I'm switching to my primary account. The Chapter 8 of my related fanfic is out, but still no cathedral. Well, I'll have it by tomorrow, I hope. I calculated its height as the map geometry to be almost exactly 300 meters (10512 units tall)? if you accept one meter to be 35 tall and 42 wide (because of non-square aspect ratio, have to always keep that in mind!). The maximum size a doom map could occupy is 1560x1560x1872 meters, four and a half cubic kilometers. Limited by the 16-bit physics ancestry.
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The cathedral model is done. The accompanying sprite is done.
Also, changed sky for maps 25..27 to the much brighter one from map 24. Feels like the sky is really on fire now. No maps edited (except my screenshooting range CHE46), I just modified TEXTURES and removed fogdensity in MAPINFO.
Also, changed cathedral stained glass windows to blue/purple because the old red/orange provided no contrast against the red environment.
I still have to make sprites for all the 100500 skybox objects. The next weekend, for sure!
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Added CHE07 as a proof-of-concept sample of a better fog for Mars (which irritates me gratly with its *bright* fogged map geometry clashing horribly with the darker skybox).
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A big update. I worked hard all sunday, from 5 in the morning to 22 in the evening, but I did add sprite support. My clever plan of making sprite support before I had the sprites... failed! I had to edit skyboxes for maps 19, 20, 24 and 25. Also, I took eday28 from the latest eday and frankensteined it together with my modifications to the old map 26. The new area is awesome! :smile: But making sky floor is like calling "Beetlejuice!" three times. I come and start FIXING.
Link stays the same.
Uploaded link to screenshots to the discord group.
The "Mr Frankenstein, meet MY monster!" moment:
P.S. I just realized, looking at Sergeant Mark IV's screenshots, that I set light levels throughout entire Chebskies completely wrong: I was designing them all for "light level=standard" while he designs for "light level=dark", which is much brighter.
Where I used 224 I should have used 160 or lower.
Will edit and re-upload.
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CHE19
Mar. 20, 2019:
- made the portal a standalone building you can walk around, still see the city on the other side: showing off the visual-only portals that work in Zandronum!
- changed marine routes to fix problems I reported on the forums: now after all the targets are killed, the marines walk into tunnel behind the entrenched tanks, invisibly teleporting back to the city, walking visibly to the portal, visibly teleporting back into hell then walking the route again. This perpetual motion creates illusion of reinforcements that keep arriving while preventing the marines from swarming and blocking the player.
CHE24
Mar. 21, 2019:
- fixed light levels
- got rid of sky portals, remaking side wings using 3d floors and other fakery. Fps is more like 30 now. Still too low.
CHE24B
Mar. 21, 2019:
- fixed light levels
- got rid of sky portals, remaking side wings using 3d floors and other fakery. Fps is very solid now, 40..60
- moved the machinegun in the right yard into a painfully obvious trap.
P.S. Dissatisfied with these 2 maps, will fix later today.
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CHE24
Mar. 22, 2019:
- fixed bugs introduced by me
- fixed light levels: 160 is too dark for the bright orange sky. raised to 176. 128 is too dark for the end level skybox, raised to 144. 160 is too dark for the blood realm (fog too dense), raised to 176
- added a missing torch in the dining hall (for symmetry)
- added a 3-second delay to the front gate raising after you press the button. More interesting this way: you hear the back door rising but don't see anything happening.
- changed all inverted cross windows from skybox to just a flaming back wall texture + pulsing light. Removed that skybox.
CHE24B
Mar. 22, 2019:
- fixed bugs introduced by me
- fixed light levels: 160 is too dark for the bright orange sky. raised to 176. 128 is too dark for the end level skybox, raised to 144. 160 is too dark for the blood realm (fog too dense), raised to 176
- added a missing torch in the dining hall (for symmetry)
- increased door raising speed for the monster closet behind the front gate button.
