So Monday was my first day of my new semester, and the first time I’ve taken classes since 3 or 4 semesters ago. So far……….so good, I think . All of my classes are DE (Distance Education) meaning I stay at home and do all of the work on my own. Then I just submit assignments via email or on Blackboard. I’m taking College Composition I (basically English since I didn’t take college-level english in High School), Concepts of Personal and Community Health, Introduction to Network Concepts, and Microcomputer Operating Systems. I should mention that I decided to change my major to Computer Graphics and Web Design Specialization; previous to my return to school I was working towards a Game Design Specialization. The two degree only differ by 3 or 4 classes, so what I may end up doing is just take an extra semester and see if I can’t get both specializations.

I’ve had some problems dealing with these classes in the past and I didn’t do so well as far as grades were concerned. Not so much that the classes were hard…just that I’m not a school-type of person. For some reason I just don’t get that much out of the type of teaching atmospheres that schools around here use. Not to mention there’s a lot of social stresses that I have to deal with, which makes it that much harder. But I’m really gonna try and buckle down this time around. I’m pretty sure I’ll regret it later on if I don’t go through with it.

So the question has to be asked – how will classes affect my mapping and projects? The list of priorities has definitely changed, that’s for sure. But that shouldn’t be a surprise. I won’t say that they bring me to an utter grinding halt; I will almost certainly still have some free time. I’ll just have less of it, that’s all . Progress will probably be slowed down and you may not see much of or from me. But rest assured, they won’t be canceled or anything drastic like that…unless something drastic happens. And it also depends on how demanding these classes turn out to be; right now I can’t give a definite answer on that. The tl;dr is this – I got important, grown-up school stuff to do so I may not map as often, but I’ll still be around and I’ll never, ever stop mapping completely.

So…*sigh*…I tried to make that post sound as positive as possible. I just hope I can follow through with it. Wish me luck guys!

Just in case the 2 of you here didn’t get bored enough from the previous post, here’s another post full of text and no images .

Firstly, Mekworx has been updated to WordPress 3.0.1! Yay WordPress, how I love thee

I can’t remember if I mentioned this here or not, but recently I sold my Alienware Aurora M9700 gaming laptop on eBay for $800. The reason? I’m planning on building a brand new box with the help of Super Jamie! Well ok, to be fair, the laptop was still in perfect working order and still suited my needs. However the fact of it being a laptop never really had any use to me; it sat on my desk pretty much the entire length of my ownership of it. So it was basically a desktop that was prone to getting really hot (the thing had two video cards jammed into it…not so good when you’ve got all those components so close together in a laptop case). The heat never actually caused any problems as it seemed to be ventilated just good enough…but I didn’t like it. So that’s why I’m building a new [desktop] machine. Super Jamie was kind enough to help me with the list of parts based on my price range; this is what we came up with. (big thanks again to Super Jamie for setting that spreadsheet). It’s subject to change, of course, since some of those deals will probably change before I can buy the parts, but that’s gonna be it more or less. Super Jamie’s setup is very similar so it should turn out to be a pretty good machine . I’m planning on chronicling the building process with some pictures and a post…if I’m not too lazy .

For some more immediate news in the realm of Meka-projects, a couple of things – Vela Pax is currently on hold, Supplice was briefly in-progress but is now back to on-hold status again, and I started a new vanilla map for Joshy’s Plutonia Revisited Community Project. And now, explanations – Since I sold my laptop, which was my main computer, I’ve been relegated to two much older and much slower machines; my mom’s old ThinkPad (just for internet usage when I’m around it) and my old Win98 box [running XP] for everything else. The Win98 computer is atleast 13 years old though it’s had a few minor upgrades done to it since then. But it still can’t run a whole lot. I attempted to try and work on the latest Vela Pax map in it and it basically laughed back in my face saying “I don’t think so, scooter”. I then attempted to run GIMP on it so I could possibly do some texture work for Supplice. Well, needless to say, it was waaaay too slow for my tastes, so I promptly dropped that plan. Then I remembered back at Joshy’s new community project. I had thought briefly about contributing something to it since I was sorta itching for some vanilla-style mapping. At the time I was too busy with other things to help out though. However, now that I’m stuck on my older box that can’t do what I need it to for my projects, I decided I’d try and contribute a map. And so I started something a few days ago! No shots right now, but I’m hoping to have the bare layout done in a few days. The work-in-progress name for the map is “Atlatl” and it’s probably going to be a episode 1 map (both in terms of appearance and difficulty). There’s not much else I can say about it right now so keep your eyes peeled for shots.

