Yuegong - Moon Palace (abandoned map)

[elend]

Yuegong was supposed to be an asian (chinese centered) scifi map using Doom³ textures as well as a lot of custom decorate and texture modifications. Unfortunately I lost all drive to continue this around 2020 and haven't mapped at all since. Now I really don't feel I can ever bring up the energy to continue this project, even though it was a lot of fun back then. But I quickly realized that this will likely take a year or more of effort. I don't want to spend this time infront of the computer anymore. I am currently back to my original hobby of scale modelling (scifi ships, not stupid tanks or WW2 planes) and will likely "come back to Doom" via this path.

Why this thread then? When checking out this year's Cacowards I got reminded of my abandoned map and checked it out again. I already put a lot of effort into it and it feels kind of weird leaving it at that. I want to at least show some more screenshots to "just get it out of my system". A screenshot dump to get closure, so to speak. I was even thinking about uploading it and let other people have at it. If there is interest, I can definitely do that. Regarding the custom decorate: A lot of it I posted in the Doomworld Decorate thread already, but I think there are some things I haven't posted yet. I also did a lot of Doom 3 texture modifications like a ton of new and animated screens, some more bright maps, etc. If there's interest, I can dump this somewhere.

Well, this is how it currently looks. It's about 50 % rough construction finished I would say. No items, no functioning lifts, no monsters, nothing.

 

 

Spoiler

 

My "shipping container" maze. A very small one, albeit with jumping and clever placement of little crates you can actually get around quite nicely. Some doors are open I think and items would have been inside. "TCM" is the mining corporation's name and is featured not only on the containers, but on doors and singage as well. The container crane was a bitch to do and features quite some 3D floors, I think. Oh god, I can't even fathom getting back into this.

 

Chinese style entrance gate with a pond infront and mountains in the back (good feng shui)! Lanterns are custom decorate as are the lotus lilies. Pond is a 3D floor powered actually deep one where hidden items would have been. I guess. God, I love Doom 3 textures.

 

Custom Dragon mural texture, as well as modded Doom 3 (I think?) concrete textures for the pillars of the bridge. Looked fairly chinese / asian style with which I was quite pleased, lol.

 

Office building waiting area with unnecessary 3D floor usage for table and lamps. Custom chinese brands on the Doom 3 vending machine. The red things around the door on the left are chunlian (red couplets) which Chinese use to greet the new year and bestow wealth and health upon the household.

 

Totally forgot I made this Guanyu statue, lol. Lot of chinese offices or businesses have these kinds of statues for good luck and protection. It's a custom decorate with 8 rotations even. The little fence around it is custom as well.

 

Neat office area with a custom Shufa (chinese calligraphy) artwork wishing - again - wealth upon the business, lol. The guy seems to be playing mostly solitaire, though. The plants are custom as well, not sure if I posted them here. I think the book shelves were also custom. Notice the little figurine of the lion ontop of the screen. It can be shot.

 

Welcome to the office cubicle octicle of hell, where the head of department sits literally on elevated cubicles to watch you, hah. Notice the little Doom poster on the lower right.

 

Another office desk with a little custom mug I made (can be shot) as well as those asian style dividers, which are just midtextures. I noticed a lot of "japanese" style WADs creeping up recently, so if anyone needs this kind of midtexture, just tell me.

 

Board meeting room with custom chairs (which I posted here already), asian styled lamps and a moon gate style entrance. One of my favourite areas.

 

A pagoda made out of midtextures and 3D floors. Took me a shit ton of time and doesn't even look *that* great. But in the end I was still pretty pleased.

 

The ceramic pots are destructable and I think I have posted them here already. Octagonal window is also pretty asian style.

 

Chinese oldschool furniture (which wouldn't make much sense to bring to Titan, where this is all taking place, but hey it's the future who the heck cares.

 

We are now entering the server maze behind the office cubicle room from hell. Those are the original Doom3 screens I think. I don't even remember if I had to make brightmaps for those, but I think I did. Cables are also custom decorate aka midtextures. I think I posted them here already.

 

Absolutely chuffed with those cables in the corner. Notice how they continue on the ground. They are yellow (red on the other side) and would have been hints for a puzzle or switch sequence, if I would have actually been able to pull something like this of.

 

The server maze. Absolutely love Doom3's server textures and made around 5 new ones to have more variety. They are even animated with animated brightmaps, looks absolutely hilarious in motion.

 

A possible switch sequence thing.

 

Another view of the office room. Notice the "printer" in the lower left, lol. Company flags are custom decorate as are the Norton Commander screens. They are animated even. The original idea was also to have destructible glass ontop of those cubicle walls, but that turned out to be too much work and wouldn't even have had a gameplay benefit. The original gameplay idea was a cubicle maze, but then I quickly realized that you can basically jump over all of them and anihilate any potential imps hiding in there, so that was a bit of a fail design. It could work great in vanilla doom without jumping, though.

 

Another custom mural, I just love this shit. Even has a bright map, I think, to give it a more 3D-ish looks.

 

This is the waiting area inside the medical building actually. On the left just some random ass geometry made a bit interesting with a window to look through. There's also a feng shui thought behind it, whereas the "bad energy" of the medical area (directly behind the wall on the left) can "flow out" through that octagonal window.

