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Maps / Re: LlamaHombre's One-Off Maps (Current: guest MM2QUI updates)

« on: November 03, 2022, 04:05:25 AM »

Thanks to Llama for letting me piggyback here. I'm probably not going to make a habit out of this; I had wanted to update MM2QUI anyway, but I wanted to get the changes out ahead of time. Seeing how MM2BUB2 and now MM10DW3 have been handled, though, I figured people would want to host it, so to ease the burden on hosts I asked Llama if I could slip my map in here. I don't have any other maps in core that I plan to do this for.

Similar disclaimer to Llama's that, while I'm not a member of the core team, I do intend for these changes to go into core for v6b. Whether or not they actually do is out of my hands, but the feedback I've received from some members of the core team so far has been positive.

I wanted to take a moment to go over where my head was at while making these changes. MM2QUI has a strong historical context in 8BDM, and while it definitely had a lot of problems, I wanted to keep its overall identity intact while addressing the pain points. I'll be going over what I've heard and observed, my updates, and how the two relate.

To start, here's the raw changelog for anyone who just wants to know the difference.

(click to show/hide)

Alright, so let's get to the nitty gritty. For anyone who's unaware, my name is on MM2QUI because I used a concept SmashBro came up with to drastically modify the existing MM2QUI. At the time, my focus was primarily on making the quick beams consistent, as previously they fired entirely randomly. While the map was modified by other users after the fact in ways that I feel were to its detriment, I think it's existed in an "it's fine" state for a while. That being said, it's clear most people aren't fans of the version in core.

The two complaints I heard the most were:
-The map is too flat.
-The lack of null walls lets floorhuggers and flying classes terrorize matches.

Additionally, from my experience on the map, I identified the following problems:
-The southwest corners are pointless, offering no real advantage and having the worst flow on the map.
-The southern half of the map is frustratingly segmented.
-The northern half of the map can be difficult to siege thanks to predictable entry points and long sight lines.
-The item layout here is just a disaster

Now, some people might take a look at the second complaint from that first list and say "well, core shouldn't be trying to cater to CBM!" I actually agree with this take, but in this instance, the pain CBM players are experiencing comes from a purely cosmetic choice. While core should not be made first and foremost for CBM, I think it's fine to address CBM pain points from time to time as long as it doesn't come at a detriment to vanilla gameplay. You'd be surprised how often it can.

However, I had one more problem swimming in my head: MM2QUI is a very nostalgic map for a lot of people. Its flat layout and short walls have become part of a now decades-old identity for the map, and while they do cause problems, I believe that identity needs to be respected. The challenge with this update, then, was to alleviate the pain caused by these decisions without erasing them entirely and effectively replacing the map.

I'll go ahead and break down the changes, now.

Problems:
-The map is too flat.
-The southwest corners are pointless, offering no real advantage and having the worst flow on the map.
-The southern half of the map is frustratingly segmented.

(click to show/hide)

Problem:
-The lack of null walls lets floorhuggers and flying classes terrorize matches.

(click to show/hide)

Problem:
-The northern half of the map can be difficult to siege thanks to predictable entry points and long sight lines.

(click to show/hide)

The item layout changes probably speak for themselves, but if anyone wasn't keeping score before, I encourage you to open up the current version of MM2QUI and count how many weapons are in each slot. It wasn't great.

Finally, a straggler change I want to discuss:
-Lowered the time between quick beam fires from 7 seconds to 6

(click to show/hide)

This was one hell of a wall of text, but the point I wanted to hammer home is that I wanted, above all else, to make changes that fixed gameplay issues without trampling what's made MM2QUI unique and special for so long. I believe I've managed to accomplish that, but I want to get this into public hands ahead of v6b to get people thinking about what this map has needed.

Thanks again to Llama for letting me tack this onto his pack, and enjoy!

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Tutorial Collection / Re: [TUTOR] SECTINFO Setup

« on: August 15, 2022, 10:29:42 PM »

At the request of Trillster, I've added support for Domination points to this tool. The included pdf has been updated with a breakdown of how exactly they work, but the short version is that you would add a "user_point" user variable to all the sectors you want to make up a capture point. This works alongside the user_callout uservar, so you'd want the sector to have both. OP has been updated with the new link, have fun!

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Maps / Re: REAL Pack - v1b Released!

« on: January 10, 2022, 11:11:19 PM »

Hello everyone! I'm here with an announcement: REAL v1b is now available! Alongside a plethora of improvements to the existing maps, three new maps are included. Two of these maps are award-winners from previously hosted competitions, and one has never been seen before.

