I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea--that colored lighting thing I posted the other day was completely done by Teppic8, who also has done quite a few other special effects, mostly for Legacy. Check out his site, it reminds me of Wildman's ZDoom tutorials a bit.
Here are some corners of our community you don't hear about much (BTW, if you want me to make mention of your site or project, drop me a line):
One thing that has been possible with DosDoom for some time, but never implemented, is colored lighting & different color maps. Well, Teppic8 has made a little wad, & a new linedef type entered in the lines.ddf, that shows the effect, simply using the radiation suit colormap to create a green light effect. As you can see, it works beautifully. The lines.ddf entry is for a switch that turns on the green light for the targeted sectors:
{ GREEN LIGHTS SW1}
[9007]
TRIGGER=9007;
TYPE=PUSH;
ACTIVATORS=PLAYER;
COUNT=1;
COLOURMAP=33;
LIGHT_TYPE=SET;
LIGHT_LEVEL=255;
First, I should warn those of you in parts of the world who haven't heard that the latest virus (actually a worm) that is making its rounds. These virus authors seems to hold the fabled "e-mail virus" as some sort of holy grail to attain, because ExploreZIP.worm is actually transmitted via email. This thing preys on Outlook, Exchange, & other MAPI aware email programs. It shows up as a zipped file attachment in an email message, & when you attempt to open the attachment, it kicks out a bogus error message & then starts searching all mapped drives & trashing all files with the extensions of .c, .cpp, .asm, .doc, .xls, & .ppt. You really need to update your scanners, people. I was very bummed to see all the carnage wreaked on the community by the last episode of Chernobyl, which the American media gave plenty of warning about. But it seems that there were many who were completely in the dark about it, & got hosed. So I would encourage you all to get virus scanners ASAP, & keep them updated regularly!
I've really fallen in love with Doomserv over the past few weeks, & because of this, I have been working on a dm map for the past few days that is really starting to shape up. I got the layout set up first, & my plan was to make something that was fun for a lot of people to play at once. I recieved good feedback on it, so now I am starting to fix the textures & add details. Thanks goes out to all who are graciously mentoring me in the finer points of mapping. I have always had a great deal of respect for the skilled mappers in our community--they are true craftsmen in every sense of the word.
One of the very cool things that came out of my times at Doomserv was that I met Doomers who are not part of Doomworld, Doomnation, etc. They pointed me towards some of their pages, & from there I found some cool web site rings. There is quite a big community out there that Doomworld & Doomnation don't know about. We Doomers need to network more, & learn about each other. If you look at the big news sites, they have a mailto: link that says "send news". Guess what? My site started out as an unknown site that got very few hits until I started sending news of it to Doomworld & Doomshack's Doom News. Sometimes, they didn't post the news because I forgot to send the url, or I sent the news to a broken email account, & then I got discouraged. But I kept trying to send it in through various ways. If the "send news" link was broken (as was often the case with Doomnation), I would try emailing some of the reporters directly (their mailto links are usually right beside their headlines). Sometimes the reporter had left for vacation right after he posted his last article, & I wouldn't get a response until way later. My point is that if you have been overlooked by the big news sites, don't take it personally, even though you may get discouraged. Believe me, I've been there, & I can totally relate. Sometimes, it's a lot of work to get your update covered. Just keep trying, & give people the benefit of the doubt.
Dave Leatherdale asked me to post news that the DosDoom Team is looking for some more programmers: We want general programmers, as well as programmers for the other platforms (not Windows or Linux--we have that covered).
On another note, I have been experimenting with making a DM map. Yes, that's right, I am actually trying my hand at mapping. I have no clue what I'm doing, but I have some ideas that I really want to see in a map. Heh, I tried making a one-sector map as a test, saved it, ran Doom, & the thing crashed right away. Hmmmm... does it need all 4 starts? 4 DM starts? Nothing worked. Then it dawned on me that I should run a nodes-builder on it--heheheh. Yes, it runs great now, the best one sector map I have ever seen! Let's see if I can get this thing to take shape easily. I may just go back to DDF coding if it doesn't. Unless some of the master mappers can give me some pointers.
Speaking of DDF coding, Gokuma has been sending me snippets of code for some TF monsters/soldiers. As you know, DosDoom's bots cannot currently support different TF classes for bots. We have been thinking that perhaps just coding some new creatures to use some of the bot code & some of the old TF skins that were being done for another, now-defunct effort, & we may be able to get some kind of TF-like thing going here. Hey, it's worth a shot, eh?
Well, it was interesting to see & hear Covaro on "Good Morning America". He didn't get to say a whole lot, but he did get to speak the minds of many Doomers whose sentiments I have been hearing over the past month. It's funny, because I pictured him as a little, chubby, Hispanic guy with a mustache due to his nick, not as the thin white dude he really is. People we know online are just so different from how we visualize them to be. I remember meeting a caller of my BBS years ago. We had arranged to meet at a hockey game. The dude was a big, burly, construction worker who was totally geeked on computer games. It was the biggest riot listening to him talk (more like shout) excitedly about the different games we were into--all through the game. Everyone around us was looking at him, but no one dared say anything, because he looked like he could break them in half.
