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!)

Yeah but it becomes a problem when you are trying to navigate that stuff in the heat of battle. Sure, selecting a tome of power right before a tough section is good, but I rarely selected anything other than a quartz flask just so that I could hit that in the heat of the moment. Vanilla Heretic didn't let you bind artifacts to specific keys, and that was a HUGE problem. I would have used the inventory a lot more if I didn't have to always keep the health queued up to use in an emergency. Compare that to Duke 3D, which did a similar inventory system, but also had hot keys for all the items. When I needed that portable med kit, it was always one button away. (Not to mention, I could actually turn off the jetpack and save it for later.) In my opinion, the inventory in Heretic was basically useless because I couldn't *really* use stuff whenever I wanted it.

I'm glad someone else noticed the palette. The palette in Doom is honestly not good. All of Id's games seem to have problems with their palettes, really, except maybe for the first Quake. Ditto. Because the two games are so compatible, I kind of want to be scientific about this. I want to try some wads that swap content between the games. People keep bringing up the weapons. If you played Heretic with Doom's weapons, how would it feel? People mention the aesthetic. Well, how would the maps look if you kept the layouts the same, but re-textured them with Doom's textures? (Can't just do a simple swap, you need to replace them intentionally.) Or perhaps take it the other way; start with some classic Doom maps, re-texture them with Heretic/Hexen art, and replace the monsters/weapons with Heretic ones. Is it still a fun map design? And then start swapping things back and forth. How does it play with Heretic monsters and Doom weapons, or with Doom monsters and Heretic weapons? Also, I will definitely admit that the sound design in Heretic is lacking. It demonstrates clearly how much sound design plays into a satisfying experience. The crossbow shouldn't sound like a shotgun, but it just isn't as satisfying to hear that soft "whipp-peh!" compared to that deep guttural "K-CHOOM!" (The same comparison can also be made to Doom 3's plasma rifle. Pitiful.) And the dragon claw, wow, that's a horrible sound. That said, the sounds in Hexen are some of the best I've heard in any video game. I don't know what happened to Raven between those two games.

Okay, I know that this is really just a matter of taste, but I just find Doom so much more fun to play than Heretic. But that said, I SHOULD like Heretic more. I like Heretic's theme better, and I'd rather play a game where I run around a fantasy world than one where I run around military bases. Heretic has some more interesting powerups and you can even activate them when you need them. But yet, I just have more fun playing Doom than I do Heretic. Even though I've played Doom so much more and neither Doom nor Doom II have many surprises left for me, I am more enticed by the idea of playing through Doom yet again on a new system than to play through Heretic. And yes, this is all just a subjective thing, and I'm not going to knock anyone who thinks Heretic is more fun. But still, I can't quite put my finger on why I like Doom more. Any thoughts? What is it that Doom is doing better than even Heretic, a nearly identical game (mechanically speaking) just can't quite do as well?

So wait, it doesn't actually detect that it has passed the player? The video made it sound like it could turn before its move counter hits zero.

Something else I've thought of that I don't get about this code. If an enemy walks past the player, it turns around. How does it know if it has walked past the player? I mean otherwise the player could easily walk around in circles around a monster. Perhaps not perpetually, but often enough the move counter would get set to a high enough value that a simple side-step could have a demon keep walking in the wrong direction for a long time. So how does the code detect that it has walked past the player?

I would. It just seems disconnected from the experience people were going for. Look at it outside of the code itself. If you were playing any kind of shooting game and you shot an enemy and they didn't react, wouldn't you think it was a bug?

What could cause them to be set to NODIR at this point?

Okay, I get it now. Honestly I'm pretty impressed; the one designation of not allowing them to choose a direction opposite of their current movement is such a tiny little thing, and yet it enables them to follow corridors. How did anyone think that up? Or was it just some sort of happy accident... I'm still a little curious about some other things. This is more about the specific code than the general process, but I'm wondering how they determine "second best option," or rather, how they determine that with optimal code. I can't think of how to do that without running a massive series of if statements that check all eight directions. I think I found the code that does this in P_NewChaseDir. I see it creates an array just called "d" (which it gives an array length of 3 but only uses the second two?) and it sets one to be either north or south and one to be either east or west. (I'm guessing a quick check of player position being greater or smaller in X and Y?) But I don't understand the logic of what it is doing; how it is quickly determining each possible route to the player and whether or not it is viable.

I did this, and I noticed several things. First of all, I noticed that if the player is just a little further forward they will manage to navigate through the long corridor all the way to reach the player, which is really what makes the AI "feel" more intelligent, because it (sort of) can navigate through the map to reach the player. If the player is south enough in the first room, then if a monster randomly shambles into the wall at the very tip of the hallway they recalculate which way to turn, and move south to face the player. But if the player is just north enough, when they hit that wall they turn north, and then they follow that wall all the way around and find their way to the first room. I also noticed that when a monster finished following a wall it tries to find the player again, which can produce a little random walking. It will quickly find its way to the next wall and follow it. But the key element here is that it is not actually tracing the whole curved path to the player, just following one wall at a time, which is going to lead the monster to find the next wall. I also noticed that while the monster randomly shambled around int he big room, sometimes they would bounce off a wall and then walk due east, (the exact opposite direction of the player,) and continue in that path perpetually until they hit another obstacle. They never get triggered by moveCount getting decremented again. So now I am left with wanting to understand these factors: One, how are they determining to follow a wall? What makes them decide to follow a wall instead of just trying another (random?) angle that might lead them to the player? Two, once they are following a wall, how are they tracking this wall? What are they doing to check if they've reached the end of the wall? Three, why are monsters sometimes walking due east into perpetuity? Off hand I wonder if they are trying to follow the wall, but since that wall is at an odd angle, they try to follow it moving straight north, bump into it and change their angle, but now are moving away from the wall in a way that they can never detect that they have reached the end of this wall. But this is pure conjecture since I don't understand the first two points I mentioned.

That video gets right up to it, but I'm missing something there. If it hits something, it has to pick a new direction. If the player is still standing where the closest angle to the player moves the monster into a wall or something, what does it do then? The video shows it walking the length of a wall and says that it turns around when it gets to the end of the wall. How is it determining that it had reached the end of the wall? And then what does it do at that point? Is it trying to move to the other side of the wall? In the video there is a gap in the wall, and if the pinky moved forward just a little bit to try to continue following the wall it would get around the wall and be able to reach the player, but if it just recalculates the angle closest to the player then it would turn around and walk the length of the wall again. And if the wall was very short then the pinky would get stuck perpetually walking a very small obstacle unable to cross it. I'm trying to understand how games programmed such behaviors back in the day. This was before we had modern pathfinding and nav mesh stuff; heck this doesn't even have path nodes like in UT99. I want to understand the logic they used to keep monsters from being stuck by simple obstacles. I tried looking at the source code, but I'm more familiar with C# than C++, so I don't quite follow the commands.