[UltravoxSapphire]

ck3D, on 03 February 2021 - 05:56 PM, said:

^ There's really not much to hate about those shots, I recognize some classic areas from LameDuke and beta screens, some others I'm not sure might be your original creation but in the end it all looks really clean (a lot cleaner than Blood And Ice if you allow me) and fun to explore with good use of the available space, that and the Duke Nukem 1 reference kind of sells it for me, honestly (I'm big into the idea of reusing Duke 1 and 2 lore myself, I also grew up with those games). I'm curious now, did you learn anything from Doom modding that you're applying here? Only asking because there's a lot to learn from Doom mapping and here it looks like you did. Besides that, theme has been tried over and over but to my knowledge, no 'clean', playable and fun beta mod was ever released I don't think (including Blood And Ice, haha), at least I'll be keeping an eye out for it.

Don't call yourself a lazy twat in advance, too - making a mod by yourself (even though you're partly reusing assets here, I know) is hard enough on yourself as a person that you don't need to do that. So far it's looking all good and thus it's pretty obvious to me that you can totally do it (unless at some point you yourself choose to give up, which would be fine too). Just keep it up, and maybe remember to respect your own workflow by doing things as you feel like doing them, never before - that's typically how one starts feeling imaginary pressure and burning out for, in reality, no reason.

I apologize for the pessimistic opinions I have on my creations. The thing about it is that I feel that other people don't see this project the same way I do; I get this feeling that they probably think it's subpar and uninteresting, and I can't help but believe that their "thoughts" are correct, even though they probably aren't thinking that.

As for what I learned in Doom modding, I learned how to use a grid properly...'cause I didn't know how to at the time I was making Blood and Ice, as you can see in this old pic I've got
(Look at the sidewalk)

[ck3D]

That's art in a nutshell, though - you have a vision, and then it's literally the craft of a lifetime working on developing the technical skills it will take you to more or less accurately and successfully communicate that vision to the rest of the world. That just seems to apply to every possible field and level (or game) design is no exception. There's a very clear improvement between your new work and your (not so) old work, which hints at how you really like doing what you're doing and thus naturally progress so if you keep at it, there's no reason why your final product won't bear the exact feel you want it to bear. The less you'll doubt yourself, the more you'll be focused on the actual qualities of your output and in the end those are what will speak. But you don't have to apologize, I'm just saying self confidence is quite crucial and also totally compatible with remaining open to criticism, so don't sleep on it!

I'm also glad you're mentioning the grid as that's actually such a basic element of the editor in the first place and yet it's so practical once you fully know how to use it (with a grasp on how Build units work and how many x of them roughly equate to, or on how it applies itself and works with texture dimensions and resolutions and relative alignment, etc.). I'd say when one starts looking at numbers a lot in Build and regularly fake using the wall drawing tool just to measure distances for instance is already past one important point in the learning curve. Good luck with your project!

[jimbob]

learning how to use the grid is a fine art, one i still havent really mastered. often i create things and they seem just a tad bit larger than they should be in real life. and to see what some of the build magicians here pull off these day makes me feel inadequate

[Danukem]

Personally I think its fine if objects are somewhat bigger than real life, as long as the scale is consistent. In fact, I find that maps done to accurate real life scale feel way too cramped and are miserable to navigate through, especially if there is combat. With player movement speed being so high and the primitive clipping of build, giving the player more space is generally a good thing.

[Ninety-Six]

Danukem, on 04 February 2021 - 04:37 PM, said:

Personally I think its fine if objects are somewhat bigger than real life, as long as the scale is consistent. In fact, I find that maps done to accurate real life scale feel way too cramped and are miserable to navigate through, especially if there is combat. With player movement speed being so high and the primitive clipping of build, giving the player more space is generally a good thing.

Perhaps that's the real reason his sprite is so small and his eye-level so low.

