Mekworx http://mekworx.the-powerhouse.net Sat, 01 Jan 2022 02:46:33 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.8.2 http://mekworx.the-powerhouse.net/wp-content/uploads/cropped-nothernewmekworx_bigpng-32x32.png Mekworx http://mekworx.the-powerhouse.net 32 32 This is a post about Supplice http://mekworx.the-powerhouse.net/2021/12/31/this-is-a-post-about-supplice/ http://mekworx.the-powerhouse.net/2021/12/31/this-is-a-post-about-supplice/#respond Fri, 31 Dec 2021 20:00:03 +0000 http://mekworx.the-powerhouse.net/?p=3220 My single yearly blog post. I talk about how things have been going for Supplice this year, how I hope things will go for 2022, and show off some screenshots.

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Hey folks!  I just realized earlier today that I haven’t made my mandated yearly Mekworx post.  And it was good timing too seeing as how (at the time of me writing this), there’s roughly 6 hours left in 2021 in my part of the world.  Guess I better type fast!

Actually I’m going to keep this one somewhat short and sweet.  I’m going to focus on Supplice and how things have been going with it this past year.  And I’ve got lots of screenshots to share!

Last year’s update post hinted at the future of Supplice, but as you guys may know by now, we’ve got a publisher behind us – Hyperstrange!  We also made a showing at Realms Deep 2021; check out our reveal trailer!  And on top of all that, we also released a small demo as part of a Steam promotion event.  You can download the demo from our Steam page…and if you’re feeling generous, wishlist the game while you’re at it ;)

So things have been going pretty well for the project this year.  I think I still don’t fully grasp just how crazy things have been.  There’s no way I could have predicted that Supplice would end up becoming its own stand-alone game with a publisher and a Steam page and…yea, its wild how far this thing has come.

We’ve got a solid plan for Supplice moving forward into 2022.  There’s still a mountain of work left to do, but my personal goal is to try and have the first two episodes finished by the end of the year.  Thankfully we’ve got a couple extra mappers on board to help out with that (Jimmy and Xaser, so you guys are in good hands).  I’ll admit that the pressure has gotten to me a bit on the mapping front, particularly now that we’re pushing the game onto a much larger audience.  That’s going to be my main hurdle to get over this coming year.

Speaking of maps, I was finally able to let people play the two finished maps, which shipped in the demo.  It was cathartic to have those out in the public after so many years.  We got some great feedback on the maps and the demo as a whole.  And sadly I didn’t have time to update the maps as much as I would have liked prior to the release (we were doing a mad dash to get the demo ready before the deadline).  But on the whole, I think the reception to the maps was very positive.  After the demo released and the feedback came in, I spent time on both maps to update the gameplay/flow and to get the visuals up to par.

Outpost Romeda in particular had some really dumb flow problems that I couldn’t resolve.  I thought I was going to have to rip out chunks of the map to fix them.  But after the demo, I was able to fix most of them after some creative noodling (and address issues brought up by players).  Another issue I had with it was how “Doom” it looked.  I don’t know how best to describe what I mean here, but essentially the visuals of the map weren’t really in line with what I want in E1.  Unfortunately this isn’t something that’s easily fixed, but I did address the fidelity problem.  So Outpost Romeda will be somewhat of an outlier map in E1; it’ll likely be the biggest, most complex map in the episode and will deviate somewhat from the mainline theme.  Anyways blah blah blah, here are some screenshots of the updated areas.

Terminal Melt, the 2nd map in the demo, didn’t have as many problems as Outpost Romeda.  And I didn’t get as many complaints from players for it either.  There were a few problems areas that I was able to resolve adequately, particularly the loop-back to the exit path from the double water tower fight.  I spent a bit more time updating the visuals here as well.  The exit was moved out into the rocky/icy area to the west, which was something I wanted to do for a while, but I didn’t have time to do it for the demo (it required setting up a portal to get around some icky sky walls).  Here are some screenshots (which haven’t been posted anywhere else yet).

I realize now that I’ve re-posted screenshots of both of these maps probably 5 times over the years :lol: .  Sorry about that!  Here’s something new~ish if you don’t stalk our Twitter or our project threads.

This is Tantalus, a map for Episode 2.  I finished up the layout+detailing for this map back in July.  And it took me way too damn long to make, but I’m quite happy with the end result.  I haven’t implemented any of the gameplay elements yet, but that will come soon.  The whole map is a multi-layer spacestation.  It centers around some light puzzle elements where you’ll have to drop keys and items down through vertical shafts in order to progress.  I went kinda nuts with the portal usage here and I’m hoping that doesn’t impact performance too much.  But visually speaking, I think it nailed how we want E2 to look.