I am very appreciative to LlamaOne his allowing me to post a writeup of the exciting things that have been happening in our little community ever since the release of the source code. His initial article didn't imho properly touch on the things that have been happening, & he very graciously changed some things, & even invited me to contribute. I would have loved to include more pictures, & give proper representation to all the members of our community, but I had to be brief. And of course, many other things came to mind after I had submitted the article, but you do have to stop at some point & send it in. Another person would no doubt have different emphases than I did, but you see a "Mellow's-eye" view of the community in my article, & I hope that I've done our community some justice. I hope that our work gets some more notice, as the big names in gaming news (Blue, et. al.) seem to largely ignore Doom, though it is just as vibrant & thriving today as any of the newer games out there.
Fanatic has posted a wad that takes care of your MP3 needs in DosDoom. You just put the MP3's of your choice into a certain dir & rename them to make them work on the maps you want. This is something that should be included in the official release of DosDoom, IMHO. BTW, after reading his post about finishing the wizard (skrag) for QDoom, I cannot get the Black Sabbath tune "The Wizard" out of my head. Every time I go to his page now, that tune pops into my head. :-)
Sweet!
This isn't DosDoom related, & unfortunately isn't even bot related, but I just took a look at the Parallel Team's Fragfest Initialized dm wad, & I was floored. At first, I wasn't even going to download it, because the maps are only for ZDoom & Boom, & so of course they are nothing that I can play bots on. In fact, I was completely put off by their negative remarks re: Legacy, & their disdain for those who play on Legacy. However, I decided to take a look anyway, seeing how Fanatic lauded their work as something on par with the Gothic maps. All I can say is, wow! These maps are works of art. They are mostly huge in scale, & have some incredible architecture & lighting. They even use some textures to help simulate Quake-like spotlights in one hallway that I can recall. The style is pretty much tech/base, & the detail that has been put into these maps doesn't get in the way of moving around, which is great. I was reminded of Iikka's spawling Addictive DM maps, but unlike Iikka's maps' which had a notorious (& might I add annoying) dearth of powerful weapons due to his preferred "hunt & peck" style of DM, the FFi maps have no shortage of iron. & FFi has even surpassed Iikka's designs, in some instances.
What was a nice touch is the fact that they have 3 demos of 5 people playing on a LAN. The demos are from the POV of Pennywise, who pretty much dominates the three demos, though at the beginning of the first demo I had my doubts about him. He was definitely using a keyboard for at least the first few minutes of the first demo, & it was painfully apparent that he was turning at the fixed rate of a keyboarder. Either he switched to a mouse partway through, or I just got used to seeing him play (& he got warmed up). But I always enjoy seeing some good DM demos--it gets me as pumped up as watching the NBA playoff games.
I really want to see a bot get ported to ZDoom soon. Someone. Please.
Okay, here is the next step for my mini-mod: TF01, which is basically Bloodfoot with a few Team Fortress Classic weapons added, namely a pipe bomb launcher & a MIRV grenade launcher. The MIRV is especially useful for blanketing the ground with scores of those dreaded bomblets, causing quite a pyrotechnic display when they go off. The pipe bomb launcher is a somewhat limited item, as I haven't figured out the remote detonation, so they just go off after a timed delay. But the pipe bombs still look pretty cool. :-)
No, it's not a Native American tribe, rather it's a mini-mod that features the effects that I've been talking about the past few days. That is, the different colored blood & the footstep sounds. Try it out & let me know what you think. Do you like hearing footsteps of everyone running around? Also, thanks to Fanatic for the idea of calling the checkmoving function in more than just the last frame of the player's CHASING_STATES sequence. It did work to mitigate the problem of the footstep sounds continuing a little bit when you stop moving.
I just tried Bludfoot with Sir Robin's latest map, basedm6.wad, & the footsteps really enhanced the experience. Let me just add that I was really impressed with this map. I really didn't give him his props in an earlier map of his, & I've had no interest in his Boom-only, non-bot-compatible DM maps (too bad he doesn't support some sort of "best played with any Doom port" campaign for his BaseDM series, like he does the "best viewed with any browser" movement). But this BaseDM6 is compatible with different ports, & the layout is the classic circular design with crossovers for maximum flow & connectivity. The architecture is aesthetically pleasing without getting into the detail that hurts framerate &/or gameplay (not that framerate is a problem for me anymore, but I still try to be empathic). Unlike so many maps in Gothic2.wad, there are no obtrusive corners in BaseDM6 that get you stuck in the heat of the battle. I haven't played many maps with the 3d bridge effect, which apparently Sir Robin has made a trademark in the BaseDm series, but I was very impressed by how well it works.
Also, let me give full props to the Legacy team for being the trailblazers of the footsteps sound effect with their splashing sounds. Heh, I don't want to arrogate the title of being the originator of Doom footstep sounds & start a flame war. And if anyone surpasses my effect, power to you. And of course, Fanatic has been coding the different colored blood & bullet puffs for some time in his QDoom project, which looks to be an excellent mod.
