JAMAL JONES TRILOGY - Old development thread - [Doomkid's 20 Years Mapping Contest]

[Doomkid]

NOTE: This is the old contest and development thread! It's only here for archival purposes :)

 

 

Check the final release thread HERE!

 

 

 

June 23rd: WINNERS ANNOUNCED! Click HERE for more info!

 

 

June 12th: Playthroughs complete! Check the playlist below:

 

 

 

 

Old contest guidelines and such below:

 

..That's right, way back in the distant and spooky year of 2001, a much younger me began the journey of endlessly plopping down linedefs and vertices. To celebrate such a long span of mapping, and inspired by several other astute scholars in the world of Doom, I present to you my very own vanilla mapping contest!

 

That's right, a mapping contest. What a fun (and original) way to mark this occasion, am I right? Since this is a friendly competition, you'll need to know..

 

 

WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR (& WHY)

 

 

..As stated, this is going to be a vanilla format mapping contest. The reason I'm picking such an oldschool format is multi-sided:

 

• The maps I played in the late 90s and early 2000s that inspired me to get into mapping were all vanilla maps, as that's all there was in that era, sans a few early/niche source ports.
• The majority of my mapping output over the years has been vanilla, so it makes sense as a theme for the contest.
• Vanilla map submissions will be the easiest to compile into a fun megawad for us all to enjoy once this contest is wrapped up!

 

The themes I'm looking for are the following:

 

• City / town maps

• Run-down techbases

• Abstract or off-the-wall

• Hell maps

• Maps that generally evoke a classic Doomy feel, of course!

 

..and above all else, try to put yourself in that "90's mapping headspace". Try to take all the best aspects of any older maps you're familiar with on board as inspiration, while of course remembering to stay within vanilla limits!!

 

 

THE RESOURCE PACK & HOW IT WORKS

 

 

(Contest has expired, please check top of thread for the last east build)

 

Since most people know me for my vanilla compatible partial conversions, I decided that all of the best submissions are going to be compiled into an episode called JAMAL JONES: One Man Jury!

 

Jamal Jones is the older brother of my other Doom character Rowdy Rudy, and after all is said and done, this wad will serve as a prequel to the original Rowdy Rudy's Revenge!

 

There are a number of minor changes to weapon and monster behavior, however nothing strays too far from classic Doom gameplay:

 

 

• The Spectre is replaced by the Plasma Guy. Attacks like a much slower Arachnotron, but with far less health.

HP = 90

 

• The WolfSS guy, who is now a sort of Hazmat Guy, can be used as an extra low-tier enemy.

HP = 50

 

 

• Commander Keen is replaced by an Alien Imp. Twice as sturdy as normal imps, hurling a Baron and Imp fireball in quick succession. Walks faster than his weaker cousin.

HP = 130

 

• A Blind Pinky has the same health as always, but charges quite a bit faster now!

HP = 150

 

• A Toxicacodemon is a little more aggressive than a standard tomato, and spits a toxic Baron ball rather than a standard Caco ball.

HP = 400

 

• The Pain Elemental is replaced by the infamous Flame Caco. He spits deadly flame at close range, but don't let his followup fireball catch you off guard!

HP = 550

 

 

..The lower-tier weapons have also received some nice upgrades:

 

The pistol is now a tougher, faster, and perfectly accurate Rifle, and the fists are now a 4x stronger Bayonet. Additionally the Chainsaw, Shotgun, Chaingun and Rocket Launcher have all received a slight increase to their rate of fire!

 

..There are also modified versions of the classic Doom II textures, originally taken from the HD textures without the HD pack. These serve to give the world a bit of a grittier, off-kilter feel, and helps distinguish this wad from classic unmodified Doom.

 

^{(more old, outdated details contained in spoiler)}

 

 

HOW TO SUBMIT A MAP

Just post it right here in this very thread! You can use WadHosting, Doomshack, MediaFire, or anywhere else that's available to upload your wad.

When you post your map, please be sure to include the title of the map as well as the amount of time you spent mapping.  **Your map should be unique to this project, by the way!**

 

RULES

 

• Do not re-use an older map you've already been working on! These should be new maps.

• Do not submit non-vanilla maps! If the map crashes, I won't accept it (though of course I'll let you know about it and you'll be able to fix it before the deadline).

• Do not use any additional custom textures or flats beyond what's provided in the resource pack.

• Please DO include a custom MIDI file with your map!

..other than that, as long as it's a vanilla map that is your own creation, have at it!


WHAT WILL WIN? / WHAT'S UP FOR GRABS?

