Kiwi Farms Community Doom Mapping Project

[Pierre D'Olnique]

Isn't Hammer notoriously fucking awful to work with?

 

[Judge Dredd]

Isn't Hammer notoriously fucking awful to work with?

Yes, but that might be fixed?

It wasn't too bad at first, but years of OS changes and game updates turned it into a barely functional broken mess. Especially for Source where set up alone was a big head ache. I wanted to enter one Half-Life 2 mapping project but couldn't get it set up as the project demanded. As for Hammer as a tool, it worked fine for GoldSrc, but for Source it was already a struggle to make something good. It's amazing HL2 looks as great as it does if this is what they were working with.

However, a kiwi (I forgot who) told me of Hammer++. I looked it up the other day and from my research, it seems that Half-Life tools have vastly improved in the last few years. There's Hammer++ for Source, Trenchbroom apparently has HL1 support, and JACK has a free version that actually functions.

Small power level, but back when I last modded Half-Life and Half-Life 2, there was squabbling about tools in the community. Often things were broken (Sledge), or paywalled (JACK), and there were slap fights as a result, and iirc the common attitude was to just wait for Valve to release Hammer 2.0, which had been rumoured since Portal 2. This was pre-Covid I think, and tools like Hammer++ seem to have been released during/after Covid, likely as a result of lockdown spare time.


I'd have to test these tools personally before I decide what to run a community project using them.

I'd also have to look into textures. I remember a texture pack from an abandoned Blue Shift inspired mod being popular, but I've been outside the Half-Life mod scene for a while.

 

[Migraine Box]

My personal take, I'd like if community projects were to stay in the realm of Doom. Very easy to pick up and design, test, and play. Idk if it's from the simplicity of the engine necessitating creativity or what, but mappers usually end up developing "fingerprints" in their work, i.e., in Doom 2, you can easily tell when a level was made by John Romero, American McGee, or Sandy Peterson. Especially Sandy Peterson. In other games like HL and HL2, everything has to flow together in a linear style so you kinda loose that.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely adore Half-Life and am familiar with a lot of what's under the hood, but idk if I'd want to get into mapping for it. My tism would scopecreep me into GoldSrc Mordeth territory lmfao. That being said, OG versions of Hammer still work fine if you have an older system to run it on (baremetal 98 or XP, no clue how it'd run on a VM). Not sure about anything newer than that.

HL2 I know nothing about re:modding, but judging from the insanity up on the Gmod side of things, the tools available can't be that bad, or difficult to learn. Only problem is it'd require players to own several Source games for compatibility.

 

[Pierre D'Olnique]

I've never been a fan of the way HL1 sounded and looked, honestly. It somehow aged worse than both Quake 1&2 in that regard. I'd be willing to try making something for Q1 since compared to Doom it'd hopefully feel like moving from playing with sticks to playing with sticks and rocks. The main issue would be the default textures only having varying shades of brown, enemies included, so they'd need to be spruced up. All of them, probably.

Like our good pal the Ogre could be wearing programming socks, a skirt, some makeup and in combat wave a dilator around and launch HRT pills at the player.

 

[PunkinMan]

I've never been a fan of the way HL1 sounded and looked, honestly. It somehow aged worse than both Quake 1&2 in that regard.

I think the reason as to why is that half life 1 uses extremely compressed real world textures and references but the stuff thats mostly done by hand looks much better than the textures that are used, of course some of the real world textures dont look horrendous if used properly. I personally believe that quake has a more stylized art style and better overall art direction, something that comes to mind is that valve was more focused on gameplay, technical aspects and multiplayer where as quake already had the groundwork for everything, they had pretty much mastered the mapping and most coding at this point and ended up adding more love and care the half life should have received, I swear that in quake 1 zero bytes are wasted on fluff, where as half life...

 

[The Bovinian Derivative]

I am down to do whatever, but at least for our next imo project we should stick with Doom. There were a lot of people who were interested and missed out, so there's still interest here for that specifically. Quake is also a good candidate since it's still in the vein of the map-by-map old school shooter design. Can you make a decent HL map without a lot of scripting or triggers?