Here’s something we did for fun recently – a “Suppliced” E1M1.  This came from a fun little Twitter challenge between some of the other retro FPS devs.  I spent a couple of days on it, but it actually came out pretty cool looking.  Hopefully we’ll be able to release it in some form later on :nod:

In way less interesting news, the site has been updated to the latest version of WordPress.  Woohoo :P

And that’s all I’ve got!  Since I can only muster the energy to do 1 post per year, consider checking out our Twitter page for more Supplice updates.  We usually do #ScreenshotSaturday posts when we’ve got something new/interesting to show off.

Take care and have a safe New Years!

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Here’s my last-minute yearly update post! http://mekworx.the-powerhouse.net/2020/12/27/heres-my-last-minute-yearly-update-post/ http://mekworx.the-powerhouse.net/2020/12/27/heres-my-last-minute-yearly-update-post/#comments Sun, 27 Dec 2020 23:03:45 +0000 http://mekworx.the-powerhouse.net/?p=3126 Hey everybody!  It’s that very belated time of the year again where I blather on about how I’ve neglected the site and then post some screenshots .  I hope everyone has had an enjoyable holiday season considering how awful this year has been. But the site is still here, and celebrated its 12th birthday in […]

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Hey everybody!  It’s that very belated time of the year again where I blather on about how I’ve neglected the site and then post some screenshots :P .  I hope everyone has had an enjoyable holiday season considering how awful this year has been. But the site is still here, and celebrated its 12th birthday in October! As always, I gotta say a big thank you to Wartorn for hosting the site for so long :)

Before we dig into things, I just wanna note a few site updates.  The Supplice page now goes to the game’s Twitter account, and there’s also a link to it in the sidebar. I’ve updated the Vela Pax page with new info (keep reading for that stuff).  The Back to Saturn X Episode 1 and Episode 2 pages have been updated with the recent release of E2 and the add-on releases for the 2019 Doom re-release.  The Design page reflects all of these updates.

So yea, I didn’t get around to making more blog posts over the course of this year. Honestly it was low-priority for me considering how busy I’ve been. And unless I’m outputting a lot of work worthy of showing off, small update posts seem to be more trouble than they’re worth.

That’s not to say I haven’t been working on things. In fact the latter-half of this year has been quite the whirlwind of activity for me. Most of it has been behind-the-scenes stuff, which I’ll talk a bit about. But I’ve done some mapping work too, and soon I’ll be doing way more mapping work. If things so well, 2021 will probably be a busy year for me in terms of mapping output.


To start off, I’m actually gonna talk about Vela Pax a bit. The project has been on hiatus for a few years now, and I’m sure someone out there is wondering what’s up with it. I think the last time I seriously worked on the project was back in the Summer of 2016, which is quite a long time ago. Unfortunately I was going through growing pains with the project at the time as I was deeply unsatisfied with the finished maps. This was a product of the project’s long development cycle as I had changed my style a lot, and my bar for quality was a lot higher. I spent close to a year just updating those 3 maps without even doing work on the latest map. After that I started messing around with some sprite replacements; the last thing I worked on were some item and weapon sprite replacements. But I hit a roadblock with it, and decided to focus on other projects, hoping that I would be able to come back to it with more motivation at a later date.

Since then, I’ve had a lot of time to think about what I’m gonna do with Vela Pax once I get the time to work on it again. And I’ve decided that the only way I’m gonna be happy with it is to restart it from the ground-up. I know some folks actually enjoy the currently finished maps, so those will be saved as a “legacy” release, probably as a separate wad. But everything else map-wise is going to be remade.

My initial idea is to keep some aspects of the old maps around. So certain layouts or set-pieces might be lifted from the old maps and worked into the new ones. The general theming of each map will also likely stay intact as well. So MAP01 will still be the Earth base, MAP04 will still be a lava-drenched hell, and so on. What’s gonna change though is…well, pretty much everything else. I’m gonna draft the bare layouts first before I touch any sort of detailing (which will help a ton). Map sizes might shrink a bit, but I’m definitely going to go big again; they’ll be bigger than Counterattack maps for sure. And I’m going to focus more on interesting map dynamics and traps/puzzles/set-pieces/etc. One problem I have with the old maps are how bland and grindy the moment-to-moment gameplay can be. It’s a lot of run-n-gun with the occasional trap, which usually consists of “you are trapped in this room and must survive until the timer expires”. I’m also not happy with how the layouts flow in the old maps, and this is a symptom of how I used to make maps years ago. Instead of blocking out the initial layout, I would make the map all in one go – layout + detail + gameplay. I recorded this time-lapse video of MAP01 where I was working on a small portion of it, and you can sorta see what I mean. And then there’s the detailing and visual designs to think about. It’s the least important aspect of the project, of course, but its probably the better aspect of the old maps. That being said, I still don’t like the old detail work on the whole, particularly when it comes to the main shapes and overall architecture (though the newer additions are decent).