 

I'm afraid to say that the winner of the contest will be decided solely by me and my arbitrary sensibilities. I'll be playing all the maps and seeing which one I enjoy the most. There's no hard and fast qualifiers beyond creating a fun "Clasically Doomy" experience.

If you're in need of seeing what kind of maps I make and/or enjoy, check out my back catalog on /idgames for a little bit of inspiration that might help you "get in my head" as a mapper. Protip: I like my Doom maps short, sweet & punchy!

As for what's up for grabs, just some small cash prizes!

• First place will receive $300 AUD

• Second place will receive $150 AUD

• Third place and below will receive my undying love and gratitude :)

(After the contest is wrapped up & I have received all submissions, I'll be recording gameplay and commentary of each and uploading it to my YouTube channel!)

 

OTHER IMPORTANT STUFF

 

* The deadline for map submissions is March 1st, 2022! *

* Only ONE map per person! * ^{(however if you submit a non-vanilla map by accident, you can submit another!)}

* I will accept no more than 50 maps! * (this rule is now scrapped)

* You have not "reserved a slot" until you have actually uploaded and linked a wad in this thread! *
 
* I WILL ONLY SEND MONEY THROUGH PAYPAL! Please keep this in mind when submitting! *
 

...UHH...

 

..One last thing! The winner will not be announced until after I have played, recorded & uploaded ALL submission playthroughs to my YouTube channel.

I think that just about covers everything, for now at least! Happy mapping, everyone! EDIT: Submissions closed.

 

 

[phoo]

Those are some cool custom monsters!

[Dusty_Rhodes]

Can't wait to get started on this. I'd love to contribute to the Doomkid Cinematic Doomverse!

[RonLivingston]

That Flame Caco, It looks almost like its the cacolantern

[Dusty_Rhodes]

Really cool resource pack, though I'm surprised there's no new skies. I guess that keeps with the theme of classic Doom. I love Doom 2's Sky1, so I'm not complaining.

[OpenRift]

God damn, you are on a role with these. I swear these characters sound like something out of an exploitation movie

[Astronomical]

I am a huge fan of the wad in sense returning to the original Rudy look and feel, Rudy 2 was an improvement in many ways but I missed the look and feel of the original. 

[E.M.]

Hell yeah, I'm down for making another vanilla map.

[Doomkid]

1 hour ago, Dusty_Rhodes said:

Really cool resource pack, though I'm surprised there's no new skies. I guess that keeps with the theme of classic Doom. I love Doom 2's Sky1, so I'm not complaining.

I may actually change the skies, but just to other subtle/natural skies that should mesh just fine.

[OverflowingMocha]

Not sure why there are 2 different packs of lavafall textures in this texture pack, but this is cool! Big fan of Rowdy Rudy stuff.
I'll try to cook something up.

[evil_scientist]

"Jamal Jones: One Man Jury", one hell of a title! A straight-to-VHS movie about a vigilante ex-cop. He gets things done - with his fist and a gun.

 

I don't generally map for vanilla, but this contest sounds cool!

[big smoke]

very nice 
i may actually participate in this contest 
since i have some free time after im done with some mods im about to finish 
will most likely make a small map for it anyways 

[Pistoolkip]

sounds fun!

But the 50 wad limit combined with first come first serve is a letdown. At my general mapping pace, I can't commit the hours to making an excellent vanilla map if I'm not guaranteed entry when it's done in a couple of weeks.  

[Walter confetti]

Wonderful, another contest! And I'm not sarcastic! How many levels can be included in a wad? One or more?

 

Good luck with the contest! I don't know if i can do something since I'm involved in many other projects...

Edited January 25, 2022 by Walter confetti

[INfront95]

Never actually did vanilla map, but it's tempting to try

[Doomkid]

10 minutes ago, Pistoolkip said:

the 50 wad limit combined with first come first serve is a letdown. At my general mapping pace, I can't commit the hours to making an excellent vanilla map if I'm not guaranteed entry when it's done in a couple of weeks.  

This limit was imposed mainly for the sake of my own sanity as a compiler and "project lead" more or less (despite this being a competition and not a traditional CP). I wouldn't want to turn people away though who would otherwise have a vanilla submission made for this, so I'll get rid of the limit for the time being. I seriously doubt I'll get that many actual wads handed in within the next 7 weeks, so I'm happy to remove this limit.

 

4 minutes ago, Walter confetti said:

Good luck with the contest! I don't know if i can do something since I'm involved in many other projects...

Thank you Walter! And please, only one map per person. I'll clarify this in the OP!

[Sectorslayer]

Cool project! 😗
So the WAD would be a map01 with custom music? No DEHACKED lump or anything? Just tell you the level name and provide the intermission screen graphics?