[ck3D]

Yeah I've said it before but I agree with Dan on that subject. There is what I would call practical oversizing which really makes sense once you've translated your real-life-inspired environment into the language of the game's physics in how it functions, and performs in-game, and then your average rookie mapper oversizing where the author lacks the perspective to realize that his constructions really are too big, and it doesn't serve the gameplay. But more often than not, I'm inclined to think it's undersizing that's bound to get in the way and not the opposite. Making a map is utilizing allocated space and turning it into a fun environment to roam around, feeling sandwiched in between layers of colored walls and sprites protruding out of everywhere all the while being fed two angry Enforcers is never fun (and a waste when the same encounter might just as well happen in properly designed space to begin with).

By use of the grid I did mean it as a guide but not necessarily for scaling, more like a way to create patterns within your level that you can easily manipulate, exchange or copy paste on the fly as opposed to doing everything by sight and having to make do with mathematical imprecisions. Learning how to break away from the grid is important but, maybe funnily enough, learning exactly when to actually rely on it (again, mostly for consistency in values and distances) also is, and perhaps just as much.

[jimbob]

i use x amount of gridspaces for general guidelines, like say normal grid space 4 wide for doorways, wich seems fine ( normal gridspace for me is going from no grid to press G 3 times, wich seems the default grid in build iirc. )

making walls in about intervals of 8 grid spaces, sidewalks about 4 wide, roads about 8 to 16 for single or dual lane, 8 grid spaces for crates, 4 for small ones, you get the idea
the thing i still struggle with from time to time are diagonal gridspaces, i just 'feel' those because im not going to calculate the actual spaces needed to get 8, but diagonaly

[Aleks]

jimbob, on 05 February 2021 - 02:40 AM, said:

i use x amount of gridspaces for general guidelines, like say normal grid space 4 wide for doorways, wich seems fine ( normal gridspace for me is going from no grid to press G 3 times, wich seems the default grid in build iirc. )

making walls in about intervals of 8 grid spaces, sidewalks about 4 wide, roads about 8 to 16 for single or dual lane, 8 grid spaces for crates, 4 for small ones, you get the idea
the thing i still struggle with from time to time are diagonal gridspaces, i just 'feel' those because im not going to calculate the actual spaces needed to get 8, but diagonaly

It's perhaps easiest to just base the general guidance for size of things on how 3D Realms did it in Duke and the general "consensus" that 512 X/Y units in Build and 8192 vertical units are equal to 1 meter. Duke's F7 sprite is generally a bit flawed here, but this makes indeed for "4 3rd grid spaces" for door width and 16 "page ups" for doors. As for diagonals, it's either good to base it off diagonal square flat sprites for proportions or just make the area without diagonals, then select and rotate it with ALT+< to make for a smooth rotation (again in Build units, e.g. 512 being equal to 90 degrees) - then just connect the remaining lines. Also remember that when drawing lines or moving vertices, the newer versions (not sure how new) will show you explicitly the line length in Build units, also there's an option to show markers for halves/centres of the lines which I find super helpful too.

[ck3D]

That's a good point about diagonals being a difficulty at first - personally, to work that out I figured out my own patterns of values I'll regularly use for such angles and they're going to be different (although relatively close) from the ones I use for straight lines (the classic 1024/2048/3072/4096 etc.). Which leads me to agree on how what matters the most is consistency, unless you're deliberately making a creative exception and something you especially want to stand out (but so that's not in a bad way, it'll still have to remain coherent enough). Also variation in angles is nice and all if you want to bother but personally I tend to use straight diagonals a lot (so at perfect 45 degree angles), usually those suffice to do the trick of breaking the linearity - and you don't really want to always submerge the player with infinite directions either - and are generally easier to work with later if you're going to add splits, sprite work and whatnot.

A good example of how important respecting the regularity of your dimensions is for instance, let's say you want to make a tunnel with an arched ceiling and so you first make one square section with the archways and then copy paste it a few times, connecting all good since you're not changing anything and then let's say you want a 90 degree corner with a 45 degree transition that keeps the arches, if everything is perfectly coherent and you respected the grid, the transition in between the rotated sectors will be easy to draw as every default value will be correct once you draw the diagonals and auto-adjusting the slopes will work right away too, whereas as a beginner it's easy to completely lack that scope and just spend hours making individual little touches and refining everything until it looks worse.