Lastly, as many of you are probably already aware, QuakeCon started up not too long ago! And why am I mentioning this here when I obviously am not there and really have nothing to do with it? Well, because Carnevil and gang made it back there this year to show off the latest work on Last Bastion. Even though I’m not part of the team working on the project any longer, I still follow the project and support it 100%! Carn almost didn’t make it this year, which would have sucked. But with the help and advice of a few Doomer’s, he was able to find affordable lodging and make it down there this year . From what I’ve been told, the reactions so far have been very positive. Be sure to keep an eye out for more news and updates on the project’s blog as well as Carnevil’s twitter feed. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m really looking forward to seeing some new shots and vids by the end of this year’s QC

Well that’s all I gots fer now. I’ll be back with some pictures in the next post, I promise!

The past week has been a bit of a whirlwind of all sorts of things. Well pretty much everything but mapping . I got my hands on some Armored Core ports for the PSP recently and much of my gaming time has been focused on those. I even went as far as to compile a Hidden Parts Guide for it since the community hadn’t filled that void yet. I also recently made the decision to go back to school and finish up my degree. There were some personal issues that sorta hindered my college endeavors and really almost made me say “the hell with it”. But I realized that if I don’t go through with it, I may regret it. So it’s very likely that I may have to cut down on my mapping and other activities this coming Fall; it sorta sucks but I think most anyone would agree that it’s way more important. On top of that, there have been some really retarded issues that have been coming up in relation to my extended family. Long story short it’s put a lot of stress on the entire family as well as myself. So, I don’t know, it’s just extra baggage that I don’t care to be carrying around right now. It’ll probably also put some sort of hindrance on me as I head back to school as well as my personal and communal projects.

With the time away from the computer, I’ve been pondering my various projects and involvements in community related efforts. I was actually having a somewhat hard time getting away from Doom Builder a little over a week ago when I wanted to take a break. This time I was either having a hard time convincing myself to even turn the computer on or I was too busy dealing with bullshit or something else. Really, I could probably do with a few more days off from anything computer related. But seeing as how I don’t have much else to do during the day that doesn’t bore me to tears, I decided to hop back and and put my focus into mapping. And so that’s what I’m going to do!

I thought it would be a good idea to cap off where I’m at on each of the projects I’m working on. And also to briefly list off my future plans for each of them.

Vela Pax
The last time I stopped working on this, I was about 35-40% complete with MAP05. To give you a little perspective, from my last blog post with the work-in-progress screenshots, I was probably somewhere around 10-15% done. I’ve been moving at a steady pace on the map although it’s been a somewhat slow pace. Slower than I’d like, anyways. I’ll begin working on this map again today and hopefully I can progress a little faster now that I’m working my way into base layout. My goal is to be half-way or more finished with the project before Fall hits.

There was a concern I was having about the music; specifically the file size of the whole new music chunk. I have pretty much found all of the tracks that I want to use. The issue is that it’s going to be somewhere around 19 MB of extra space. If you think about it, that’s not a whole lot by today’s standards. But in comparison to the file sizes of a Doom map, it seems sorta lop-sided. I made some swap-outs and sacrifices here and there and I was able to find a working play list that equaled 10 MB; in comparison though, that 9 extra MB doesn’t really seem to make much of a difference. The music is in .it tracker format and they are of pretty high quality. They convey the mood I want for the maps almost “to a tee”. With some of the maps going to be a hour or more long in play length, my reasoning was that the large music file size was worth it in that regard. I would really like to hear opinions on this. But I think in the end, if I really think the music fits the map and works well with the project as a whole, then I’ll just have to overlook the file sizes and ignore the file size nazis.