Apart from the maps, I’m still going to keep the same general aspects of the project intact. I’m gonna stick with vanilla and vanilla-edited textures, use the same (or similar) skies, use the same music, and keep most of the graphic replacements around. Something that I planned were slightly enhanced weapons, which was one reason why I made new weapon sprites. Each weapon will be slightly upgraded from its vanilla counterpart, and some of these have been seen in the latest beta build. Having the enhanced weapons finished before I remake the maps will hopefully mean better gameplay on the whole.

One final thing that I was considering was switching the project to the Eternity Engine. It would be a fairly big change considering the extra editing features I would have access to. But it would probably slow down my workflow a bit. I love Eternity and I’ve been wanting to make something for it for a long time now. We’ll see what happens when the time comes.

So there ya go, those are my future plans for Vela Pax. Now I don’t know when those plans will be put into action…probably not anytime soon. But once I get a chance to restart the project, hopefully I can keep my motivation high and power through it.

I’ll leave you guys with the few screenshots of the new Plasma and BFG sprites I made (with the unfinished MAP04 in the background).


For those of you not in the know, we recently made the decision to turn Supplice into a fully-fledged, stand-alone commercial game.  The team and I made this decision a few months ago after observing the success of other retro-inspired FPSs.  A lot of us have wanted to do make our own game for a while now (*cough* retrograde *cough*) and we felt like it was a “now or never” thing.  So this is what I’ve been hard a work on for the past few months (and beyond if you wanna count the old Doom TC project :P )

Most of the updates have been trickled through our Twitter and Facebook pages, so please go give those a follow if you’re interested in seeing more.  The project pages at Doomworld and ZDoom still exist, but they are out of date.

I’m gonna be light on the details for now since we’re still figuring things out.  And I don’t want to spoil anything either, of course :like: .  The general gist of the new game is to create something that is very much influenced by Doom and other 90s FPS games.  Obviously we’re still using the GZDoom engine, and we’re trying to make use the features it provides.  This includes everything from the maps, weapons, monsters, graphics, music, and so on.  I’ve been slowly learning how to do things like 3D floors and stacked sectors, along with reacquainting myself with scripting and UDMF’s mapping features.  I guess the best way to summarize it is to say that Supplice will be a modernized 90s FPS, if that makes any sense at all.  It’s inspired by Doom and similar games, but its going to look and play way more advanced than that.

After we made the decision to go stand-alone, the biggest hurdle we had to overcome was trying to come up with a new premise.  We didn’t want to toss out everything we had made over the almost 10 years the project has been in progress.  The trick was to try and save as much of the content as possible by merging it with the new concept.  So lately a lot of my time has been spent working on the design doc doing just that.  We settled on a concept fairly quickly, and I spent a lot of time fleshing out ideas with the rest of the team.  We’re in a pretty good place now and I’m excited to see our ideas come to life.

As I said before, I’m slowly learning the ins and outs of UDMF.  Making maps is somewhat difficult considering the monsters and many other gameplay aspects don’t really exist right now.  So I’ve been going back to some of my old DM maps and updating them, making use of some advanced features.  Stacked sectors has been the biggest eye-opener for me; it immediately breaks through Doom’s main obstacle of “floor over floor” architecture, and opens up a whole extra layer of gameplay and visuals.

Here’s a sampling of screenshots, including some updates to the singleplayer maps along with some DM maps.

Supplice UDMF screenshots

I’m definitely going to be doing more mapping in the future, though its likely to be relegated to set-pieces and tests until we’ve finished up more of the gameplay elements.  And I’ve still got a lot to learn with UDMF and the other advanced mapping features.

It’s going to be interesting seeing how things go from here on out.  We’ve got our work cut out for us, and its going to take quite a while before we have anything close to finished.  Thankfully we’ll be able to save probably 90% of the work done so far.

I can’t really go into more details right now since we’re still figuring things out.  But the plan is to sell the game on PC.  Beyond that is unknown territory; we’ll see what happens.  I’m pretty confident we’ll make something that the Doom community will enjoy at least.  And so far its been very exciting working with everyone on the team.  We’ve been able to make amazing progress in a short amount of time.  There will be more updates to come, so keep your eyes peeled!


Last but not least, Back to Saturn X Episode 2 was finally released in August!  And on top of that, both E1 and E2 were made official add-ons for Doom’s recent re-release on modern hardware.  So please do check those out!  One day Episode 3 will be finished…probably :3


That about wraps out the yearly update post.  With Supplice being at the forefront of my creative output, maybe I’ll actually make a few update posts concerning it from time to time.  I’m not gonna promise anything though so don’t get your hopes up :lol:

Thanks for reading and stay safe out there!

