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  • What features have never been used for a Wolf3d mod/TC

    Discuss Wolf3D and Wolf3D modding/ports

    Postby WolferCooker 11 Sep 2011, 05:33

    Over the years, wolf3d modding has reached great strides in adding new features that were once impossible to create. Who would've thought adding features such as a usable mounted weapon and a sniper-scoped view can be done? What about reviving dead enemies, animated walls, portable medkits, armor, and so on? And of course leaving the old DosBox behind and now having the ability to make Wolf3d compatible with newer computers with the trusty SDL program.

    These features are what makes wolf3d TCs even more enjoyable to play because implementing modern gaming ideas into a old 1990s DOS game was once not possible... that is until our friends at iD software released the Wolf3d source code thus the birth of Wolf3d modding.

    With all that said, what modern gaming features haven't been used or tried in a Wolf3d engine yet?
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    Postby DoomJedi 11 Sep 2011, 08:37

    WolferCooker wrote:With all that said, what modern gaming features haven't been used or tried in a Wolf3d engine yet?

    Well...I think we can't help but dividing possible features to ones that maintain Wolf3D gameplay - and ones that change to Doom engine-type gameplay or Build-engine-type gameplay.
    This includes multifloor, walk thrust and much more.

    We love Wolf3D modding....Wolf3D gameplay is what we like...and making too Doom-like engine - wouldn't it be just easier to start modding Doom or Duke Nukem or whatever? You get those features there from the start.

    I think coolest things not yet implemented are multiplayer, hub system, inventory menu, more advanced type of weapons - heatseeker and such... more advanced gib system with bodypart flying around.... advanced bloodsplats on walls....advanced AI...
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    Postby WolferCooker 11 Sep 2011, 19:13

    True, Wolf3d with more advanced features would seem like Doom/Duke-like, but hey maybe some people prefer Wolf3d over Doom and would like to have such features in there.

    I'm thinking maybe... jumping... breakable walls... carrying/throwing barrels... meat shields... moving obstacles such as expanding/contracting walls.

    What about playing BJ as a mutant?
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    Postby DoomJedi 11 Sep 2011, 20:39

    WolferCooker wrote:I'm thinking maybe... jumping...

    Jumping doesn't fit Wolf3d IMO and changes gameplay too much. It's effective only when there is z axis for bullets and/or higher ceiling heights...
    Even Doom-engine games didn't have jumping and in general - jumping is not too much fun. Sure, Duke3D made a fun out of jumping - but there we talk about very advanced engine in all other areas - to support "fun of jumping".

    breakable walls...

    Using interactive directional scenery you can achieve basically the same affect - and much easier.
    Breaking real walls is problematic mapping-wise....
    If used too much - makes it hard for mappers to plan the map and map progress and roots to areas. keys, exit - as there are too many alternative roots.

    This is simular to Sonder wirecutters.

    carrying/throwing barrels...

    There is already "dragging bodies" code used in a few mods - that implements exactly the same thing - only body instead of barrels. So this is not new.

    Throwing them is interesting idea.

    meat shields...

    What are meat shilds?

    moving obstacles such as expanding/contracting walls.

    Already implemented in a few mods. Like moving trucks in "DeathTrigger". Those are quite deadly.

    What about playing BJ as a mutant?

    This is interesting idea :) We can use different stamina types and weapons....
    Maybe this can be a secret mode in some my future mod
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    Postby WolferCooker 11 Sep 2011, 23:47

    By meat shields, I meant holding a nazi enemy as hostage to better protect yourself against bullets from other nazis and still kill them all.

    I would like to expand on the throwing the barrels idea. Throw objects in general such as a chair, etc. Like RTCW and Wolfenstein 2009 (with the barrel)
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    Postby Tricob1974 12 Sep 2011, 03:51

    WolferCooker wrote:I would like to expand on the throwing the barrels idea. Throw objects in general such as a chair, etc. Like RTCW and Wolfenstein 2009 (with the barrel)
    IMO, this could be expanded on a little bit more. Why does every single barrel have to be empty? Wouldn't a barrel have some sort of contents in it every once in a while? We're talking Treasure Chest opportunities here. :)

    Better still, make some of the objects destructible, with items inside. Sure - you can't hide food and things like that in the barrels this way, but non-flammable items are still doable.

    I have other ideas too, but they'd only work well with advanced engines like Hexen or Quake.
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    Postby DoomJedi 12 Sep 2011, 15:52

    WolferCooker wrote:By meat shields, I meant holding a nazi enemy as hostage to better protect yourself against bullets from other nazis and still kill them all.

    Running probably should be disabled in this case, heh :) Not to mention disabling use of 2-hand weapons :) So it basically leaves us a knife and a luger - which kinda hurt the efficiency of all "hostage" idea.
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    Postby Ron 12 Sep 2011, 16:24

    Throwing objects has been done before, I think by Dugtrio.
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    Postby WolferCooker 13 Sep 2011, 00:20

    Well, you can best use the "hostage" situation with using a burst handgun. Like WSJ's burst pistol in Totenkopf SDL.

    As for enemies, such as bosses and flamethrower, chaingun, and rocket launcher guards, why not make them 8-sided like the original guards? They move funny when they always walk towards you and you never see their backsides. This idea is sort of in Project Vertilgung, but it wasn't finished.
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    Postby DoomJedi 13 Sep 2011, 08:09

    It's sure not a coding limitation - but art one. It's not easy to make a guard 8-dir - artwise.
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    Postby WolferCooker 15 Sep 2011, 02:22

    I thought of another feature, but it might be easy to do. How about planting TNT on the ground for a set amount of time, then explodes with a large blast radius and powerful enough to kill a room full of guards? Maybe 2 TNTs would be enough to kill a boss.

