T.U.C.Q. Progess Thread

[Boingo the Clown]

Progress Report: January 13, 2014

More adventures in texture alignment.

I added a dummy landing bay on E2M1 as a way of explaining how the player ended up at the end of a dead end street.  It has a toll barrier to stop the player from going back to the landing bay, so It doesn't change game play.

I turned the interior of the diner pink!



This is because pastel interiors, including pink, were popular in the 1950s, so hopefully this will help with the 1950s diner feel. The black and white checked tile on the lower section helps with the look too.

I experimented a little bit with the buildings in the skybox. Here I have reproduced the pyramid.



I do not have many buildings (only five, with textures only for the pyramid), but it is fun to have a little success.  Here is a pic of the buildings taken inside the skybox itself, showing how tiny they actually are.



Work is going slowly on the buildings, so it is going to be a long time before I have a real cityscape done, but looking at how ZDooM and Zandronum stretch the sky texture out ridiculously, it is probably what I am going to have to go with.  BTW: I have discovered a bug where 3D sectors in the skybox are displayed as full solid sectors in ZDooM when the sky is seen through areas with complcated geometry.

That's bad.

I think I have finished with the diner exterior for now.

I reduced the size of the oudoor areas on E2M1. They were originally created for making ful sized buildings in in Legacy. Now that I can use skyboxes, they are no longer needed.  I still left in reduced versions, so that the player can still see into other parts of the level.

I finally completed those blasted police barriers!  Yippie!



Considering what a simple and effective trick it was to make these in Vanilla DooM with just some lines and a single texture, it sure was a pain in the fleshy gutes to reproduce it in GZDooM with at least triple the number of lines, more textures, and 3D sectors.  Ugh!

It had come to my attention that the larvae were coming out of their holes prematurely on E1M5. They were meant only to come out after the player has jumped or fallen into the pit, but the narrow ledge was causing people to accidentally trigger them early. To fix this, I removed the triggers from the edge of the ledge (I'm a poet!) and transfered them to another set of lines just inside the pit.  Hopefully this will keep the larvae in their holes until the player is actually in the pit.

[TrueDude]

I am in love with the diners interior.

[Super Chex]

I am glad you are back Atari.  I was wondering where you went.

Progress Report: November 24, 2013

Minor progress to report.

A couple of weeks ago I made up a replacement ENDOOM lump as experiment even though most people have the ENDOOM display option turned off.  This week I obsessively made a better one.



The lift in the big hangar at the north of E2M1 has been bothering me for a long time. I want to change it to being a 3D platform like the small lift, but the method I used changed that lift's behaviour, requiring switches to raise and lower the platform. I do not really want to change the way the large platform moves, so I have left it alone.  A couple of days ago I was playing HACX and saw a lift using a technique I had seen before, but never used myself, so I decided to give it a try.  The method is simply to use an invisible sector and use transparent mid textures to build a grid to fake a visible floor.

This is what I ended up with.







I do have another option or two I might try.  What do you think og this method?


I finally got around to making that chainlink fence texture and put it in today.  That was really easy.



I made some minor changes to the diner in the hopes of giving it a little more of a 1950s googie style. In fact, I am planning on changing the interior of the diner from brown to a salmon pink if I can.  I am even thinking of adding a jukebox (the squared off kind like I used to see when I was a kid like this one, not the round topped kind due to it being easier to make) that with scripting might be able to play a little music.

I spent some time on the old computer early in the week making up new(er) versions of the title screen indentifying the next release as release 6.  Don't get excited. I am not ready for a release yet. Progress continues to be slow.

As a side note, I was manning a Christmas kettle for the Salvation Army the other day. I decided that drawing snot monsters might be off putting for people walking by, and so I decided to do some sketches of a blimp I might have as a background element in E2M1. I started sketching a nice cigar shaped object with tail fins like this, when somebody stopped and asked me why I was drawing a bomb!

Anyway, I kind of stopped drawing.  Maybe snot monsters are not so bad.

