[WIP] Vela Pax - Beta #2 is out!

[albiongeck]

The fluid inside the originals is less obvious so they look a bit less conspicuous, and I think the bottom of the conical flask being so flat makes it a little awkward. The animation is quite important even though I can't tell what it is doing. However I really like the variety you've added by revamping the pickups, it's a nice touch.

Also:

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http://comics.farazparsa.com/?p=60

[Marrub]

Where's the fun in that?

But seriously, I already made some new armor bonuses, which I really like. I want to have some new health bonuses to go alongside them. But the current health bonuses aren't really the greatest. I don't mind the shape so much but it feels a bit flat looking (probably has more to do with the shading than anything). I was going to go back and do a bit more pixel pushing on them, but I thought maybe there would be an interesting design out there that I could try out.

What about a more bulby/smooth looking version of the original sprite?

[Mechadon]

The fluid inside the originals is less obvious so they look a bit less conspicuous, and I think the bottom of the conical flask being so flat makes it a little awkward. The animation is quite important even though I can't tell what it is doing. However I really like the variety you've added by revamping the pickups, it's a nice touch.

Yea, that is probably a really big part of the problem, I'm sure. The animation is basically the same as the vanilla sprite, more or less. I also think part of the problem is the shading is bit too flat; there's not enough there to show off the shape of the container.

What about a more bulby/smooth looking version of the original sprite?

Hmm, well I'm not sure I could improve the original sprite all that much to be honest with you. I can push some pixels, but I'm average at best . I do have one idea that I scrapped for Supplice because I didn't really have the skills to pull it off. It was a sort of crystalline, decanter-shaped container. I wanted it to look sort of like this, though not shaped the same way. I might give that idea another go.

[Mechadon]

Hey, got another update for you guys . I'm finally done with all of my map updates. MAP05 has been optimized and bug fixed, thus marking the point where I can finally start working on MAP04 again.

I was able to squeeze about 8000 sidedefs while optimizing MAP05, so I made sure to put them to good use. One thing I was disappointed with in the first iteration was how the outdoor lava areas came out. I didn't have enough sides to really make them how I wanted. So that was the first thing I did, and now they are more or less how I imagined them from the beginning.

Some other rooms also got some additions and, in one case, a complete redesign. While I was at it, I made some changes to some texture themes too. I think there were too many brown/city~ish tones, so I tried to inject more reds and hellish things in placed (for example, the STUCCO texture has been completely replaced with the grey marble, which worked out quite nicely). You can see the screenshots for the updated areas below. I figure you guys are probably tired of seeing screenshots of the same maps over and over, so hopefully this is the last time





Rocks
More rocks
Even more rocks

The only thing I didn't get to do, that I really wanted to do, was to play with more contrasted lighting. I tweaked the lighting for both MAP01 and MAP02 and I was very pleased with the results. However in the case of MAP05, there are light transfer tags almost everywhere. It was a nightmare to get them all working right the first go around, and I just decided I was done with that self-torture . Some areas got slight lighting changes, but overall not much has changed there.

Oh, I also updated the statusbar again. I added some bits to the ammo, health, armor, and did a bit more minor editing. There are some new key icons to match the new key pickup sprites. And for the hell of it, I made some new ammo/arms number graphics. It should be done now...but I'll probably end up doing more editing on it later on down the line if something starts to bug me about it.

I'm a bit sick of mapping right now, so I'm gonna take another short break before getting back to work on MAP04. Thankfully I've had months and months to think about what I want to do with that map, so it shouldn't be too difficult to start roughing out areas. Of course, I'll be sure to keep you all updates as I make progress on it

[Mechadon]

Hello ZDoomers! I wanted to let you guys know that this project is not dead! In fact, just today, I released a new public test build. This update has a ton of new changes, including COOP support of each of the finished maps.

Grab it here - http://mekworx.the-powerhouse.net/mekas ... -beta2.zip [19mb]

I'll update the first post while I'm at it too. If you interested in some screenshots, there are some slightly out of date ones here

Thanks!

