Episode 4

[Catoptromancy]

22:22 <@Catoptromancy> e3 and e4 are pretty much empty
22:23 <@Ralphis> dbimpact e4
22:23 <@Ralphis> enjoy
22:23 <@Catoptromancy> post it on forums
22:23 <@Ralphis> u
22:23 <@Catoptromancy> make a thread and just post a link
22:23 <@Catoptromancy> i dont like harvesting
22:23 <@Catoptromancy> heh
22:24 <@Ralphis> as in, using existing stuff to fill out the wad?
22:24 <@Ralphis> you dont have to
22:24 <@Ralphis> was just an offer on my part
22:24 <@Catoptromancy> I know
22:24 <@Catoptromancy> jute offered all his music, a shitload
22:24 <@Catoptromancy> I told him to post a link in a thread
22:24 <@Catoptromancy> I dont like to just grab stuff
22:24 <@Ralphis> i just told you in person bro
22:24 <@Catoptromancy> heh ok
22:24 <@Catoptromancy> ill make a thread
22:24 <@Ralphis> RottKing has to say it is cool tho
22:25 <@Ralphis> but I don't see him saying no (maybe I'm wrong)
22:27 <@RottKing> yeah that's fine

Episode 4 submission.
http://www.gamers.org/pub/idgames/levels/doom/Ports/d-f/dbimpact.zip

[Cire]

Sounds like an awesome idea imo.

[Catoptromancy]

Cire said:

Sounds like an awesome idea imo.

It is not an idea. It is done.

Original wad mappers can re-release their own wads. Anyone with a map on idgames can submit it to Freedoom.

[Cire]

OK, nice.

[joe-ilya]

So freedoom needs some maps in e2 and in e3 and it's done? Great.

[Cire]

Any idea when Db Impact is going to be added to Freedoom repo?

[joe-ilya]

Well , this doesn't fit to episode 4 because it's tech maps.

[Catoptromancy]

Necessary bump. Too busy to really work on anything. Maybe someone can do this.

[Dragonsbrethren]

joe-ilya said:

Well , this doesn't fit to episode 4 because it's tech maps.

Freedoom is not Doom and doesn't have to (and, IMO, shouldn't) follow its episode themes.

[RjY]

I don't see how to use dbimpact as an E4 replacement without breaking M8 - it's tied to E1M8's bossdeath effect. I don't think this could be fixed without significant changes to the map's gameplay which I would not be comfortable with making. Alternatively Freedoom just drops dbimpact M8 - which given the current drive to make Freedoom easier, is way too hard - and uses dbimpact M1 to M7 to fill missing slots. But I think the intention was not to break up the episode...

However, having said all that - and with all thanks to Ralphis and RottKing for the donation - I think it looks bad to reuse existing releases. Especially work as widely-known as a caco award winner. It's like Freedoom can't make its own maps or something, which is true of course but it shouldn't be so blatant about it! ;-) But seriously though if Freedoom was going to go that route, it would have done so already, e.g. when shadow1013 made Invasion Of The Damned by trawling /idgames for suitably permissively licenced uploads a couple of years ago.

_______


Update:

I have looked a bit harder at dbimpact M8 and, although I haven't tried making these changes, I think it would work to replace the use of tag 666 with a system of 4 lower-to-lowest actions on control sectors, adjacent to a fifth, on which a lower-to-highest action is repeatedly triggered (thus the latter not moving at all until all 4 surrounding sectors had lowered). This would be a similar system to the 4 switches on map20 of Scythe2. It is a largely invisible change - the map would look the same, and play almost the same, save for some difference in timing when the spiders teleport back in, and not having to kill all barons before they do - but of course would break any existing demos. (Hopefully no-one would care about that; for demo playback one would use the original PWAD.)

However, I have further questions:

• What about the sky texture? dbimpact has a night sky that the maps are constructed around (e.g. lighting in outdoor areas appears to consistently come from one part of the sky). This looks a bit strange under Freedoom's existing E4-like orange sky texture. Is Freedoom allowed to import dbimpact's sky texture as well? The text file credits it to Infurnus, but did he make it from scratch?

• What about the secret exit? Having a secret exit on E4M3 is no good - after leaving E4M9, the player would go back to the start of a map he has already done. The obvious solution is to switch M2 and M3 (putting the secret exit on E4M2 as needed), but does that ruin the wad? Does it matter to the authors if the Freedoom version has to have them out of order?