If you want to hear the Deathbot walking towards you down the hall, here's an easy way to hook it up in DDF. Use a pak explorer to take some footstep sounds from something like Quake2 or Half-Life. In Half-Life, there are 4 different player footstep sounds, so I took them all & loaded them into a wad & named the entries for them DSSTEP1, DSSTEP2, etc., using Wintex. Then, I added the 4 new sounds to sounds.ddf like this:
[STEP1]
NAME=STEP1;
PRIORITY=65;
BITS=8;
& named the other three sounds accordingly. Note that I made the priority 65 instead of the more typical 64. This is so the footsteps don't drown out sounds that have priority 64. So your weapons will drown out the footsteps, & not vice versa. Then, I just add a line that says ambient_sound="step?"; to the Death_Bot entry in things.ddf (The ? is a wildcard to make DosDoom call step1-4 randomly. Don't forget the quotes, either, or DosDoom won't recognize the sound correctly. However, you don't need quotes if you are only using a single sound effect rather than the wildcard.). Then, I insert two frames into the chasing_states sequence that call the makesound function, like PLAY:A:1:NORMAL:makesound, & PLAY:C:1:NORMAL:makesound,. Just call makesound twice in the chasing_states sequence in frames a & c, or b & d. Any more than that & it sounds like a jackhammer. One weird thing about Doom is that ambient sound will go right through walls, so you can hear the footsteps in areas of the map that are near you, even if they are not connected by a doorway or hall.
You can easily make the player make footstep sounds as well by editing the Our_Hero entry in things.ddf in a similar fashion. The only drawback is that the footsteps continue for a moment after you stop moving. I recommend only one makesound frame for one tic in the entire chase sequence, so you can differentiate your own slower footfalls from the quicker bot's. Plus, it sounds better that way. But of course, not everybody likes the idea of footsteps in their DM experience. There have been some complaints about the footsteps in Quake2, & I have noticed that on some Half-Life servers the footstep sounds are disabled. I think it definitely adds to the experience & allows you more ways to sense what's going on around you, & in the much faster paced Doom DM, the footsteps do not IMO detract from the challenge like it would in the slower paced Quake2 Dm experience. But it's easy enough to comment out the makesound frames to turn it off.
Colored Blood
I got different colored blood for different monsters. I got this idea a while back from some other gentlemen who are working on some sort of project of their own (I forgot which it was), & hearing Fanatic mention his own work on QDoom motivated me to try it out, & I got it to work in DDF. The Caco now bleeds blue blood, & the hell knights bleed green. It was pretty simple, really. I just made some new blood sprites of the approriate colors, & then I made a few new entries to the things.ddf:
[green_BLOOD]Then I simply changed the blood=blood to blood=blue_blood, etc. A very easy thing to implement, with striking results.
REACTION_TIME=8T;
RADIUS=8;
HEIGHT=16;
SPECIAL=CORPSE,DROPOFF;
STATES=gBLD:C:8:NORMAL:NOTHING,
gBLD:B:8:NORMAL:NOTHING,
gBLD:A:8:NORMAL:CHECKBLOOD,#REMOVE;[blue_BLOOD]
REACTION_TIME=8T;
RADIUS=8;
HEIGHT=16;
SPECIAL=CORPSE,DROPOFF;
STATES=bBLD:C:8:NORMAL:NOTHING,
bBLD:B:8:NORMAL:NOTHING,
bBLD:A:8:NORMAL:CHECKBLOOD,#REMOVE;
Heheheh whoops! In my rush to get the BatBotDM mod out the door, I forgot to include my deathbot.bat file. While you really don't need it, it does simplify your command line typing a great deal. Just copy the following & paste it into a text file named deathbot.bat:
@DOSDOOM.exe -skill 5 -deathmatch 1 -ALTDEATH -SKILL 5 -nomonsters %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7
& now you will have an easier time of launching a deathbot session. You can add the -file & -warp parameters like this:
deathbot -file gothic2.wad -warp map30
& yes, in DosDoom you have to use -warp map30 rather than -warp 30. For Doom1 maps you would use -warp e1m1. The same would apply if using idclev within the game.
More Bot Bats
Here are some other batch files that I have been using with the other bots for a while now, & I really should have shared them with the community sooner. But better late than never, so here they are.
Doombot: I have simply stripped it down to make it so that you don't have to edit the doombot.bat file ever again, as it was a very laborious task to change the doombot.bat file every time I wanted to warp to a different map. Here it is (again, just copy it & paste it to a text file named doombot.bat):
@doombot.exe -skill 5 -deathmatch 1 -nomonsters %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7
Then, you just type
doombot.bat -file breed_dm.wad -deh breed_dm.deh -warp 01
& you are in business.
Cajun Bot: Copy the following & paste it into a text file named cajun.bat:
@cajun -skill 5 -altdeath -nomonsters %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7
& you would type:
cajun.bat -file breed_dm.wad -deh breed_dm.deh -warp 01
to get started. So, make your bot sessions a little more streamlined by using these batch files.
