Marscaleb

Thank you for the response! Well that's unexpected. Yeah, I'm aware of the rendering bugs. It wasn't worth fixing for a quick mockup. I forgot to mention that in the post. The sky is simply because the texture isn't finished and doesn't tile. It was actually just a stock photo that I resized and colored to match the palette. It was just so I could have something to test the sky functionality. The textures clipping through is because I am using sprites for the walls as it was a quick and easy way to add some fake contrast; I'll use proper geometry later once I have real artwork to use. What exactly do you mean by saying the gameplay in Duke 3D is methodical?

What I disliked most about the original Wolfenstein was the lack of variety in the environments. Not counting decorations, you had something like ten different wall tiles for the entire game, and each level only used about three. I don't want my game to just have a small handful of stone walls to craft arbitrary shapes; I want more variety and environments that look like places. This is part of the big draw of using the larger scale. I already notice it makes a profound difference to the player experience; with the larger scale a narrow hallway can feel more narrow and a small room can feel more cramped while still actually giving room to move. The classic scale feels a bit more freeing in the movement, but decorations like pillars and boxes take up a lot more space and there's overall less freedom to create more unique environments. The outside area particularly shows the advantage of the larger scale; the trucks feel more appropriately sized, and a narrow gap between them feels more narrow. Likewise with narrow corridors; there is more narrowness making tight areas feel tighter. I figure a big room will feel big no matter what, but with the classic Wolfenstein scale I can't make a tight space feel as tight. The movement feels widely different between the two, even if they actually move at the same speed. The small scale feels faster, which works for run-and-gun. I could increase the speed for the larger scale, but this feels like the right speed in the tight corridors. I don't know; tell me what you guys think.

Hello fine people! I had an idea to make a Wolfenstein 3D clone with a focus on exploring large inter-connected maps; I'm calling it Labyrinth of the Seven Talisman (LOST). I'd like some feedback regarding the map scale. First I should explain, while I am keeping the grid-based map style, I am taking a cues from a few Wolfenstein contemporaries to expand it a little bit. I'm going to have variable wall heights, as was done with Shadowcaster, ROTT, and Ultima Underworld. I'm also taking a cue from Jurassic Park (SNES) and making the map's cell-size smaller so I can have more varied detail in my walls, so a single cell will be a quarter the size of Wolf (half in each axis; 32 pixels.) But while I was working on some of the artwork, I realized that I could have better control over making the environments if I made a “single” ceiling be three cells high instead of two; I'd have a scale where a wall is 96 pixels high instead of 64; enemy sprites are around 75 pixels instead of 50. I threw together a prototype to test the two different scales. I'd appreciate it if you could take a look and give me your thoughts. I have a downloadable game or just watch a video I recorded. This is just a mockup-prototype; I'm using a lot of art stolen from other games, nothing works other than movement and wall collision. Download: (20 megs) https://eightballgaming.com/downloads/LOST.zip Video: https://youtu.be/TJXjBLSFDxA It's two maps built to the different scales; press F1 to swap between them. Each map has similar features to test how it feels in similar spaces. The first room is build to the short “single” floor height, there is also another room built to just one-cell-higher and an outdoor area with some “military trucks” to try to capture some of the environments I want to use. The doors don't work but you can just walk through them. Which scale do you like better?

Ah, so the precomputed table is based on that formula? Interesting and useful to know. I was really just asking to know what the values are within that precomputed table, but at this point I'm not so sure seeing the raw numbers would mean much to me. Thank you for the response.

I'm trying to find some technical info on how doom render's its sky; I recall seeing someone describe this once, but I can't seem to find it. I don't see it in the Doom wiki. When Doom renders the sky, the sky texture isn't just "flat." The further the image is from the screen, the more it gets stretched. Does anyone have data for how much/when the image gets stretched? I am trying to recreate this effect, and it would be nice to have that data.

Thank you Plerb, this is just what I was looking for! And clearly no thanks should be given to Edward850, since he wasn't first to reply. Instead you get this!.

I recall reading about an often overlooked effect Doom did in its rendering. If a wall was facing directly north or south, it would make it slightly darker, and if it were facing directly east/west, it would make it slightly brighter. (Or maybe I have it backwards?) I think I read about it on the Doom wiki, but I don't recall what the effect was called, so I don't know how to find it. Can anyone elucidate me here? I'm trying to look up some specifics about how this worked.

Is there any way to export a Doom map as a 3D object of some sort? An .obj file, .fbx, whatever works. I was searching for this and I found people saying it could be done within Doom Builder, but I cannot find this option. I don't know if I'm looking in the wrong version or what.

There's an automap mode in Doom Builder? I can't find it... I just did a search and found a video where someone used that mode, but it was tied to a button I don't have. Am I using an outdated copy, or is there some option that has hidden that toolbar?

Because what I'm trying to do is examine the geometry in a more pure state. I'm not talking about permanently disabling everything. But the extra lines and boxes get in the way of seeing the lines themselves, especially in tight regions.

Is there a way to disable the normals from being displayed on the map? By which I mean: that short line that sticks out of every wall-line to show which way is the "front" of the wall. Can I turn that off? I know you it's important, but sometimes its in the way. Also, is there a way to not display the nodes? Or any sector line that is flat to adjacent sectors? Basically like, a way to display the lines as they are shown in the auto-map in-game, but with textures and lighting?

Heretic seems to make more use of strong saturated colors, especially for things like all the powerups that are all over the maps, projectiles, enemies, etc. Wheras Hexen doesn't use as much of the "bright" colors, the vibrant reds and the vibrant greens etc. But when you really compare the two, Hexen puts a lot more subtle coloring into its art. A slime-covered wall in heretic is a grey wall with big splotches of bright green slime. A slime-covered wall in Hexen is a grey-ish green-ish wall. So I get why someone would say that Heretic is more colorful than Hexen; you really have to look closely to see the more refined use of color that's going on in Hexen. But once all the enemies are killed and the power-ups are collected, the Heretic maps start to look more drab and dull than the Hexen maps do. I'd love to see them release some sort of remastered version. It doesn't need updated graphics, but an updated interface would be nice. Even just a version that plays nice with modern systems would be nice. Hell, I'd even settle for a DOS-Box version that comes from a legitimate site that I'm not worried is going to give my computer herpes.

Perhaps the problem is that it doesn't have enough muddy colors. For a medieval setting, you are going to have a lot of stone textures, and they only have their basic grey for regular stone, and then a tan-brown for alternate stones. So most of the game is just a basic gray. Compare that to the Hexen palatte, which retains most of the same colors, but shortens the vibrant colors (used mostly for magic effects anyway) and gives some more muddy colors. And the Hexen textures used those to add little pieces of detail to the textures. Of course, Hexen had fewer levels that were supposed to look like they were in a castle and more that were "outside" so the game doesn't look as grey, but still. Compare that further with the Hexen II palette and the vibrant colors are almost non-existant. There are four colors with four shades for some full-bright magic effects, and after that only the red and gold colors even get bright. But then again, ShadowCaster has even fewer muddy shades than Heretic, and nobody ever complains about that game's aesthetics, so what do I know?

That's what we need for Heretic mods, some weak fodder enemies! Though I never considered the chaingunner to be fodder; he may have only 70 HP but he will f*** you up hard!

That made sense in Karnov on the NES. It doesn't make so much sense in a game that uses a keyboard. (But it is good to know; thank you!)