[Death Egg]

RjY said:

However, having said all that - and with all thanks to Ralphis and RottKing for the donation - I think it looks bad to reuse existing releases. Especially work as widely-known as a caco award winner. It's like Freedoom can't make its own maps or something, which is true of course but it shouldn't be so blatant about it! ;-) But seriously though if Freedoom was going to go that route, it would have done so already, e.g. when shadow1013 made Invasion Of The Damned by trawling /idgames for suitably permissively licenced uploads a couple of years ago.

I don't see how this is a problem, I would think people knowing that levels already proven to be great were in Freedoom might give them more of a drive to try it out. Hell, I wouldn't mind seeing all four episodes being previously successful releases myself. A sort of "Best of", in a way.

[Shadow Hog]

I'm not sure replacing the E4 sky with a night one would be a good idea, since custom stages probably are designed around it being a bright orange.

[fraggle]

I don't know how I managed to miss this thread the first time around. This is awesome news! Thanks to Ralphis and Rottking for this generous contribution!

RjY said:

However, having said all that - and with all thanks to Ralphis and RottKing for the donation - I think it looks bad to reuse existing releases. Especially work as widely-known as a caco award winner. It's like Freedoom can't make its own maps or something, which is true of course but it shouldn't be so blatant about it! ;-)

I disagree. There's a lot of advantage to having a complete, coherent episode like this (it requires a lot of coordination), and there aren't a lot of people mapping for Freedoom. I think this is a really nice contribution and it would be foolish to squander it. The fact it's won a cacoward just hammers this point home even further!

Looking at your update it seems like you're already working on importing it so I hope this is a moot point. If you need any help with this let me know. One thought OTOH: we should change the M_EPI4 title to say "Double Impact" rather than just "Episode 4" (it's probably about time we came up with decent names for the other episodes, too). Also need to fix the level names in Dehacked and the WILV* lumps.

But seriously though if Freedoom was going to go that route, it would have done so already, e.g. when shadow1013 made Invasion Of The Damned by trawling /idgames for suitably permissively licenced uploads a couple of years ago.

Freedoom hasn't gone down this route in the past. Maybe it's time it did.

I don't see how to use dbimpact as an E4 replacement without breaking M8 - it's tied to E1M8's bossdeath effect. I don't think this could be fixed without significant changes to the map's gameplay which I would not be comfortable with making. Alternatively Freedoom just drops dbimpact M8 - which given the current drive to make Freedoom easier, is way too hard - and uses dbimpact M1 to M7 to fill missing slots. But I think the intention was not to break up the episode...

Looking at the A_BossDeath code in the source code, it looks like the behavior should be identical for E1 and E4. Am I mistaken?

• What about the sky texture? dbimpact has a night sky that the maps are constructed around (e.g. lighting in outdoor areas appears to consistently come from one part of the sky). This looks a bit strange under Freedoom's existing E4-like orange sky texture. Is Freedoom allowed to import dbimpact's sky texture as well? The text file credits it to Infurnus, but did he make it from scratch?

We should check the source of the sky texture, but it would probably be best to import it along with the levels if possible.

• What about the secret exit? Having a secret exit on E4M3 is no good - after leaving E4M9, the player would go back to the start of a map he has already done. The obvious solution is to switch M2 and M3 (putting the secret exit on E4M2 as needed), but does that ruin the wad? Does it matter to the authors if the Freedoom version has to have them out of order?

It's probably not a huge deal to rework the secret exits. My experience is that it's usually fairly straightforward to find somewhere to add a new exit to an existing level, and I'm sure the original from E4M3 can be disabled. We should just do this.

Shadow Hog said:

I'm not sure replacing the E4 sky with a night one would be a good idea, since custom stages probably are designed around it being a bright orange.

How many WADs even replace levels from episode 4? This doesn't sound like a big deal at all, the sky will just look a bit different.

Death Egg said:

I don't see how this is a problem, I would think people knowing that levels already proven to be great were in Freedoom might give them more of a drive to try it out. Hell, I wouldn't mind seeing all four episodes being previously successful releases myself. A sort of "Best of", in a way.

Yes, I really like this idea. Way back when Freedoom was in its early days I hoped that Freedoom would serve as a "showcase" for the talents of the Doom community: Freedoom is included in Linux distros like Debian, meaning that some people might play it who wouldn't normally play Doom mods. I don't think most people in the community would say it's lived up to that goal. Something like this can certainly go a long way towards improving things, though.

[Catoptromancy]

[fraggle]

I think you accidentally your entire post.