- changed all inverted cross windows from skybox to just a flaming back wall texture + pulsing light. Removed that skybox.
- added several decorative windows to make high walls less blind.
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CHE19
Mar. 22, 2019: made the marines only start their assault when you cross the bridge. Until then, they are running in circles, most of them on the Earth side. The map starts with a message "get that tank moving".
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CHE19
Mar 23, 2019:
- made the area behind the portal enclosed in low cliffs, blocking the view down into the skybox.
- made the bloodfall narrower, less visibility down into the skybox. All to reinforce the ambience of being on a vast plain.
- made the marines already in hell retreat back to the earthside creating impression of small hitch in execution of a hastily organized offensive. The portal is now a two-way teleport, for monsters only.
- improved the command's messages about the tank not moving
- shuffled areas around to reset after that nasty bug (see comment in the map script)
- added two heavily armed marines to the castle area (locked on an inaccessible cliff)
- added a RL spawher to the ammo cache in the castle area: this map is too hard to complete with only the starting rifle.
- added med-kits and green armor at the map start. Ideally, healing the player should be done via script: this is not for balance but because it looks stupid to send a wounded to storm Hell, yes?
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CHE22
Mar. 24, 2019:
- renamed to che22 to keep in sync with PreBetaX
- removed the heavy weapon dudes: silly me, they could teleport to follow you
CHE23
Mar. 24, 2019:
- renamed to che23 to keep in sync with PreBetaX
- fixed light levels (down to 176 from 224)
- fixed bridge adjustment, north end was shifted to the right
- simplified the terrain under the bridge, also making many sectors sloped
- improved the sharply sloped "nope, dont jump here" sector by aping ActorThrust and the like from the necropolis. As if a different texture, that of the walls, wasn't obvoius enough.
- switched the blood brook to non-glowing verions BLOODNG & BFALLNG, to keep in line with my proposal of "glowing = harmful; non-glowing = safe"
- replaced the lava pit with a normal looking corridor, stepping there leads straight to jungle.
- made the exit I previously made into a secret leading to che47, because that map is removed in current PreBetaX
- added two draft messages telling the story (offensive failed, marines withdrawing) triggered by walking onto the bridge, then off the bridge.
- changed hanging corpses in the starting area to ones that don't have flies: their buzzing was *ruining* the ambience!
CHE47
Mar. 24, 2019:
- renamed to che47 to keep in sync with PreBetaX where this map was removed. I propose making it a secret, containing The Unmaker.
- made the non-harmful blood into NG versions, to keep in line with my proposal of "glowing = harmful; non-glowing = safe". Added vapors from eday30 to the harmful blood areas.
- modified some ambient sounds from WaterFall to WaterFlowing because the former is too grand and noisy for small bloodfalls
- set music to EDMU23 (the same as the Stronghold) for a lack of a better alternative
CHE24
Mar. 24, 2019:
- renamed to che24 to keep in sync with PreBetaX
- scraped my previous foggy sky replacing it with a more contrast black-and-crimson mess, with crags now simply dark. I did it because I finally got music working and that made me realize that my previous feeble attempts weren't worthy of this ominous, oppressive theme!
CHE25A
Mar. 24, 2019:
- renamed to che25 to keep in sync with PreBetaX
- applied the same modifications as in the map above
CHE26A
Mar. 24, 2019:
- renamed to che26a to keep in sync with PreBetaX
- set the music according to PreBetaX
CHE26B
Mar. 24, 2019:
- renamed to che26b to keep in sync with PreBetaX
- set the music according to PreBetaX
CHE27
Mar. 24, 2019:
- renamed to che27, to keep in sync with current PreBetaX
- minute adjustment of slope sector heights under the broken bridge
- set the music according to PreBetaX
CHE28
Mar. 24, 2019:
- renamed to che28 to keep in sync with PreBetaX
- fixed skybox light levels
- set the music according to PreBetaX
- fixed bugs introduced by me
- fixed Sergeant Mark IV's bug (the door to the blue key missing "repeatable action" flag, so it could never opened again if you hadn't entered after opening it)
- fixed Sergeant Mark IV's new area by setting the fancy grates to 121 Line Identification + 32 walkable Middle Texture, so that they prevent player plummeting but not block cacodemons flying above.