ALP06 - Echelon and Flow

(click to show/hide)

REEF11 - Agonopolis

(click to show/hide)

And, using a new map code scheme designed to indicate maps made by the both of us:
REAL01 - Spectral Echo

(click to show/hide)

REAL may only be one map strong for now, but rest assured that after working together on Spectral Echo, Llama and I have some plans that'll fill that code out nicely.

Additionally, all maps now include SECTINFO and preview images for Trillster's map voting system.

Full changelog:

(click to show/hide)

We hope you enjoy! You can grab it on TSPG or dropbox.

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Tutorial Collection / [TUTOR] SECTINFO Setup (Now with Domination!)

« on: January 05, 2022, 04:41:05 AM »

What the heck is SECTINFO?
I can't blame you for not knowing-- before using it myself in Spectral Echo, the only person I know of that ever bothered using it in a map was Russel. SECTINFO is a lump in your map's wad archive that assigns a name to sectors by sector number. For instance, Spectral Echo's SECTINFO lump looked like this:

(click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

[TTT05]
names = {
"Upper Ruins" = {0, 15, 18, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 42, 44, 136, 147},
"Ruins" = {1, 8, 10, 11, 13, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 127, 128, 129, 137, 140, 143, 144, 154, 155, 156, 162, 163, 170, 189, 190, 398, 399, 400, 404, 405, 406, 407, 408, 409, 410, 411, 412, 413},
"Mid" = {2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 97, 98, 105, 112, 113, 114, 115, 180, 191, 192, 193, 199, 201, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 313, 338, 339, 365, 366, 367, 369, 377, 378, 397},
"Coast" = {23, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 159, 160, 161},
"Falls" = {45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 62, 63, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 177, 178, 343, 344, 401, 402, 403},
"Sewers/Mid" = {64, 65, 374, 375, 376},
"Sewers/Balcony" = {72, 73, 74, 179, 182, 183, 184, 185, 214, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237},
"Spectral" = {138, 139, 141, 142, 187, 194, 197, 198, 217, 218, 219, 225, 226, 227, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 283, 284, 285, 287, 288, 292, 293, 296, 297, 318, 322, 331, 333, 379, 414},
"Upper Spectral" = {145, 186, 188, 195, 196, 215, 216, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 230, 231, 232, 381},
"Sewers" = {181},
"Catacombs" = {273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 319, 320, 337},
"Hall" = {279, 280, 282, 321, 323, 325, 326, 327, 328, 329, 330, 332},
"Atomic" = {281, 311, 312, 314, 315, 316, 317, 324, 334, 335, 336, 340, 341, 342, 345, 346, 347, 348, 349, 350, 351, 355, 356, 357, 358, 359, 360, 361, 362, 363, 364, 368, 370, 380, 382, 383, 384, 385, 386, 387}
}

This has two relatively low-impact effects on gameplay. The first is that typing $location in chat will display your actual location on the map, based on the mappings in SECTINFO. The second, and often more noticeable, is that co-op info will now display your teammates' locations.

Is this a requirement for maps to be competitively viable or even casually viable? No, not at all.
Is it cool? Absolutely.

Unfortunately, all known versions of Doom Builder lack a mechanism to implement this, which means that in order to do so, you have to either manually gather sector numbers or cobble together an external workflow. On top of that, since SECTINFO runs off of sector numbers, it would actually break whenever you were to split or delete a sector...

...or does it?

I spent my evening today crafting up a fix to this situation. The result is a standalone tool that can root through information in your map's TEXTMAP to generate a SECTINFO for you! The method this tool uses has a couple of upsides: you don't have to look at sector numbers, and since it uses information harmlessly saved in the map that doesn't rely on sector numbers, it will not break if you split or delete sectors. If you don't mind briefly dipping into an external tool to make it, this can save you a lot of time and energy setting up callouts on your map.

Grab the tool here!

Included is a short .pdf file that details the workflow for getting these set up. Enjoy!

oh and I guess you can use SECTINFO to set up control points for domination too but this tool doesn't do that uh oh
edit: OH YEAH IT DOES PAL

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Events / Re: Teamplay, Textures, Tango - A MM8BDM team mapping competition!

« on: November 02, 2021, 02:11:52 PM »

Thank you to the judges, to everyone who got a map in, and to Llama for being awesome! This was a bucket of fun to work on, and while I personally don't touch competitive scenes all that much, there were some maps here that I was dying to get some games on when I saw them submitted. Congrats to the other winners!