Also I also can't be arsed to ever make accurate mental divisions while mapping, but the grid is of great assistance here as the different scales can do a big part of the job for you once you know what you're doing.

Aleks, on 05 February 2021 - 02:58 AM, said:

It's perhaps easiest to just base the general guidance for size of things on how 3D Realms did it in Duke and the general "consensus" that 512 X/Y units in Build and 8192 vertical units are equal to 1 meter. Duke's F7 sprite is generally a bit flawed here, but this makes indeed for "4 3rd grid spaces" for door width and 16 "page ups" for doors. As for diagonals, it's either good to base it off diagonal square flat sprites for proportions or just make the area without diagonals, then select and rotate it with ALT+< to make for a smooth rotation (again in Build units, e.g. 512 being equal to 90 degrees) - then just connect the remaining lines. Also remember that when drawing lines or moving vertices, the newer versions (not sure how new) will show you explicitly the line length in Build units, also there's an option to show markers for halves/centres of the lines which I find super helpful too.

I admit I have a bit of a gripe with such rigidity in measurements (trying to match real-life door sizes and whatnot) because in Duke I feel like the physics are just completely different from what you can do in real life and so even something that aims at translating real-world stuff that accurately looks like a replica is likely to fail at allocating the player a comfortable amount of space. Real distances will look right graphically but most often won't be optimally practical. I guess it's really a matter of style at that point though, and whether or not the author is down with visual abstractions, but what I mean is I don't think emphasis on visual quality and coherence and emphasis on photorealism are the same. To be fair though, you know this is coming from someone who loves spacious areas these days. I like how accurate you are and meticulous your own style is, which is a big part of why it's unique but I think it's also cool to get looser and go wild with big stuff that's just fun to jump around on with literally zero hindrance. I know you'll agree but I still felt like that point had to be made, to mitigate!

[Merlijn]

And here I am, mostly basing the size and distances on "what feels right".

All kidding aside, I adopted a similar approach to ck3d by slighty exagerrating the size of locations. Back in the day, red4 was too cramped because I went for realism.
Nowadays, if something is cramped it's by deliberate design (because I want that particular part to be claustrophobic for example).

As for SG4, I did hit a bit of a writers block the past few weeks, which slowed things down. The good news is that I finally figured out what I wanted to and now the map has great momentum again.
So basically in this map you will enter the lions den, which means you'll be descending deep into the earth (after cleaning out The Kompleks).
One of the things you'll encounter on your way down is this big underground river of slime, consuming the last remnants of Emmerichville:

[jimbob]

pretty much finished my farm map for the Global Kerfuffle mod, only need to 'script' some sequences in order to hinder the player, and do some finishing touches.

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[Micky C]

Nice work on the milestone of finishing a map. Are you going to add shading and shadows though?

[brullov]

Personally, I find some beauty in full bright scenes on the Build Engine.

[jimbob]

Micky C, on 07 February 2021 - 12:20 PM, said:

Nice work on the milestone of finishing a map. Are you going to add shading and shadows though?

yes, its one of the next steps, including adding some secrets, and exploration options aswell. i just need to find an angle on the shading

[Aleks]

Merlijn, on 07 February 2021 - 04:45 AM, said:

And here I am, mostly basing the size and distances on "what feels right".

All kidding aside, I adopted a similar approach to ck3d by slighty exagerrating the size of locations. Back in the day, red4 was too cramped because I went for realism.
Nowadays, if something is cramped it's by deliberate design (because I want that particular part to be claustrophobic for example).

As for SG4, I did hit a bit of a writers block the past few weeks, which slowed things down. The good news is that I finally figured out what I wanted to and now the map has great momentum again.
So basically in this map you will enter the lions den, which means you'll be descending deep into the earth (after cleaning out The Kompleks).
One of the things you'll encounter on your way down is this big underground river of slime, consuming the last remnants of Emmerichville:

duke0151.png

Neither yours nor MRCK's maps ever felt oversized for me, but then again, the "rigid" dimensions I mentioned seem to be quite intuitional and I guess you both use these most of the time anyway, they're the same in original game too Oversizing is mostly a problem with 90's maps (and quite a big one usually), especially considering how there's often very narrow corridors contrasted with high ceilings or weird proportioned door.

