February 25th, 2007

Ten years ago, on February 22nd 1997, the first episode of Mordeth was released. A small historic fact that apparantly has not gone unnoticed... thanks guys! :) Lots has happened since that day, and I don't mean just this project. And here we are today, Doom and its community still around. That's pretty amazing, huh?

A few issues are the root cause of this project still not being finished. And I'm not even talking about the multiple attempts to get a team going, or the multiple setbacks and delays experienced. Key was the emergence of source ports and the proliferation of features that followed. Time and time again new features got added, and work adapted to that. Then I made it worse, overextended myself by working on two episodes at once. Combined, the focus of the project always shifted around. And lastly: because the project dragged on most of the finished work became outdated and had to be redone. This last bit is still going on today.

And of course: I'm working as slow as a glacier! :)

And still not finished. Work has been pretty much on a backburner since last December, after a month-long vacation in China, extremely long working days ("make the hurting stop...") and (yes I'll admit it) the release of WoW: The Burning Crusade. Now that the excitement has begun to wane away I've turned my eye once again to my level editor. So far the new outdoor theming has been giving me lots of trouble... I certainly underestimated this particular overhaul!

No new screenies yet. Main work has been going on for outdoor areas, and since I use portals for that it's not "showable" until the portal parts are done and "glued together". Otherwise it just shows up as (literally) half a level. And that won't do :)

I'd like to thank everyone who is still waiting (and waiting and waiting) for the new episodes. It better be good! :)

June 26th, 2006

Work has been going on slowly but steady, despite ever-decreasing available free time. The current level-in-progress has most of its layout in place but some key area's still need to be fleshed out. Now that the next version of the Eternity Engine gets a doubled SEGS limit, I'm finally able to dress up the outdoor environments in a way that's more to my liking. Several previously prepared outdoor themes were reviewed before I finally settled on a particular setting a couple of weeks ago… No, I'm not telling yet... I hope to get to show some meaningfull screenies off this soon! Apart from creating, expanding and improving these new outdoor resources, there was also some maintenance work done on the existing stuff.

Today, I just feel like elaborating on some (gameplay) issues.

Despite my almost-overwhelming attraction to RPG elements lately (especially after Gothic2 / WoW), this project is still going for the "lonely marine" approach… there's no "sarge" to guide you along, no screen messages to tell you what to do, no carefully misplaced PDA's to be picked up, no NPC's to talk to, no marks on the automap to guide you. But I've sure been tempted from time to time because everything you do in a FPS (even a modern one!) is basically a switchhunt. Yes, the old and often loathed switchhunt. It's the dressing-up that's different, which disguises a "press four switches to open the door" as a "open three valves then fire up a rocket booster to kill a Tentacle which opens a way out" situation, or a "pick up 3 keys then press three switches" as a "pick up three demolition packs then destroy these three radiomasts". And it better has to make some sense to the player or he'll just fail to grasp what he's required to do in order to proceed. So, in absence of any kind of guidance and a large non-linear level to (potentially) get lost in, my player has to rely on visual clues so that means I have to limit myself to fairly straightforward "puzzles". So, in short, no Hexen syndrome here.

With a different theming in episode 2, the atmosphere has also changed. While the first episode could be described as "gloomy", its successor goes for "oppressive". It has more dark and foreboding area's which is even more accentuated by the contrasting outdoors and well-lit indoor area's sprinkled around, while the sprawling layout and architecture makes the player feel small and very much in danger.

Despite EE having no multiplayer support yet, Mordeth does plan for it. So expect good multiplayer gameplay, including shortcuts being opened up once an objective has been achieved and means of recovery after a untimely death.

Several things are still unresolved. There's a theming issue that I could really use for one level (akin to Doom3's "hallucination" stuff), but which might look misplaced inside other levels… so the question is to use it, and how, or (most likely) come up with something else instead. I'm also in doubt on how exactly to rebuild the first (due to that old burglary: lost) level, and whether Gary's refurbished level still fits in. Plus spritework that I've been neglecting for a long time.

And also important: regardless of the long development cycle, I will/can not "hurry up". Sure, I'd like this to be released... the sooner, the better… but matter of fact is that paying attention to Real Life stuff takes precedence over the need to finish some game add-on. Just be glad I got rid of my WoW addiction, and that the result will be worth waiting for! :)

And the really good news: up to now I have valiantly resisted all my girlfriend's suggestions that my "stupid game" "needs more flowers" and "maybe some cute animals you can chase and pick up". Hurray!

February 10th, 2006

Yay, a pulse! The good news is that I finally got rid of a crippling WoW addiction. Raiding Molten Core, Zul'Gurub etc 3-4 times a week stops being fun after a while, since raiding is all that's left to do once you hit the levelcap. Plus, my main was a Paladin... Need I say anything more? Anyway, back to Doom!

Portals is where it's all at nowadays in Mordeth-land. Can't imagine doing stuff without those now. Levels look more life-like with added details and perspective on floors and ceilings. In many cases it's actual easier to use a portal instead of old-fashioned detailing. For example, creating a ceiling with some details (beams, skylights, perhaps a moving ceiling fan) over a floorplan with eg. lots of crates used to be a pain... now, you can just leave the ceiling bare and slap on a ceiling portal to add the details much more easily, using much less sectors and in much less time.

And apparantly interactive portals are the next step, allowing projectiles, monsters and players to pass seamlessly between sectors and their portals. At this point Eternity will basically become a 3D engine, more or less similar to Build. This will sure change gameplay a lot. But, this will take a while before implementation :) I do think that other source ports will follow Eternity's example here and implement their own versions of portals, since 3D floors are just no match for the flexibility of interactive portals.

Progress? Yes, although things could have been much better. At least I can show you guys some more screenshots which - I might add - are from a new level.

March 22nd, 2005

Wow, have I been neglecting this site... almost a year not updated! The project is still going nice, but progress has been slowed down significantly since November. Life has been a rollercoaster ride these last months, so that took most of my attention. Admittingly, spending time with World of Warcraft also did not help :) Still, I've got some stuff to show for my absence. The most fun thing to do so far was playing around with Eternity's portal and 3DMidTex features, which makes for a number of great sceneries. I've currently (re)started a new level, but I keep turning back to "finished" stuff, for that extra little tweak. Whee!

May 31st, 2004

Progress is still going nice. One final outdoor area plus an another few days good work and I can add another level to the 'completed' list. Nice, especially considering that level was done from scratch in just over 3 months - and I'm usually only be able to work on the project a day or two at most during a normal week. Two more maps, a bit of tidying up, and I think it's done. Famous last words, no doubt :)

Meanwhile, Quasar has upped the version of his Eternity engine to v3.31 Beta 7, featuring portals and high-resolution. I still haven't used its portal features, yet, due to time contraints. Got some nice things planned though :)

As a last note: my email is still getting spammed. So when trying to contact me: start your subject header with "DOOM" or your mail is bound to get discarded unread.

December 22nd, 2003

And a belated Happy Birthday to Doom! I still can't believe this good old game is now 10 years old. Lots of kudos to Cyb, Ling and the other contributors to Doomworld's celebration feature! I, as usual, was too engrossed in work and other matters to even notice we were already living in December. Also, this news blurb does not have the usual reference to the long hiatus between updates here which, incidently, is now standing at half-a-year. