Rune

Man vs. Crab. The debate continues.

Human Head Studios’ Rune was built during an unfortunate period of video games where machinima was seen as a revolution. Game level designers were suddenly Stanley Kubrick despite never even taking an Intro to Film course in their life. But they saw Terminator 2 five times, so it must be ok. What ensues is awkwardly timed dialog, a confusing script, embarrassing gestures on models whose mouths don’t synchronize with speech, and a general distaste for actually sitting through the malarkey.

Keep Yourself to Yourself

Crucified Dreams is officially out. It will be on the /idgames mirrors within the next 24 hours so people can start their hate reviews. Sometime in the coming weeks, I’ll write a retrospective on each level telling why it rules or sucks or why someone that disappeared 8 years ago has their art released port-mortem.

On Tuesday, I will turn 24. That time will be spent on telephones listening to Americans rant about their futile little consumerist lives. Then I’ll come home to watch a movie on my computer or something, sleep another 10 hours, show up late for work, again, and repeat the fucking cycle again. Summer of George, my ass.

Another happy post. Still collecting thoughts on the new Muse, waiting for a decent rip to become available. I’ve been kicking it to some early 80s Depeche Mode for the interim. (Not gay).

Crucified Dreams Released

Crucified Dreams is finally out after eight years of “work”. The current release is really a test version to allow people to try it for a couple weeks. After the initial feedback, I’ll make gameplay modifications such as moving items about, making plasma/BFG weapons less available, etc. Once the v1.1 revision is complete, then it will be uploaded to the /idgames archive and I can forget about it forever.

I have single player work on the back-burner, but I don’t have a clue when it’ll be complete. There are 4 levels of 25k+ sidedefs almost completed now but I might be making major layout modifications to one of the levels that will delay the release further. I’m using a custom texture set that’s all kinds of hotness.

Now what’s the deal with the singer from Soul Coughing sounding exactly like Dave Matthews? It’s almost as bad as Linkin Park sounding like Savage Garden, although that’s a little too ironic. Word, my children.

Doom Maintenance Releases

A few new downloads:

• Jägermörder 02: Terra Nova v1.2, now runs with PrBoom-Plus and has some texture misalignments fixed. I also removed some cell ammo near the end to make the Cyberdemon battle a bit more difficult. At least you can now record demos for this level with a port that actually feels like Doom.
• Horizontal Spinning Fan in Doom, a tech demo level I made in 1999 that displays how to make a fan using animated textures, similar to the waving flag effect found near the end of Batman Doom. You can also see this demonstrated in one of my Surge DM 2 maps.
• Deadly Simplified v1.3, an update to my Doom II MAP07 deathmatch tribute that adds more detail and fixes some texture alignments. I had forgotten to upload it to /idgames for its initial release but now it’s there to prepare for the inevitable fact that doomworld.com will not always be around.

Crucified Dreams? It’s finished except for Jon_R’s MAP04. The full web site should be back up soon as I’m right now in the middle of changing around the layout and retaking screenshots. Early 2006, babies.

I have also redone this site’s code switching from tables to proper XHTML 1.0/CSS so future redesigns should be made much easier. Mad props to Manc and various Shackers for helping out with my layout ineptitude.

Halo

I’m in the Halifax area staying at a relatives’ place as I continue my supposed job search. This week, instead of actively seeking, I played Halo’s single player campaign. Gaming from 2002, here I come!

I felt the game was fairly unbalanced as far as the fun factor goes. Let’s get all the Hatorade out of the way right now. Bungie sure knows how to copy and paste. It’s one thing to keep a common theme throughout a building’s structure to ensure consistency and believability of the environment. But copy and pasting the same corridors and rooms 50+ times in one level? I declare “The Library” as the most tedious, boring, and repetitive video game environment ever built. It seems like a producer at Bungie decided the single player needed to be ten or more hours longer and forced the level designers to pad the length through copying geometry.

Two of the later chapters in the game also have backtracking and revisiting areas from earlier chapters, so there was another element that dulled the experience. Areas where the same three enemies were respawned multiple times weren’t too much fun either. I need to have the feeling of progress by giving rewards for my accomplishments. So stop having me fight the same bloody fights over and over in the same stale environments!

