1994 tune-up challenge (*updated /idgames link*)

[Hellbent]

I'll take Fortress

http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=13884

EDIT: I wonder if I should keep the maze as it is....

[Gez]

It'll be hard to adapt UAC Dead to Doom 2, without changing the last fight with the barons and cyberdemon.

[Snarboo]

Gez said:

It'll be hard to adapt UAC Dead to Doom 2, without changing the last fight with the barons and cyberdemon.

It's doable, certainly. Perhaps a mapinfo lump could be made? However, what ports support that feature?

Edit: I would like to avoid that as much as possible, but some maps do require map specials.

[SirTimberWolf]

I will see what I can do. That'll be my first task, in fact.

[Snarboo]

A note about textures: if the map you are working on used custom textures, an exception might be made.

Edit:
I think I'm going to take Helipad.

If you want, I'd be willing to let you have Map 7 for UAC Dead, TimberWolf.

[esselfortium]

Snarboo said:

It's doable, certainly. Perhaps a mapinfo lump could be made? However, what ports support that feature?

Edit: I would like to avoid that as much as possible, but some maps do require map specials.

ZDoom supports mapinfo, though I haven't looked specifically into whether it supports defining custom tag-666/667 specials for maps. It probably does.

I know Eternity's EMAPINFO has a feature like this, though: boss-specials.

With that said, though...if this is supposed to be a Boom-compatible project, let's keep it Boom compatible. Some creative reinterpretation of the UAC_DEAD fight in question could be done, I suppose.

Or, better yet....a BEX patch could be included that makes cyberdemons and barons call A_KeenDeath on one of their death frames, and use a voodoo-doll setup (yay Boom!) to make that fast-door-open trigger cause the desired floor-lowering or whatever.

[Snarboo]

esselfortium said:

With that said, though...if this is supposed to be a Boom-compatible project, let's keep it Boom compatible. Some creative reinterpretation of the UAC_DEAD fight in question could be done, I suppose.

Or, better yet....a BEX patch could be included that makes cyberdemons and barons call A_KeenDeath on one of their death frames, and use a voodoo-doll setup (yay Boom!) to make that fast-door-open trigger cause the desired floor-lowering or whatever.

I generally agree. I think we should limit ourselves to DEH/BEX for customization, and your idea sounds perfect. I think we should definitely implement it if necessary. We'll wait for TimerWolf to reply.

Speaking of which, do all ports support the Keen Death special on every map?

[ArmouredBlood]

Been working on Elements more, did quite a bit to it. Any pointers on what to do with it would be great as I'm still a bit of a newbie mapper.

http://wadhost.fathax.com/files/AB.1994C.ELEMENTv2.zip

[Snarboo]

Alright, I've added you to the roster. I'll also check out your map.

Feel free to modify your map as much as you feel like. If you feel like the map is fine with only a few modifications, that's cool.

Edit:
For general pointers, I recommend Essel's excellent post about adding details to your map.

Here are some tips after playing your current version:

• Perhaps you should make the doors a little thinner? Thick doors look kind of strange.
  
• I like what you did with the water room. It's a simple and nice looking addition to the map.
  
• The yellow key door has the water flat as its floor texture, which looks strange.
  
• The yellow key puzzle needs some minor fixes. The ledge is just thick enough for the player to scoot around and grab the key without needing to hit the switch. If this is intentional, no changes are needed.
  
• The Baron and Knight ambush at the end of the level is kind of brutal. Try removing a few enemies or making the area a little bit bigger.
  
• The star shaped elevator in the first room could use a switch instead of the weird skull platform you need to walk on to drop it.
  
• Perhaps add a few more lighting effects to the map. Lighting looks good so far, but in some places it doesn't look entirely natural. Adding lamps and light textures to bright areas and using sectors to create natural light cones might help.

[The Green Herring]

Snarboo said:

Speaking of which, do all ports support the Keen Death special on every map?

Yeah. Furthermore, it can be triggered multiple times if more than one enemy calls it. If you use a voodoo doll Boom scroller to emulate the famous exploit on UAC_DEAD.WAD, the scroller should have two doors tagged 666, with the relevant floor-lowering actions placed on one of their linedefs, and the voodoo doll should trip a linedef somewhere between the two that shuts both of them, requiring the trigger to go off a second time.

Anyway, from the depths of the WADPAKs (WADPAK4.WAD, to be specific,) I choose Command Control (COMCON.WAD) by Patrick Hipps.

[ArmouredBlood]

Snarboo said:

Here are some tips after playing your current version:[list]Perhaps you should make the doors a little thinner? Thick doors look kind of strange.

Ya it was bothering me a little the author left the doors so big, fixed a few of them but didn't want to get carried away.

I like what you did with the water room. It's a simple and nice looking addition to the map.

