Blasphemer discussion

[DooMAD]

57 minutes ago, MrFlibble said:

On another note, I was just browsing the Heretic/HeXen resource thread, and it looks like this post by @DooMAD appears to be about textures intended for Blasphemer (?):

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/post/1883159

 

UPD: A newer version of the pack is on the next page:

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/post/1891140

 

Looks like most of the images these are based on were sourced by Googling, with exact provenance unclear, making them unsuitable for the base project, sadly.

 

I wasn't aiming for them to be included within Blasphemer itself, but if anyone was using Blasphemer as a base for mapping, having some additional textures in the correct palette to use is always a bonus. 

 

Plus I really like the palette.

 

The latest versions are:  http://www.teamhellspawn.com/stalungcraeft2.1.1png.zip for PNG format or http://www.teamhellspawn.com/stalungcraeft2.1.1wad.zip for WAD format.

[MrFlibble]

50 minutes ago, GeorgePieVG said:

Agreed, however the recent Freed∞m releases are really good as a new take on mechanically the same game as Doom but with a whole new aesthetic, art style, lore and story.

It is true that different design can do wonders in changing the look & feel of a game. Some curious mapping tricks can also do a lot to make it more unique. And I'm totally for these things. However, I just wanted to point out that such changes alone will not  suffice to make the project more like a completely new game -- especially if PWAD compatibility is still a goal.

 

Potentially breaking PWAD compatibility, if only in a handful of cases (but I'm not sure if caves and caverns are all that rare in Heretic maps, especially since the number of available themes is rather limited, as you have pointed out), for the sake of an extra decoration that will likely not be used in every map anyway does not seem like a particularly reasonable tradeoff to me. It is really a pity that the vanilla engine does not allow to add new decorations, but I suppose that GZDoom should? Maybe add these trees and possibly other extras to the IWAD as new decorations that can only be used in source ports which support this feature? That way you would not be limited to just one tree and a broken trunk (not very good for creating a convincing group of more than two trees), but also use other trees like those from @Nmn's CC0 decorations (for example).

 

Ideally, it would be nice to be able to put GZDoom-specific decorations in a map and still be able to use it in vanilla/limit-removing ports, with these extra additions just not showing up. But that is likely not possible (?), or perhaps you could do that as some sort of maphacks? I think EDuke32 allows this kind of stuff, although I'm not sure on details, but external alterations of maps seem possible in that engine.

1 hour ago, DooMAD said:

I wasn't aiming for them to be included within Blasphemer itself, but if anyone was using Blasphemer as a base for mapping, having some additional textures in the correct palette to use is always a bonus. 

Thank you for the clarification!

 

Concerning the source images, did you try to use stuff with a particular license and/or public domain, or anything that you felt suited your needs, regardless of licenses?

[DooMAD]

24 minutes ago, MrFlibble said:

Concerning the source images, did you try to use stuff with a particular license and/or public domain, or anything that you felt suited your needs, regardless of licenses?

It was very much just a "that looks cool, throw it in" kinda thing.  I wasn't really looking where most of the stuff came from.  One or two of the door textures might be from the 'Tomb Raider' series if memory serves.

[Craneo]

31 minutes ago, MrFlibble said:

but I suppose that GZDoom should? Maybe add these trees and possibly other extras to the IWAD as new decorations that can only be used in source ports which support this feature? That way you would not be limited to just one tree and a broken trunk (not very good for creating a convincing group of more than two trees),

why add custom decorate tho, mappers can add that to their own maps themselves, if it's for the default levels, wouldn't adding custom actors to them mess with testing on say Crispy Heretic?