Ok, the good? Architecture was pretty stylin’. The Covenant environments were very distinct from the marine’s ship and Halo’s architecture. All of them reminded me of the set design from the Aliens series and since the game also includes groups of marines fighting together, of course there is dialog taken from Aliens (“we’re all gonna die, man!”). I thought most of the Warthog gameplay was really fun, especially during co-op. But what the hell is with the Covenant Ghost? A number of times I swore up and down when driving one while having to negotiate a narrow ledge with a result of falling over the edge because the Ghost floated a certain amount above the ground (~one metre) and had to stay parallel with the surface. Then you had the fun task of getting it unstuck when it became almost vertical on a rock surface. >:( Oh right, positive…

What’s with the hype around the story? Most of the cutscene dialog was rather awkward, especially the whole Cortona/Bot storyline. Again, a fair amount comes from the Alien series…

The good: vehicles, stuff blowing up, outdoor environments, co-op, mix of indoor/outdoor. The bad: It’s an FPS on a console, jeez. (We won’t mention the botched PC port, will we?)

Run, DOS, Run

G:\games\doom2\utils> deutex -usedtex g:\games\doom2\cd\crudream.wad | sort > g:\games\doom2\cd\usedtex.txt

Result:

DeuTex V3.6 Copyright (c)1994 Olivier Montanuy (montanuy@dmi.ens.fr)

DeuTex -help will give you the available commands

Doom directory is g:\games\doom2
listing texture used in the levels of g:\games\doom2\cd\crudream.wad
Reading WAD g:\games\doom2\cd\crudream.wad: (1405 entries)

Checking LEVEL MAP01
Checking LEVEL MAP02
Checking LEVEL MAP03
Checking LEVEL MAP05
Checking LEVEL MAP06

Error: *** Out of memory (Needed 388110 bytes) ***

I have 384mb RAM, dude. Stop the hate.

Kukuka-fuku

Executable: Risen3D ßV1.7.00 Oct 13 2005
OS: Windows XP 5.1.2600
Z_Init: 32.0 Mb allocated for zone.
Game path: G:\games\doom2\risen3d\
EDIT MODE: OFF
UDIR: none set
SAVE PATH: G:\games\doom2\risen3d\savegame\
Building gl nodes for g:\games\doom2\cd\crudream.wad
NODES BUILD: error Input/output error
Shutting down: A B C D E F G H I N Complete

Boom-compatible, huh? Thanks for the useful error message too. N stands for-

Crocodile Smile

I gave the lovely Daikatana a try. On the first level, you’re fighting robotic mosquitoes, alligators, and frogs. Now let’s think about this. You start a game by forcing the player to look up and down constantly for enemies that blend in with the (all green) environment. Great motherfucking introduction! Then to get into the sound… the same clip is used for every mosquito. So you hear a half-second loop constantly throughout the level.

Then, the hub system that worked oh so well in Quake 2. I go to the second level to be approached by a flying automaton that comes down from above my head. So what’s my first reaction? Back off. What does that do? Puts me back into the first level in the hub because the enemy is about 128 pixel units away from the hub level switch trigger. I kill it in level one with the amazing Ion Blaster. (Sidetrack: why do you have the typical fist defense when you start the game, yet when the player starts the first level, there’s a projectile weapon sitting directly in front of you. Is this to make it open that the player will miss that weapon and have to use their fists throughout the first hub? Why does the first weapon hurt the player? Are you trying to make this game as newbie unfriendly and frustration as possible?). Ok, time to head back to hub level 2. It crashes. After a couple tests I conclude that once you return to a hub’s level hub you were at earlier, you cannot return to the subsequent level. So level 1->level 2->level 1->level 2 can’t happen. Then why is there an enemy right beside the level switch trigger? Have I mentioned that my save game for the level switch crashed Daikatana? Save games I had before that also crashed it? Did Eidos hire elderly women with Down Syndrome to perform quality assurance? That would make them ghosts since Down Syndrome shortens life expectancy. There isn’t a patch either. Good thing I didn’t pay for this.

Get a new hobby, moneybags

Doom 2-Sided Linedefs Debacle

Pro tip #1: In order to make ZDoomGL run like molasses, put as many 2-sided lines in a scene as possible. As a case study, I shall take a map for the much delayed Crucified Dreams and show you screenshots of my findings. See below for visual evidence. Click the thumbnails to enlarge the scene.