The Ace Team was wondering when I was going to finish my Batman TC DDF conversion, & that was just enough motivation for me to wrap it up. So, here it is. Remember, it will only work with the Deathbot, or DosDoom 0.653 or later. It has the Deathball instead of Azrael's Gloves, & there were a few other changes that you can read about in the docs. Let me know what you think, & maybe I will tweak it some & release a better version sometime.
TFC Mod?
I am now considering my next DDF project. I have Half-Life, & TFC, & I just got ahold of the essential pak explorer & mdl viewer, so it seems feasible that I could make some TFC sprites & start coding some TFC stuff. ATM, the Deathbot cannot spawn different bots (i.e. a scout bot, a HW bot, a soldier bot, medic bot, etc.). So to make it work atm I may just make some new creatures that look like these guys. We'll have to see. Perhaps Yoghurt & Terry could add some TF classes ability to the bot they are coding? We'll see. This mod would also be a huge amount of work that I may or may not be willing to undertake, as I do have a very full life apart from Dooming. It would be good to enlist the help of my DDF-coding brethren, so anyone interested should please let me know.
Fanatic has been, well, fanatical in his QDoom progress lately. The dog & zombie have now joined the Doom universe. He's actually posted quite a bit over the past few days, & I guess I'm going to scoop the big 3 news sites by mentioning it. I think everybody's been busy with the transitions that May brings about, which accounts for the dearth of news & updates. But we should see all the citizens of our little community hard at work, now that summer's upon us (um, for us who are north of the equator, anyway).
DosDoom Progress
A new 0.654 beta version is getting passed around the team now (one very cool feature already in place), & Terry is starting to get settled in. Heh, BTW did you know that RAR compresses better than ZIP? I prefer my Winzip, as it speaks the lingua franca of compression files. But anything for the cause, I guess . . .
Tronicmind referred me to his excellent sound patch. This wad replaces all the sounds, making them all more intense. If you are looking for a fresh sound to your Dooming, then try this bad boy out. He makes special mention of DosDoom in the docs, though I just tried it out with the new Cajun bot, & it sounded great.
New Members?
Heh, not sure if this is official or not, but it looks like Yoghurt & Terry of the Cajun Bot team are coming aboard the DosDoom team. I have always had a lot of respect for Yoghurt's work, & I am glad to see his interest in the DosDoom port.
I have been playing Team Fortess Classic all day on my new machine, & I must say that it rocks harder than anything I've ever played. Check this score!
Well, recent events involving the Colorado shool shooting & the lawsuit against id et al has of course raised many voices. There are a few things I would like to say. First, the concept of video games producing violent behavior has been raised time & again. I remember showing Doom to my father, & he had two words for it: "cognitive dissonance". Cognitive dissonance refers to a psychological concept whereby a person experiences something that goes against that which they would normally agree with, with the result that the person changes their mind about that which they previously believed. It's something that occurs in people's lives, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. In the case of my father's assessment, he was suggesting that by experiencing the act of killing in the enjoyable format of a video game, the gamer was experiencing cognitive dissonance by having fun (playing a game) while actively engaging the concept of killing. The idea is of course that it desensitizes a person, or even makes them enjoy killing. I have seen citations that military training programs are similar to video games, suggesting that video games are training people to be killers. I remember waaaay back in the early 80's when the RPG Dungeons & Dragons was attributed to one distrurbed young man's actions when he decided to run away from home & crawl through some sewer pipes like he was in a real life dungeon--he wound up dying.
My own experience has been that while I enjoy playing computer games, I do not find myself to be desensitized to violence. I remember getting really bummed out after killing a bird with a bb gun. I am very shaken up if I witness an altercation on the street. I do not enjoy having to confront people. I am horrified by the atrocities committed by people. For me to even get into a shoving match is so uncharacteristic of me that I cannot even imagine doing it. In such a situation, I have learned to recognize when I am not making reasonable progress in resolving an issue with someone, & that the wisest course of action is to hold my tongue, back off, & let the situation cool down until both parties are feeling more receptive to hearing the other guy's point of view. I have found that by remaining reasonable, the other guy comes around & winds up apologizing anyway. Unless they are crazy or sociopathic, that is. In that case, you won't get anywhere with them anyway.
Computer games do not turn normal people into killers. The military may use some computer training programs, but they are also doing quite a bit more to psych soldiers up than just sitting them in front of computer programs. A teenager who commits a heinous act had a lot of factors leading to that, & I would believe that the most prominent one would be what kind of home life he had. However, I think that there are some reasonable hazards in some computer games. For example, epileptics should avoid certain video games because of the flashing lights which have been known to trigger siezures. There was that cartoon in Japan that caused many siezures when it displayed a flashing light a year or so ago. And of course, you could get carpal tunnels syndrome by playing for too long. You could get hemorrhoids from sitting in front of the computer too long. You could get eye strain from staring at the monitor for long periods without taking breaks & looking at something far away. And perhaps a person who is crazy should not play games that have things shooting & blowing up. But crazy people are going to find a way to go off, & they don't need a computer game to push them over the edge. It's so convenient to fix the blame for one's actions on anything else but oneself, & it's an unfortunate trend in my own litigation-crazed country of the USA. In the end, we are held accountable for only one person's actions--our own.