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It’s the annual Mekworx update extravaganza http://mekworx.the-powerhouse.net/2019/10/14/its-the-annual-mekworx-update-extravaganza/ http://mekworx.the-powerhouse.net/2019/10/14/its-the-annual-mekworx-update-extravaganza/#comments Mon, 14 Oct 2019 00:32:37 +0000 http://mekworx.the-powerhouse.net/?p=3066 It’s that time of the year again I guess. For some reason, I forget about this place until around October of the given year, when I get the itch to go through and update the site. Honestly though, this year is been pretty uneventful for me in regards to Doom projects. So I haven’t felt […]

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It’s that time of the year again I guess. For some reason, I forget about this place until around October of the given year, when I get the itch to go through and update the site. Honestly though, this year is been pretty uneventful for me in regards to Doom projects. So I haven’t felt the need to make updates here (even though there were some loose ends from last year’s update that I needed to take care of). Funnily enough I made many of the site updates in September, and I told myself I was going to get this blog post out before October. You can see how well that worked out :P

So I’ll get the boring stuff out of the way first. October is the site’s birth month, and this marks its 11th year of existence! I have to thank Wartorn for being so generous with the webspace and for helping me with back-end issues. The site is running the latest WordPress release (5.2.3) and I’ve updated all of the plugins and the current running theme. Speaking of the theme, there’s now a proper matching download button image (see the bottom of any project release page), and I went through the header background images and attempted to make their file sizes smaller by cropping them and converting them to jpg. Hopefully its a little less annoying to load a page now.

The following project pages are new or have been updated: Eviternity, 32in24-17, and Mek’s Box ‘O Skies.  Some of you might be wondering why the Supplice page goes to a facepalm.  Well the old page still exists, but I haven’t figured out the best way to update it.  The project is so huge and there’s a ton of content that I’d need to post on there.  Updating it will be a project in itself.  Maybe I’ll get to it one day.

I also spent the time adding a bunch of new, totally useless emots like this one – :trippy: …and this one – :blarg: . Why? Well actually, these were made for use on the private Project Retrograde dev-forum. I had intended to upload them here waaaay back when I first made them, but it seemed like they would be kinda useless. Now that the project forums are pretty much dead, I thought I may as well dump them here. Oh and if you’re wondering about Project Retrograde…well, I think I mentioned this in an older post, but its on indefinite hiatus due to various reasons. It’s something that I want to continue working on in the future, but right now I just can’t work on it in any meaningful capacity.


Now on to the good stuff! Like I mentioned earlier, this has been an uneventful year for me in regards to mapping (so far). On a personal level, I’ve had to deal with some health issues that have really eroded away my motivation (I won’t go into specifics, but it’s nothing serious). On top of that, I’ve been working on finishing up my I.T. degree. So as is usual for the average person, I’ve just had “real life” things slowing me down. But even with all of that, I did manage to work on some projects.  Actually in hindsight, even though I haven’t done a ton of mapping recently, I do have a lot of content to show off.

Supplice has been moving slowly this year; Cage was busy finishing up Ion Fury (which you should absolutely go and buy!) and that has slowed down things considerably.  The other team members have all been working on their own projects as well.  I did manage to get some planning and mapping done though.  So I’ll start with the 2nd Supplice campaign map named Cryoferron.  This is likely old news for some of you because I finished this map back in September 2018.  Now why didn’t I mention this in the previous post? Well because I had plans to make a new blog post shortly after that one…yea :embarrass: .  But oh well, that just means more content for this post!

This ended up being another fairly large map (DB shot), and it actually shares a relationship with Romeda (the previous campaign map I finished).  Both were layouts I made years ago for a small Doom 64EX project I was tinkering with.  Cryoferron is the larger of the 2 and it was a lot of work to get it in this partially finished state.  This is an episode 2 map that takes place on the frozen moon of Triton.  The setting will emphasize high-tech bases in dark, icy environments.  I haven’t made a gameplay pass on this [or Romeda] yet, and there’s still some visual refinement that I would like to do.  Overall though, I was very happy with how this turned out visually.

Shooting forward to earlier this year, I started work on some Supplice DM maps.  At this point I knew things were going to slow down, so I decided it would be a good idea to get some texture practice in.  From March through June, I made 4 DM maps of varying themes.  I’ll start off with Helafex Station.

This was a practice in the E1 earth-like setting (on an Earth-like planet called Methuselah, same setting as Romeda).  This is a small and mostly flat map that I chose as something that would allow me to do detailing quickly.  You’ll notice some greenhouses in one of the screenshots; that’s something we wanted to try out for this setting and I think they’ll look pretty cool when done in a more serious manner (currently they don’t have ceilings since that’s difficult to pull off in Boom).  The idea for this setting is to have the player traverse the living and working quarters of the terraformers who settled here.  I’m hoping we can put an emphasis on lots of earth-like natural settings as well (trees, grass, caves, etc).

Shortly after I finished Helafex Station, I started work on more serious effort, this time utilizing the newer industrial textures that Cage had been working on.  The layout for this map was specifically made for the industrial theme (being inspired by some Quake maps).  This one is called Dynahammer.

I ended up being super happy with how this one turned out; the end result was very close to what I had envisioned when I drafted the layout.  The big thing I want to focus on with the industrial setting is large and opposing architecture.  The setting takes place on the tiny moon Daphnis, which has a desert-like environment spotted with huge mills and factories.  More hellish influences will start popping up in this setting as well.  I put lots of emphasis on height variation in this one; it has a bowl structure with raised walkways encircling the center of the map.