    The landmine feature used in the game should be a great starting point for that.
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    Postby Tricob1974 15 Sep 2011, 06:36

    I don't think it'd be very convincing with the Wolf3D engine. Due to the way the sprites are drawn, they wouldn't overlap in a way that looks like an explosion bigger than one square, should you look at the explosion from an angle. I wouldn't try such a thing with a game engine older than Hexen; not even Doom. :(
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    Postby Ringman 04 Oct 2011, 16:23

    I have a weird one that's possible with some simple art tricks. Reflective floors! I've actually played around with this at one point. What you do make all the textures in the area a bit shorter at the bottom, like cut off 10 pixels. Then copy the bottom section of the texture (that's left) flip it upside down and place it at the bottom underneath the original. Now use a program like Photoshop to have it fade to the floor color. Do the same for sprites, by moving them up a tad from the floor copying there bottom sections, flipping them, and placing them directly underneath and fading it to the floor color. This gives a very shiny wet floor look.

    You can combine this with a water that comes up partway by making the floor color higher and cutting off the bottoms of the sprites and walls and adding a little ripple graphic at the bottom, to give an idea of a level partially submerged in water that's reflective!

    A similar idea would be misty floors. Instead of cutting off the bottom of the texture and replacing it with a mirror image just take the bottom half and have it fade to a light grey, (color of the floor) and do the same for sprites. Instant low level fog, like you'd get from dry ice.

    The coolest thing is, these tricks only work with the wolf solid floor colors and no shading, you can't do this with floor and ceiling textures. Lots of other crazy things you can do with this idea, like having walls and sprites fade into blackness at the tops with a black ceiling for a unknowingly high ceiling, or really tall objects you can only see the bottoms of.
    You could do knee high grass, deep snow, underwater areas, etc. The Catacomb Trilogy employed these affects a bit.
    Lot's of crazy ideas to play with.

    The only downside is that you have to have separate sprites and doors for these areas, and those won't look good in any other areas, plus you'd pretty much have to make the entire level like this, unless you employed teleporters, because areas like this don't merge well with areas not employing these effects.
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    Postby DoomJedi 04 Oct 2011, 18:44

    Ringman wrote:I have a weird one that's possible with some simple art tricks. Reflective floors! I've actually played around with this at one point. What you do make all the textures in the area a bit shorter at the bottom, like cut off 10 pixels. Then copy the bottom section of the texture (that's left) flip it upside down and place it at the bottom underneath the original. Now use a program like Photoshop to have it fade to the floor color. Do the same for sprites, by moving them up a tad from the floor copying there bottom sections, flipping them, and placing them directly underneath and fading it to the floor color. This gives a very shiny wet floor look.

    Indeed this is a cool original idea that might work - I can really see it happening...
    Though 10 pixels is ALOT in terms of 64 sprite.

    You can combine this with a water that comes up partway by making the floor color higher and cutting off the bottoms of the sprites and walls and adding a little ripple graphic at the bottom, to give an idea of a level partially submerged in water that's reflective!

    This one I've actually seen in a mod... was it DHWTC? :roll: AFAIR yes :)
    Loooooved it, really wowed me with originality :good: :Bravo:

    A similar idea would be misty floors.

    Oh, I love mist in general - and in games in particular. :twisted:

    Instead of cutting off the bottom of the texture and replacing it with a mirror image just take the bottom half and have it fade to a light grey, (color of the floor) and do the same for sprites. Instant low level fog, like you'd get from dry ice.

    While this is a cool idea - IMO when we have already working fog implementations via fade-to-bright shading - we can't can "more foggy" than that.
    You're idea is good for "classical" wolf3D mods though, that use no shading. If combined with "Hexen-type" "moving sprite clouds" - it can work really well actually.

    Lots of other crazy things you can do with this idea, like having walls and sprites fade into blackness at the tops with a black ceiling for a unknowingly high ceiling, or really tall objects you can only see the bottoms of.
    You could do knee high grass, deep snow, underwater areas, etc. The Catacomb Trilogy employed these affects a bit.
    Lot's of crazy ideas to play with.

    Indeed... this opens up a whole bunch of creative options to increases the "mood" of the mod. 8) Skycrappers, tall forests etc...etc......
    Though underwater(or frozen) areas are better done by just strong blue shading - at least for "non-classical look" mods.

    The only downside is that you have to have separate sprites and doors for these areas, and those won't look good in any other areas, plus you'd pretty much have to make the entire level like this, unless you employed teleporters, because areas like this don't merge well with areas not employing these effects.
    Indeed. Doubles the objnums and complicates the mapping work for mapper.
    But this can be easily solved with "smart objects(objnums)/actors" - same objnum that changes the sprite they load off the VSWAP depending if the area is outside, or a "dark/fog" floorcode it's standing on, or if the areas has invisible "dark/fog" object number inserted into it. This way we have the same "barrel" objnums to look foggy on some "dark" or "fog" floorcode - and have the "usual" look on other floorcodes.
    This will actually prevent fog and darkness from indoor areas, not to ruin the realism.
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    Postby DoomJedi 04 Oct 2011, 18:55

    I very love your creativity and your modding passion :)
    I can very much relate to that, and we seem to share the same values.

    You are a kind of guy I'd (and I'm here representing only myself) love to see in "Team RayCast" for our next mod. Even only as adviser.

    What are you BTW - mapper, coder, sprite artist? Both? All?
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