Supplice
Ever since I started working on Vela Pax, things have slacked off tremendously with Supplice. Which is no surprise; I can only focus on one thing at a time and I don’t like working on other major projects until I’m done with the ones I’m working on. I guess you can chalk that up to my horrible multi-tasking skills. The only real work that has been done is the music; Jimmy91 is the man to thank for that. He’s been making some amazing tracks given my weird tastes and requests. Jimmy is really the only man whose done a considerable amount of work on the project so far.

To be fair though, I have done a few things since I first announced the project. Jimmy and I have discussed many of the project’s ins-and-outs in depth and we have a pretty good plan to work by so far. I attempted to try and create my own textures for the project; this is still pending but I will likely make a final decision on if I want to pursue that option once I make a few more textures. Right now it’s still mostly working out how we want to approach the various aspects of the project; we are pretty close to the point where actual work needs to begin so that we can knock out all of the resources and begin mapping. However I have planned on finishing up Vela Pax first before I start any major amount of work on Supplice again.

TSoZD
At this point I’m not really even sure why I’m on the team for this project . I really haven’t done a damn thing since I was put on the team. Other projects have been eating up all of my time unfortunately. Things have really been moving at a snail’s pace other than what essel and Vader have been working on. I recently had a discussion with essel about whether or not I was still interested in the project and what ideas essel had to get the project moving again. I’ve tried on a couple of occasions to break myself from whatever I was working on at the time and try to get something started for this. And every time something would prevent me from getting very far.

Basically, I’m still very interested in the project and contributing to it. The problem is that with all of the stuff I’ve got coming up in the near future, I’m not sure how much I’m going to be able to work on this. My goal is to try and start something before my classes start this August; that way I will at least have some ideas and a base to work from when I do have the time. After that, the trick will be trying to balance this with Vela Pax, other real-life activities, and school work.

Vaporware
So this project is pretty much in the same boat as TSoZD, unfortunately. To add to it, there are a number of Eternity-related editing additions that I’m not familiar with. As far as the mapping process is concerned, that’s going to slow me down a bit. Although I have done a little bit of work for it so far; I made a font set for it a while back although I’m not even sure if it’s going to be used. And I try to remember and test out the work in progress maps that are posted when I have a chance. But no, I haven’t started any mapping yet .

I was planning on doing 2 or 3 medium-length, hell-themed maps for the project. And whenever I can seize the free time to do it, I will. I don’t know what that will be though.

Long story short, I’m back in the same predicament that I didn’t want to be in and had worked hard to get out of when I hopped on board Project Vega Too many projects to work on/contribute too, not enough time and little-to-no tolerance to hop around from one to another. I try to remind myself that they are just games; they are nothing to be stressed out over. But I guess with everything that’s been going on my own little world, it’s sorta been eating away at me. So I’m gonna try and drown myself in some mapping for the time being

And now for some Doom stuff!

So recently I finished up detailing and prettifying Jimmy91′s CC4 map “Suburbia. It took me a few weeks once I started back on it; slightly longer than I had anticipated but I had fun working on it nonetheless. As I’ve said before, I tend to stress out a bit more when doing work on someone else’s map. This time I wasn’t so stressed, although there were a few hurdles to jump over. The map is very varied in the texture theme department; brick n’ stone, techbase, hell, gothic, and a little bit of everything else inbetween. Getting all of those texture themes to mesh in a way that didn’t look weird or just plain fugly took a little bit of thought and care, but in the end it came out pretty good. I think you guys will really enjoy this map. I’ve already posted some shots at the Doomworld CC4 thread but I wanted to throw some here to. So here ya go:

My plans after finishing up Jimmy’s map were to start work back up on Vela Pax. And so that’s what I did! About a week and a few days ago, I started grinding away on the next map in my crosshairs; MAP05. The map is entitled “Delirium” and is going to be a hell themed map. In case you, the reader, have forgotten, this map is going to be a detailed and expanded version of Dominion of Madness; a speedmap I released a while back. However it’s very likely that most of the original map (gameplay and detail) will be changed drastically or even completely different. The basic texture theme is consisting of marble/wood/metal so far while the structures and feeling of the map are going to be foreboding and massive. I’m looking to keep the map’s size and length somewhere around medium-ish, though I may go nuts again and have it turn out to be some huge, 1 1/2 hours marathon It’s shaping up pretty well and I’m enjoying the work though! I just posted some screenshots on the Vela Pax thread at Doomworld, so I figured I’d whore them out here as well. Here they are:

The areas in these shots are still very much work-in-progress; no lighting or thing placement done yet and everything is subject to change.

So I’m going to continue working on this map in the coming days and weeks. I’ll be sure to drop some more updates and screenshots when I can on the Vela Pax thread at Doomworld, so be sure to check in every now and again. I’m also trying to keep the Wads in Progress page up to date but it seems that whomever does the update approval has been busy. So it might take a while before my update go through over there. In the mean time, I would love to hear comments and the such

A few days ago, I finished up this map I have been working on for my latest side project, Vela Pax. And lemme tell ya, it is a beast of a map. Once I got the layout done and started working on gameplay and thing placements, I had to fight with the 65536 SEGS limit the whole time. It was somewhat of a pain, but in the end it didn’t hurt the detailing or gameplay of the map. This map took me just over a month to finish (breaks and laziness included, of course).

The name of the map is Substruct. It’s the third map out of six in the Vela Pax episode and it’s detailed and themed in a techbase/industrial setting. It will be the final techbase-style map before you start to delve into more gothic and hell themed maps in the latter part of the episode. The map is somewhere between medium and hard in difficulty and it will probably take the average player over an hour to finish in it’s entirety. The gameplay is about as non-linear as you can get; you can run around 95% of the entire map without having to open up areas and do things in any order you wish. Although because of this, certain routes may be easier or harder depending on where you wonder to and what weapons and items are available to you.

As promised, here are the final screenshots for Substruct:

From this point I will be working on Jimmy91′s CC4 map and some Supplice-related stuff (namely some graphic and DEHACKED related things). I want to finish up the CC4 map before I move onto anything else with Vela Pax. I’m hoping it won’t take me very long to do.

As far as what’s planned for the future construction of Vela Pax, I’m planning on doing my update and expansion of my recently released speedmap Dominion of Madness next (I’m going to rename it for this, but I’m not sure to what at the moment). It will be the 5th map in the episode and will get a face lift, probably a hefty number of new areas, and maybe some gameplay flow changes. If you’ve played the original map before, or if you want to give it a spin now, I’m really looking for some more feedback on it’s gameplay as a whole so I can reflect it on the updated version. I will eventually be looking for some dedicated testers, so let me know if your interested.

I am somewhat pleased with how my non-linear approach to Substruct came out. For the remaining maps, I’m thinking I will inject some more of this non-linear, open-ended style of mapping, although maybe not to the same extreme extent. I’d also like to keep the playtime to an average of 30-45 minutes long, although longer wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing in my book as long as the map is interesting enough to keep the player engaged for that length of time. I’d also like to try and not get so blasted close to that SEGS limit again, but knowing me I will probably go nuts with those other maps just like I did with this one . Theme-wise, it’s basically being split up into two mini-episodes; techbase for the first 3 and hell for the latter 3. Although I’m planning on having them varied; for instance, MAP01 will be very techbase while MAP02 will start to get into more heavy industrial. MAP04 is planned to be a sort of city-scape slowing being taken over by hell while MAP06 will be your garden variety Hell with lots and lots of red, lava, flesh, and copious amounts of demonic hordes. This is the plan right now anyways

Lastly, I got my Wads in Progress page up for Vela Pax, so check that out if your interested. Thanks to everyone who has commented and helped me out so far! I’m enjoying myself working on this project and I hope that will be a reflection of things to come for Supplice