Design

Time for a map related post!

Time sure has been flying by recently. I’m working diligently on Vela Pax and it’s hard to say if I’ll be able to meet my goal of finishing MAP01 before the Winter season ends. Right now I’m over halfway finished with the map after a good solid month of working on it. What usually happens when I reach this point is I’ll start to slow down and have a harder and harder time coming up with ideas. So while I’m over halfway finished, that doesn’t mean it will take the same amount of time to complete the map as it did to reach this point. But I guess most of you knew that already.

But let’s back up a little bit. I realize that I haven’t posted much about Vela Pax’s progress here so there’s a lot to fill in. MAP05, now entitled “Apollyon”, has been finished for quite some time now. Shortly after that I started work on MAP01, entitled “Excella”. On top of all of that, I have pretty much finalized my music selections for each map, finished the statusbar/statnumbers, made the CWILVs graphics, fixed and added a few new textures from the Doom Alphas, and I even attempted to record some Doom Builder time-lapse footage of me working on MAP01. Things have been coming together rather well and all that really remains is to finish the maps, add a couple other graphics, and do final testing. The biggie, obviously, is finishing the maps

So back to MAP01. As I said, the map is over halfway finished (probably 60% if I had to pull out a number) and I’ve been working on it for close to a month I’d guess. Nothing is entirely certain about the gameplay other than it will be the easiest map in the pack and it’s a garden-variety techbase. Originally I was going to keep the flow linear, but those plans tend to fly out the window when I’m working on the map; we’ll see how it comes out in the end. So far it’s been a real joy to work on and I’m hoping it will wrap up with little grief on my end. Here are some shots although there’s nothing new here; they are the same shots that I last posted in the project’s threads:

MAP05 is the product of my horrid, horrid obsession with Doom mapping. It took me nearly half of a year to finish this map (working on and off, of course). It is the main reason why Vela Pax is taking so long to finish. At the time of this writing, it is the absolute largest map I have ever created, and I hope it is the last. My initial concept for this map was to “make an epic, hellish, abstract fortress with some linear and non-linear gameplay”. I took that concept and ran rampant, my sanity becoming an innocent bystander in the carnage . Some stats for any interested parties: Vertices – 49004, Linedefs – 63834 [!], Sidedefs (compressed) – 110785, Sectors – 10030. PRBoom+ recently obtained support for ZDoom’s extended node format, otherwise my compatibility for that port would have flown completely out of the window before the map was even halfway finished. If you didn’t notice, I came pretty close to breaching the linedef limit. I breached the sidedef limit many, many times actually and I had to cut out some of the more useless detailing in the map to get everything to fit; sidedef compression saved me, big time. So was all of that work worth it? If your playing the map for the first time on UV, it could potentially take you close to 4 or 5 hours to finish in it’s entirety. Gameplay stayed similar to my initial concept; there are linear and non-linear sections. Difficulty is pretty high but a lot of that comes from the immense size and complexity of the map and layout. Personally, even though it was a pain to work on, I think the map came out very well. Obviously it’s not going to cater to everyone but I think it will be pretty enjoyable to those who like gigantic, adventure-style maps. In truth that’s sort of what Vela Pax as a whole is turning into; a set of very large, complex, non-linear maps which make for a sort of Doom “adventure”. Here are some screenshots!

A word of advice – if you want to keep your sanity and love of mapping, never, ever make a map this big. Sure, it looks like fun…but trust me, the fun doesn’t last. Any perceived bragging rights really aren’t worth the anguish you’ll put yourself through . But I hope you guys enjoy the map anyways!

So where will I go from here? Well at the moment I’m taking a short break from mapping (although today I did work on MAP01 some…shh, don’t tell anyone!). After that I’m planning on finishing MAP01 as quickly as I can without degrading the quality of the work. I’m thinking the next map I’ll tackle is MAP04, entitled “Faxanadu”. I’d detail what plans I have for it here, but instead go and check out the soon-to-be-edited Vela Pax page. I’m going to update it with some new screenshots and information; I’ll be detailing my plans for the rest of the maps there. If your interested in more info, be sure to check my various project threads: Doomworld, ZDoom, Skulltag, and Wads in Progress.

(By the way, if your wondering what’s up with the title of this post, Google around for the latin translation of “Vela Pax”. I didn’t realize what it meant until someone told me. No, the project has nothing to do with sailing peacefully ).