 

[PunkinMan]

I am down to do whatever, but at least for our next imo project we should stick with Doom. There were a lot of people who were interested and missed out, so there's still interest here for that specifically. Quake is also a good candidate since it's still in the vein of the map-by-map old school shooter design. Can you make a decent HL map without a lot of scripting or triggers?

depending on how many details you want it can be difficult to learn what you want out of the input and output system in half life, doom builders map editing capability's are far better in comparison as you can make a line that does many actions

 

[Judge Dredd]

I'd be willing to try making something for Q1 since compared to Doom it'd hopefully feel like moving from playing with sticks to playing with sticks and rocks. The main issue would be the default textures only having varying shades of brown, enemies included, so they'd need to be spruced up. All of them, probably.

I love the designs in enemy designs in Quake. So weird and monsterous.

That said, Quake (and to a lesser degree Half-Life) suffers from a lack of interesting enemy behaviours, and everything is a bullet sponge. Something Half-Life 2 also struggles with, but makes up for it in other ways.

I really like Brutalism Jam for Quake 1 (look it up on YouTube) for what can be done with some grey stone textures and mapping skill.

I'd also argue that Half-Life's more real world setting fits better to making things inspired by real life locations.

Can you make a decent HL map without a lot of scripting or triggers?

Scripting yes, triggers kind of. If you define triggers as doors, level changes, etc. Then no. You can have levels where you move through rooms of enemies. But you can also get crazy with scripted events, cutscenes, etc.

While I'm not 100% sure, I'd like to think I'd handle Half-Life in the same way Brutal Half-Life handles custom levels.

But something I'd like to do is something like The Whole Half-Life Tower where there's a shared room (a stairwell in that mod) that every player builds off of. You have limited space to work with, you can't alter the stairs, and each map much include a CD you can pick up.

Would even work for Doom. Since adding episodes is easy, I might add a similar optional rule set. Map has to fit in 2048x2048, and must include the blue keycard, something like that. (Maybe even replace the key a KF appropriate item)

Only problem is it'd require players to own several Source games for compatibility.

Not needed. As long as you own any source game, it will install the appropriate SDK. You only need a bunch of source games for specific mods like Smod and Gmod, since they use things from every game.

 

[AnOminous]

Postal 2 might be even more appropriate.

 

[Seymour Duncan]

Contrarian option: how about Duke Nukem 3D or some other Build title? Mapster isn't terribly difficult to use because the base is similarly draw-lines-on-a-grid sector based 2.5D as Doom, but it supports slopes, sprite platforms and all sorts of other neat stuff right out of the box. Downsides being 1) it's not Doom II, 2) EDuke32 is still kind of wonky and 3) it doesn't have that absolute deluge of documentation and tutorials as Doom mapping does, it is there but somewhat more limited in volume.

 

[Dick Valentine]

In light of the low barrier for entry and overall enthusiasm for Doom we should absolutely stay with it for now. As much fun as modding games can be, the ugly truth of the matter is that anything bigger than a fun weekend project quickly turns into actual work. Artists as a whole are a fickle bunch and as a rule should not be expected to do shit except on a whim when they feel like it. Ask anyone who's put in hundreds of hours into a personal project what it can do to your mental health. Team members disappearing, having your work stolen/uncredited and never seeing a penny for years of effort can grind your spirit to dust. Kind words from strangers on the Internet will take you only so far. For every finished DIY home project you come across there's a dozen long-forgotten mountains of bricks, spoiled cement and a dude on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Men in general would rather burn it all down than ever admit to being bested by a pile of assorted debris.

Graduating from Doom to just Quake is no small feat. It's akin to going from sketching a caricature of your favorite lolcow to painting a canvas with oil colors. One requires a piece of paper and a pen which you probably have in arms reach right now. The other will endanger the security deposit of your dwelling and your sanity. For example, in Ultimate Doom Builder there's a built-in tool called the Visplane Explorer (left panel, 2nd icon from the bottom) that let's you see how badly you've managed the linedef budget. Pretty handy. And here is what you have to deal with in Half-Life (and every other Quake-based engine). You know, if you can get Hammer to calculate the BSP tree at all because one of the 16 polygons in a random rock brush you made yesterday is skewed against god's plan. Exactly, how about we just chill the fuck out and have fun for the time being. The 15 hours or so I've spent in UDB have been an absolute joy and whether my shit ends up in a future pak, drive-by dropped into the WAD thread or languishing on my HDD I really don't care, already got my moneys worth. Everyone is of course free to start whatever project they wish but don't say you weren't warned. If DN3D or Quake 1 have somewhat up-to-date editors, they could work but anything more complicated than that would most likely end up in failure.