I contributed tree/foliage-related textures I made some time ago anyways, can't we just make doomcute sector trees instead? they have enough variety and can be shaped in any way if you know how to make maps and stuff
 

Spoiler

as you can see from the staff weapon in the screenshots, these are rather old contribs too (maybe a few weeks ago, or a month ago? idk my perception of time is fucked up post-pandemic)

[AntonR]

I don't know how much of a consideration this is, but IMO since it's still a possibility, Blasphemer should be usable as a Heretic stand-in, so "thing"s should have some parity so you can play custom wads without it messing the intent up, and as well, ideally, should be able to play in a chocolate/crispy fashion. I do believe it is already working, or very close to working this way, and it would be a shame to lose it

[MrFlibble]

Personally I think there should be nothing wrong with having some extra decorations that only work in ports that support such enhancements -- provided that the base game is still accessible to users of other ports too.

 

In fact, the project could have several IWADs with different campaigns, or at least different port-specific versions, and indeed a version with various enhancements on top of the base game could be closer to the coveted "its own thing" discussed above. On the other hand, a DOS-compatible version could be also useful, if only because one could play it in the browser (like this), thus potentially bringing the project to a wider audience.

 

At any rate, I think it is a good idea to expand the texture set, much like Freed∞m does, and actively use the new textures in maps.

[GeorgePieVG]

10 minutes ago, MrFlibble said:

Personally I think there should be nothing wrong with having some extra decorations that only work in ports that support such enhancements -- provided that the base game is still accessible to users of other ports too.

 

In fact, the project could have several IWADs with different campaigns, or at least different port-specific versions, and indeed a version with various enhancements on top of the base game could be closer to the coveted "its own thing" discussed above. On the other hand, a DOS-compatible version could be also useful, if only because one could play it in the browser (like this), thus potentially bringing the project to a wider audience.

 

At any rate, I think it is a good idea to expand the texture set, much like Freed∞m does, and actively use the new textures in maps.

It would be great, but it's best to do it only after all the map slots are occupied and compliant with Chocolate/Vanilla Heretic limits.
Speaking of textures, I picked up some textures from freedoom attic (as well as regular freedoom and librequake) and converted/edited them for use in blasphemer.

blasphemnewtex.zip

[Craneo]

@GeorgePieVG a lot of those textures don't really fit honestly... why are there walrus, dolphin, chihuahua(?) and horned, bald anime girl(???) gargoyles, why is there a hanged AGM soldier from the future, I say keep only ones that actually fit the medieval gothic theme maybe, there are also a lot that are clearly too old and don't match either wads quality control I think, such as the gargblud fountain, the lqmeddb faces and the cwolf textures, there is also the wllslud sludgefall textures, which I assume are meant to be animated, but I doubt we can do that? because only ZDoom has animdefs afaik, and why are there repeated SKY1/2/3 all based on the NASA pic, maybe it's just me, but I think the current skies are fine, idk... ofcourse there are also a lot of great, fitting textures, such as the mheaven and mhell textures, the sewer texture (tho imho it should just be the bars and the liquid, implemented on different bricks as a patch), and the bigdoor textures

EDIT: some more texture feedback, the flesh textures should be pink-ish, not blue imho, try this translation: "52:60=169:176", also most of the metal textures work except for metal4 (lights are too futuristic imho), metal7 and metal8 (these are meant to be merged into a single texture via a lot of patching since they are based on the Doom BR walls), the SKIN textures are pretty good, btw, I do wonder if you could use the skin symbol ones from Freedoom that had the harpy and other mythical figures drawn on it, I assume the ones you took are from LQ?

also @MrFlibble I think it would be a lot of work to mantain two iwads when the main one isn't even finished yet.

Edited July 21 by Craneo

[GeorgePieVG]

13 minutes ago, Craneo said:

@GeorgePieVG a lot of those textures don't really fit honestly... why are there walrus, dolphin, chihuahua(?) and horned, bald anime girl(???) gargoyles, why is there a hanged AGM soldier from the future, I say keep only ones that actually fit the medieval gothic theme maybe, there are also a lot that are clearly too old and don't match either wads quality control I think, such as the gargblud fountain, the lqmeddb faces and the cwolf textures, there is also the wllslud sludgefall textures, which I assume are meant to be animated, but I doubt we can do that? because only ZDoom has animdefs afaik, and why are there repeated SKY1/2/3 all based on the NASA pic, maybe it's just me, but I think the current skies are fine, idk... ofcourse there are also a lot of great, fitting textures, such as the mheaven and mhell textures, the sewer texture (tho imho it should just be the bars and the liquid, implemented on different bricks as a patch), and the bigdoor textures

also @MrFlibble I think it would be a lot of work to mantain two iwads when the main one isn't even finished yet. 