As we can see, transparent areas of textures show white pixels instead of the scene behind the 2-sided line. There are noticeable white lines on the floor surface at the edge of polygon sectors. Oh and have I mentioned that this runs at less than 5fps on my machine? Most of my keyboard/mouse input was being ignored at the time too. It took pressing the Print Screen button 10 times until I finally got a screenshot taken.

Pro tip #2: Don’t run Crucified Dreams with ZDoomGL when it comes out.

Corollary: Timmie needs to stop working for the Evil Empire and fix the bloody ZDoomGL code!

Edit: GZDoom runs the scene properly and Timmie says the next version of ZDoomGL will be based off that code, so problem resolved! Now to try Risen3d…

• Everything Needs Standards
• Ho Ho Uwe
• They’re Like Me
• That’s sure to put bigots in their place. Yeah.
• The Deacon Effect

* A R N O L D ‘ D *

Have I mentioned that I no longer have a paying job? I think my supervisors are going to be disciplined too because they didn’t notice that four weeks in a row, I never showed up to my shift on time. On Monday, I got to work at 11:30am, took 10 minutes to setup. At one point one of my supervisors was nearby asking somebody about a “lost hour” in their payroll sheet that didn’t match up to his phone login times. Then he casually glances my way and asks, “what time do you start?”

Me: “9:30 but I don’t come in at that time”
Supervisor: “Why?”
Me: “I don’t wake up in the morning”
* Supervisor throws head up and rolls eyes
Me: “I’ve been doing this for weeks and nobody complained” with a smirk on my face
* Supervisor puts focus back on the other guy
… after 30 seconds…
Supervisor: “Do you remember the conversation we had?” (about having to “setup a meeting” if I didn’t show up to work again as I did for 2 days back in September)
Me: “Yeah…”

…and I continued at my computer without him saying anything, soon enough he went away. The whole time I had a smile on, pretty much laughing at him.

A couple minutes later another supervisor comes over and asks for me to put my phone into “AUX 1 Meeting mode”, knowing I was likely getting fired or at least a letter of reprimand. He takes me to the other side of the building into an area that you need key card access to and puts me into an individual meeting room with a HR/payroll/PR person at the call centre. Keep in mind that this part of the building does not have access to the rest of the call centre unless you have that key card. So I’m neutralized just in case I feel like sticking to The Man, by stealing a stapler… or something. It was fun talking with the HR/payroll person that was handling my issue.

*shows me phone login timesheet*
Her: “Do you see anything wrong with your phone login times here?”
Me: “Yeah, from how long ago is this?”
Her: “Three weeks, can you explain this?” with a concerned looked on her face like I had just molested her only child
Me: “I come in when I want, I just try to put 8 hours in a day”
Her: “Well it got you terminated”
Me: “I knew this was happening, I just came here for money until I was finally fired”
Her: “Why didn’t you like the job? Didn’t like the account?”
Me: “It’s a job in call centre.”

Then I told her that I hate living in the area and she agrees, saying she’s trying to get out herself. She asks what I plan to do, I said get to Halifax or Toronto area… she says she went to Devry in TO (maybe that’s why she’s working in call centre in Nova Scotia at 30-35 years old, owned bitch!) and wondered where I went to university… I said Guelph… she tried to make fun of it somehow. She said good luck on your job search. I gathered my bag/coat that the supervisor had dropped off at the front desk so I wouldn’t go back into the call centre floor and fuck shit up.

Now I’m back to the drawing board of finding a new job although I actually have some money in my bank account now so I can move to anywhere in Canada if I need to. Two student loans have their first payments starting November 31st but I’m completely ignoring them for now and they don’t have access to my bank account for direct deposit like the National Student Loans Centre had a couple years ago and wouldn’t fucking stop taking my money despite me still being in school. So I’ll just let the interest gather… then leave the country! Now wasn’t this all a waste of a couple paragraphs.

• Big Brother is Watching
• WHAT.
• Another hit on the blogosphere !!
• Rediculous
• How amewsing

He said that that ‘that’ that that man used was wrong. This is a grammatically correct sentence and I despise this language. I should learn German or Gaelic so I can sound manly for once. Just. One. Time.

Jägermörder 02: Terra Nova Released

A month late, I’ve finally released Jägermörder 02: Terra Nova for Doom II. It’s BOOM-compatible but the SIDEDEF and SEGS lumps go over the engine’s limit of 2¹⁵ so the only port that will run the map at the moment is ZDOOM.

