Doom 2 In Name Only - Now (supsiciously) on a load of gaming articles

[Capellan]

When I did the CC4 level my main PC was still a WinXP box, and I did almost all the work in DETH, BSP and TCOUNT. I just used DB for a couple of the diagnostic utilities.

These days I have DB2 installed on my main (Win7/64) PC, but I built grosse.wad on my old WinXP laptop, using the same trio of programs. I'm used to it.

Now that grosse.wad is in playtest, I have it on my main box, and I'll use DB2 to do any minor edits. That process is getting me more familiar with DB2, so maybe one day I will actually make the change :)

[Babel]

srry for the delay, but i had some problems with the map and i have to fix it again, so now i did a quick fix. I hope it is compatible now

http://www.speedyshare.com/FbpXX/map23.wad

[Tristan]

Joseph Lord said:

srry for the delay, but i had some problems with the map and i have to fix it again, so now i did a quick fix. I hope it is compatible now

http://www.speedyshare.com/FbpXX/map23.wad

Before checking for Boom feature removal I checked in DB2's Visplane Explorer. Good thing I did, saved me a lot of time

[MajorRawne]

Some preliminary photos of The Crusher.

The corridors look a bit bland at the moment. One of the map's themes is how the layout changes. Some areas will look and play differently as you come back through them.

Also, a personal message to Photobucket: removing our ability to copy and paste multiple image links? Way to slow people down in the age of speed, you fools.


(Yeah, I can crop images, I'm rocking now ;)

THE NUKAGE REFINERY
I'm not happy with this area and may bin it.





THE CRUSHER AREA





OTHER AREAS

Main corridor


Computer room


EDIT: There's a ghost in one of my photos! In the second Crusher area, there appears to be a Doom Marine or Shotgunner standing in front of the doorway, but there's actually nothing and no-one there! (Unless some lucky survivor from another area wandered in)

[Babel]

Eris Falling said:

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/9071/nopeq.png

Im srry but i dont know what it means, i dont use that program.
Anywhere im still fixing it

[Tristan]

Joseph Lord said:

Im srry but i dont know what it means, i dont use that program.
Anywhere im still fixing it

It means you've exceeded MAXVISPLANES and MAXDRAWSEGS, many times.

Exceeding MAXVISPLANES (128) will crash Vanilla Doom when the player stands in any of the red areas on left screenshot.

The right screen is MAXDRAWSEGS (256), when triggered, which is just about everywhere on your map, the Hall of Mirrors will occur, I can tell from the screenshot you are so far over that limit in some places, most of the screen will just look like a graphical mess in Vanilla.

[scifista42]

I'm just writing to say that I haven't spent much time to mapping in past month. I'm going to work on my (still pretty much unfinished) map again after Christmas, and I will show progress at least a day before deadline. :) I'm sorry, but I really have less and less time that I can spend for Doom, but I would still like to contribute to this project.

[Tristan]

scifista42 said:

I'm just writing to say that I haven't spent much time to mapping in past month. I'm going to work on my (still pretty much unfinished) map again after Christmas, and I will show progress at least a day before deadline. :) I'm sorry, but I really have less and less time that I can spend for Doom, but I would still like to contribute to this project.

You're map is too far into development to go to waste now anyway, just post SOMETHING on the 31st or before :P

[cannonball]

scifista42 said:

I'm just writing to say that I haven't spent much time to mapping in past month. I'm going to work on my (still pretty much unfinished) map again after Christmas, and I will show progress at least a day before deadline. :) I'm sorry, but I really have less and less time that I can spend for Doom, but I would still like to contribute to this project.

You have put a lot of work into your map and we have seen a lot of proof of that. Remember the deadline is not for maps to be completed, just a time for everyone to checkin with progress however far it is. So there is absolutely no need to worry about your map slot being taken :)
@Joseph Lord, I played your map. I will post later a detail list of things to change, ironically a lot of fixes I can think off will actually fix the vanilla limits too. Whilst there are a lot of places which have homs, they are mostly caused by the same area.

[Babel]

A third version slowly but surely ;)

http://www.speedyshare.com/XHZQs/map23.wad

[Tristan]

Joseph Lord said:

A third version slowly but surely ;)

http://www.speedyshare.com/XHZQs/map23.wad

Visplane and Drawsegs viewer is identical to last time.

[Tristan]

MajorRawne said:

EDIT: There's a ghost in one of my photos! In the second Crusher area, there appears to be a Doom Marine or Shotgunner standing in front of the doorway, but there's actually nothing and no-one there! (Unless some lucky survivor from another area wandered in)

This?


It's not a shotgunner, but it doesn't look like a Marine either.

Spooky...

[Capellan]

Eris Falling said:

Visplane and Drawsegs viewer is identical to last time.