I agree about the face textures, I included them because they are from the same pack. Only the gargoyle fits, I think. But all the others will fit for Zauberer, if development ever resumes. The AGM soldier would be a nice easter egg in the spirit of Build Engine games. WLLSLUD is redundant here, yes. The sky textures are just sketches that I have included separately, they are not intended for the game, but in case someone will find them useful.

[Craneo]

Sir this is the Blasphemer thread, not the Zauberer one 😛
anyways, I tweaked the old sky3 mountains from your scraps folder 
also made the sewer be the "patch" part only, untested but should HOPEFULLY be usable on top of any gray wall 
EDIT: yeah I say it works better this way:
EDIT 2: even works well on SOME brown walls!

Spoiler

 

Edited July 21 by Craneo

[GeorgePieVG]

Thanks for the feedback and help btw. The symbols on the skin were taken from Freedoom too, but an older version and based on alchemical symbols, I can get the new version of the symbols.  The recolored flesh looks really good, my original idea was to do something like corpse frostbitten flesh, but yours looks better.

[Catoptromancy]

Would not be very hard to make an actual zauberer iwad right now. Would be entirely placeholders, but decent ones. Only needs a deutex wadinfo.txt and resource tree, so could use custom wadinfo to compile zauberer from blasphemer source. Would need to go resource by resource to find comparable placeholders and add second column in wadinfo.txt 

BSTATK   BURN    # * PLACE HOLDER *

This wadinfo.txt entry has two names. The second name is actual resource and name of file to be used, and first name is new lmp in wad using the actual resource. So using this method, can easily, but time consumingly, make zauberer from blasphemer resources. 

[AntonR]

Why couldn't extras be a PWAD? I recognise my doom knowledge is slight, but I don't really know why things should be in the IWAD? Why not just have a collection wad called "Blasph_extra" or something? I think over scoping the IWAD is probably unwise because it risks expanding the scope for contributions indefinitely, which, at least for me, would make it more difficult to maintain any focus.

[GeorgePieVG]

36 minutes ago, AntonR said:

Why couldn't extras be a PWAD? I recognise my doom knowledge is slight, but I don't really know why things should be in the IWAD? Why not just have a collection wad called "Blasph_extra" or something? I think over scoping the IWAD is probably unwise because it risks expanding the scope for contributions indefinitely, which, at least for me, would make it more difficult to maintain any focus.

Looks like Blasphemer already has PWAD with extra stuff. I think gldefs can be included in IWAD, it doesn't affect gameplay anyway. 

[MrFlibble]

6 hours ago, Craneo said:

Sir this is the Blasphemer thread, not the Zauberer one 😛

To tell the truth, there has been Zauberer discussion in this thread in the past; but indeed there's a separate Zauberer topic too.

 

I fully agree that at this point, a good chunk of Zauberer assets could be just made from Blasphemer placeholders, and there is nothing wrong with it IMO.

 

On a separate note, @raymoohawk did post some textures in this topic that are not included in the Freed∞m attic, intended either for Blasphemer or Zauberer:

I had to use the Wayback Machine to recover them, thankfully all or most of the images have been preserved. I believe that all of these were made from scratch.

7 hours ago, Craneo said:

also @MrFlibble I think it would be a lot of work to mantain two iwads when the main one isn't even finished yet.

It could be a long-term goal to be kept in mind. I believe that a major success for the project would be if generally more mappers were motivated to produce quality levels specifically for Blasphemer on a consistent basis.