After finishing up Dynahammer, I took a short break and then began work on the conversion of an existing 32in24 map (specifically Marmalade Murder Mansion from 32in24-13).  This was a map that I felt came out pretty decent in its original form, so I made plans to convert it.  I wanted to convert it much earlier, but I didn’t really have an idea for it until I remembered that I needed to try out a hellish Triton-style ice theme.  So that’s what I did, and thus Demonic Cryonics was born.

The layout needed some changes, but most of the gimmicks from the original were left intact.  Visually it came out looking pretty neat I think; instead of having the building be out in the open, I decided to put it underground in a big ice cavern.  The Triton theme will have some hellish elements to explore, and I was planning on keeping most of them underground similar to this map.  I wasn’t sure if the blue+red color scheme would work out, but it looks really nice, especially with Cage’s awesome version of FIREBLU.

The final map to round off the Supplice update was one that I really struggled with.  After Demonic Cryonics, I actually wanted to start my 3rd campaign map.  It was going to be for the decrepit floating techbase setting (on a gas giant called Bellerophon).  But this was around the time I started hitting some roadblocks, and I just couldn’t wrap my head around a good concept.  So I decided to revisit a DM layout that I had started a few months prior.  After struggling to finish the layout, I slowly chipped away at the visual pass.  Part of the problem with this theme (and thus this map) is that it was probably the least fleshed out setting in my head.  Way back when the project started, I had a much clearer idea of what the setting would look like.  But as time marched on and the project got more ambitious, my original plans weren’t gonna cut it.  Thankfully Cage had already crafted some really fantastic artwork and textures for this setting.  So all I needed to do was wrestle with how to best present those assets.  This was the eventual end result, Stratobase Becrux.

Now while I’m happy with the end result, I don’t think the maps in this setting will look exactly like this.  The atmosphere of this gas giant is meant to be extremely toxic, so the structures will need to feel more enclosed instead of some of the open-air rooms presented here.  But for a DM map done for practice, I’m not going to be too worried about that.  And it does a decent job at showing off Cage’s amazing texture set for the setting.  This map is pretty small (probably suitable for 4 players) but it has some nice height variation and overlapping paths.

So what’s next for Supplice?  My plans are to lay off the DM stuff for a while and start hammering away on the campaign maps as much as possible.  Apart from some personal issues slowing me down, I have really been at odds with trying to get decent mapping done for this.  I’m slowly coming to the realization that I may have set my standards through the roof, and it’s made working on maps a difficult affair.  Everything else in the project is of such high quality that I want the maps to match or surpass that.  And over the years my mapping speed has really slowed because I get stuck on the details; granted I enjoy the process of working out problems and iterating on designs over and over.  But it means making something I’m happy with will take a lot of time.  So my goal now is to try and swing the pendulum back towards a more carefree style of mapping, at least enough to gain some traction.  The good news is that I’m not actively working on any other projects right now, so Supplice will be my main focus for the foreseeable future.


Anywho, let’s move on to 32in24!  Early in 2019 Shaikoten, surprised us with a new 32in24 session – 32in24-17: 3 Flags 3 Furious.  This was pretty cool because the previous session had been well over a year ago, so I was pumped to make some maps.  The theme for this session was 3-way CTF, something I had zero experience with.  It was a challenging session for the simple reason that getting congruent bases to meet in a 3-way intersection isn’t the simplest thing to do in Doom.  Things get wacky when you try rotating 1 or 2 map unit structures at odd angles, and getting things to meet in a central location can get messy.  I found that you tend to deal with lots of broken sectors and overlapping lines.  And then you’ve got flats to deal with, which aren’t easily rotatable (I cheated and just used solid repeating materials for everything :nerd: ).  I ended up figuring out a decent method of coming up with proper layouts and made 3 maps plus 1 detail job.

The first map, Yoo Hoo Wrecking Crew (2 top-left screenshots), ended up coming out great.  I started with a simple premise and layout; the flag stands are elevated and very near each other, but they can only be accessed by taking a route into the opposing team’s base.  Teams also have a switch that can be pressed which cuts off the shorter of the two routes.  That’s it really, and it seemed to have been a good concept since I got lots of positive feedback on it.  Detailing it was a breeze thanks to the relative simplicity of the bases and mid section.

After I figured out the general idea on how to construct a 3-way CTF map, I decided to do something more ambitious.  This 2nd map became Butt Scratcher Deluxe (2 top-right screenshots).  The original idea was to have the bases connected to the mid via long, narrow hallways.  A plasma gun would be in the center and would act as a power weapon in these narrow hallways for attackers.  Then each base would have teleporters leading to the other two bases, which would act as alternate routes.  The idea was flawed though as the teleporters ended up becoming too powerful.  So after getting feedback, I nerfed the teleporters and extra routes were added.  I also added a flag stand that raises/lowers with switches nearby as an extra layer of defense.  I think after all of the tweaks it ended up becoming a decent map.