 

That's a planned locker room maze. Even with jumping these worked pretty well actually, since they are pretty tall. There are only 2 places in the room, where you can jump on top of the lockers and since the ceiling lamps are 3D floors, you can even walk and jump around on those. Would have been a pretty fun little room to explore I think. I should have made it a little bit bigger, though. The locker textures are Doom3, with a lot of modifications to give it visual variety. You can see stickers here, rust there and the ocassional warped locker door.

 

Ominous entrance to the shower area. Those tile textures are modified Doom3 tiles. Absolutely love these. xD

 

Tried to get a bit creative with those square tile textures provided by Doom3. Made some custom blue ones as well and if you look carefully, you can see the TCM company logo as tiles on the floor, lol. The rubber duck on the left is custom decorate as well. You cannot shoot it. Unfortunately it also doesn't make a sound. The "wet floor" sign is custom as well, iirc. If you bump into it, it slides around.

 

Actual shower area, where some imps could have hidden in, but in the end if you think about it... what's really possible here. It's a long corridor with two or three revenant ambushes. And there is so much space going around here, that you could have avoided them easily. This is my biggest problem: Scale and gameplay. I usually build everything too huge because "I wanna be epic!" but what ends up happening is, that everybody just circle strafes every monster, haha.

 

When a mancubi goes to the toilet. also custom SQUAT TOILET textures. If anyone needs these, just tell me.

 

A look from above the locker maze.

 

The MRI in the medical building. Using a lot of those angled floor thingies, I don't even remember how these are called, geez. There are pools of water (for cooling) in the corners and items would have been hidden inside, haha. Other than that it's a pretty useless area?!

 

The sickbay area with a large window that goes into the lower floor. The IV drops are custom decorate as are the curtains btw. Nice circular room where the original plan was to unleash some Cacos through the ceiling, but since there is a glass barrier they wouldn't have done anything to you. So you either leave them there or shoot through the glass and attack. I don't know man, I think the Caco's energy balls went through the glass without destroying it, lol. Was quite a problem and I didn't know what to do.

 

The main surgery room. Poor zombie's surgery was not successful and the doctors just forgot him there.

 

A little corner of pharmacy in the medical building. I made some custom pill lockers, hah. Looks a bit funny.

 

The research area (to research on things?! I don't know, man) with custom decorate. Went a bit wild with 3D floors to make it look hecka cool and totally forgot about gameplay and actually moving around in that place. It's basically just a huge circle, with a little blue sphere hiding in the middle, which you could access via a remote switch I think.

 

The rehabilitation area with custom wheelchair decorate and nice red beds. God I love Doom3's textures.

 

More beds in a huge room. Looks cool but gameplay wise it's just a huge box. What are you supposed to do here apart from unleashing a lot of monsters. Even then, you are most likely to get stuck on the beds or shit and be frustrated. The screens with the pulse animation are custom as well, iirc.

 

A littleoasis of relaxation, lol.

 

Another custom mural.

 

A bridge with a track on top that leads directly to the medical building. I think it was meant for emergencies, but oh well.. Pretty useless area at the moment.

 

A better view of the crane and containers.

 

 

 

Edited December 11, 2022 by elend

[elend]

Sorry, was updating some more screenshots in the spoilers. Now featuring the medical area!

[Berubaretto]

Welcome back! Haven't see you for a long time. Looking forward to the further progress of this map!

[Horus]

Based on the screenshots you’ve shown so far, which look incredible, I would say there would be value in releasing this as a walking sim map, like Simpletonium’s release last year:

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/125748-the-library-udmf-atmospheric-map/
Not all Doom maps need to have monsters to be interesting.

 

[elend]

Oh damn, a walking sim map? That does sound pretty interesting. Hmmm...

[esselfortium]

This looks so good. I still hope it can be finished someday, but thank you for sharing it like this, too. It would have been terrible if this had never been released in any form.

[AndroidFerret]

1 hour ago, Horus said:

Based on the screenshots you’ve shown so far, which look incredible, I would say there would be value in releasing this as a walking sim map, like Simpletonium’s release last year:

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/125748-the-library-udmf-atmospheric-map/
Not all Doom maps need to have monsters to be interesting.

 

 

Thats definitely a good idea . especially since mods like DCS can bring enemies even in maps which don't have those 

[taufan99]

I'd be interested in seeing you revisit this map someday. I have some fascination towards East Asian-themed maps like this.

[thestarrover]

The screenshots are wonderful! Absolutely a great work. I hope you finish these maps.

[RonnieJamesDiner]

Oh man, I remember seeing you post screenshots of this in discord years ago. It looked gorgeous then and it still looks incredible now! Thanks for sharing this elend, even if you never quite find the time/passion to revisit the map. Would've been a big shame for this to just disappear.

[Thelokk]

Nah, really, @elend, finish this. I don't care if I'm being pushy, and a-hole or a nuisance.

 

Finish this. Please.

[RastaManGames]

@elend, my dear Doomer-comrade!

These screenshots looks very astonishing & fascinating!