CHE29
Mar. 24, 2019:
- renamed to che29 to keep in sync with PreBetaX
- fixed light levels
- deprecated the dedicated start areaa "city" skybox by moving the player starts inside the fence and moving the fence back to keep the scenic view from the start and raising the terrain surrounding the bridge base to "occlude" the city that isn'there. Now only the uber-lean main skybox remains, 4 sectors, 42 linedefs and 12 things. Sky portal performance increased from 22 to 38 fps when looking straight up in the front yard. Also freed 15 tags by deleting upper/lower things from the bridge.
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I just noticed my fancy standalone portal contradicts lore. Now planning to re-skin it from an obsidian building with meat lining to a full-meat organic growth.
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CHE22
Mar. 31, 2019:
- changed the standalone gate to flesh to fit the updated lore, used classic Doom 2 textures transformed using TEXTURES
- chaned the bomber that bombs the castle to two assault helicopters, re-purposed from zombie helicopters. They arrive and start shooting at barons. Removed 2/3 of the barons, without bombing there were too many.
- fixed the long lingering bug with earthside sky randomly not working. Was caused by things (including skybox pickers) glitching if moved to the left of x ~ -29000. So the entire -32768..32767 grid cannot be used, dammit.
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CHE22B: Chebmaster.com
Jul 09, 2019:
- the final solution of the tank problem: the marines travel across upper ground where tank could not go. You can ignore the tanks and follow the marines there, but the meat to ammo ratio of this map is daunting.
- the middle of the map remade from scratch, from the bridge to the castle area. Vaguely resembles the original layout. The monsters were moved from the original and shuffled, I made no changes to their number nor composition.
- simplified the earthside area by necessity: I moved everything ~5000 to the right (to make the humongous camera container sector fit) and items began glitching at x < -25K instead of former -29K. So the map contents size is the limit. Either 44K from the rightmost vertex to the leftmost thing, or 41K from the rightmost thing to the leftmost thing.
- added machinegun and shotgun in the starting area, so that the map is playable as a standalone when starting with only rifle.
- removed marine walking trigger delay from my previous map version.
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CHE28:
Sep. 15, 2019:
- invented a new trick for buildings bases - see the sharp slopes using 4 textures squished along cardinal directions
- moved the twin towers of the skybridges area entrance to the west thus making the wall of that area straight north to south.
- got rid of the potentially sloped 3d floor that made the floor of the skybridges area, replaced with plain floor at - 2000. Reason: engine unable to render intersecting 3d floors. Grumble. Increased crevasses depth to around -2300.
- redone the south-eastern part of the skybridges area, making it look like there are the white city wall and the same lava-leaking cliffs that frame the city entrance, just seen from the other side. The lower tier of the city is now only visible from the bridge adjacent to the blue key building. ~40 fps minimum on my laptop I officially define as "potato".
- modified the blue key building decreasing the gate tower's height significantly
- fixed texture alignments on all buildings in the skybridges area. Changed a *lot* of ceiling heights.
- corrected the railings from "walkable middle texture" to "impassable". How could I have missed the fact that "walkable middle texture" blocks projectiles...? I was so sure I checked that, ugh.
- made a couple such railings separate linedefs offset by 1. Because were causing texture misalignment on walls, windows cut by the top edge.
- modified skybox, compressing the lower tier (much denser now, only a tiny part is visible). In the upper tier, removed barely visible buildings and added towers on the cliffs above the city
- added support columns for 3 longest bridges.
- connected the toilet room window with the skybridges area. Moved one arachnotron to make him not visible from that window.