Thanks, I see structures like that some times and wish I used em more in my maps, but they never seem to fit :(

The yellow key door has the water flat as its floor texture, which looks strange.
The yellow key puzzle needs some minor fixes. The ledge is just thick enough for the player to scoot around and grab the key without needing to hit the switch. If this is intentional, no changes are needed.

Keep missing things like that and the omnipresent STARTAN2 the author probably had to use cause of WinDeu and testing without HoM. The scooting around wasn't intentional.

The Baron and Knight ambush at the end of the level is kind of brutal. Try removing a few enemies or making the area a little bit bigger.

Yeah I originally had no teleporting behind the palyer, which was decently hard but then funneled the barons one by one up the stairs, making them easy to kill. Will remove 2 barons and see how it goes.

The star shaped elevator in the first room could use a switch instead of the weird skull platform you need to walk on to drop it.

I'm not sure why the original author used that instead of a switch either. Will change it.

Perhaps add a few more lighting effects to the map. Lighting looks good so far, but in some places it doesn't look entirely natural. Adding lamps and light textures to bright areas and using sectors to create natural light cones might help.

Yea, been whittling away at adding some lighting. Will keep working on it.

[Spertz]

I'm taking tigers den.

[Snarboo]

You've been added, but could you add a link to your map in your post?

[Spertz]

I would but i'm not sure how you do that

[Super Jamie]

Add a link to the idgames page, you can even wrap it in url tags to be fancy, like this:

dm2tiger.zip- The Tiger's Den

[maggot202]

edit: i'm not too sure about this. Seems that too much gzdoom editing has taken it's toll on my vanilla-doom mapping :(

[40oz]

Sign me up for Tunnels by Dominique Lavergne

[GreyGhost]

I'm claiming an old favourite - Daniel Griffiths' Xenomorph 'The Complex'.

[pavera]

I'll take The Fortified Castle by Dominique Lavergne. Can't end up any worse, could it?

[Snarboo]

Krispavera said:

I'll take The Fortified Castle by Dominique Lavergne. Can't end up any worse, could it?

It actually uses Heretic textures. If you fail to load the GFX wad, it will look terrible. For this project I would like you to only use Doom's, though.

[Mr. Freeze]

I'm calling Hades' House of Horrors Part 1.

[Snarboo]

Would anyone knowledgeable enough about vanilla/boom upload a document detailing the various limitations of the format? I've made mistakes making vanilla maps because of bad habits carried over from making maps for ports, such as not properly tagging elevators. I think it would helpful for us if we had a guide on how to make our maps work best.

[esselfortium]

Well, since you mention the need to tag elevators, it's kind of hard to say what exactly to list. Because that's not a limitation of the Boom format, it's just how lifts work; it's something that always was and still is in nearly everything except a few ports like ZDoom that change the behavior.

[Snarboo]

I guess I mean more of the advanced tricks, which I have no idea how to do, such as the K2 bridge or instantly rising and lowering sectors. I'm also not familiar with the various Boom features.

[esselfortium]

Midtexture bridges in vanilla and Boom work by instant-rising and instant-lowering an invisible, self-referencing sector. This means both the front and back sidedefs have the same Sector Index set in Doom Builder. To make it instant-raise and instant-lower, you need to make three dummy sectors off-map. One that's merged with the self-referencing sector, and two more that touch that one. One of them should have its floor height set to the "raised" bridge height, and the other should have its ceiling height set to the "lowered" bridge height. For simplicity's sake I usually just set their floor and ceilings together, so they're both 0-height sectors.

To instant-raise the bridge, use special 83: WR Floor Lower to Highest Floor. The highest floor is above the floor's current height, so it will instantly jump to that height.

To instant-lower the bridge, use special 91: WR Raise to Lowest Ceiling. The same instant-jump behavior applies, for the same reason.

Make sure you set your bridge's outer edges to block monsters to keep them or their corpses from popping up or down when the bridge moves, and make sure the lines of your self-referencing sector don't have any 32-unit-or-more gaps between them for players to fall through.

Also, if you're using ZenNode it can sometimes be picky about it and make your bridges visible.

[Snarboo]

Hey thanks, I'll read up more about some of the more advanced tricks.

[pavera]

Snarboo said:

It actually uses Heretic textures. If you fail to load the GFX wad, it will look terrible. For this project I would like you to only use Doom's, though.

Heh, I didn't actually look at the gfx wad, want me to choose something different? I'm sure I can do something decent with doom's texture set.

[Snarboo]

Krispavera said:

Heh, I didn't actually look at the gfx wad, want me to choose something different?

Oh no, not at all! If you think you can work with the map, that's fine. :)

[pavera]

Alrighty, should be a fun little challenge for me.

[Gez]

esselfortium said:

Make sure you set your bridge's outer edges to block monsters to keep them or their corpses from popping up or down when the bridge moves, and make sure the lines of your self-referencing sector don't have any 32-unit-or-more gaps between them for players to fall through.

So that explains the oddities I've seen in Claustrophobia's Skyscrape level.