 

Blasphemous Experiments is a neat mapset, as far as I can tell, but I'm afraid the difficulty is a little bit too high for the first episode, and it can very well overwhelm new players (and personally I'm not a fan of fighting huge crowds of monsters either, but that's just me). I suppose it could go as the fourth episode?

 

It seems like a very polished E1 mapset that showcases interesting locations and compelling gameplay could be a nice demonstration for the project (yes, I'm quite on the idea of making a shareware IWAD release).

[Craneo]

the green pillar one could use a lot more tweaking, the skull really lacks contrast and looks too clean, and also the pillar itself looks too alien, which from what I know of Zauberer probably fit it well, the bricks also seem unecessary, Blasphemer has a lot of brick textures already (perhaps too many) so more bricks don't add to variation, then again I could be wrong, really love the doors, metal plates (specially rusted ones), and bookshelf tho (they may still need color tweaking)

I admit I am not too sure how well Blasphemer could work as a basis for new pwads too, Heretic as is doesn't have as much usermade content, neither does Freedoom (atleast, talking about stuff that isn't a direct contribution), Blasphemous Experiments seems to be more of a exception/miracle, and again, new stuff can always be part of the pwad itself, hell, BlasphExp has the textures from Blasphemer built in and can be played with Heretic instead (in fact I'm pretty sure all screenshots had Heretic as the iwad IIRC)

[Catoptromancy]

With so much new stuff recently, it seems like a good time for a quick release. Changelog has details of everything.

 

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Catoptromancy/blasphemer/master/FORK_Changelog.md

Fork 004 Release:

https://www.geocities.ws/catodemos/blasphemer/builds/blasphem-fork-004.zip

[Nihlith]

Everyone has been doing an incredible job. Here's a playthrough of level 1 of city of the damned. I think all of the elements here are looking at least as good as the release it's emulating. The sword is better than the staff, the wand is as good as the old one and the crossbow looks and feels better. Good, good. The weird birds are awesome, the zombies are excellent and the weirdly tall goblin things are looking very good. A+.

 

Sword definitely needs a swing sound and a different sound for hitting enemies and walls. 

Maybe for the swing? https://freesound.org/people/petenice/sounds/9509/ or maybe https://freesound.org/people/SypherZent/sounds/420670/

Maybe for enemy hit? https://freesound.org/people/ethanchase7744/sounds/448982/

Maybe for wall hit? https://freesound.org/people/Debsound/sounds/168822/

 

Those would probably be place holders but they'd be easy quality of life edits until better sound effects are found.

 

Edit: Very nice sky, textures, items, and music. Its really coming together.

 

[AntonR]

swing sound is unfortunately not really possible, doom/heretic does just a hit sound for melee.

also, I would love to hear my enemy death sounds and item pickups in there, I am very proud of the ghoul/golem death sounds in particular

[Catoptromancy]

They can be added if made from scratch. A lot of current sounds were ones made for the project, so only placeholders got updated. I couldnt tell exact source of each sound. 

 

Here is a complete list of resources and shows if a specific resource is a placeholder. 

https://github.com/Catoptromancy/blasphemer/blob/master/wadinfo.txt

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

On 7/20/2024 at 9:23 AM, MrFlibble said:

There are also some from-scratch textures by @ETTiNGRiNDER here. Not sure if those could be useful somehow? (again, maybe for Zauberer?)

Since it was brought up here and I still haven't gotten around to updating the page, I should make extra clear that only the stuff on that big purple sheet with the green bricks I did for Tyrant's Tomb and such are from scratch, the WAD files are a collection of my own textures + edits + other community posted stuff I thought was good and people endlessly surprise me with their inability to read the credits file (I'm tempted to just remove those WADs from the page), therefore most of them are not going to be suitable for a project like this.

 

I think I was at some point going to make versions of the Tyrant's Tomb set that were adapted and touched up to look better in the Blasphemer palette and formally submit them, but I never got around to that and definitely won't any time soon, seeing as I'm very much in the "not finding time or energy to finish my own projects let alone help someone else's" mode.

