Mekablog

Hey guys! I know no one bothers to read this blog anymore, which begs the question – why am I bothering to post here? Probably because I’m bored or something. Who knows

I’ve got a few updates on different fronts. Firstly, I finally got my new computer all buttoned up and running like a champ! The new memory did just the trick and I’ve been using my new computer successfully for almost a month now. It’s a solid machine and does what I want it to do very well. I posted the part specs a few posts ago and I know I promised to take some shots of it and it’s innards at some point. I may still make a post about it…just depends on my mood. All in all though, I’m very happy with the end result of building my own machine . Props to Super Jamie for all the excellent help he provided!

Mekworx’s 2nd birthday is coming up pretty fast – October 29th! I don’t have anything planned though. There are numerous updates that need to be made at some point, so I may possibly use that day to do that. I would actually like to have a new theme made for the site at some point. I’m not going to do it though. The last time I attempted that, it didn’t turn out too well (though it was a fun learning exercise). Suffice to say that there may be a new theme for the site in the future.

School has been going pretty well and I think I may actually come out the other end of this semester with respectable grades and my sanity intact! My free time hasn’t been as limited as I previously thought it would be, mostly due to the types of classes I’m taking. As such I’ve made some respectable progress on my various Doom-related projects. What, you want proof? No way I don’t owe you anything!

Incidentally I did take some screenshots recently, which I promptly and shamelessly plastered all over the Doom community circuit . I guess I may as well post them here too since I did promise screenshots in my previous posts.

First up we’ve got my contribution to Joshy’s Plutonia Revisited Project.

While I was restricted to my ancient back-up computer a while back, I decided I wanted to do some mapping. Working on Vela Pax or pretty much any of my other projects were out of the question though because the computer just couldn’t handle the huge size and complexity of the maps (both when editing and playing them). I recalled Joshy’s project and saw that it was Vanilla Doom compatible, so I jumped on it. The vanilla compatibility meant that my map would have to be restricted as far as line count went, thus meaning that it couldn’t be very visually complex.

The map is meant for to be played in the latter episode of the project. At the moment it’s sitting on the MAP29 slot and that’s where it may end up once the project is released. I just recently finished making some fixes and tweaks to the map and it was just sent off to testers. If all goes well it will be included in the final map set. Be sure to keep your eyes on this project! There’s going to be some great work released in it

My main focus however has been Vela Pax MAP05. I just recently posted an update in my project thread at Doomworld actually. Here are some shots of the latest areas (be aware that no lighting is done):

I’ll spare everyone my boring and lengthy descriptions as I’ve done beat them into the ground as it is. Right now the map is about 75%~ish complete and it’s sidedef count is right around 64000. The map is and will be a beast and will probably be one of the largest maps ever made to date. I didn’t really plan for it to be this huge in the beginning but that’s how it’s turning out. Somehow with my goals of “make it huge and epic”, I haven’t ran out of ideas…so it just kept going and going! The end is in sight now though, and I’m hoping to keep it working in PRBoom+ without any issues. Sidedef compression is saving my ass right now and I might be able to get away with 80000+; beyond that’s it’s a crap shoot and problems might arise.

Vela Pax as a whole is turning out to be a bigger venture than I previously intended. With the first two maps I’ve worked on being behemoths, it’s taking up quite a big chunk of time to complete. I’m not unhappy about this, but it does slow down progress on other projects (eg. Supplice) and contributions I’m supposed to be making. The remaining 4 maps won’t be as ridiculously huge though. I’m hoping to be over halfway or more finished with Vela Pax by the end of Winter. The feedback and comments on the project have all been very positive and I just hope that I can live up to those expectations. Expect to see some more progress on MAP05 and Vela Pax as a whole in the near future!

And hey, I might actually have some news related to Supplice to report soon! Now that would be awesome