Aside from the obvious tragedy of the incident in Colorado, it was a shame that the 2 guys appeared to be motivated to some extent by a hatred for people different from themselves. Sure, I didn't get along with jocks or some of the other groups in high school either, but I did find that as we all grew up, the differences between us all became a non-issue. Part of getting along in society requires us to get along with different kinds of people--it's a pretty basic life skill. Sure, society is filled with people who choose not to get along with others, but I think they bring a lot more trouble upon themselves than it's worth. I guess my word to those who are experiencing the kind of isolation that the "trench coat mafia" felt would be this: Don't get too hung up on the way things are at this moment in time. Just ride this period of life out. You are (hopefully) going to change & grow as a person, as will the other types of people you are dealing with. The things that are so important right now that they cause strife between you & others will fade away. You may find that the jock who gives you a hard time today may one day be the guy who helps you out when you're stranded by the side of the road.
Batman DDF Progress
The Flamethrower is working properly now. I have changed its function a little bit, in that the flames are now subject to gravity. They can be shot in an arc to get better range, but most likely the range for the Deathbots with this weapon will be about what it is in the dehacked version due to the arcing downward of the flames.
The Super Blast Gun was completed first, but it was such a basic conversion that I didn't bother mentioning it earlier.
Yes, you all know about the Deathball by now, which was deemed complete as of yesterday. It's not an Ace Team licensed product--this is a Captain Mellow original. All I need now is a map that simulates a giant pool table.
Heh . . . once again a post by Fanatic has been the catalyst for a train of thought for me. Back in the good old days of the BBS, there was a certain culture called the "elite". If you were "elite", it usually meant that you were one who trafficked in "warez", i.e. pirated software. Being highly skilled & artistic in the use of ANSI graphics for your BBS menus was also the mark of an elite board. Elite boards were of course very exclusive, requiring an invitation or password to enter--sort of like the clubhouse of "the Little Rascals" with the "no girls allowed" sign in front. :-)
Another "elite" thing to do was to incorporate high ascii & a mixture of upper/lower case low ascii into your nick, your menus, your email, your netmail tagline, the diz in your files, & just about everything else. High ascii, for those who don't know, is the selection of characters found in the higher range of the ascii character set. Lower ascii characters can be typed by using the normal keyboard strokes (a-z, shift + a-z, 1-0, shift + 1-0), but to type those high ascii characters, you need to press alt + a 4-digit number from 0129 to 0255 (e.g. alt-2033 = ß). I've been known to add the odd high ascii character here or there when appropriate (ñ, ¿, é, etc.) but I've never gone over the top with it.
The use of high ascii seems to have died out, except for a renaissance in the Jedi Knight circles whereby cheaters initially confounded hosts who attempted kicking them off because they had used a nick like ««LÆm ©hEa†e®»». Gradually, hosts discovered how to type these characters & were able to kick the cheaters. As they shared this esoteric knowledge with other JK hosts, they called this high ascii "ascii", apparently oblivious to the distinction. Whatever.
It seems that the "elite" writing these days features a more dumbed-down version of the former high ascii glory, & only has a mixture of lower ascii characters, presenting the appearance of more of an elite wannabe. Maybe the junior elite need to dust off that Windows 3.1 character map utility to try to match up to their predecessors. Actually, I am not sure what comprises "leet"-ness these days. I guess that ANSI graphic design has given way to expert art, HTML & javascript coding (Ola or Mystican would be good examples of this), but I have seen some who claim to be "l337" who don't have the most "elite" skills. I guess I should ask those who claim to be "elite": What do you do that makes you "l337"?
Heh . . . I originally wrote this rant last year, but never put it up. I guess Marc drove me to it this time.
¿Win32 DosDoom?
To remain relevant, I should mention the testing I did of an extremely beta win32 version of DosDoom. It was pretty nice, but the windowed mode wasn't very practical. The mouse was still capable of moving across the desktop while controlling my aiming, & so when I clicked to shoot, I wound up selecting another window on the desktop. Doh! But I must say, the fullscreen mode was very, very nice. & the sound worked very well.
Deathball Fun
I really should release a beta of this deathball--it's very trippy. Here's some of the more interesting things I did with it over the past 2 days (with autoaiming off & mlook on):
- Try to see how many enemies in a row the deathball will punch through.
- Bank shots off of walls to gib enemies around corners.
- See how many times I can get the deathball to go around a room by sliding one along the walls.
- Set timed detonations by sticking deathballs to the walls, sliding slowly up to the ceiling or down to the floor.
- Off the pillar, off the wall, off the other wall, into the zombie--nothing but net.