- fixed fences height around the plasa with the button that unleases barons and knights. Now uniformly low, I'm not sure if was the right thing to do.
- fixed texturing of the second round "stool" tower in the yard (the one with green armor) to match the central one. Was sp_hot instead of metal.
- fixed glitchy (unfinished?) windows of living rooms: added simple boxes textured "black".
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CHE27:
Sep. 16, 2019:
- fixed missing middle textures in the red key hall (my fault) and in the flooded basement (it seems Mark was planning for a secret there but it wasn't finished and the corridor was ending in HOM)
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I've performed a great pruning. The old-style sky is much, much better than the over-complicated mess I created trying to fix Sergeant Mark IV's new skybox. That was a mistake. It could not be fixed, it should be simply dropped.
The skybox itself is awesome, and I am sure would be of a great use in some old-style DooM maps... BUT it fits the specific Extermination Day maps, as that Russian saying goes, 'like a saddle on a cow'.
So simply rolling back to the sky styled after the old one from the days of the Hell on Earth starter Pack makes the maps work *much* better.
A sky with scrolling clouds is cool, BUT it imposes damn tight constraints of what you could picture with the skybox. You *have* tho have a ring of tall mountains, for starters, to avoid texture glitching near the horizon. Fog is not a solution because night vision scopes of the railgun and the bazooka see right through the fog and the sky still looks like shit.
After awhile, an obligatory ring of tall mountains just looks tiresome.
Plus, the new sky I stone-souped from SKY3B is *bright* along the horizon, making various trees and other dark detail stand out splendidly.
Also, the pesky problem of the engine blurring the zenit into an ugly spot is solved by *deliberately* making the top of your sky strictly solid color, making it on your own terms. In my case, there's a black cloud overhead.
The old version is now available as [the old url]chebskies-2019-09-16.pk3
As always, the complete log of changes is inside the PK3.
I am now retconning my fanfic, in part to reflect these changes. Please don't read it, I've only corrected the first chapter so far.
CHE22:
Feb. 18, 2020:
- changed the sky to SKY3BC, a modified variant of SKY3B with black below the horizon baked into the sky and a black cloud overhead to prevent the engine from blurring the zenith.
- reduced the skybox to bare essentials (the looming plateau ahead with the boss tower on top, nothing more).
- increased outdoor brightness to 144.
CHE22B:
Feb. 18, 2020:
- changed the sky to SKY3BC, a modified variant of SKY3B with black below the horizon baked into the sky and a black cloud overhead to prevent the engine from blurring the zenith.
- reduced the skybox to bare essentials (the looming plateau ahead with the boss tower on top, nothing more).
- increased outdoor brightness to 144.
- reshaped the castle area to account for a different entrance vector than what the castle area was designed for. Now the lava lake begins from the walls, to reach the jumping rocks you need to go right, cross the lava river across conveniently placed rocks. You can fall into lava now as your tank is blocked from entering that area.
CHE23:
Feb. 17, 2020:
- changed the sky to SKY3BC, a modified variant of SKY3B with black below the horizon baked into the sky and a black cloud overhead to prevent the engine from blurring the zenith. Fits the ambience much better.
- removed half the skybox.
- reduced outdoor brightness to 144
CHE47:
Feb 18, 2020:
- changed the sky to SKY3BC, a modified variant of SKY3B with black below the horizon baked into the sky and a black cloud overhead to prevent the engine from blurring the zenith.
- greatly simplified the skybox. Of decorations, only the boss tower, the big castle and one faraway tower remain. Instead of the second abyss, jungle is visible below, at height of -2048. Using a triple texture (2 transparent 3d floors) to create a volumetric effect of treetops. It works, cool!
- moved the 2 barons to their original position at the bridge. Still in a pit to prevent premature activation, they raise when the player enters the berserk room.
- reduced outdoor brightness to 144
CHE24:
Feb.15, 2020:
- changed the sky to SKY3BC, a modified variant of SKY3B with black below the horizon baked into the sky and a black cloud overhead to prevent the engine from blurring the zenith.
- deleted the skybox completely, commented out the dynamic skybox script.
- decreased outdoor brightness to 128 and indoor to 112. Reason: needed better oppressive ambience but not at the cost of adversely affecting the gameplay. 128 is the reasonable minimum for closed spaces while 144 is the minimum for large open spaces. The jungle is quite closed.
- deleted the prop tunnel and elevator at the map start
- changed the wooden gate & fence blocking the prop road to two low towers with iron columns between. Moved one imp onto these towers.
- fixed the long-standing problem of imps crowding the jungle to the left of the main swamp entrance and being killable with a single rocket. Now there is a silent teleporter there, teleporting them to the far end of that narrow strip. Until killed, they are in perpetual motion, distributed evenly. Both sides of that strip work that way.
CHE25:
Feb. 15, 2020:
- changed the sky to SKY3BC, a modified variant of SKY3B with black below the horizon baked into the sky and a black cloud overhead to prevent the engine from blurring the zenith.
- simplified the skybox removing all mountains, hills, rock spires and distant jungle props except those forming the crah straight ahead.
- decreased outdoor brightness to 136 and indoor one to 128
- fixed a broken linedef in sector 774 (corridor opposite the crusher trap)
- changed all the blood except the fountain to non-glowing version.
- changed fountain top from stone to blood
CHE26A:
Feb. 16, 2020:
- changed the starting area sky to SKY3BC and removed the skybox.
- changed the starting area ouutdoor brightness to 144 and shadows to 128
- changed the cliffs at the gorge ends to work without skybox
- reduced the starting area to get rid of unnecessary cover. Those scenic view shelves are not needed, there is nothing to look at now.
- remade the elevator shack using 3d sectors, looks properly from the tower now.
- changed the inverted cross windows scrolling texture to HESNAK01 and removed the stupid flashing effect
- changed the alternate sky of the dining hall from red to brown to contrast sharper with the main skies (which are now both all red).
- simplified the yellow key gallery sky sector geometry a bit.
CHE26B:
Feb. 16, 2020:
- changed the starting area sky to SKY3BC and removed the skybox.
- changed the starting area ouutdoor brightness to 144 and shadows to 128
- changed the cliffs at the gorge ends to work without skybox
- reduced the starting area removing scenic view shelves
- remade the elevator shack using 3d sectors.
- changed the inverted cross windows scrolling texture to HESNAK01 and removed the stupid flashing effect
- changed the alternate sky of the dining hall from red to brown to contrast sharper with the main skies (which are now both all red).
- fixed broken geometry in the left yard (had to remove one spike from the inaccessible far tower)
- fixed broken textureless linedef in prison
- increased deviousness of the entrance button: before, both monster closets opened at once. Now the one behind him opend, there is a delay, then the closet behind the button opens (which should now be behind the player again).
- made grass in the final yard brown: the new BD scripts were reacting to green grass with replacing many hell trees with green earth trees and brown grass tufts with green grass tufts.
- raised the inverted cross in the right yard so that it is not partially obscured when viewed from below
- fixed broken texture: satyr faces were out of alignment with dart throwers
CHE27:
Feb. 16, 2020:
- fixed texture at teleport edge in the red key hall
- fixed width of the broken bridge (was not equal across the break, lol)
- improved the red key slide ramp. The wind special is only used inside the tunnel. The top part of the slide is a combination of various thrust, thrust z and carry effects (with wind it was starting to push when you were still peering down from above, not cool)
... I've optimized what I could, made round towers octagonal, squeezed every last drop out of my fancy skybox, even got rid of crenellation on the side wall in the blue key yard. Managed to raise fps up to 30+, with solid 40+ in many areas. But there still are places where it drops to ~25 or even to 18.
