Topics

1

Editing A&A / Doom Builder and In-Game offsets missmatch

« on: February 06, 2014, 05:33:54 PM »

In Doom Builder 2 I got this:



But A&A gives me this:




Textures get shifted 6 or 7 units to the right left when in game.
It never minds for just walls, but for details like libraries and other similar things, it can get a bit annoying to manually trying to match them all with those 6 or 7 units shifting problem.

Any way to fix this? Thanks.


In addition, in the second image (the A&A screen) you can see that due to the lack of .LIT changes, there are some parts of the room that look darker than the original ones, making the map to look awful.
I don't mind using a blank .LIT, but I'm not sure if every light effect can be achieved without .LIT.

2

General Discussion / Do you use spells that seem useless?

« on: February 05, 2014, 03:37:08 AM »

That.

Some spells, either Arcane, Mage or Priest, seem useless or so specific that the rarelly will be used.

Have you found any of those "rarely" used spells more than "rarely"? Which one? Why?


Actually, I'm playing as a priest. There is a spell that I use a bit: Pull.

As a melee class, there are some combat situations where trying to defeat several enemies at the same time is impossible. Or there is an enemy that is firing at me from an unnacesible place for me.
In such cases, I use the Pull spell to "attrack" the enemy towards me and then kill him. I find Pull spell very useful.

Other spells that I find very useful and I use all the time are the spells Holy Water and Holy Bread, that create water and bread to drink and eat. Instead of carrying with me an extra load of food and water, I just create them when I need, so I can carry more useful things either to use or to sell.

In addition, I find the Life Water (creates a +10 HP potion) quite useful. It may seem a spell that is underpowered and useless, because it costs 20 mana to create a +10HP potion, while I can heal that same amount with just Rejuvinate Spell with less mana. Well, actually, they are different things. I use the Life Water spell when I start the map (and if I am out of these potions) to create some potions. During the quest, sometimes my mana gets really tight after hard battles, so I need mana for something else that is not healing, for example, protecting myself, curing poison, enchanting my weapon, etc... So here is where those potions are very handy, I can heal quite a bit without spending my mana. And also, I don't need to carry a lot of other potions because I can create my own when I need. Of course I carry 3 high healing potions for very harsh situations

3

Editing A&A / Map editing questions

« on: February 03, 2014, 07:09:15 AM »

I reach a point in map editing where I got stuck.

Maps are made up of 4 files:

- a .GEN file containing the map music and I think the sky or some pic defined.
- a .I file that seems some kind of script that spawns objects. At this point, the coordinates defined in this file doesn't make any sense because the object spawned in Q1M1 from this file are far outside any playable or accesible area, just in the infinite area of the Doom Builder rid.
- a .MAP file, that is the map itself
- a .LIT file, that I suppose is a compiled script that defines the map sector's lights.

And here I'm stuck again.
I have build up and modified some parts of the map. The map structure works well, texture alignment works well, and everything works well, EXCEPT the sector lighting.
Let me explain: in Doom Builder (DB from now on) I create new sectors to add detail. Those new sectors have a light level of 255. But when testing the map in game, my new sectors have the 255 light level as spected, but the old sectors that I didnt' modified, have a different light level.
Also, some sectors have a glowing effect, but there is not thing marker in the sector.
I can't see any thing marker changing this light level or the behavior of the light in those sectors, so the only explanation is that the sectors' light level is changed through a script, probably in that .LIT file. But again, the sectors with modified light doesn't have any sector tag. And that is bugging me because any Doom game needs a sector tag to change that sector's properties. And the only explanation is that the script in .LIT files uses corrdinates system instead of sector tags, which is in fact a terrible way to do things, IMO.

It never minds, I can manage to do it anyway, but here comes another problem: this .LIT file is compiled, encrypted or something, so I cannot read, nor understand how it works, and of course, modify it.

So basically I need some way to modify those .LIT files with a normal editor. I discard an HEX editor because I don't want to mess with that kind of things.
So I need a compiler/decompiler.

Any help? Thanks.

4

General Discussion / [Suggestion] Slopes and 3D Floors

« on: February 03, 2014, 05:47:29 AM »

Since our A&A Hero likes skateboarding, don't you think that giving him slopes and 3D Floors would be a good present?

Just asking. 

5

Editing A&A / [MAPPING] Unspecified Thing Numbers

« on: February 02, 2014, 10:49:22 AM »

Hi.

While editing the original A&A maps, I found several things that have undefined numbers in the current Doom Builder Config File (2-Feb-2014).

