Design

So a few weeks back I decided that I needed a break. From…well, pretty much everything. School was [is] hectic and patience with myself was wearing very thin. I had also felt like shit the weeks prior because I was stressed out over numerous things and it was becoming very difficult to focus on anything for a reasonable period of time. I’ve been trying very hard to clear off my plate of projects that I’ve had on-going for a while now so I can focus on a project that’s more important to me…but things have been going pretty slowly. For the most part I’ve gotten quite a lot done. The problem is that in relation to what I’ve gotten done there’s a whole lot more left to do. The break has done me good though. I’ve been thinking about what’s left to do and what I want to finish up first. So I present you with Mek’s Awesometastic DOOM WIP’s

First up is IGPack. If I had to give it a percentage done it would probably be 95%. I stopped working on it completely a while back due to conflicts with school and a slight loss of interest. If I really worked hard I could probably have a final working test build in two days or so (barring any amazing blunders on my part). I have a list of things-to-do:

• Convert the following SMII maps to be used in IGPack

Stone Cold
Death Metal
Emesis
Nebulae Simplified
Sector S7

• Either get the CREDMAP from ClonedPickle or make one myself or make a CREDPIC.
• Make a new, readable smallfont.
• Finalize all maps to be included in end project.
• Rearrange map rotation.
• Finalize new railgun sound.
• Recompile the Altgib code to get rid of the old crouch command bug.
• Fix any remaining map bugs I can find.
• Compile readme.txt

From there I’ll release the final private test build, fix any bugs that pop up from there, finalize everything, then release. Boy I’ll be happy when all of that’s done.

Next comes Claustrophobia 1024, another community-related project rooted at the Doomworld forums. This project has a pretty awful past. If any of you are aware of the drama storm that happened near the end of the old Claustrophobia project, then you’ll know what I’m talking about. It was an unfortunate situation which may have repelled a very talented mapper from the community forever. But I digress…I have been leading this new project for a little while now and it’s shaping up to be very promising. Most of the work that I do right now is manage all of the maps and make decisions on what makes it into the pack and what doesn’t. That doesn’t sound like a lot of work, but you’d be surprised. I also did 90% of the graphic work during the older version of the project; all of it will be carried over to the new project. I also made three maps which you can read about on the Claustrophobia 1024 page. I’m hoping to have this project finish up in the early part of 2009.

The other BIG thing I’m working on is revamping an old Domination map so that it looks better and will work with the new version of Domination built into Skulltag. Obsidian Oblivion (name subject to change) is an absolutely massive map that I started on over a year ago for a Domination project. I finished the map but the status of the project (at the time) was at a halt, so the map has been sitting on my computer for a long time now. Very recently the original project has come back to light so it can be converted over to the new Domination standard, so I took a look at my old map to fix some bugs that I knew about. What I saw when I opened DB was pure horror; I couldn’t stand it, so I started working. Apparently I mapped with a grid of 2px all of the time and it made for fixing some structures just a huge pain in the ass; also there were parts of the map where lag was really bad. So I started cutting out certain things as well as enhancing certain structures…and then I started changing the texture palette around. It’s turning into a completely new map almost in terms of detail and I’m happy with what I’ve done so far. I kid you not when I say this map is massive; the original finished project had more than 50,000 sidedefs. It is my largest map to date and I swore to myself that I would never EVER map another team-game map that big ever again. So far I’ve kept my word

Aside from those large projects, I’ve also got some smaller contributions that need finishing up. Greenwar II is YEDS (32in24 team) longest on-going project. It takes new layouts with practically zero detail from the guys who made Greenwar and lets the YEDS team detail them up. So far I’ve detailed 3 maps which have taken up many hours of my time. Currently I’m signed up for two more maps, one of which I’m currently working on. I have injected large amounts of details into these maps and, so far, I’m extremely happy with what I’ve made as well as the rest of the contributions. It’s going to be an amazing looking and amazing playing piece of work once it’s finally completed. I was also asked to help work on Vaporware (or whatever it’s being called now) along with some of the greatest mappers ever conceived. Vaporware is a secret single player project that’s being made for the Eternity Engine. EE is probably becoming one of my favorite Doom ports of all time; the stuff you can do with it in terms of mapping is just incredible. I have yet to start anything but the work that has been done so far is simply breathtaking and I’m really eager to start something.

And then there’s the somewhat forgotten update to Sabbat Martyr DeathMatch. At one point Hidon was working on version 1.2. He has done quite a bit but he seems to have disappeared from the face of the Doom community. Sometime soon I need to get in touch with him to get all of his worked transferred to me so I can finish it up. But anyways, the update aims to improve the playability of the wad by fixing annoying bugs, reducing lag, and removing some of the less-than-stellar maps. Truthfully I don’t know the extent of work that remains to be done since it has been so long since I’ve even looked at that wad…but hopefully it will be done sometime soon.

And so it stands, my awesome WIP list. IGPack is on the top of my list of things to get done as soon as possible…and I will keep everyone of you (all 2-3 of you) updated on the progress of that project in this blog. I don’t think I’ve made the IGPack page in the ‘Design’ section of the site yet so I’ll probably get to that very soon. Wish me luck