ne_q1spCompilingGui update (1.0.1) and quake stuff

following some suggestions on func_msgboard,i’ve added a few things to the compiler gui program.
v1.0.1:
-Added some error checking to recover in the case of corrupted config.ini.  It still requires you to restart the program though.
-Added ‘factory defaults’ in the case of a deleted config.ini.  It still requires you to restart.
-Checking ‘Run Quake’ or running quake manually will automatically apply +map mapname, you still need to enter -game mod in the arguments though.
-Added ‘About’ information.
-Changed main window to allow it to be minimized.

the original post has been updated with the new file, or just download it here:

ne_q1spCompilingGui101.zip (22kb) from necros.quaddicted.com

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ne_q1spCompilingGui

my creatively named “ne_q1spCompilingGui” is a sometimes useful GUI.  essentially, it acts as a graphical batch file that will copy files for you, run qbsp, vis and light with whatever settings you want and easily let you toggle command line arguments on and off.

ne_cath story

no real mapping to report today, i was helping a friend of mine install some wiring in his house.

i do have the original story behind ne_cath.  actually, the story was lost, along with all the other data, but i wanted to have it down somewhere, so i’m re-writing from memory.

doom2 sp map update 3

this is probably a better method of showing new areas vs old ones.

here’s the current version of the canyon now.  it’s got some kind of castleish thing down on the bottom right which gives access to some lifts that bring the player up high enough to reach the ledges that lead back up north.

the yellow key is in that small room near the bottom.  they player will have to back-track a bit to get to the yellow door, so i’ll have to open up some new areas or something to keep things interesting.  and likely spawn in another horde of monsters, of course. ^_^

the giant grassy area on the right has no purpose atm.  i want to use it to just connect some areas a bit more just to open the map up a bit.  i may spawn a ton of monsters here and having the opening will allow them to spill out into other areas better…  but i’m not really sure.  i may just leave it as decoration or something.

riven and doom3

i’ve been playing some riven recently thanks to a mod that allows it to run on my macbook pro and a thought that used to occur to me often back when i was first playing it came to mind again.  this would be so much cooler if it was realtime.

i got to thinking about the gameplay mechanics in riven and what kind of puzzles there were and i realized that it could be done with doom3.  i mean, there’s the obvious problem of only having access to hard shadows, but aside from that, the engine provides enough flexibility to accommodate all the puzzles in riven.

the fancy rides between islands (maglevs and the mine cart) are simple to create with splines and any anything else like machinery can either be scripted directly in the engine or else animated in md5 files.  riven never requires you to swim (indeed, water is actually a barrier) so the lack of liquids in doom3 is not an obstacle.

and then, i got started thinking about the art assets.  even if all the sounds from the game were ripped, it would still leave a colossal number of models and textures.  it would just not be possible to make it all.  doh.

still, some pretty cool puzzles could be done in idtech4…

doom2 sp map update2

was supposed to finish off the cavern by building the button area that enables the gateway in the center to be used by the (A), but mapper’s block happened so i dropped it for now.

instead, i started on the outdoor canyon area (B).  i had to rework this area before i finally settled on what’s there.  the first time, i had some problems integrating the new area with the first outdoor section above it.  that first area had a ceiling height of 128 but with the sky at 0, so anything had to be below 0 which the original area wasn’t. (i wanted to create a mountain above the ground height).

i settled on making nominal ground height far above sea level, so when the player appears at point (B), they are actually about -1024 down.  as they work across the canyon (following the red line, roughly), they eventually come back to 0 height.

i added a tower (C) out in the ocean to act as a sort of landmark for the two ‘windows’ i added through the rock walls shown by (D).  this will give the player something to place themselves with (without having to look at the map).

slade v3

it seems slayer, who created slade, is now working on a third incarnation of the editor.  more info: http://slade.mancubus.net

current plans for expansion…

so the whole point of this thing was to blog the map itself, so here’s my current plans:

i’m currently building around the brown section in this image.  the gameplay of this cavern is pretty much done at this point.

but just to explain a bit:

the player enters this cavern on the right side.  they move to the center and hit a button.  the button simultaneously starts a timer that releases hundreds of monsters out of the teleporter in the middle of the cavern and also unlocks the passageway at point ‘A’.  the player is safe from the gigantic horde of monsters once they start to work their way around the perimeter of the cavern.

along the way, they pick up boxes of rockets that they have to use to thin the horde out (they are safe from counter attack).

eventually, they make it to the brown unfinished area above with a button that will ‘recalibrate’ the gateway ‘to allow human transport’.  uhhh heh, well, it lets them use the teleporter.

it’s not on that image, but the teleporter would take them to some small/medium outdoor area with a completely different theme.  the obvious choice here is ‘hell’ since it’s doom after all.  so either those weird tentacle textures or the brimstone rocks or something.  it’s not really important, the point of it is really just to put some contrast in what the player’s seeing.

anyway, they work through this small area and teleport ‘back to the real world’ (…heh) into the green section.  this is planned to be outdoor, and i’m not sure on the size or exactly how it’ll look.  currently, i’m thinking of like big canyon type thing with a blood river meandering down the center of it.  the cavern is inside a giant mountain anyway, so it should be fairly consistent.

in any case, they pick up the yellow key which they use…

over here.  of note, the area ‘B’ is currently a decoration area, it’s not reachable and just has trees (and a teleporter pad where flying monsters come out of).

plans here are fairly vague but everything past the yellow door is likely to be marb textured with some courtyards.

area ‘C’ is the current start point, but i want to expand that northward a bit with a proper start (instead of just appearing in the hallway inside the map already).

slade vs doom builder

been using doom builder for a couple of hours now.

so far, it does essentially the same thing as slade with a few minor differences.

in 3d preview, both slade and doom builder have the ability to adjust floor/ceiling height by pointing at either the floor or ceiling and then using the mousewheel to increment or decrement by 8 units.

slade also defaults to adjusting ceiling height if you mousewheel when looking at a wall and not a floor/ceiling specifically.

doom builder has the option to turn that on.

the difference is this:  in slade, when looking at a wall, you can press shift+mousewheel and that will adjust floor height of that wall.  unfortunately there is no option for that in doom builder.

slade also looks a lot better than doom builder.  you can adjust the width that linedefs are displayed at whereas i find doom builder’s default line width a bit thick.  you can disable ‘high quality rendering’, but that really only disables anti-aliasing for lines making it even more ugly.

vertices are only visible in slade when in vertex mode.  they are solid coloured squares.

doom builder’s vertices are always visible which is distracting. also, they have this cheesy glossy look to them.

slade displays things/entities as a solid coloured circle with a line radiating out of the origin of the entity.

i kind of prefer doom builder’s display of things because you can turn on ‘display things as boxes’ which is much more helpful when aligning bounding boxes.  sadly, things have the cheesy gloss effect like vertices do.

once you’re past the aesthetics though, i think doom builder is superior.  slade has a long delay (~1 second) every time you switch to line mode.  it’s incredibly annoying and seems like a bug.  doom builder switches between modes fast with no delays at all.

switching in and out of 3d preview in doom builder is equally fast.  slade looks like it’s compiling the map every time you turn on the 3d preview which, in a large map, can take 1~2 seconds.

otoh, slade can display the sky like it appears in-game.  i haven’t been able to do that in doom builder.

as with most things like this, i wish i could combine the crisp, clear look of slade with the efficient and quick coding of doom builder.  oh well. :S

time to switch editors

ugly isn’t it?  well, it’s definately misaligned.  thing is, i have no idea why.

every single instance of this texture (and the support texture on the far left side) are misaligned like this.  i had to go through the entire map resetting the x offsets for something like 200 support trim textures… -_-

my best guess is this is a bug with SLADE’s auto texture alignment.  normally, when you tell it to auto align textures, it will only align textures in the same general area and only textures that are the same.

but somehow, it went and ‘aligned’ these textures over the entire map.  :S

i think i’ll give doom builder a shot now and see how it goes.