Deathmatch and Coop starts I guess?

[Doomkid]

9 minutes ago, sectrslayr said:

Cool project! 😗
So the WAD would be a map01 with custom music? No DEHACKED lump or anything? Just tell you the level name and provide the intermission screen graphics?

Deathmatch and Coop starts I guess?

Yep, the wad you send me will just be a MAP01 and a custom MIDI track! You don't even need to provide inter graphics, just a map and a MIDI (the map being made using OneMan.wad from the OP as a resource, of course - just clarifying this for others).

 

When you're testing your map, just load it alongside "OneMan.wad" so that it pulls the correct textures and enemies. Also yes, please do include 4 coop and DM starts just to avoid crashes!

 

EDIT: OneMan.wad does have the DeHackEd embedded, so most ports will just read it natively. The separate .DEH file is just for vanilla Doom's sake!

[Rymante]

Hmmm.....

 

I'm tempted to try and make something for this.  I just finished playing through both Rowdy Rudy wads for the first time recently & rather enjoyed them, however I've never made anything before that strictly conforms to vanilla limits before so I'll have to figure out how to test for that.

[Doomkid]

There are a few different ways you can make sure your map is totally crash-free in vanilla Doom:

 

- Firstly, of course, make sure you're mapping in plain-Jane Doom2 format. (An easy one to get wrong which I've done an embarrassing number of times)

- Secondly, if using Ultimate Doom Builder or GZDB, you can use the "Visplane explorer" option. This will show red areas where the the game will crash if the player walks because too many sectors are in view at once.

- Thirdly, you can try using ChocoRenderLimits. It will tell you in real time as you test your map if it's breaking limits (Link at bottom of page)

 

Between Visplane explorer and ChocoRenderLimits, it becomes a whole lot easier to make sure your map is conforming to vanilla's rather strict limits!

[Womp the Cat]

the texture replacements are rad!

[Osmosis Bones]

Just when I was starting to get in the mood for mapping. I'll be sure to give this a red hot go

[Glikkzy]

Hello! I am thinking about maybe trying my hand at a vanilla map in this project (and more mapping in general, finally), so I tried setting up ports and mapping environment.

 

First I had to change "S_END" to "SS_END" in the .wad (so it matches "SS_START") to make UDB load the sprite replacements.

 

Now for a bit of trouble: I was trying to use Chocolate Doom for this. When loading the embedded dehacked in the .wad in Chocolate Doom with -dehlump in the UDB game configuration, Chocolate Doom gives me different errors always along the lines of what is in the picture. It all works perfectly fine when testing my simple room in any other port like Crispy Doom or GZDoom.

 

Am I maybe doing something wrong with how to get Chocolate Doom to load the dehacked, or should I simply try to run it all in dos Doom?     

[Doomkid]

So, when testing, try renaming the last SS_END lump back to just be S_END again before actually booting the map. (The reason for this is that Vanilla Doom wants an S_END lump if it’s looking for new sprite names but NOT an S_START lump, which is why the convention of renaming it SS_START came to be)

[Glikkzy]

I see! I am not too familiar with the inner workings of .wads and how they are read. I renamed "SS_END" back to "S_END" and the dehacked loads in Chocolate Doom. So switching it back and forth between mapping and testing is the way to go for me it seems. Thank you for clearing up the confusion!

Edited January 5, 2022 by Glikkzy

[thiccyosh]

I'm a sucker for maps that stink like 90s' and I've always wanted to replicate that strange feeling in a map. Sadly I don't have enough time to cook up a map, however I'm really curious how this will turn out! Good luck everyone!

[holaareola]

Not sure I have the time, but just in case, does the savegame buffer overrun count as non-vanilla compatible here? It's a natural guide back to the 90s style I suppose!

[Hitboi]

I don't think I have a lot of time for this, but I would like to try. Count me in.

Also, I love 90s wads!

Edited January 5, 2022 by Hitboi

[Vladguy]

Sure? I mean, I don't think I'll be able to do that well, but whatever I guess /shrug

[Astronomical]

3 hours ago, Doomkid said:

So, when testing, try renaming the last SS_END lump back to just be S_END again before actually booting the map. (The reason for this is that Vanilla Doom wants an S_END lump if it’s looking for new sprite names but NOT an S_START lump, which is why the convention of renaming it SS_START came to be)

Is this if you only rename the sprites?

I have found that vanilla doom will accept s_start if all names are the same, But you would also need to include all sprites from the iwad, and while I don’t believe that is illegal, it balloons the lump count.