As an experiment, I installed MorphVox Pro on my new machine.  Maybe I will attempt to do some voice acting for a cutscene or two if I can get over my stage fright.

In my now long-gone version, I recreated your old lifts perfectly. If you'd like, I could do it again. Also, hello everybody. :3

EDIT:>> Wow... I *HAVE* been gone a bit too long. Just realized that the majority of lifts work, just not the large one. Still, I think it's doable. As for the lattice... just... no, please.

[Boingo the Clown]

You should have read the following report where I changed the lift to look solid.

Link: http://www.chexquest.org/index.php?topic=3670.msg187392#msg187392

In case you are wondering, it is an old trick that works in vanilla DooM, which is where I first learned of it.

[Atariangamer]

My thoughts...I like pastels, but pink? IDK, it does fit.

The 'real' skybox thing looks amazing, but how would it look/appear in other levels? Or are you just doing it for M1, where you're in open streets?

I do like those barriers, and as for the E1M5 larvae...That's brilliant. I seem to remember playing through a modern version and noticing that I could just stand on the ledge and 'snipe' them...now with old school rules on, you'd never quite see them to shoot them, but also considering infinite tall actors, I think I had an issue once where they came out, and trapped me on the ledge because their heights were like pillars. That's a good solution to the problem.


Also, random note...the oversized text on that post makes me feel as if I was being talked to by HAL. Though can HAL really wonder?

[Super Chex]

You should have read the following report where I changed the lift to look solid.

Link: http://www.chexquest.org/index.php?topic=3670.msg187392#msg187392

In case you are wondering, it is an old trick that works in vanilla DooM, which is where I first learned of it.

While it does look nice, why not just use a step activated GZDoom 3d sector? I'm sorry if I seem like a critic. I just wanted to put out an idea.

Also, would you like if I were a sort of "team member" of sorts? I have the tools, and a fairly decent knowledge of the Zdoom/GZDoom/Zandronum editing techniques. I miss this fandom, working on hardcore projects like these. Will you have me?

[MajorSlime]

I would have to agree about the 3D Floor idea. Although, it might be because Boingo wants to have it work in ZDoom as well...? But if thats the case, that makes no sense, because I thought the project was being moved to GZDoom, hence a lack of need for ZDoom. Actually, simple 3D Floors work in ZDoom as well, so theres that. All signs point to "why no 3D Floor?" Its very simple to implement.


As for getting it to work on walk-over, use a Platform Raise Wait Lower function, with a tag to the 3D Floor control sector. Unless such a function doesn't exist in the format Boingo is using... idk.

[75]

As for getting it to work on walk-over, use a Platform Raise Wait Lower function, with a tag to the 3D Floor control sector. Unless such a function doesn't exist in the format Boingo is using... idk.

Platform actions just move the FLOOR of a sector, a 3d floor is a floor AND a ceiling, he needs an elevator action, unfortunately as far as I know Legacy format maps don't have an elevator action.

Elevator actions move the floor and ceiling of a sector together, retaining the height of the sector, no matter what happens, which is needed for 3d floor lifts like this. Those actions are only in zDoom in Hexen and zDoom in UDMF format, though.

The best option I can think of right now to implement this with 3d floors is to hackily string together a floor and ceiling move on two linedefs that are very close together using dummy sectors and hope that they don't go out of sync and have strange glitches (e.g., if the lift comes down on your head it will become infinitely thin, there's nothing to stop the 3d floor from changing shape; if you activate one linedef but not the other, well, you'll get the amazing stretchy lift)

[MajorSlime]

Hmm, fair point. i remember in the Lost Quest arch used a linedef to let a monster/thing travel down a small path elsewhere that had a moving floor. This would then cause multiple linedefs to trigger as the thing moved down the path. That could solve the double linedef issue, but theres still that about getting stuck underneath...

[Super Chex]

As for getting it to work on walk-over, use a Platform Raise Wait Lower function, with a tag to the 3D Floor control sector. Unless such a function doesn't exist in the format Boingo is using... idk.

