Topic: Wolfenstein 3D (PC)

[DarkWolf]

Episode 1  Floor 1



Whee these are easier to do than the Blake Stone maps, although they don't look as good.  I've got Episode 1 done, others will follow soon.

[TerraEsperZ]

He he, this definitely looks better than the maps I was doing using ASCII characters in WordPerfect 5.1 (DOS) over 10 years ago.



Too bad I don't have the files anymore because it would have been fun to compare the two



About the map, I've noticed that there's a lot of unused (black) space around this map and those from Blake Stone. Even though cropping the map to only include the playable area wouldn't reduce the final file size in any appreciable way, it might make the maps easier to manage (the decompressed map will take less memory while vieweing). Unless I'm totally off the mark of course.



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

[DarkWolf]

I'm lazy okay?

[Maxim]

On my monitors (generally adjusted properly to see the full range of brightness levels)  I find the south/east walls a little too dark to see through easily. Also, did you try texturing them instead of using pure black?

[DarkWolf]

I tried a few different methods for the walls.  The black was the best I came up with.



The only thing I didn't try was a checkered mask which would give the illusion of a transparent wall.  But I don't think that would look much better.



The problem with a lighter wall is that the textures are sized in such a way that if I omit the south and east walls or make them too light you get an optical illusion (which is still somewhat present at first glance), where it looks like the room next to another room separated by only one block thickness is higher vertically than the room next to it, when in fact it is not.



There are problems with 2:1 diametric projection, but I thought a flat map would have been lame, especially with map editors available for these games.  Also I don't have the time or skill set to do a different type of 3d projection.

[Maxim]

The 2:1 projection is cool, it looks like an old pseudo-isometric game and all the pixels stay intact; any true 3D would lose that, and steeper projection angles look more ugly. I can see the problem you refer to, and I can't see any easy way out. Here's an example for the viewers at home:







If the walls had some thickness then there'd be some overlap which would provide depth cues, but there's no texture for wall tops and it'd cause a little bit of self-occlusion. It might be a worthwhile tradeoff though, maybe 4 or 5 pixels of wall tops on the NE walls, in the floor colour?



You're rendering the N and E walls with different brightnesses to make them look more 3D, did you try doing the same with the S and E walls?

[DarkWolf]

Wall thickness would be interesting.  If I get the nerve to dive into the ugliness of the script again I'll give it a try.



The reason the N/S and W/E walls are a different brightness is because they are separate textures in the game, not by my choice.  Most of the time the difference is just in brightness but there are a few walls which have a different N/S texture than the W/E texture.  A prime example is the elevator.  Those walls are all the same wall #, but one side is the switch and the other is the railing.  I just decided to keep that method to avoid complications.  Plus I'm sure some avid Wolf3d fan would have some choice words for me if I used only the bright or dark side.



The only real difference in the methods I used for the S/E walls was just in how noticeable the optical illusion was.  It also helped in Blake Stone that there were dark floor textures, so the floor/wall overlap was darker but the sprites still showed through okay.  Unfortunately Wolf3d has a solid, lighter floor color.

[Maxim]

I just noticed something...



http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/4113/compliedzl1.png

[DarkWolf]

Oh man it takes hours for these to run through pngout.  It's not worth fixing.

[JonLeung]

Maxim Said:

I just noticed something...

Do you mean the "Wolf" part or something else?



(I always thought it was neat that the majority of the Mega Man maps were made by Geminiman.  Funny thing is, if you ask him, that's only a coincidence, as he says he didn't originally name himself after Gemini Man from Mega Man III like you would think.)

[Maxim]

It's a typo.



If I get the time and inclination I might fix it myself. I wouldn't mind doing a little cropping too...

[JonLeung]

I'm supposed to be the one to catch typos, sheesh.  And since I can't see that image now that I'm at work, I can't see what the typo was...  >_<



EDIT: Ooooh, compLIed...

[TerraEsperZ]

I definitely think that cropping all the empty space would make the make both a bit smaller and much easier to use. As it is, you often have to move around a bit before actually reaching a room.



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

[Maxim]

Well, I did it; PNGOut is running on both of my CPUs now.

[DarkWolf]

I originally used a dual core machine to do them, and I only ran them on the second longest strategy.