Sunder - Map20 Appears, finally.

[notgull]

Gazebo, by any chance do you have a Patreon, or a Ko-Fi, or some way else to receive money? I genuinely want to pay you for this, since I've had more fun with this mapset than I have with most games I pay $60 for.

[Katamori]

2 hours ago, notgull said:

Gazebo, by any chance do you have a Patreon, or a Ko-Fi, or some way else to receive money? I genuinely want to pay you for this, since I've had more fun with this mapset than I have with most games I pay $60 for.

 

Seconded! Having crowdfunding access for mappers (other than Twitch subs) should be normalized more.

[Insane_Gazebo]

On 2/8/2022 at 10:25 AM, notgull said:

Gazebo, by any chance do you have a Patreon, or a Ko-Fi, or some way else to receive money? I genuinely want to pay you for this, since I've had more fun with this mapset than I have with most games I pay $60 for.

 

I do not have anything like that setup, but I'll look into it if people are feeling generous. :)

Also, I've begun streaming mapping again! I don't have any sort of schedule worked out, but do I have a fair bit of free time right now so hopefully I'll be on fairly often. You can catch me here:

 https://www.twitch.tv/insane_gazebo
 

[Thelokk]

56 minutes ago, Insane_Gazebo said:

 

I do not have anything like that setup, but I'll look into it if people are feeling generous. :)

Also, I've begun streaming mapping again! I don't have any sort of schedule worked out, but do I have a fair bit of free time right now so hopefully I'll be on fairly often. You can catch me here:

 https://www.twitch.tv/insane_gazebo
 

 Looking good, did you create those flesh textures from scratch? 

[Insane_Gazebo]

1 hour ago, Thelokk said:

 Looking good, did you create those flesh textures from scratch? 

I did not, no. They were created by the lovely Makkon who has done a heap of gorgeous textures for Quake. (I also used a good number of them in Map20.)
(The flesh textures did require some palette conversion.)

You can grab them from his twitter/google drive here:
 

 

[Gez]

On lundi 7 février 2022 at 11:24 PM, Yasha said:

One other thing...Sunder is planned as a 32 map megawad, but according to IG a lot of the later current maps are hitting the limits of his editor. So I wonder if maps 21-30 will be about the same size as 15-20 currently, or if he'll be able to make bigger ones somehow (a new editor, etc.). I tremble in fear of what a Sunder Map29 will look like if he isn't constrained by line/thing limits... (I assume 30 will be a relatively-small boss map, but if it's more along the lines of God Machine from Sunlust or Fire and Ice from Scythe...good god)

The thing is, it's not so much the editor that limits how big you go, it's the map format. With 16-bit values to store vertex, sector, sidedef, etc. indices, you can't go over 65535.

 

So to make bigger maps than what the Doom format allows, you need to move to UDMF. Up to now UDMF has mostly been used for the advanced features offered by the ZDoom or Eternity namespaces; but there's a Doom namespace that doesn't really contain anything that's not available in Boom/MBF. It's just that it fully removes the map format limits.

[Yasha]

On 2/10/2022 at 8:34 AM, Gez said:

The thing is, it's not so much the editor that limits how big you go, it's the map format. With 16-bit values to store vertex, sector, sidedef, etc. indices, you can't go over 65535.

 

So to make bigger maps than what the Doom format allows, you need to move to UDMF. Up to now UDMF has mostly been used for the advanced features offered by the ZDoom or Eternity namespaces; but there's a Doom namespace that doesn't really contain anything that's not available in Boom/MBF. It's just that it fully removes the map format limits.