Oh, bad news by the way. That super-duper cool classic 90's game remake/total conversion for Unreal 5 you saw a few years back got pushed back to Q4 of TWENTY-FUCKING-NEVER. Has nothing to do with intellectual property, the only guy who actually did any work on it just finally found a girl tolerable enough to spend time with. Sorry you had to find out this way.

 

[Evil LISA Clown]

I whole heartedly agree with Dick Valentine on keeping the low barrier entry. If we have to switch to another engine, you still need to maintain that "low barrier" so nearly any troglodyte ween on this board can get into the action with a 15 minute tutorial, or else the project would just fizzle out with maybe only 3 or 4 members on this board both owning the proper experience and time to contribute to a specific game.

Remember that modding for classic DOOM is surprisingly fuck easy once you realise that "SLADE", the program used to package DOOM mods is in many cases a glorified zip file packager under a different extension. You can add textures just by putting image files in a subfolder called "Textures" for fucks sake.
Making maps for GZDoom also becomes way easier once you figure out how to make a working door. Unlike in most 3d games, DOOM's maps are written mostly in 2D, meaning that you can almost directly translate a notepad sketch into a fully fledged map. Hammer and Quake are leagues more complicated, and the process of making these maps while well documented deal way more with technical problems.

Community mapping projects need to cultivate a following of avid contributors and audience for wayward projects. Having DOOM be the basis of the first projects has been a really good start, but you shouldn't jump the gun yet.
I say if you wanted to keep the mapping project interesting, do what Doomer Boards did with their projects and have them tie around a common theme, like Wolfenstein maybe.

 

[ArticleWriter]

If Dull Pencil's next map isn't called Balldo's Gate I'll be sorely disappointed.

 

[Checkerboard Hero]

Had a chance to beat the WAD in its entirety, I was surprised how fun every level was despite the wide-range of experience everyone had. Only major gripe was Kaotic Fears with the performance sucking mirrors, otherwise it was still a fun level.

Favorite level would have to be Stinkditch Fortress, I managed to beat it my first try without saving/loading mid-level all while doing it blind which shows how well it was balanced the items and enemies were. Definitely going to be pain for any new player who wastes their ammo immediately without rationing it out as you play because even when I was rationing it came down to the wire many times.

Shout-outs to Retard War, I know those bombed out holes in the very beginning took a shit ton of time to do.

 

[Otis Mallebrok]

Isn't Hammer notoriously fucking awful to work with?

No, it's fine actually. But making a hl/quake style map is a lot more involved overall.

 

[Checkerboard Hero]

If there was a Hammer mapping project I feel like we'd see a lot of maps that resemble early 2000's levels where it's very blocky and bland, while modern non-shit Hammer editors exist for both Goldsrc and Source it's still a steeper learning curve than GZDoom. If something was to be announced the deadline would probably have to be doubled to adjust for this, not sure how many experienced mappers for either engine exist on KF.

 

[Evil LISA Clown]

I'm sure if there was another another Doom Community Project, they'll not only have more custom resources, but returning mappers would bare more experience with mapping for said game.

 

[Übermensch Doom Cuck]

Just finished playing this project today & gotta say, I was expecting it to be mediocre at best & a pile of shit at worst but you guys proved me wrong. This was very enjoyable to play with lolcow references everywhere & very good map/combat design. I'd say that the Patrick's intestines map was a tad annoying but nothing hair-ripping. I'm personally just not a fan of gimmicky maps but I respect the author who made it.

The Stinkditch Fortress one got me slightly worried when I saw the monster count but the map was so well balanced (and on pistol-start nonetheless) that I never once felt like I wanna rush to the exit asap, like with most of the shitty Troonworld maps that overstay their welcome severely. Took my time & thoroughly enjoyed it.

If a sequel is planned in the future, who knows, I might join the fun of building a map.

Thank you!!

 

[ArticleWriter]

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2103533895

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2106403716

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2108197218

Maybe someone wants to archive this before it's lost to the void. Part 2 is him suffering a single life run through Stinkditch Fortress.

 

[Dull Pencil]

Fucking hell, I did not expect someone to stream this on Twitch.