[RjY]

I've been attempting to make the wad play in episode 4 (work not yet published). M8 now uses a system of control sectors to replace the tag 666 usage to decouple it from the E1M8 slot. Hopefully this change should not be noticable. M2 and M3 are switched for secret exit purposes (see below).

fraggle said:

Looking at the A_BossDeath code in the source code, it looks like the behavior should be identical for E1 and E4. Am I mistaken?

A_BossDeath operates on barons on E1M8, but spiders on E4M8. It's not the most clearly-written function in the world...

fraggle said:

We should check the source of the sky texture, but it would probably be best to import it along with the levels if possible.

Upon inspection it is a remake of a sky from TNT:Evilution. The text file credits it to infurnus.

fraggle said:

It's probably not a huge deal to rework the secret exits. My experience is that it's usually fairly straightforward to find somewhere to add a new exit to an existing level, and I'm sure the original from E4M3 can be disabled. We should just do this.

It's true one could easily (albeit messily) graft a secret exit into dbm2/E4M3.

However, the existing secret exit on dbm3/E4M2 is not just your usual tiny room with a switch that you happen to stumble across. It's more like an expanded version of the secret exit in E1 of the original game. Reaching the normal exit requires you to explore only about half the map. There are entire optional sections that are effectively large secret areas, even an optional key.

I'm not going to be the one to ruin this, so I swapped the order of the maps instead.

[fabian]

RjY said:

I'm not going to be the one to ruin this, so I swapped the order of the maps instead.

Best idea, so simple!

[fraggle]

RjY said:

A_BossDeath operates on barons on E1M8, but spiders on E4M8. It's not the most clearly-written function in the world...

Ah, I see now. I forgot that I refactored the Chocolate Doom version of this function.

However, the existing secret exit on dbm3/E4M2 is not just your usual tiny room with a switch that you happen to stumble across. It's more like an expanded version of the secret exit in E1 of the original game. Reaching the normal exit requires you to explore only about half the map. There are entire optional sections that are effectively large secret areas, even an optional key.

I'm not going to be the one to ruin this, so I swapped the order of the maps instead.

Okay, that sounds like a reasonable enough solution then.

Glad to see you're making progress on this, I look forward to seeing it integrated!

[RjY]

I'm pretty much finished except I've hit a stumbling block with the sky texture. This is the sky texture:


http://i.imgur.com/p2JKRoQ.png

As I said in a previous post, it's obviously a remake of a sky from TNT:Evilution.


http://i.imgur.com/WtciGIv.png

Now, Freedoom discourages obvious remakes, but I think Freedoom could probably have made an exception in this case. However there's a bigger problem. Google Images recognised the third quarter as the following artist's impression of a quasar, which can be found on a variety of web pages such as http://panda.unm.edu/101lab/lab13/lab13_B.html and http://irfu.cea.fr/Sap/en/Phocea/Vie_des_labos/Ast/ast_visu.php?id_ast=2707, amongst many others.



So, advice please. The sky texture isn't made from scratch. It contains material that is probably copyright (I have no idea if it is, but I think you have to assume it is). Does this make the sky texture insufficiently free for Freedoom to use, or am I worrying too much?

edit: replace wide images with thumbnails and links

[Jayextee]

If nothing else here's a painted-from-scratch sky that can be used without copyright violation. It's something I was making for a project but I didn't like how the Doom palette mauled it.

It's more like the original orange sky, but probably great as a placeholder until something better turns up?

[fraggle]

Good job sleuthing the source of that sky image. As a suggestion, it's probably not much work to construct a replacement: NASA has lots of photos of stellar phenomena and they're all public domain.

[RjY]

Jayextee said:

If nothing else here's a painted-from-scratch sky that can be used without copyright violation. It's something I was making for a project but I didn't like how the Doom palette mauled it.

It's more like the original orange sky, but probably great as a placeholder until something better turns up?

Thank you, this was much appreciated; your sky even has a sun, which I could rotate into the right place to preserve the maps' shadowcasting (which I decided was an essential requirement for any replacement). But on the whole I found it too bright for the sky it was meant to replace, so I ended up doing what fraggle suggested instead.

fraggle said:

Good job sleuthing the source of that sky image. As a suggestion, it's probably not much work to construct a replacement: NASA has lots of photos of stellar phenomena and they're all public domain.

That's what I ended up doing. I tried to be careful to preserve the original sky's shadow-casting property (there is a bright part that appears to cast shadows in outdoor areas on many of the maps; I made sure the bright part was in the right place to preserve this effect)

There are a few minor bugs I would like to fix in some of the maps (such as some single-use linedefs that should be repeatable) but those were in the original and can wait.

Pushed to master.

[fraggle]

Great news. Thanks for the awesome work merging this in.