Hm, that's interesting. If he stays with Boom, then I guess the maps can't get much bigger than 15-20 currently are, then? I mean, those maps are already larger than even most difficult WADs penultimate/ultimate maps are, so that's fine, but I kinda do wanna see some 20K-monster magnum opus that takes a literal day to UV-max at the end of this WAD one day XD

 

In other news, I ran through Map16 with no monsters. It's a testament to how staggeringly huge this megawad's later maps are that running through them with no monsters still can take you like 30 minutes (longer than many popular megawad maps take to UV-Max!) if you don't know exactly where are the switches are. Granted, that runtime is slightly padded since IG likes to make you hit one switch that starts lowering an absurdly tall sector blocking another to force you to fight monsters, but still.

[Insane_Gazebo]

On 2/8/2022 at 10:25 AM, notgull said:

Gazebo, by any chance do you have a Patreon, or a Ko-Fi, or some way else to receive money? I genuinely want to pay you for this, since I've had more fun with this mapset than I have with most games I pay $60 for.

Alrighty, because you and some others keep asking me  I've finally got a Ko-Fi setup. (I'm not sure I produce enough content to warrant a Patreon.)
It's pretty bare-bones right now but it exists! 

https://ko-fi.com/insane_gazebo
 

On 2/11/2022 at 1:04 AM, Gez said:

The thing is, it's not so much the editor that limits how big you go, it's the map format. With 16-bit values to store vertex, sector, sidedef, etc. indices, you can't go over 65535.

Yeah, exactly. Unless someone somehow finds a magical way to circumvent that 16-bit value and keep it running in the Boom format, I'm just going to have to get creative with my line use. (There's certainly been some times where I really, really have wanted more than 65535, especially to detail certain areas that's for sure.)

Of course there's also other issues, with the overall direct space the map takes up. Go over a certain point and stuff starts to 'loop' across the map (this can eventually include enemy attacks) sounds and other things. (Collision certainly starts to break.) In my first test build of Map18 you could hear a rev closet that was all the way down at the south side of the map, from up in the northern section. (To solve it I just moved the closet closer to the center.)

There's also a height limitation as well (I think it was about 20,000 units?) that causes all sorts of strange HOMs to appear. (And not in the same places for each player, either.) 

Uh, I guess that's a lot of words to say I can't see any of the maps getting any bigger than they are currently due to the limitations inherit in the format.

[taviow]

On 2/17/2022 at 10:59 PM, Insane_Gazebo said:

Unless someone somehow finds a magical way to circumvent that 16-bit value and keep it running in the Boom format

 

Might be a dumb question, but why is it impossible for ports to fix this, even the ones that want to keep the experience as vanilla as possible? Isn't the problem essentially that this value is stored in a short instead of an int? Why is this a thing that cannot be improved?

[brick]

It's not a port thing, it's a map format thing. UDMF already allows much higher numbers (in the billions IIRC) due to being 32-bit. Key thing in what Gazebo said though: "and keep it running in the Boom format". UDMF is not Boom, and will run in fewer ports. As a mapper you always have to make that choice: do you want higher limits and more options (generalized actions, scripting, etc), or do you want to support as many ports as possible? You can't have both. Besides, when Gazebo release the first version of Sunder, I don't think any 32-bit formats existed, and while you wouldn't need to convert the older maps, if the news ones switched to UDMF they wouldn't work in any ports other than ZDoom or Eternity (and if included in the same wad as the older maps I'm not sure non-UDMF ports would be even able to load it, or would just choke on the unrecognized lumps).

 

It's unfortunately not that easy to find a solution that is 100% satisfactory.

[Hirogen2]

Just as in writing computer programs with functions, if the map gets too big (and hitting map format limits is certainly one definition of "too big"), it's time to consider splitting it.

[Jacek Bourne]

51 minutes ago, Hirogen2 said:

Just as in writing computer programs with functions, if the map gets too big (and hitting map format limits is certainly one definition of "too big"), it's time to consider splitting it.

Or alternatively, we need a new map format and port which can support it to vastly increase the amount of space and lines to work with.

[Hirogen2]

2 hours ago, Jacek Bourne said:

Or alternatively, we need a new map format and port which can support it to vastly increase the amount of space and lines to work with.