My version of DB2 doesn't seem to have that facility. I guess I need to update it (or possibly get my eyes checked).

[glenzinho]

Capellan said:

My version of DB2 doesn't seem to have that facility. I guess I need to update it (or possibly get my eyes checked).

Visiplane Explorer Plugin for DB2

[Capellan]

Thanks. It appears I also need to update, however, as the plugin needs a later version of DB2 than I have :)

[Antroid]

Don't forget to test the map in "chocorenderlimits" or however that one thing was called, because as helpful as the VEPlugin is, apparently sometimes it misses stuff, and doesn't account for doors opening and stuff like that (I think?). It may also unearth some other errors that could appear in vanilla. For example on my map I had a sector incorrectly raise only in chocolate doom, but it worked perfectly in zdoom.

[MajorRawne]

Be careful with the visaplaneexplorer version of DB2. If your computer cannot run it, make bloody sure you've got a backup of the old version of DB2, otherwise you'd better hope you've got one of those construction kit discs from the 90s with DEU on it.

[Capellan]

Or, presumably, an internet connection :)

[Gez]

You can't rely on that. If your computrons is not enough, Visplane Explorer bans you from the Internet for life. Unless you create a classic Doom II megawad with DEU; then it unbans you.

[Babel]

And now?

http://www.speedyshare.com/2Etna/map23.wad

[Capellan]

Joseph Lord said:

And now?

Better, but still problems.

[qoncept]

Visplane issues AND a flying spaghetti monster.. yikes.

[Tristan]

Capellan said:

Better, but still problems.

A bit more than just problems...

http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/8040/drawsegs.png

EDIT: Before the comments roll in, I'm well aware that 350 is 94 over 256.

[Capellan]

How do you switch to view drawsegs?

The other problem, of course, is that this is just the areas that are a problem when the map is "at rest". If you have doors that open and expose additional areas at the same time, "high but safe" becomes "ka-blooey".

[cannonball]

Joseph Lord said:

A third version slowly but surely ;)

http://www.speedyshare.com/XHZQs/map23.wad

I cannot recommend this enough. Use this plugin for chocolate doom and it can help you spot areas where detail need to be cut down.
From what I see the second room you visit with the nuke river, there are a lot of subtle ceiling height changes of the far side, you should remove them especially as they are curved to.
The room with the first spider mastermind needs a serious rework, I cannot express how much I hate that part at the moment. First things first the flaming barrels really inhibit movement and make you a sitting duck. Also the bars which lower and a massive drawsegs problem. I would suggest scrapping the ground floor area and go for an area with some stone pillars to allow the player to hide behind them. You should also use a trigger point such as entering the room or the first switch you need to press or a linedef close by as of course the linedef where it is at the moment would be useless in this scenario. To get round the problem with removing barrels. You could place a few in the room, and perhaps some around the spider I know they won't get hurt but would still be funny, especially with monsters nearby.
That's my two cents for the start area. Oh and the green brick area between the start and mm room, yet again rework the barrels, though this doesn't need a drastic change.

[Antroid]

Capellan said:

If you have doors that open and expose additional areas at the same time, "high but safe" becomes "ka-blooey".

Just raising all the relevant doors before doing the checks should take care of that.

Also I'm finished with all my exams, my thesis and all that, and finally I can do some mapping. I'll either try to test the balance of map29 again, or start with map28 any day now.

[Tristan]

Capellan said:

How do you switch to view drawsegs?

The other problem, of course, is that this is just the areas that are a problem when the map is "at rest". If you have doors that open and expose additional areas at the same time, "high but safe" becomes "ka-blooey".

There should be a little icon along the top of DB2 with a clock like thing and VP. Just click the arrow and you can view Visplanes, Drawsegs, Solidsegs and openings.

[Capellan]

Eris Falling said:

There should be a little icon along the top of DB2 with a clock like thing and VP. Just click the arrow and you can view Visplanes, Drawsegs, Solidsegs and openings.

Ah ha! Thanks for that.

I built my level on the time-honored tradition of "see if it crashes while I'm playing it" (which will always, in my head be "the Requiem map11 dance". Stupid visplanes.). These fandangled new tools assure me it won't. :)

[Egregor]

Eris Falling, can you use the same method on my map (level 11) and post it in here? I was using chocolate doom and just running around looking for it to peak out. That map seems much better. Try mine next!

[an_mutt]

Oh my god I actually got some spare time to finish my map!!

Map 17 - The Tenements

I've ran the map through visplane explorer and I've found one tiny spot that can cause a crash through visplane overflow - however, you need to noclip into the corner of one particular corridor to actually make it trigger. Should I sort it out, or is it just fine as-is?

edit: updated the mediafire link to the map's updated version which is also posted on page 11