Zodiac CTF demo

well i posted this over in the ZD forums last week but figured i should post it here too.

introducing:

ZodiacCTF!

http://www.fathax.com/wadhost/files/zodctfdemo1.zip

this was something i wanted to do after playing certain maps in Zodiac DM. some of the layouts just seemed ideal for conversion with very little imagination required. some of the others required more creativity and a few would never have made good CTF designs so they're being replaced with all new material. it also gives me a chance to fix anything which i perceived as 'wrong' in the original maps. for example there was a tiny defect with a sky which i finally got to 'fix'. also when i looked into the zodiac signs then i realised firesticks on an Aquarius map made no sense as it's not a fire sign so they are (coloured) techlamps now. it's all just little things which i think will improve the overall quality and which as an outsider are perhaps easier for me to pick up on.

once again i've been sat on these maps forever despite a great many of them being complete now. this demo release contains the first 8 but i actually have 10 more done - 3 of which are completely original. these new designs do not follow the Zodiac shapes but will fit in completely with the established themes.

the reasons i'm not releasing more atm are twofold:
1 - people obviously have trouble assimilating too many new maps at once. episodic releases are better than shitting out 30 new maps at once.
2 - WAD compilers seem to quite often forget all about sensible player numbers for the maps they throw together and this doesn't help server admins or the players. i have a variety of sizes of maps here and as Zodiac works in two cycles of 12 maps then so will the CTF but i plan to split it into two map packs, one of small to mid-sized maps and the other for larger numbers of players.

this demo release of the first maps is just a mix, maps 1, 4 and 7 are small, maps 2, 3, 5 and 6 are large. amd map 8 is sorta small-midsize.

be very interested to see what Milian in particular makes of it all Smile

NOTE: it needs to be run on top of zodiac2e.wad and if you want to see where the flags have been placed then you can run CTF mode locally from the ZD launcher with one small change to the zlauncher.ini. simply open it in Notepad, go down to the section labeled '[SP_Mode]' and add the line 'ctf=2' as the new first line of that section. you will then be presented with two new options for local games (the ST one isn't much use for now though).

Oh wow! Interesting to see some progression on this project.
I'll do some sightseeing when it's online and a game is going on Smile

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Musique!

ah heh, well as i mentioned above then there's been quite some progress on this project (on and off). i'm currently messing around with a wholly original second Leo map which'll bring the total up to 19 maps.

with regards to online play then idk, maybe when we get CHiP back. as i say then the released demo WAD is really just that and as it mixes both small and large maps then i don't expect the whole thing to be run on one server. it was just put out to show that yes, work does still go on and to get some feedback.

Ja, I've had a look at it yesterday.
I don't know about gameplay 'cause I don't play CTF, but I was impressed by your creativity. Some very cool details (especially in the Aries map where I asked myself, why I didn't put them into the map myself Wink

)

Tell me, if you need stuff like original graphics or something.

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Musique!

well, even for CTF players then some of the maps would be hard to figure out if they're any good i think. for instance Aries flows very counter-intuitively but it is still a hell of a lot of fun.
and yes, i did really work that one over. your map gave me the idea of a mine so i gave it the wooden supports and also the small railway track. btw, i copied the wagon from another map of yours - it was something i remembered seeing and thought it would be a nice touch to use it here. recognise it now? Razz

the doors there had to go as in DM it's possible for evil players to sneak in when they open and spawn camp. thankfully Zodiac never tends to get that sort of player Smile

but for CTF where a flag is at stake then it would be too easy to hide in one of them.
so those were my thought processes on that one.

oh and despite thinking it wouldn't get onto a server i was very lucky yesterday to get to play it all! Ronald had said he'd give some feedback on it and when i reminded him of this he ran a server for it with 3 bots too. i dragged in a Baah and Alfred for the last couple of games and it was really good stuff. even the maps i had reservations about were cool and 3on3 seemed to play ok even on the larger maps Smile

the funniest thing was Ronnie repeatedly stating that he couldn't find the flags on map08. i told him to follow the arrow and he said he couldn't see that either Laughing

as far as original graphics, then yeah i do need the title/intermission pic without the white text. i just kinda knocked up that modification from the one in the DM WAD a long time back. it doesn't look too bad i guess, even though my imaging skills have come a long way since. the M_DOOM graphic is very ropey though, it was something i scavenged from the main picture and is just a placeholder image atm. so if you can dig up any original images then i would be most grateful Smile

ROFl

funny! I wouldn't have recognized the wagon at all. But coincidentally, I've finished the last area of Biovite5 yesterday and needed some stuff from the laboratories in map 01. I also reused the wagon, so yes, I recognize them now Smile

Ok, over the weekend I'll go through my backup files and will send you the original graphics and fonts by mail. Can you open Photoshop documents (psd)?

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Musique!

not a format i use but i'm pretty sure i saw it in the list of filetypes Corel can use...

*checks*

...and yes i can! Smile

and hahaha, funny to hear you're digging up the wagon again now.

thought you might like to see what i've come up with so far for a reworked TITLE/INTERPIC:

menu graphic's also looking much better thanks to that source image Smile

Sweet! Nice to see that the files were helpful Smile

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Musique!

oh very much so!

not much updatery to report but i've been adding some more textures to the WAD and stuff. if you go back to my first post you'll notice a new banner in the second pic Smile

Ah let's bump this and make your forums a bit more lively eh? Razz

I'm very close to having the first cycle of 12 maps down for this now. Of course as with any of my projects then that doesn't necessarily mean it'll actually be finalised anytime soon. Still managing to divide my editing time between allsorts of weird and wonderful creations.

But there is one thing that I keep thinking about and really did not want to mess with without checking in with Mili and that is changing the pallette for the WAD. I fancy using the UDM3 pallette to alter the blues although I'm still not 100% on the idea. One consideration is that for teamplay then the blues will be very much lighter than the red players but from what little feedback I've been able to garner on that matter then it doesn't seem like such a big issue. The more important thing to me is that Mili would still be happy with the looks if I did decide to add it.

If you want to see what I'm talking about then run a local game with UDM3 first and then Zodiac2e run on top of it. Just take a look thru the maps and see what you think of it like that.

woow, is very good!, but the bad thing is that I have Windows Vista and I have no works doombuilder Crying or Very sad

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bb...nn

You tried what those other guys suggested? Stopping Explorer from the Task Manager should let you use it.

If this does not work then you could try another editor.
DeePsea is one possibility. You can only get a trial version of it for free but I hear that works quite well.
SLADE is another choice. From what I know then this one is rather like Doombuilder.

Also Doombuilder2 is being worked on and I'm pretty sure CodeImp will be addressing the Vista issues in that Wink

hooray!

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bb...nn

thank you very much. if I get to publish my first map .. where he was showing? Wink

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bb...nn

y.. somewhere where I can download the doom2.wad?

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bb...nn

Uh... you do not have Doom2? Surprised

And would you consider losing the Barney signature? It makes the forum look really ugly Razz