I didn’t have much time left when I made my third map, Swirlytron (2 bottom-left screenshots), so I ended up making a flawed layout that wasn’t equilateral in 3 directions.  The whole map was kind of a joke, but it was a concept that I had in my head right after finishing the first map, and I was compelled to make it.  The idea was similar to Yoo Hoo Wrecking Crew in that the bases would be very close to each other but would require round-about routes to gain flag access.  However the gimmick here was that the route would be a super-fast flowing river that encircles the entire map, flowing in one direction.  Each base would have a “stop” on the flowing river which would provide access behind the bases.  Bases also had defensive walls that could raised by attackers so the flag could be more easily grabbed.  The original, flawed map was no more complex than that.  But because it was technically an illegal map, so I ended up remaking the entire thing from scratch during the detailing phase.  Honestly the reason why the original layout wasn’t congruent to begin with was because the structures were a nightmare to mesh together.  This was more of a singular structure that had to fit together instead of 3 bases butted up against a mid-section.  On top of that, the flowing river needed to flow along its containing walls in a perpendicular manner, and these walls were at strange angles (the angles of the walls are important when you setup the moving floors).  The defensive walls also weren’t implemented very well, so I remade them.  I ended up expanding the layout with an outer wall that could be traversed, and made a more involved mid with blocking walls separating the flag stands that met at a central platform; this platform provided access to all of the bases through a small opening and also provided a rocket launcher.  It’s a silly and dumb map that took more effort to make then the other two by a wide margin :lol:

The last map, Crux of Captivity (2 bottom-right screenshots), was a map by Marcaek.  He wanted me to detail it, so I gave it a shot.  The nice thing about detailing a map like this is that you don’t have to try and figure out all of the 3-way mirroring stuff, its already done for you.  All I had to do was split it up, detail a single base, duplicate it 2 times, merge them together, and then swap out the base colors.  It’s a cool map and I think the detailing work came out pretty good considering I did it within the span of a night.


Last but not least on the mapping front is my submission to EviternityGossamer.

Those of you who read my previous post already know about this map’s more vanilla incarnation.  It was originally a submission for Vargskelethor’s 2nd Doom mapping contest.  Since then, Joel has already played the map on stream and the contest is over.  I was also still in the process of converting the map over for Eviternity, and the project hadn’t been finished yet.  So while I could have posted in-progress shots, I felt it would have been better to wait until the map was totally finished.  So you’re getting those screenshots now!

I love how the map was transformed in ukiro’s texture set, and the additions and tweaks make it a more enjoyable experience over the version Joel played.  The original map killed my motivation for a while because I [stupidly] crunched hard to finish it in a week.  Ignoring that though, I’m happy with how the map turned out.  There’s more information on the project page as well as a link to the original version of the map, so go check that out if you’re interested.


For the mappers and modders out there who come by and read my ramblings, I made a huge update to my Mek’s Box ‘O Skies resource.  I’m up to version 3 with a total of 562 (407 of which are in this update alone).  One day I got an itch to make a bunch of skies from ideas that I had floating around, and it got a bit out of hand.  This pack will probably get another update in the future, whenever I get that itch again :like: 


And that’s it for this year!  We’ll see if I’m able to make more than 1 post a year from now on…I’m not holding my breath though, heh.  I want to get some more Supplice stuff out there so I’m gonna try really hard and do that.  If some good progress gets made in the coming months, I’ll see about making some meaningful update posts here.  Until then though, take care and thanks for stopping by!

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Awise Fwom Yo Gwave http://mekworx.the-powerhouse.net/2018/10/21/awise-fwom-yo-gwave/ http://mekworx.the-powerhouse.net/2018/10/21/awise-fwom-yo-gwave/#comments Sun, 21 Oct 2018 21:57:48 +0000 http://mekworx.the-powerhouse.net/?p=2604 Hey look, I’m finally bringing this place back from the dead [sorta]! Really sorry to the very few of you who actually stop by here and read anything I have to say. I had plans to do some content and back-end updates about a year ago. But unfortunately, as things tend to go, I was […]

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Hey look, I’m finally bringing this place back from the dead [sorta]! Really sorry to the very few of you who actually stop by here and read anything I have to say. I had plans to do some content and back-end updates about a year ago. But unfortunately, as things tend to go, I was either too busy or I just didn’t have the interest to swing by here and do the work.