[Craneo]

if you do, please replace the Dsparil pitchfork symbol in the cloaked gargoyle man and runic texture walls with a inverted cross or a pentagram as that is more fitting to Blasphemer's general aesthetic
also, are the vines from scratch too?

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

41 minutes ago, Craneo said:

if you do, please replace the Dsparil pitchfork symbol in the cloaked gargoyle man and runic texture walls with a inverted cross or a pentagram as that is more fitting to Blasphemer's general aesthetic
also, are the vines from scratch too?

Yeah, tweaking some of the symbols was also something on the agenda if I did that.

The vines are from scratch, too, rather messily painted up with a tablet.

[AntonR]

5 hours ago, Catoptromancy said:

They can be added if made from scratch. A lot of current sounds were ones made for the project, so only placeholders got updated. I couldnt tell exact source of each sound. 

 

Here is a complete list of resources and shows if a specific resource is a placeholder. 

https://github.com/Catoptromancy/blasphemer/blob/master/wadinfo.txt

That's a great resource! I don't really know much of this history so I assume that would involve contacting SuperSomariDX if they would be up for replacing some of their sounds.

You don't need to list my licenses as different btw, since they are my recordings or done using public domain materials I relicense them under yours ( I think I stated this on my last uploads)

[andrewj]

6 hours ago, Catoptromancy said:

Here is a complete list of resources and shows if a specific resource is a placeholder. 

https://github.com/Catoptromancy/blasphemer/blob/master/wadinfo.txt

I noticed some are marked CC-BY-SA / GPL.

 

Are they just place-holders?

[Nihlith]

4 hours ago, AntonR said:

swing sound is unfortunately not really possible, doom/heretic does just a hit sound for melee.

also, I would love to hear my enemy death sounds and item pickups in there, I am very proud of the ghoul/golem death sounds in particular

I was going to add the suggested sounds for a run through but when I opened the file I saw I had no idea how any of it works. Everything I've done has been in gzdoom/decorate/zscript. Feels a little awkward to critique without being able to understand the issues. When I said that I thought it'd be easy for me to do. 

I had to double check the Heretic staff to make sure. Of course you're right, but would it be impossible or just mission inappropriate to add data without a direct equivalent in Heretic if said data has no numerical or temporal effect?

[GeorgePieVG]

What do you think about diversifying the music a bit? @jute did a great job composing the soundtrack for the entire game and there are a lot of good tracks (like the one that plays in the first demo), but overall it sounds repetitive. Here is some music that could possibly be used:
continuum.mid MIDIs
Tristan Clark MIDIs
Lippeth MIDIs
The Realm of Parthoris soundtrack (beware of E1M9, it's from Duke Nukem 3D)

There is one important issue though, vanilla Heretic had the music in MUS format, not MID. Chocolate Heretic will probably play MID files, but I'm not sure about the original DOS executable. So we'll have to convert it first.

Edit: we may also add new music for episodes three, four, and five that will play in Crispy and more advanced ports.

Edited July 23 by GeorgePieVG

[Catoptromancy]

Anything with a license mentioned is a placeholder. Blasphemer is a community project and will have all its resources community made for it some day. A community made resource can be replaced by another. 

 

There was always a few public domain sounds in blasphemer so I wasnt worried about license much, but it seems there is a recent rush to fill in many resources with public domain stuff. 

[Catoptromancy]

9 hours ago, AntonR said:

You don't need to list my licenses as different btw, since they are my recordings or done using public domain materials I relicense them under yours ( I think I stated this on my last uploads)

 

Sounds that are handmade and not based on another can be added more easily. I assumed all your sounds were under a non-bsd license, so could only replace placeholders. 

[ax34]

I think this midi will be suitable for Blasphemer/Zauberer.

Author: me (ax34)

License: CC-BY (or CC0 if CC-BY if not free enough for Blasphemer)

cemetery-looped.zip