DeiMWolf Progress Thread

[Boingo the Clown]

Definitely insane.

Using your advice I managed to create an experimental barrel.



(No actual barrel textures created. There are just a couple of wood textures.)

Here is an editor shot of all the dummy sectors outside the circular test level.



And that is for just one barrel.

All those dummy sectors would be fine if they could be used for all of the barrels on a level, but with the need to line the dummy sectors up in parallel with the actual sectors it means an awful lot of dummy sectors to hide in void space.

With barrels in rows and columns some of the sectors will line up.

When I have rooms full of barrels like this ...



... that's really bad news.

{{EDIT: I could always resort to using models, but I am told models only work in pk3 file format and will not work in WAD file.  Unfortunately, DeiMWolf is currently in a WAD and it may be a while before any switch to PK3 is likely to happen.}}

[Boingo the Clown]

Progress Report:  March 27, 2014

Had a really big scare yesterday.  DooMBuilder fouled up big time and horribly corrupted DeiMWolf.

Luckily, there was an automatic backup from an earlier save, and I was able to recover, albeit with a few resources lost, that were easily replaced.

Unfortunately, DooMBuilder then began refusing to save any changes, claiming deimwolf.wad was being used by another program. I spent hours checking out the resources inside the wad in case a corrupted entry was causing the problem. With the help of Mastrius, I found out that the earlier DB incident had left some sort of ghost copy of deimwolf.wad that can not be deleted. Saving DeiMWolf out to a new directory got around the problem.

Anyway ...

Now that I am more comfortable using GIMP, I have started doing some texture work. (Layers rock!)  Work is going slowly, because I am not very experienced, and I have a bad habit of playing the game whenever I go in to test (), but I am starting to get some good results.

Before:




After:



I have been wanting to change the cell door for ages.  It has been a bit of a bugbear for me.  It is not quite finished, and there is more that needs to be done with it, but it is definitely screen shot worthy.

The bad news is I made changes to the physical dimensions of the cell door.  That means I am going to have to delete all the cell doors in the game, then copy and paste this version there.

Oh! The tedium!


Also ...

Before:




After:



... sort of.

It is still a work in progress. (The little coloured dots are for aligniment purposes.) It was what I was working on when the wad got trashed.  Some details are still missing, such as the up and down arrows. The pipes are made up of 3D sectors, and do not have any finished textures for them yet. There is currently no switch in the centre of the wall.   The switch that was there before was a standard DooM switch texture, which is no longer available now that I have DeiMWolf running as an IWAD.

Like the cell, the changes I am making means I will have to change all of the elevators in the game.

Oh well.

[ChexMaster2109]

It looks very nice. And I know how much of a pain those sloped 3D sectors are. I wish someone would change those (Though it would be very hard. From a programming standpoint, I know exactly why they work that way, and it would be quite a pain to go through and change it, but it would make it so much easier )

[Boingo the Clown]

I haven't kept track of my progress in the last two months, but I can assure you there has been progress, albeit it light.

I did a little sprite work.  I now have a rendered version of B.J. running out of the castle and yelling "Yeah!" instead of the blurry resized versions of the original W3D sprite. The run is fine, but the "Yeah!" part needs a lot of work. Basically, the only thing that is good about it is the arm being thrust into the air.

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Please don't give me any guff about B.J. not wearing a grey track suit. As a military prisoner, he would probably be wearing whatever clothing he was captured in, so I put him in combat pants, boots, gaiters, and a commando sweater.

I only did sprites for the player's standing pose. This may be the case for a the time being until I figure out how to modify the existing running poses I have to him holding a gun.  I also made an interesting discovery. I was testing the standing poses on a test object, but then I decided to add the sprites to the player.  I took a look at the player using the chasecam and saw that the game had converted the sprite to the DooM palette!

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The one on the right is my test object, and the one on the left is the player.  I may have to recolour the player sprites so they work better with the DooM palette. I may in fact change the commando sweater to DooM green so the players can pick their colours in multiplayer.

I can't remember much else I have done recently, aside from playing with voxels. While it is not complete, I have successfully made and tested a voxel medkit, and it looks pretty good so far.

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The measurements are based on an actual WWII German medkit I own, although the texturing is based on a photo from the net, due to the rough shape my medkit is in.  Much detailingt remains to be done, including colouring the latches, and adding the carry handle on the right hand side.

[Atariangamer]

This mod never ceases to impress me. I can't ever shake the feeling that it looks a bit too nice to just have the square walls, though...

[ChexMaster2109]

lol, yeah... it looks amazing though.

[Boingo the Clown]

I have hit a couple of snags in DAZ Studio that are quite annoying and may slow things down a bit. (as if things aren't going slowly enough)

I picked up a really nice Uniform for the SS guard here.

