleased with the offer, and the rest is, as they call it, history. Vanilla Doom Actions is now on /idgames.

 

Now go check out these linedefs!