Jägermörder 02 Update

No Crucified Dreams yet which can be blamed on Jon Rimmer and Michal Mesko. Go harass them and don’t forget to insult their mother.

Jägermörder 02: Terra Nova is well underway, with the layout about 90% complete. I was aiming to make it Boom-compatible, just as the first in the series, but currently the sidedef count is 30,282, rapidly approaching the Doom engine’s limit of 32,768. Even with SEGS, I doubt it will even run with Boom after I add the final area. I only have 384MB of RAM on the machine I’m working with causing Doom Builder to swap like madness, especially when I’m in 3D mode. It isn’t too fun to wait 10 seconds for a texture change to complete.

The style of the level is the same as Jägermörder 01: Chemical Lab, except I will fix a couple complaints about that map in its sequel. First off, the map isn’t short, it’s huge. Almost Xbox, even. Secondly, the map won’t be easy but that doesn’t mean I’m going to go all Hell Revealed on you. I know some players will be turned off by the two introductory fights that force you into a small area with plenty of crossfire. Lastly, the linear aspect of the layout’s design isn’t as much of a problem. The first 33% of the layout is linear but after that there are multiple paths to accomplish goals and multiple steps to reach goals.

As is the theme in my Doom career, this level was started long ago; the summer of 1999, I believe. It has ended up being a combination of a bunch of different maps I started but never completed, including: Mordeth: Episode 2, Jägermörder 05, a Quake-style wind pipe effects demo (you get vertically sucked up, then spit out the other end), SMMU/Eternity start map, an E1-style DM map for Crucified Dreams, an Ultimate Doom map I started in 1998 and areas from my remix of Lee Szymanski’s Crucified Dreams contribution. Oddly, the theme and architecture are still consistent. Sprinkled throughout are subtle homages to some of my favourite mappers which you historians should be able to easily spot.

I’m not going to claim it’s my best work yet since there are a few too many tight corridors and I didn’t experiment with tenebrism enough as the whole layout is rather well-lit. I guess I’ll delay that type of work to Jägermörder 03, which has a huge layout that’s 66% complete. 04 has also been started.

Crucified Dreams will also have a deathmatch version of Jägermörder 01 with a modified layout more conducive to multiplayer. They’re all just words, aren’t they?

Doom Mapping Update

Hello folks. I guess I can make an update despite not releasing anything Doom-related in months. While you look at my wadography (I’m coining this term to refer to an author’s list of Doom works), you’ll notice I have very little work in the public’s hands. This is tiresome since I’ve been working for years on levels which for one reason or another I haven’t released. I have seven unfinished single player levels, each in the range of 10,000 to 25,000 sidedefs. These maps include two sequels to the Jägermörder series (Boom) and two ZDoom maps that I think will be one of the first serious explorations into the capabilities of slopes within the Doom engine. One annoyance pertaining to these matters is the stretched look of steep slopes, but I’ll make due.

I suppose to next topic of discussion is the much maligned (wait, I mean forgotten) Crucified Dreams. Yes, it is still being worked on. It was started in 1998 but think of it this way: when I picked up the project from Covaro in March 2000, most of the maps in the project either sucked (Hi Pixel!) or were Gothic Deathmatches 2 rejects. I’ve cut out a fair amount of material and the rest has been heavily reworked. From there I also finished a bunch of levels from scratch. Along with this, I took the texture resources which were mostly gothictx.wad, added SlaughterDM resources and some textures of my own. This led to me retexturing many levels and reworking layouts and redetailing… I’ve pretty much gone through each level four times detailing. Some of the geometric detail is approaching being obscene but I think it’s was all worth it. While Gothic DM2 pushed the limits of doom2.exe, I’m trying to push the visual limits of Doom2 within a 2.5D space without slopes… although I’ve also added some slopes composed fully of 1 pixel wide sectors, but it looks aesthetically pleasing since I made sure to align textures and flats to avoid repeating pixels. You read all this thinking it’s Gothic99 MAP01 all over again, but it’s far from that. Many of the areas are modest, kept clean and simple… for the most part. In fact, only one level is above 1MB… actually it’s above 2MB and will reach Doom II’s limit of 32,768 sidedefs. I think it will be the largest deathmatch-only Doom level ever made so I can add myself to the annals of the Doom community as the fool that put the stupidest amount of hours into editing a twelve year old game. What is the largest Doom deathmatch level anyway?