Anyway - love that screenshot, Merlijn, it looks so dynamic with all the sloped geometries (especially love how you used one of the few diagonal textures for the side of that large block in the river that appears to be just overturned).

Had some fun with "traditional" clearwater (so no TROR involved), spiced a bit with the use of sloped sprites for masking the floor on the ramp.

[jimbob]

thanks to the magic of spriteflags my duck now floats instead of sinks to the bottom, for whatever reason i cant get my blood projectiles to not clip despite a noclip spriteflag. they still 'interact' with the player and enemies causing multiple issues, the most annoying of wich is the whack sound then they hit you. gets old quick when shells keep whacking you in the face. and turning into 'shells on the floor' on top of your head.

just for fun i made the expander make enemies not only grow, but also float up for a few seconds before exploding.

and i still love clearwater effects

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[Merlijn]

@ jimbob: really digging the new art and the overall look of the project, keep up the good work!

@ Aleks: thanks! There's going to be a lot of vertical and downward movement (really want to give the player the impression that they're descending deep into the earth) so I'll try to explore that theme as well as I can.
Your screenshot could have fooled me, I didn't see that you're using sloped sprites. Pretty sweet!

[Maarten]

@Jimbob: love the mood of your mod, it also reminds me a lot of Redneck Rampage (that's a compliment, I love the art and look of that game).
@Aleks: nice tricks, love the mood of the shot!

Merlijn's shot is a cool place too... actually I've seen it in game mwuahah It's neat!

I also made very steady progress. Like AAP1: Woudrichem, it will contain a HUGE outdoor location, but also places like this:

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[oasiz]

Looks very nice!
FYO, try to hide those black seams, you could i.e. select those walls and run:
do gamevar i 0 0
do for i allwalls set wall[i].picnum icepicnum

And same for wall[i].shade.

First line defines gamevar i, second one changes wall picnum to icepicnum

[jimbob]

Maarten, on 09 February 2021 - 12:39 PM, said:

@Jimbob: love the mood of your mod, it also reminds me a lot of Redneck Rampage (that's a compliment, I love the art and look of that game).

well i did yank some art from that game, but im trying to replace those with my own in due time.

thanks a lot


im considering naming it Operation : Mallard, but there was an actual operation : mallard by the british.

your map looks really cool ( har )

[edit]
added a new feature, you can give the ducks bread, and they will then walk away with a full tummy. duke says come get some aswell

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[ck3D]

Wow this is all looking really cool. Merlijn and Maarten's respective screens are top notch, I love the return of the crate in Aleks' and jimbob seems to be having a lot of fun working on his mod and it shows in the results, great news to see so much being done.

re: black seams, for ceilings you can also do it the cheap way and just texture the inner walls with the same texture you're using for the ceiling itself (with the same shade value and similar looking repeat values if you're cautious). In game it should all blend in unless the player inspects the structure from super close and even then, if they don't know there's a seam they most likely won't even see it.

[Maarten]

@Jimbob: thanks! Love that duck thing haha

Thanks for the tip Oasiz, but in this case I agree with ck3D
@ck3D: I acutally "left" the forums/mapping for 6 months..and I recall I never send you feedback on your maps while I've tested them all How is your episode going right now? I love how huge it was & felt like a episode.

[Aleks]

@Maarten: Thanks! And love your screen, neat geometries paired with cool layered shadows. Also that rock texture looks really cool with the blue palette. And yeah, you've been away for too long, ck3D probably made like 4 new maps for his episodes during these past 6 months There's a whole thread on his episode, which you should definitely check for some awesome screens!

@jimbob: That trick with feeding the ducks looks cool! Good thing Duke doesn't say "Shake it, Baby!". BTW, I'm not sure now, is your mod gonna include Duke or some WW2 soldier? IIRC the aliens were just temporary, right?