I guess the first thing you’ll notice is the new coat of paint. Actually I didn’t plan on messing with the theme, but somehow I got dragged down into that rabbit hole and this is what I ended up with. Honestly I don’t know if I really like it; I wanted something more minimal than the previous theme, but this seems a bit too barren and bright (*edit* I’m happy with it now, see below). Thankfully WordPress themes these days are way more flexible than the last time I messed with them. The few that I played around with all have very nice customization options, which means I don’t have to spend hours digging through css & php to try and get a logo up. So that’s nice :sun: . At any rate, this theme may or may not change in the future. Honestly I have next to no idea what I’m doing when it comes to web design :P


Important Mekworx News Bulletin!  After spending another whole day working on the site and the theme, I’ve finally ironed out most of the issues I had.  All of the design pages have been updated with properly aligned screenshots and updated descriptions.  I was also able to add a bit of flair to the theme so its not just blinding white on white on white.  There are also proper pages for the following projects – Counterattack, Doom 64 for Doom II, & Eviternity.  This post has been updated for your convenience.  Thank you.


WordPress has been updated to the latest versions and all of the plugins should be up-to-date as well. Also I just realized today that the site is 10 years old. Holy crap how did that happen…

Well if you’re still reading this and got this far, maybe you’d be interested in what Doom-related works I’ve been into lately. Lots of things have happened since my last post back in 2016, so I guess we can start there.

Those of you who read my previous blog entry will already be familiar with this, but I’ll go over it again since the project was released after that post.  THT: Threnody (the Ty Halderman community project) was released on July 2016. I contributed one large techbase map called “Fomalhaut” along with some sky textures and other graphical replacements. It was a very enjoyable project to be a part of and I think the end results were a fitting tribute to Ty. You can find some more screenshots and a download link on my page HERE.


Towards the end of 2016, Shaikoten popped up to start 32in24-16: DOOT CTF. This was a Halloween themed CTF speed mapping session with the usual 32in24 silliness in tow. I contributed 3 maps – Tootsie Roll Showdown, Count Toothy’s Super Canoe, and Come On Down to Spooky Town. The set won a Cacoward and I think Count Toothy’s Super Canoe ended up being a relatively liked map. You can see screenshots and get a download link on my page HERE. As always it was a lot of fun contributing, though sadly there haven’t been any other 32in24 sessions since :(


Around the same time (late 2016), Twitch streamer Vargskelethor (aka Joel) started a Doom mapping contest. Participants had to create a map that ran in GZDoom for Doom II, and then Joel would play them on stream. After playing all of them, he crowned the winners (all of which I know from the community, so that’s cool!). I’ve been a fan of Joel for a few years now, so I decided to make a map for the project. I got a late start on it because I was out of town, but I ended up creating something that I really enjoyed. What followed was a sudden burst of inspiration, and I ended up making a 7 map mini-episode called Counterattack. The project ended up winning a Cacoward, something that I’m still a bit in awe of.  You can check out my page for the project HERE which has a download link and some more screenshots to gawk at.


Next we’re up to my latest undertaking – filling in the leadership role of Doom 64 for Doom II.  This one is sort of a long story, so I’ll just go over the basics.  In May 2013, Doomworld user Death Egg started a project which aimed to recreate/re-imagine the Doom 64 in vanilla Doom II.  Fast forward a few years, and the project ends up looking like its going to die.  Death Egg, the original leader, stepped in and let me take it over.  We finally got Doom 64 for Doom II released on August 2018.  Everything can run in the original vanilla Doom engine, so you can do that if you’re feeling particularly oldschool.  There are 33 maps, all of which are based off of the originals (with exceptions made for map ordering and features so that everything runs in vanilla).  There are also a few new monsters (with special guest Cage making some amazing new Motherdemon sprites), lots of new graphics, new music, new sky textures, and a bunch of other cool extras.  For more info, check out the project page HERE!


Sometime during D64D2’s development, around February I believe, Vargskelethor started the 2nd Doom mapping contest.  I was knee-deep in D64D2 and other things at the time.  But being such a big fan of Joel (and the fact that I made a map for the previous contest), I really wanted to submit something.  So I started coming up with this elaborate idea for a map that was going to involve custom textures.  I spent close to 2 weeks working on a texture set and then a large map layout.  But by the end of that, I wasn’t too happy with the texture set and the map layout ended up being too big.  If I had stuck with that original idea, I almost certainly would have burned out hardcore, maybe without a finished map.  So I made a new layout that was a lot smaller and decided to stick with mostly vanilla textures.  Thus Gossamer was born sometime around the start of March!  I still got pretty burned out on this map after spending a solid week to finish it before the deadline.  But I was super happy with how the map came out, and I’m looking forward to seeing Joel play it (he hasn’t gotten to it yet, though that’s understandable seeing as he got something like 300 submissions, which is nuts).  I didn’t have a plan for the map beyond the contest, so my original plan was to release it as-is (with some edits from Joel’s version).  However I had an opportunity to have the map be a part of EviternitySo you’ll see the map show up there and it will include changes to use ukiro’s new texture set and tweaked/rebalanced gameplay.  So be sure to keep on eye on that!