The deathball has 2 ways to inflict damage: the crushing effect of its direct impact, which is is incredibly powerful, & then the detonation damage caused by the deathball exploding on a floor or ceiling nearby. In a Deathbot match, I had iddqd in effect for testing purposes. I took a deathball to the chest, which knocked me back & left the deathball hovering there in midair. When I tried walking into it, I was pushed back the equivalent of 50-75 feet. Had I not had iddqd on, I no doubt would have been gibbed by walking into it.
Heh . . . I've seen that my remark about Legacy getting into DDF has caused quite a stir . . . I really can't take credit for this info, folks. & I didn't get it over at SOM. I read Fanatic's April 16th post raving over the new Legacy 1.28, & saw him mention that:
I also put in a request for DDF support in Legacy, but they will probably *never* do support for this. There are plans for an equivalent tho. :) I like the sounds of that!& that's really all I saw. I figured that Denis & Fab said something about there being plans for some form of DDF in a future version of Legacy. So Marc is the one who's (maybe) got the inside info. I just have my antennae out.
This brings up a point, & I hope that Randy (of ZDoom) reads this as well as the Legacy guys. If you do want to do some kind of DDF implementation, that's cool, but I really think it would be best if we all kept everything compatible or kept some kind of standards so that we could all benefit from each other's work. DDF, while being very cool, is something that desperately needs to be further developed & refined. It would be excellent if the development of DDF was something that the entire community got into, rather than everybody going off on their own & making their own proprietary version of DDF. Together, we could go miles & miles, rather than each guy going a few feet by himself.I have a dream . . .
Holy Ball of Death, Batman!
I have been tinkering around with DDF today, trying to come up with a suitable replacement for the Azrael's glove, which is the BFG in Batman Doom. As you may have found out, Azrael's glove isn't well suited for deathmatch--at all. I wanted something very unique & powerful, & I think I have created a monster! The result of this afternoon's experimentation is called the Deathball. This motorized, spiky ball leaves a trail of smoke. It will punch its way through weaker enemies. It will bounce off of enemies & walls--hitting lost souls with it reminded me of billiards. It slides along walls until it hits a floor or ceiling. With practice you can make one stick to the wall, sliding slowly up or down until it hits the ceiling or floor & detonates.
Hmmm... it's been interesting over the past few days. I've had a few people asking about why they can't run DosDoom because it gives an error about not having an iwad. Now, this may seem very basic to seasoned Doomers, but there is no shame in being new to something.
Let me first tell you people who need to know: The iwad is the main Doom.wad or the Doom2.wad from your original Doom or Doom2 games. none of these source ports will work without the iwad. The Doom2.wad should be version 1.9. I'm not sure about the doom.wad version you need, but my Ultimate Doom iwad works fine. You should copy the iwad into the DosDoom directory, & then all will be well.
Now, then. This is interesting to hear from several people with the same question, because it means that new people are getting into the source ports. We all have to start sometime, & I think it's rather cool that DosDoom 0.653 is the one that brought them in. Now I don't want to get into a competition with the other ports, because IMHO they are all excellent, each with their own distinctive styles & strengths, each one the product of teams of talented people working on a labor of love.
Team Legacy, you guys have been making some amazing innovations for the Legacy port. Yours was the first port I ever played, & I have always been impressed with the bold new ideas you've tried. The console was great. Then, the skins. Now, decals to create damage to walls. Denis, Fab, et al, keep up the great work.
TeamTNT, Boom is one that I came to appreciate when I tried to run Pixel's humongous "Simply Evil" map. It was then that I realized just how solid your Boom engine is. I have been partial to the ports that featured mlook & jumping, & that it why I haven't paid much attention to Boom. When I do play something on Boom, which is still only occasionally, I am always impressed by the elegance & finesse of this port--like a Mercedes-Benz handling gut-wrenching turns & hard braking with complete civility & calm. Truly the command-line-typer's dream. I do hope to see something from this ponderous entity called OGRE, though. It would be great if there was a fun game buried somewhere under all that red tape. Why don't you guys put it to a vote to start something? ;-)
Lee, I doubt, you're reading this, but MBF was a great work. You added some wonderful features to the Boom codebase, & made some great improvements. However, the manner in which it was presented was saddening. You had your motivations which drove you to code Boom & MBF, & you had your reasons for your abrupt departure. I don't agree with your actions, but I do appreciate your revealing candor in the docs that came with MBF. They gave me insight into the human condition & what kinds of things fuel us & drive us.
Randy, if I was a coder, I would have coded a port like yours. You have done what seemed to be the most obviously needed thing to do: integrating features from the other ports. Not only that, but you have gone in new directions which are mind-boggling. You have had your share of detractors, but I am completely behind you. Now, if only there were some ZDoom bots . . .
& last, but not least, Team DosDoom, my crew--you guys are the best. Sure, I'm biased, but what do you expect? Chi, thanks for creating the first of the ports. I hope your java-based card games find as rabid a following ;-) Team, DDF rocks harder than anything. I think DDF is the single most impressive feature in any of the DosDoom ports, for the simple fact that it has made Doom hacking & modification accessible to the layperson--someone like me, whose programming ability doesn't go very far beyond writing batch files. I have been able to create the Valkyrie & Demolition mods, which are things I would never have dreamed of being able to create until DDF was made a reality. & now the bots are built in! It just keeps getting better.