[jimbob]

Aleks, on 10 February 2021 - 03:38 AM, said:

@jimbob: That trick with feeding the ducks looks cool! Good thing Duke doesn't say "Shake it, Baby!". BTW, I'm not sure now, is your mod gonna include Duke or some WW2 soldier? IIRC the aliens were just temporary, right?

the mod will include a new character, as of yet unnamed, but maybe duke could be a nickname i will replace the aliens with new artwork when my friend comes over with a german uniform, and i'll redo the duke artwork too in a US uniform, i already have a lame helper bot wich just aimlessly wanders around and occasionally shoots and somewhat follows the player, but it needs a lot of work, so far all weapons have been replaced, and i plan on doing some alternatives aswell, like a luger, maybe a K98 if i can get my hands on one.
i plan to do the photoshoot sometime this month, and mapping is moving allong at a steady pace with 3 maps fully playable, one basic training map wich is rough and will probably be replaced and i'm working on a chateau map now wich will be the map before a bossfight. the first episode will be a prologue featuring somewhat historically correct levels ( historically correct as in there where US forces on those areas, like north africa, france and finally probably belgium )
the second episode will feature a fictive story where your character excelled at his job and is recruited for the OSS and goes on to do some clandestine missions like dismantle a V2 rocket facility or stop a submarine ( already have a basic submarine base mapped out in rough form ) and will uncover a sinister plot of sorts where the nazis are being well... evil

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[jimbob]

making a flush forest section before crossing a road and move into a large chateau

have some birds flying, though it still needs some ambiance sounds.

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[Mark]

Way cool, refreshingly different.

[jimbob]

and here's a scripted sequence i did, you use the radio to call a sherman tank, wich rolls up to a roadblock and shoots a projectile smashing through the barrier destroying it, so you can proceed.
im going to do radio chatter to explain it ingame later on, maybe tomorow.

[Maarten]

@Jimbob: I love where your mod is going to!! IC you're quite motivated, nioce! If anytthing; don't forget some mapping details & shadings. But I guess you're focusing on the effects and art right now

-------------------------------
I had quite some spare time this week (lockdown...)...I actually did use 700+ sectors, 5000+ walls since 18-1-21 ... this has to be a new record for me O_o
Here is a shot. It's save to say it's over 65% done (maybe more). Soon I'll give more information about this sequel to AAP1: Woudrichem!

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[jimbob]

thanks the shading in that map is work in progress, most outside areas have relatively subtle shading, and inside needs a lot more work, yes im focussing on art and effects, and some sound too, when i get bored with that i go back and add stuff to maps, fix things etc one thing i need to work on is actual objectives and a way to code them. most of the stuff is just me going 'wouldnt it be cool if' and then try to get it to work

i like your maps, havent gotten through that huge map yet, but its fun to play, and absolutely massive in size :eek:

[ck3D]

Yeah the motivation and apparent emulation in this thread in general is cool to see right now!

@Maarten episode has been growing, like Aleks was saying there is a thread for it (link is in sig). In the past four months I've made four maps, the last one is twice the size of Woudrichem in Mapster (I only recently checked, I was surprised myself) so I'm really looking forward to your new piece if you're saying it's bigger too! In general I feel like we've entered a bit of a new age for Duke maps, using the Mapster32 limits to further extents than we used to, or maybe getting wiser with resources (maybe the first map that felt like that to me was actually Clear The Coast); just the other day I was randomly rereading the .txt file for one of the later BobSP maps (I think the underwater one) and it had this whole paragraph that in retrospect really reads like a prediction of just that kind of stabilization, where people would finally coin the right focus to work with the new limits and make maps of quite the epic scope in comparison to the output of the time, but he was early by a decade. I hope lockdown is going alright, here our situation is quite shit too with a 6pm - 6am curfew just as days are getting longer again. It's also like minus ten Celsius, so there's little incentive to leave the house.

I like the new shot, gives me some early Roch map vibe for some reason, I think the building textures and also that screen. With a blue sky, that could look just like out of Roch 2 (one of my favorites in the series).