Platform actions just move the FLOOR of a sector, a 3d floor is a floor AND a ceiling, he needs an elevator action, unfortunately as far as I know Legacy format maps don't have an elevator action.

Elevator actions move the floor and ceiling of a sector together, retaining the height of the sector, no matter what happens, which is needed for 3d floor lifts like this. Those actions are only in zDoom in Hexen and zDoom in UDMF format, though.

The best option I can think of right now to implement this with 3d floors is to hackily string together a floor and ceiling move on two linedefs that are very close together using dummy sectors and hope that they don't go out of sync and have strange glitches (e.g., if the lift comes down on your head it will become infinitely thin, there's nothing to stop the 3d floor from changing shape; if you activate one linedef but not the other, well, you'll get the amazing stretchy lift)

I got it to work easilly in GZDoom before.

[Boingo the Clown]

I think my solution is a good one.

I am still learning new things, and if I figure out a better way, I will probably use it when I learn how to use it properly. Until then I will go with what I know works.

[Super Chex]

I think my solution is a good one.

I am still learning new things, and if I figure out a better way, I will probably use it when I learn how to use it properly. Until then I will go with what I know works.

You're teh boss. I'm still here i you want a team mate. Did you make the ramp on E1M1?

[Boingo the Clown]

I think I will answer that question tomorrow. 

[75]

As for getting it to work on walk-over, use a Platform Raise Wait Lower function, with a tag to the 3D Floor control sector. Unless such a function doesn't exist in the format Boingo is using... idk.

Platform actions just move the FLOOR of a sector, a 3d floor is a floor AND a ceiling, he needs an elevator action, unfortunately as far as I know Legacy format maps don't have an elevator action.

Elevator actions move the floor and ceiling of a sector together, retaining the height of the sector, no matter what happens, which is needed for 3d floor lifts like this. Those actions are only in zDoom in Hexen and zDoom in UDMF format, though.

The best option I can think of right now to implement this with 3d floors is to hackily string together a floor and ceiling move on two linedefs that are very close together using dummy sectors and hope that they don't go out of sync and have strange glitches (e.g., if the lift comes down on your head it will become infinitely thin, there's nothing to stop the 3d floor from changing shape; if you activate one linedef but not the other, well, you'll get the amazing stretchy lift)

I got it to work easilly in GZDoom before.

Using Legacy format maps? What was your solution? Fragglescript?

Legacy's map format has less actions than zDoom (Doom in Hexen) and zDoom (Doom in UDMF), it's about equivalent to Boom format; it's possible to do a lot with Boom but it's not really something I have a lot of expertise in so by all means, I'd be interested if this is possible.

[Super Chex]

As for getting it to work on walk-over, use a Platform Raise Wait Lower function, with a tag to the 3D Floor control sector. Unless such a function doesn't exist in the format Boingo is using... idk.

Platform actions just move the FLOOR of a sector, a 3d floor is a floor AND a ceiling, he needs an elevator action, unfortunately as far as I know Legacy format maps don't have an elevator action.

Elevator actions move the floor and ceiling of a sector together, retaining the height of the sector, no matter what happens, which is needed for 3d floor lifts like this. Those actions are only in zDoom in Hexen and zDoom in UDMF format, though.

The best option I can think of right now to implement this with 3d floors is to hackily string together a floor and ceiling move on two linedefs that are very close together using dummy sectors and hope that they don't go out of sync and have strange glitches (e.g., if the lift comes down on your head it will become infinitely thin, there's nothing to stop the 3d floor from changing shape; if you activate one linedef but not the other, well, you'll get the amazing stretchy lift)

I got it to work easilly in GZDoom before.

Using Legacy format maps? What was your solution? Fragglescript?

Legacy's map format has less actions than zDoom (Doom in Hexen) and zDoom (Doom in UDMF), it's about equivalent to Boom format; it's possible to do a lot with Boom but it's not really something I have a lot of expertise in so by all means, I'd be interested if this is possible.

I changed the map format to GZDoom's format, then redid all of the 3D sectors and such maticulously by hand. No scripts, just hard effort.