Please, don't abandon this project! Finish it!
For that kind of quality I can wait as long as you need to make it playable.

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

This is definitely one of the I-can't-believe-it's-Doom-engine moment. Looks amazing. Hope it'll get finished and released in one form or another.

[Dexiaz]

Looks awesome. It's sad that you've lost interest in finishing this.

[TheCyberDruid]

Amazing visuals! Even if you don't finish it please release it as a walking sim map like Horus suggested.

[elend]

Haha thanks guys. The tip with making it a walking map is not bad actually, but then I am still worried about interesting things to discover, etc. You would want to have at least some puzzles in there I think.

[Endless]

Been a while since I last saw you! Good to see you're still working on Doom, elend. This map looks incredible, and it'd be great to see it finished one day.

[holaareola]

Awesome stuff. The intricate little touches and painstaking texturing give it a sense of place that seems to me quite unusual in the Doom world.

 

- Light fitting design game is top drawer!

- The research area design is astoundingly good to my eyes. Those beams are so chunky I can feel the weight only looking at them.

- Outdoor stuff a bit flat visually (will always be a problem with large areas in GZDoom until lightmaps I guess) but the design itself is cool with the intriguing and unusual mix of sci-fi / traditional East Asian architectural elements.

- The plant sprites and your new textures look great. You mention having posted some of the assets, any chance you'd bundle them together?

- The little dispensary cubby textures are amazing.

 

Would never argue against anyone spending less time at a computer, but hope you find the balance and that this or parts of it find its way to us in the future!

Edited December 11, 2022 by holaareola

[Not Jabba]

57 minutes ago, elend said:

Haha thanks guys. The tip with making it a walking map is not bad actually, but then I am still worried about interesting things to discover, etc. You would want to have at least some puzzles in there I think.

The vibe I'm getting from those screenshots is horror. Like, mostly walking simulator with exploration and environmental problem solving and you have no guns, but also there are a handful of really terrifying monster encounters that you're not equipped to deal with unless you find the few caches of usable combat equipment.

[StalkerBlade]

Personally, I think releasing the map as an explorative interactive art piece would be a great way to release it. That way you wouldn’t need to worry about any major gameplay features and would be able to work at your own pace on visuals or sound design.

 

That’s probably the best crane I’ve ever seen in Doom. Your scale modeling interest shows in it lol. I tend to associate model making and Doom mapping together because making a map is kinda like making a big interactive diorama.

[fai1025]

Huh, maybe I should make some map with Chinese word on it

[Uncle 80]

I'll give you an Uncle award just for the screenshots alone, and hope you find the time, will and strength to finish this some glorious day. As I've said in earlier threads featuring teaser shots of this project; I just love the "far east" theme

^{(I also have an episode in the works with, among other themes, three "far east" themed maps - although I work with strictly vanilla and almost entirely stock textures)}

[Lizardcommando]

This looks really neat. It would be a shame if this map never got released. I like StalkerBlade's suggestion of making this an exploratory map.

[sandwedge]

Wow looks amazing, even if you're not feeling like finishing it (which is totally understandable) I agree it would be nice just to walk around in it.  Great work!

[LVENdead]

This is fucking sick. I hope one day I will get to play it.

[Wyrmwood]

Another vote for just release as walking sim, this is far too pretty to just be thrown away. I totally understand if you want to focus on other hobbies but you've quite obviously invested a lot of time on this and it would real shame if it was wasted. I'd love to walk around your beautiful map.

Edited December 11, 2022 by Wyrmwood

[baja blast rd.]

This is spectacular. If it needs gameplay work, I'd be happy to be on board -- whether it's light, ambient gameplay or something louder and denser. 

[knifeworld]

These shots look incredible! I'm getting heavy Deus Ex 1 and DXHR vibes from some of them, Quake 2 from others, some UT99 too, and Doom 3 of course.

If you ever decide to revisit this and turn it into a puzzle/exploration for a full release I'd absolutely play it.

 

[SiMpLeToNiUm]

Elend!! Good to see you again buddy! Holy. crap. I had seen a few screenies of this behemoth before but I don't think I quite got the picture of just how huge and gorgeous it had become! Whatever you choose to do with it, I'm just happy we got to see the results of what you had put into it! I too upvote the idea for a walking sim map (as I have a clear bias for them). It's detailed enough to be concept pieces for a real facility's architecture portfolio if you ask me ;p Would be sick just to take a stroll through these areas.

[Daytime Waitress]

Well unabandon it, mister!

 

I'm gonna add to the clamour for it to be released as is, as a walking sim.

 

And even humbly suggest that you let folks have at it once it's out: anyone who thinks they're up to the task can attempt to finish it in their own vision. Less a decentralised community project, more a communal resource. Could become a body of work that gets added to over the course of years. Could be an intense workload for some folks to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary. Some will emphasise puzzle elements, others might turn it into a slaughter playground

Spoiler

I hope you didn't click this expecting a crappy hundred flowers reference.

 

Or sit on it if/until you feel ready to come back to it, because it's still yours.

 

But whatever you do, know that your screenshots alone have made a lot of people happy.

 

Take that with you whatever you do next, OP.