Other distractions taking up my time include writing and editing Doom Wiki articles, mostly in the realm of authors and wads. I want to fill in the info on pieces relating to the GothicDM team since they were so influential on myself and the Doom community in general. Yeah, go ahead, start whining about gameplay now. Forget the fact that nothing of worth ever has shown up in Doomworld’s /newstuff reviews in months.

Sacrifice Skull Tag Capture the Flag

There’s a CTF version of SacrificeDM’s MAP04 in the latest Skull Tag as D2CTF8: “Ghastly Abode”. Otherwise, nothing is new except that I’m slowly finishing up the last maps for Crucified Dreams.

Lamentations

Hello kids. I’ve released Lamentations, a new 6 level add-on for The Darkening. It’s fresh and in your face (and deathmatch-only so nobody will ever play it). There’s also a new version of SurgeDM II available which fixes some visual errors in a couple maps. I haven’t told Nick Baker about this version, but he’s British so I’ll release it to spite his people that has been raping and pillaging my lineage for centuries.

He Moves in Trollish Ways

Sweet, I was finally banned from the Doomworld forums. Now you can download <a href=”deepsea.zip”>this</a>, if you please.

Edit: I’ve actually been losered.

A Look Into the Future

What might these Doom screenshots be for?

SacrificeDM Special Edition

Features:

• High playability
• Detailing and realistic environments
• Enhanced architecture compared to the original maps
• No wall obstructions found in most detailed deathmatch sets
• Various themes, covering both futuristic and Gothic
• New textures
• Item placement which promotes movement throughout each level
• Support for all limit removing ports (including JDoom)

Differences from Original Maps:

• Changed item placements
• Added architecture
• Fixed visual glitches
• Add level intermission graphics
• Improved textures
• Improved support for various ports, including ZDoom (i.e., tall skies)

Release Date: January 2001

Richard Wiles and a SurgeDM 2 Bug

I recently got some mail from Richard Wiles, author of the Dickie and Spooky series’ along with Crusades and a mapper for The Darkening E2. He has an announcement to make:

I am currently compiling a doom2 wad of (so far) 5 SP and 3 DM maps. The Slayer will be a plain vanilla doom wad comprising of small but ultra-violent maps… maybe not quite HR2 standard but enough to give you a buzz. If you enjoyed the Dickies and the Crusades, well you ain’t seen nothing yet!

Ideally, I am aiming for at least 10 sp maps. I have avoided the use of source ports to reach the widest possible audience.

I am looking for some extra help from texture & music authors. Ola has retired, or so he tells me. Anyone out there care to join me? I’d also appreciate some help from talented mappers… (I know who you are)

Drop me a line if you are interested.

Richard Wiles

A couple people found a bug in SurgeDM 2 map03 where you can fall in a hole near the plasma gun which is caused by a bad nodes build. Nick should stop using Deep’s nodes builder. BSP or Zennode is all you need, baby! … so be checking the ID Games Archive for the updated version. Note that I’ve uploaded all the WADs in the textures section into the archive.

DCK Bug and Feature Request List

As many people know, DCK is a rocking editor. The only things which keep people from using it are bugs which cause frequent crashes and it can only be run under MS-DOS. Hopefully if a detailed list of bugs can be compiled, Ben Morris may wake up and the Doom community can finally get the Doom editor they deserve. (HA!) Along with this feature list, this could make “the dream map editor” for Doom engines and will hopefully serve as a guide for other people creating level editors.

• Crashes
  • Exit to DOS freeze when using texture replacer; enter an incorrect texture, and go back to editing/reopen texture replacer
  • Last texture in texture aligner sequence isn’t aligned
  • Frequent crashes when in a grid of 2 units, especially when snap to grid is off
  • Exit to DOS freeze when initially loading editor or viewing textures, when there are too many flats loaded (by merging flat PWAD into IWAD) [flat limit = ?]
• Feature Requests
  • Raise/eliminate texture limit from present 768
  • Support add-on flats
  • Support Hexen format maps in Doom II mode for ZDoom editing
  • Raise all map size limits to Doom’s limit of 32,767 units (8,192 sidedefs is too little!)
  • Support linedef specials >255, especially for Boom editing
  • Allow input of texture names which don’t exist, but warn user after entering (for Boom colormaps) [warning optional]
  • Allow binding any command to any key and save configuration separate to all other
  • Have configuration files similar to other editors allow people to easily change to a new editor
  • Support for a wider variety of video cards