You missed the point. Bigger isn't always better.

[Jacek Bourne]

9 minutes ago, Hirogen2 said:

You missed the point. Bigger isn't always better.

That’s because in this case I disagree with that point.

[DarkIceCyclone]

6 hours ago, Jacek Bourne said:

Or alternatively, we need a new map format and port which can support it to vastly increase the amount of space and lines to work with.

Well the engine is open source, so feel free to rebuild an engine :D

[Jacek Bourne]

3 hours ago, DarkIceCyclone said:

Well the engine is open source, so feel free to rebuild an engine :D

 

If I knew how to, I would. I don't enjoy coding though so I'm unlikely to learn.

[Shepardus]

This isn't like refactoring code, where you're trying to make the functions easily understood for future maintainers, and split functions produce the same output as non-split functions. If hitting the limits of the map format signifies that the map is "too big," one could just as easily have made the same argument about visplane overflows, and we wouldn't have any limit-removing ports.

 

As brick said a couple posts ago, UDMF already supports greater limits than the Boom format (and there are GZDoom maps that take advantage of this), but mapping in UDMF means committing to source ports that support the format. You'd have the same tradeoff if you were to invent a new format (which I think would be a waste of effort considering that UDMF exists).

[Jinxie]

This UDMF discussion has me curious, as I am of the opinion (as some other members are) that it would be awesome to see IG go to the logical extremes of his hyper-detailed sprawling mapping style by being allowed to break the limits of the Boom format. Does prboom+ and the likes not support the UDMF format because of differences between the source ports that are too great, or is there a future in which prboom+ could eventually gain UDMF support, thus allowing Sunder's latter map to exploit its 32-bit capabilities while also retaining the early maps in Boom format? 

[Thelokk]

Toe it's mostly a matter of practicality. Even if somehow IG found a way to break Boom's limits, I have to be honest with myself - map16's 6+ hours is as far as I'm willing to follow him. Mileage may vary of course. 

[taviow]

On the one hand I agree based on common sense somewhat, on the other hand I just want to see how far IG would go to create some sort of ultimate magnum opus of Sunder in MAP30 or something. I think now while the linedefs are limited, monster count might still be pushed farther.

 

And besides I don't know, I think Sunder is targeting a very specific demographic who does want the epic scale stuff. So perhaps in that sense some people might want him to go even bigger and to see how far it can go.

Edited March 30, 2022 by taviow

[Red Recluse]

Colors patterns especially orange rooms one of better map from Sunder wad.                                                                                                                    

 Sunder18x2705.zip

[pcorf]

3 hours ago, Red Recluse said:

Colors patterns especially orange rooms one of better map from Sunder wad.                                                                                                                    

 Sunder18x2705.zip

 

Plasma, perhaps the most commonly used song.

 

Amazing map! (I would not have the patience to create something like this even though it is possible)

[Red Recluse]

2 hours ago, pcorf said:

 

Plasma, perhaps the most commonly used song.

 

Amazing map! (I would not have the patience to create something like this even though it is possible)

Because central sector squar and paths emanating from it contain many patterns.The orange wasp dens are a real asterpiece.

[WH-Wilou84]

Minor visual bug on map 20 : while flying / noclipping around in the main area, I noticed that the fence midtextures on linedefs 52210 / 52211 and 52227 / 52228 are misaligned, due to a 64-unit vertical offset.

[Insane_Gazebo]

[Thelokk]

4 minutes ago, Insane_Gazebo said:

 

Strong 20000 Monsters Under the Sea vibes beneath all the flesh. 

[Insane_Gazebo]

Oh yeah, forgot to post this one ages back. 

[Deadwing]

holy fucking shit

[Ribo Zurai]

Sweet baby jesus christ this looks absolutely astonishing.

[Fraston]

5 hours ago, Insane_Gazebo said:

First Sunder progress update since I joined the Forums. I am watching new history and I love it!