[edward850]

Myself and Yholl would have more fun wih this if we could find all the keys in map02. D:

[Ribo Zurai]

It lives! And lives gloriously it seems.

[Mechadon]

Myself and Yholl would have more fun wih this if we could find all the keys in map02. D:

Yea I know, MAP02 is very open-ended and it is the map that most folks are probably going to have a hard time finding all of the keys in . If you guys have suggestions (provided you two eventually find all of the keys), please let me know!

[Yholl]

Yea I know, MAP02 is very open-ended and it is the map that most folks are probably going to have a hard time finding all of the keys in . If you guys have suggestions (provided you two eventually find all of the keys), please let me know!

Maybe have some visual indicators in the maps themselves? Like some subtle colored arrows or something pointing towards the first available key? Maybe a few indicators of what a switch does or where to go next?
Those are pretty much my only gripes, that there's never really an indication of what you are supposed to do next, or what area you just opened. Not really sure how well the switch part could be done, but at least giving us a bit of a hint to locate keys would be awesome. Running around a giant level filled with 6 different locks and you don't even have a single key yet is a pain, hahaha.

So glad you decided to release this new beta, I've pretty much been super hyped for more Vela Pax awesomeness for a good long while! I can't wait to see Faxanadu finished, it and Pax really have my interest. Dat Faxanadu music, hohoo.

[zrrion the insect]

I am super excited for more of this. Sign me up.

[Mechadon]

@Yholl: I was hoping to avoid making the navigation a little too "hand-holdy", even though it would make finding the keys easier . There's a balance to strike where I want player who explore and can navigate to feel rewarded, but also make that exploration and navigation not feel tedious. Obviously it varies from player to player, so...yea. I do have an idea though, which I might try out. I made some computer monitor displays for the COOP hub rooms which display what a given chamber has inside of it. I could use those for the keys so help show that "hey, the blue key is this way!" and so on. That might help out, depending on their placement, without being to direct.

I forgot that you and Edward played through one of the internal releases. Hopefully Faxanadu turns out well...Pax should be interesting if I can finish that crazy sky texture and find sprites for the boss

[Yholl]

There's a balance to strike where I want player who explore and can navigate to feel rewarded, but also make that exploration and navigation not feel tedious.

Yeah, I get what you mean, the biggest drawing point for me is the sheer size and non-linearity of the levels.
Another possible idea could be to place some locked linedefs that are always visible on the map, hidden in a wall, indicating where keys are or their locked switches/doors? I often found that I had no idea where to take a key because there was no indication of a locked door or switch on the map. Like MAP02's blue keycard, which we never found where to take, unfortunately.

One thing I found quite interesting about MAP01 was that it had a kind of "aimless progression", I guess? Like, we'd have no idea where to go, but then we'd just walk back through a previously explored area somewhere, and "Oh, enemies!" a new area had opened up! Even though we ourselves had no idea where to go, the level kept opening up for us and keeping us exploring, it was pretty cool.

We should be continuing our game soon, we'll check out all the coop stuff you've put in, hehe.

[edward850]

If only the audio for that 2 hours of video didn't eat itself, we'd be posting more of our experiences. :V

[DoomKrakken]

Dude... this is one of the most epic mapsets ever. Very hard, but very awesome. And... dat music for Apollyon...

I've a question... if I'm playing it Vanilla, the game lags a little. Understandable, since they're pretty big maps... but then I try to play the game with mods like Guncaster or Trailblazer... then things start lagging like hell. As in, to the point of unplayability. And finally, there's Project MSX... which seems to have absolutely no problem whatsoever with running with the mapset (and man, was that beautiful... ). There was almost no lag whatsoever, although something strange I found was that firing small (not large) plasma bolts from the Chimera Pulse Rifle would cause the game to lag super hard... but that was it.

Can anyone make any sense of this?