I have tested the maps (actually only Q1M1) with and without those objects, and I found what are they used for.
Most of them are markers like in Duke3D, that will transform the sector into something different, or ambience sounds, etc, but others seem to have some unknown effect that after testing the map with and without them, nothing seems to change.
I marked those markers with a "Unknown action" label.

I'm quite lazy to add them to the Doom Builder config file now, so if anyone is not that lazy can add them hehehe
I will use Doom nomenclature, for example "DR Open Wait Close" means "Door Repeatable Opens, Waits a bit and automatically closes".

Actually only tested from Q1M1, so there may be others differents in another maps.

List Updated: 4 - Feb - 2014.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Markers that doesn't appear in this list, may not exists. If this is the case, the game will crash when the map loads.

Updated markers will be marked with a "=>" instead of a "?"

? 150 - Unknown action?
? 924 - Transfers Sector Light from the brightest nearest sector.
? 1500 - DR, Open Wait Close. Wait = 2 seconds. Sound = Wooden door (look note at the end)
? 1505 - Walkable water. Preserves the floor texture. Player gets slightly sinked (not swimmable). Splashing water sound.
? 1509 - SFX Burning, campfire ambience
? 1511 - SFX Night Forest ambience 1
? 1512 - SFX Wind blowing ambience
? 1513 - SFX River ambience
? 1514 - SFX Small/short waterfall ambience.
=> 1518 - End Level. Look note at the end.
? 1523 - Scroll Floor Texture. Move things. Slower. Uses thing angle to change scrolling direction.
? 1524 - Scroll Floor Texture. Move things. Slow. Uses thing angle to change scrolling direction.
? 1525 - Scroll Floor Texture. Move things. Fast. Uses thing angle to change scrolling direction.
? 1526 - Light Glows from actual light level to 255 light. 1 sec frequency.
? 1531 - SFX Magic humming ambience
? 1533 - SFX Night Forest ambience 2
? 1537 - Scroll nearest wall texture up. Slow.
? 1541 - Scroll nearest wall texture down. Slow.
? 1542 - Scrolls nearest wall texture down. Fast.


* For 1500: this marker lowers the marked sector's ceiling to the floor and allows it to be opened by pressing "use button, open door" key. You don't need to "close" the door in the map editor because the game will do this automatically.

* For 1518: the thing tag/value/attribute tells the engige what level goes next.

6

Editing A&A / Community Project: A&A Map Revamping!?

« on: February 02, 2014, 06:08:18 AM »

 I was wondering if someone is interested in this kind of project.

The original maps are rather awful for today's standards in terms of detail, monsters' placement and overall looking.
So I came to this idea.

Basically a community project to revamp the game maps. I am not talking about creating new maps to replace the old maps,  but just take the original maps and add much more detail, maybe modify some areas that doesn't look good or seem a bit out of place.

As a community project this can be done faster than a single person project.

So what is your opinion on this?

I will start with Q1M1 map anyway, so even if I don't get any help,  I will keep working on it.

7

Editing A&A / MOD creation questions and a proposal

« on: February 01, 2014, 01:51:17 PM »

Hi there fellow adventurers.

I have been playing A&A for years and today I found this project, which is absolutely awesome and what I was waiting for years.

It is also nice to know that the game went open source or free or whatever.


Well, so basically what brings me here is the chance to share adventures with more people, but also the chance to edit the game mechanics and create new maps, although I already knew that Slade map editor allows this, I was lacking the linedefs, things and such.
I always though that A&A had a great potential.

So actually, I would like to ask for resources or a PDF or something that teaches me how to edit the game scripts and logic, so I can edit or create new enemies, weapons, spells or whatever to allow me to create a Mod or a TC.

I have been working on a Doom TC based on A&A under EDGE engine for some time, but now that A&A went opensource makes any Dom TC pointless.


So basically, how to create mods and TCs for this game?



Now it comes the proposal:

I noticed that now A&A supports network games.
I can't explain how nobody thought about creating an A&A MMORPG-ish game.
I mean, not a true MMORPG like WoW, but some kind of mod that looks like a sandbox game, with big maps, monsters respawning after some time, maybe HUB style maps like in Hexen...
People can join a server with friends and adventure in a sandbox map or maps.

I know this can be easily done with almost any Doom source port that allows networking, but since we have A&A opensource, this could be also made here.

What I'm talking about is something like Hexen style gameplay but with A&A engine, bigger maps, a lot of new items and spells and respawning monsters.



Well, thats all cya.


Be all your adventures epic and lacking of danger.