Here's the stuff:
Note: There are some bugs that you will notice. The sky tiles, even with "stretch sky" turned on. It's the result of the adjustable field of view code, but we thought that you would like to try the zoom & would forgive the tiling sky side effect for now. We have plans to fix it. I have tested 0.653 with Valkyrie, & it works great. The bots are functional, just like the original Deathbot. Type "idbot" while playing, & away you go. You can remap the zoom key to whatever you want--tilde is the default. Adjust the field of view for normal & zoom views in the graphic options menu. Hmm.. that's all I can think of atm. Hope you like it, & please report anything which may be of help.
BTW, you can turn off the autoaim in the gameplay options menu. Then you can shoot rockets at monsters' feet & watch them jump! And the aiming has been fixed when your angle is tilted up or down.
Oh, yes . . . it seems that many people have misunderstood yesterday's post re: the splitscreen. It is not in 0.653, sorry. As I quoted, the splitscreen is currently "very unusable", i.e. still under development. Sorry about the confusion there, folks. But it will hopefully be available in a future release, maybe next month or so. Also, smooth zooming (like in Quake, as opposed the the "snap to zoom" action which is currently used) is planned as well.
Okay, here are some screenies taken from map01:
The first shot was taken with field of view cranked all the way up. The second shot shows some bots running around battling imps.
Heheheh yes, we just skipped right by the 0.652, because brother Kester has briefly visited & passed on his Deathbot source, which was promptly integrated with 0.652's fov stuff. So it looks like the Deathbot will remain a built-in feature of DosDoom, & that's all right by me! We are talking about going ahead & releasing it without fixing some of the stuff we originally wanted to, due to the fact that we are entering that time of year that many students are under a lot of academic pressure.
BTW, Erik shared a little something with me that I am going to share with you all--it's a screenshot of his experiment with splitscreen. He is on the left, the bot is on the right. As of this writing, this splitscreen feature is "very unusable". When it is properly set up, "dd will have a BIG bunch of new nice features bundled with it" .
BTW, if you didn't get yesterday's "Surgery" story, go here.
Hey, check it out. I really love nachos. And I really was better at eating them than anybody else, no? The other night, though, I sat down to plate of them. My appetite wasn't there . . . at all. I made up my mind to just have my stomach removed. Yep, had my esophagus tube tied, my intestines extracted, & my sphincter sealed up for good. The doctor did a fine job, & he put in a shunt where I get my nourishment from now on. Hyperalimentation's my thing now, baby.
I've enjoyed nachos for many years. And I'll still occasionally hold a plate of them near my nose to savor their smell. But I have to move on to liquids. Man . . . I never thought this day would come, but it has. My thorax is feeling rather empty inside right now, but I know this is something that I need to do . . .
. . . Hey, I just found a plate of nachos with adobada & molé, & they smell great. Nobody else has mentioned them. Even over at Nacho Bell, where they eat nachos every day, they don't even talk about these adobada & molé nachos! What's up with that? I could start my own nacho-eating place & give main nacho places a run for their money. But my gastrointestinal tract has been removed, so that's not an option. Bye.
The Great Rain Robbery?
I really wrote more in my update from Wednesday, but I deleted the last paragraph because it felt like I was getting up on a soapbox (heheh don't they call that "tubthumping" over wherever Chumbawumba comes from?). But after reading some of the controversy re: the alleged great rain effect ripoff between the Doom Anomaly & Doom Millenium crews, I felt like it was appropriate to try to re-write here today:
Imo, some of the coolest stuff to come out lately has been done in a very laid-back, informal, altruistic way. No teams were formed per se, it was just people getting together & contributing their talents much like a bunch of musicians getting together & jamming without the hassle of forming a band or signing a contract. I'm thinking of how Fanatic made his dm mods ROKS & Breed DM, & I made Valkyrie, & then Wildman cranked out a bunch of maps for them all. It was just very cool how it all fit together as we each improvised. We tried to help each other out & complement each other's work. Then there was all the DDF coding advice that Gokuma, Fanatic & I swapped around--we were just asking each other questions, bouncing ideas around, & trying to solve each other's various conundrums. I guess my point is that it would be cool to see more of that kind of attitude. It's about mutual respect & a desire to see someone else succeed. Don't you want someone in your corner? Then go cheer someone else on. It's like TeamTNT giving Randy the thumbs-up for his great work on ZDoom, which incorporates Boom features. It's like Carmack complimenting Epic for the breathtaking graphics in Unreal. It's also more than respecting other's work, it's about sharing your own talents & ideas. As you share more, you'll see more of your fingerprints all over the place. Plus, you get that warm fuzzy feeling that beats feeling pissed off.