I had written up some dev notes the other day that I'd like to expand on some in response to what the judges had to say. I had originally written these in the context of the scoring sheet, but I think a more cohesive essay makes more sense:

(click to show/hide)

While this was a popular sentiment across all of TTT, Llama and I wanted to avoid making a symmetrical map even though symmetry would guarantee equality with the teams. At least in my opinion, pure symmetry can get boring pretty quickly. Instead, we opted to provide both teams with different but valuable resources-- light has immediate access to a low-cost power weapon and varied routes across the map, but wily gets very fast access to mid and the high ground, as well as a sight line to the big health. I personally wanted to place a big focus on varied sight lines and flanking routes, which led to decisions like the long sight line leading from ruins into falls and the glass flanking the big health in mid.

This is one of my favorite item layouts I've ever placed, by the way-- in testing, playing around that middle big health led to a lot of fun skirmishes. The weapons also feel just right, with Magic Card being my personal favorite fit. You can do some pretty nutty stuff with that weapon here due to how interlaced our routes are. I also put down the Chill Spike/Water Shield combo pretty much entirely for myself, as I think that's pretty fun to play with. I was very happy to see that the judges responded well to my choice of weapons, and that going lower on the amount of weapons was the right call to make.

Something I tried to focus on was avoiding spawncamps. The TTT ruleset is a team deathmatch setting with team spawns on, so in vanilla, that's a very real threat. In smaller maps it can be difficult to avoid putting team spawns in sight lines, but there is definitely some geometry here that pretty much only exists to stop mid from having a shot on the spawns. Each team also spawns with a powerful weapon to give them a fighting chance if they're pushed that far back.

If anyone is wondering why there's such a drought for health and ammo, by the way, this is actually reactive to a conversation I had with King Dumb around the time v6 dropped. He had mentioned that due to the increased efficacy of health and the way you need less ammo to kill now, it would be more important than ever to keep the pickups for both lower than usual. I tend to agree with that sentiment, and especially with how low our unit scale is on this map, I wanted to keep our pickups spread out while still having something to grab in each room.

On to the visuals, which is something I was happy to see we got high marks for. Before we even had a concept for the layout, we were planning our callouts. Our singular focus with this map's visual design was to give every room its own visual identity, and we did such a good job with this (if I do say so myself) that I was inclined to look into adding a SECTINFO lump. For the uninitiated, SECTINFO assigns a name to sectors you specify, which allows $location in chat and the locations in coop info to actually work. This is not a feature that GZDB/UDB support, and I had to ask Russel for the method he used when making his jam maps that use it. I would up needing to code my own console application to support that workflow, and I'm proud to have joined the single digit number of 8BDM maps that use this feature. Don't expect this to be a common thing, though-- SECTINFO isn't really scalable at all, and it's a really specific method to set it up.

Llama is entirely responsible for demaking all of the sprites and tiles, and he set up all of the cosmetic actors. He absolutely knocked it out of the park with these-- our ambitious idea to bring these Super Metroid areas to life paid off so well that we've been spitballing even crazier ideas for our joint pack, REAL. My personal favorite detail is Phantoon himself-- little fun fact, he has a small chance to just pop in without fading like he does in the game.

Fun fact about me: I hate Decorate. This map really rubbed that in. The amount of hours I spent de-janking those Kzans... *shudder* For eagle-eyed Slade Spelunkers, you may notice an obituary in the Kzan's code. They originally did do damage, but while summoning the elder gods to try and make them actually take a frag, we realized that them dealing damage really didn't add anything. At most, they'd annoy people in mid. They are what gave me the original idea for putting Chill Spike on the map, since freezing people under the Kzans sounded pretty silly at the time; in retrospect, I'm glad this situation didn't actually make it into the map.

While two of our target game types involved classes, this map's construction actually didn't place too much focus on it. Like Llama said in his dev notes for his CMCP map, good maps made for vanilla tend to stay good for other modes. Personally, the stuff I built for this map was entirely focused on vanilla, and any considerations made for classes were more of a flourish on top of that design mentality than any real focus. And really, the only change we made to explicitly accommodate classes was an adjustment to our sight line breaks in mid so flying classes could move around easier.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something, we spent a LOT of time on this map. From day 2 of this competition starting we would just spend hours and hours and hours pouring all the love we could into this map, and it's great that it paid off! Our finishing a few days early was not a result of it being a quick dev cycle-- we had just hit a point where there was nothing else we could think of to do.

If any of the other mappers want some feedback on how they might be able to improve their maps, feel free to hit me up! I had originally filled out a score sheet myself, but felt that the kind of feedback I like to give is more of an active conversation than a wall of critiques. I like constructive criticism; if there's a problem with a map, I always want to at least have an idea on how to fix it to contribute.

Thanks again to the judges, to Mendez for hosting, to Llama for being an incredible partner and friend and to everyone else who contributed a map to this! Hopefully, I'll be seeing some of you in Jam!

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