The uniform is designed for an older DAZ human model, Michael 4 (M4).  I have M4, but only the basic version, so I am using a newer human model, Genesis.  Genesis has a lot of versitility compared to earlier models, with a large number of morphs that can be applied to it.  In addition, unlike earlier human models, clothing made for Genesis will morph with Genesis, meaning the clothing does not require its own morphs to match the figure.  This would allow me to do strange things, such as putting a cocktail dress on an ogre for example.  Even better, DAZ Studio 4.6 has the ability to autoconvert clothing made for earlier figures.  That means the SS uniform for Michael 4 will work on Genesis.

The result is a nice burly SS guard reminicent of the SS guard from Wolfenstein 3D.

Here comes the first problem.

In the picture above, the boots on the guard are not actually on the figure. I simply added them to the scene and moved them around until they lined up with Genesis's feet.

Why?

Because the autoconvert function that allows me to put the Michael 4 uniform on Genesis wrecks the boots.  For some reason, the autoconvert treats the boots like they are made of spandex and scrunches them up around Genesis's feet, badly distorting them and even leaving the impressions of toes in the tops of the boots.  It changes the boots from looking bad a** to just plain bad.

The mutant had the same problem, but on him the wrecked boots look appropriate, considering he is basically a zombie.

I came up with a solution. I figured if the boots were made for M4, then I would load in a copy of M4, make him invisible, put the boots on him, and pose him to match the poses used by Genesis.  The boots would line up, and everything would look okay.

Then comes the second problem.  For some unknown reason, DAZ Studio is refusing to load Michael 4.

 

I will do what I can to see if I can get a pair of non-mutated boots on this guy's feet, even if it kills me.

[Boingo the Clown]

Progress Report: June 24, 2014

Only one thing to report today, but it is a fun thing.

I was sitting around and I suddenly put two and two together.  There are supposed to be ghosts in the secret Pac-man level (Wolf Pac) of DeiMWolf.  I was working on sprites for them already, but it occured to me that they might be more appropriate as voxels. Voxels would allow me to make 3D ghosts, but keep them pixelated.

Here is what I have been doing.

At first I imported a ghost sprite from Pac-man into Magicavoxel, made it 3D and tried to enlarge it to make it more detailed.  Then I remembered that Super Pac-man already has an enlarged ghost sprite it uses in the cut scenes, so I scrapped the version I was working on and imported the Super Pac-man sprite.

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I then rotated the sprite, copied it, and put the pieces together. Then I began filling it in.

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It was slow, but I ended up with a reasonable facsimile of the ghost in 3D.

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I made up eyes seperately, then cut and pasted them in. The results were good.

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The voxel medkit I made did not appear to have any shading in the game when I tried it out, so I turned off the shading in Magicavoxel to see what the ghosts might look like in the game.

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That got me excited.

Note: I have an old project called Pac-DooM that simulates Pac-man in DooM.  I am really tempted to bring that project back just so I can use this voxel there.   

[75]

Nice. I really like the look of voxel models, they really feel like they fit into 90s shooters.

It's a pity zand has no shading for either 3d models or voxels though. I'd like to know why that is, I'm sure there's a good reason for it, maybe it's because lighting in vanilla doom is 100% ambient (i.e., sector light level) and lacks any direction (though I wonder if they could solve it by assuming the light came from above).

I think dynamic lights (i.e., point lights, etc. in gzdoom) could feasibly light up models properly but they lack the ability to shine on other objects I think (note how they clip through walls, etc.)

[ChexMaster2109]

Still, adding depth to a voxel object by defining the ambient light level on the surface by how close it is to another perpendicular surface wouldn't be too hard, and it would add much.

[Boingo the Clown]

I really wish Magicavoxel could do voxel object bigger than 126 x 126 x 126.

I am dying to make a voxel version of the space ships in T.U.C.Q..

[ChexMaster2109]

I'm sure the voxel file is somewhat simplistic data. With luck, it might even be in non-binary form, meaning you can directly edit it. It would be more time consuming (and likely more confusing), but you wouldn't be limited.

[Boingo the Clown]

Yes.  I used no clipping to get this shot.

[75]

I'm sure the voxel file is somewhat simplistic data. With luck, it might even be in non-binary form, meaning you can directly edit it. It would be more time consuming (and likely more confusing), but you wouldn't be limited.

Maybe it would be worth revisiting Ken Silverman's own voxel editor (as hard as it probably is to use), I didn't like using MAPSTER32 at first but I got used to it after a while (I recommend making a cheat sheet of keyboard commands)

Ken's editor is probably the least restrictive editor possible for KVX files (since he invented the file format for Build engine games), so if anything could do large voxel models, that would probably be it.

[Boingo the Clown]

Voxel Blood!



Now I don't have to make up individual floor textures for puddles of blood on the floor or worry about the different resolutions.  All I have to do is place a thing and it is there.

Of course magicavoxel's size limit means the resolution is frustratingly coarse though.  If only I could double the resolution, it would look much better.