I finally heeded the advice given by a few different people & archived my news. In case you hadn't already found out, my page has been awarded the dubious honor of being "the longest loading Doom page in the history of man". I had been quite derelict in my html optimization (yeehaw dat dere's Amerikun spellin hehehe), which has made for some horrendous loading times that I never really noticed, since I view this page mostly when it is local on my own machine before uploading it. Most of the news has been transplanted to the appropriate archive pages.
This is the first step in a joint redesigning effort. I will be assisted by Mike Tawney, who has already made some new layouts. I would also like to again thank the Last Doomer, who had helped redesign my Bot Page a while back. I am very appreciative of the support of other members of the community that I have received, be it in the form of a plug here & there on personal pages, consistent reports at the big news sites, demo & map submissions from readers, or collaboration on my own projects.
Our crew is still mulling over a few points before we turn this bad boy loose, so it may be a bit longer than the few days I had forecasted. Sit tight, brothers . . .
Vpack is Out!
Wildman has released his latest creation, Vpack. This 4-map wad has been crafted just for Valkyrie, so I really do feel especially honored that he took so much time in making these. They're a great-looking set of maps, & they feature some of the Valkyrie scenery items, like ambient sound, some rather cool torches, & the bell that Wildman showed on his page recently in that screenshot from map03. Not only that, but Rick also added a cool title/intermission pic. Very professionally done. Thanks, Rick!
One thing that prevented it from going beyond 4 maps, though, was the presence of a rather bizarre bug whereby some sectors appear pitch black, which caused some areas in the maps to need complete rebuilding. I noticed & mentioned this bug on gothic2.wad map30 & bothered.wad map01 back when we were testing 0.651. Hopefully, this bug gets fixed before the next release.
Heheheh reading Fanatic's account of his paintball experience reminded me of my own:
I too had a crummy single-shot rental gun. I was flagging down the orange-vested ref often to get him to clear my barrel with his barrel squeegee. All of our group had the rental hardware, & there was a hardcore guy who came alone, wearing the facemask/helmet/camo/net & armed with the paintball equivalent of a chaingun. There was a target near the snack shop/waiting area, & we heard a braaaaaap as he painted the target. "Hey, man, wanna be on our team?" He wound up on the other team (figures). I actually wound up going head to head against him (figures).
I was defending our base from a ridge. There were some rolling hills ahead of me, & I was keeping the enemy pinned down pretty well as they advanced, & was feeling pretty pumped about it. I heard a noise to my right, & about jumped out of my ill-fitting camo shirt to see an enemy bellycrawling past me at my 5:00--incredibly, he hadn't seen me! I was so wired, I instinctively pumped about 4-5 shots into his back & legs before I stopped shooting. He was ticked: "Aaghh! Shoot me once, shoot me twice, shoot me freaking five times, man?!?!?!" I apologized as he glared & shuffled back to the waiting area, & then I resumed my post.
Then I saw the facemask- & net-clad head of the hardcore dude raise up from the rolling hills. I popped off some shots, & knew I had gotten him. I called for paint check, but the ref said it was a head shot & didn't count (I had forgotten about that rule). We were at a standoff for a few minutes with me keeping him pinned down with my lowly rental gun, but then I heard "Surrender!" to my left. I looked, & the hardcore dude had circled around & flanked me. He had the drop on me at my 9:00 from point-blank range. I dodged & snapped off a shot at the same time he drilled me with a burst of paint balls. We both started pointing at each other & yelling "Paint check! Paint check!". The ref sent us both back to the waiting area. The hardcore dude was ticked off that I had gone down fighting like that. "I usually let people surrender when I get the drop on them, because it hurts to get hit close range. But that's the last time I give people a chance to surrender!" But I had no regrets: always go down fighting!
0.652 Buzz
The 0.652 is looking nice. FOV is implemented, as is the zoom feature--press a configureable button & your view snaps into the zoom fov that you can adjust with a slider in the video options menu. Hats off to Erik for his great work. Also, the mlook is working properly. You can turn off the autoaim, which is already possible in the Deathbot, as you may have read at Fanatic's page. Bullet puffs are visible on the ceiling now--a small aesthetic thing, but still nice. I know, that has been possible for a long time in Legacy, but we have finally gotten around to doing it ourselves. We just can't stop ripping off features from that Legacy team! ;-)
Anyway, I hope to release this within the next few days . . .
On another note, I'm not sure that it is generally known that DosDoom 0.65 has some interesting linedefs with the lines.ddf file. Among them are friction, gravity, & color map. Also, in levels.ddf you can disable/enable the jumping, freelook, translucency, respawning items, etc. for a certain level. I remember way back when I took that mlook & jumping poll that a few people said that there should be a way for mappers to disable mlook & jumping in a map. Well, it's in there . . .
Also, thanks goes to Fanatic for cleaning up my Valkyrie 1.22b by removing a lot of wasted space in that wad--about 2 megs worth! I was completely clueless about that little wasted-space effect when you change or delete stuff from a wad using Wintex--& I am always changing those data lumps for the weapons/attacks/etc. . . . So, the next release should be a much more efficient download.