Last thing that I’ll mention.  Around February 2017, I released a compilation of my sky textures called Mek’s Box ‘o Skies!  The initial set had 115 sky textures, and was later was updated to include 155 textures.  I made a page for this texture pack which you can find HERE.  And there’s a chance that I’ll be adding some more textures to the pack in the future.  Check ’em out why dontcha!


 

But Mek!” I hear you ask, “What about Supplice/Vela Pax/[insert project here]??!?”  Aw shucks, you remembered!  Well I think this post has drug on a bit too long now, so I’m not going to go into details on those projects.  What I’ll do instead is make proper posts for them in the future (I swear I’ll try to make time for it).  The quick answer to that question is that everything is still in progress in one form or another.  It’s a bit surreal to think how long I’ve been working on those things…or not working on them, depending on your view.  So hey, look forward to that I guess!

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Hi there! Here’s some updates! http://mekworx.the-powerhouse.net/2016/02/12/hi-there-heres-some-updates/ http://mekworx.the-powerhouse.net/2016/02/12/hi-there-heres-some-updates/#comments Fri, 12 Feb 2016 20:13:37 +0000 http://mekworx.the-powerhouse.net/?p=2442 Hello again loyal readers, its time again for my annual~ish update and post! Before launching into project-related things, I’ll note that the site has been updated to run WordPress 4.4.2; all of the out-of-date plugins have been updated as well. Also semi-side note, but it appears that the site is now over 7 years old…wowza! […]

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Hello again loyal readers, its time again for my annual~ish update and post!

Before launching into project-related things, I’ll note that the site has been updated to run WordPress 4.4.2; all of the out-of-date plugins have been updated as well. Also semi-side note, but it appears that the site is now over 7 years old…wowza! :O

Anywho, I have actually been putting off this blog post for almost half a year now. I had plans to do site updates a few weeks ago too, but my host was experiencing some weirdness which made the page takes ages to load (at least on my end). I had a blog post sitting in queue regarding the Vela Pax Beta 2.1 release around the end of Summer ’15, but I never got around to finishing it. It was going to go into the changes as of the beta 2 release, as well as some of the project’s history up to this point. I’ll probably make a similar post like that in the future though, so no worries there in case you were interested in reading about that stuff.

So as far as updates go, there are quite a lot to bring up. I have been relatively busy in the past few months with various projects, many of which have been released by this point. Check the Design page for the updates. Here’s a list of my recent contributions and projects.

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My latest contribution is for the Ty Halderman tribute project. It’s a Boom-compat singleplayer/coop map with some Final Doom/TNT nods, though the gameplay is its own thing. I’ve also contributed sky textures and other bits of graphic work to the project. If your interested in contributing, drop by the project’s thread and talk with Chris Hansen, the project’s coordinator and leader.

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Right around the time I started on my Ty project map, Shaikoten started up 32in24-15: Dwango Unchained. I was afraid dropping work on my Ty map at the time to do some 32in24 submissions would really stall my progress. But instead I ended up making a total of 4 maps for the project, and went on to finish my Ty map without too much trouble! I was pretty happy overall with all 4 of my submissions to this 32in24 session. It was a lot of work, but I was able to fully detail 3 of the maps and clean up the 4th, while also contributing 3 movie poster textures on top of all of that.

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Right around Christmas time, I finished up a deathmatch map for the 2015 Christmas Extravaganza Map Pack for Zandronum. This map actually comes from an unused bare layout that I made for SpaceDM9. It’s a pretty fun compilation of DM maps from the community, with some fun new weapons and other silly things. Check it out!

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50 Shades of Graytall was released not too long ago, and I contributed 1 very large and complex map for the project. As the name suggests, the maps were limited to using the texture GRAYTALL along with FIREBLUE and DOORTRACK (with some flexibility granted for flat usage). It was a very fun mapping exercise for me, and my end-product is probably one of the most fun maps I’ve made in a long time (just from re-playing it personally). Other people also really seemed to enjoy this project as well as my map in particular; the map set ended up winning a 2015 Cacoward!

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Finally, less of a recent update here, but I made a project page for my Stronghold: On the Edge of Chaos contribution. I had completely forgotten about this map and was only reminded of it while going through some of my old, unfinished maps recently. I went into some of the history behind that map (what I can remember anyways), so check that out if your interested.

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As I mentioned earlier in this post, Vela Pax Beta 2.1 was released around the middle of October ’15. You can give it a download HERE and read more about the release HERE. Beta 2.1 is basically a COOP-focused release, but it also fixes and adds a few things too. At some point I’ll make a new blog post talking more about the history and future of Vela Pax.

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Something that some of you may be interested in is that I am planning on hitting Supplice very hard this coming year. The past few days for me have been focused on getting things re-organized and ready to work on again. I have some new map layouts which are going to be used in the project, and plans to convert a couple more older DM maps over for the DM map set. There’s also going to be some announcements related to the project coming soon, so keep an eye out for that. If things go well, we’ll have lots of cool stuff to show off before the end of 2016 :nod:

Welp, that’s all for now folks! Thanks for reading!

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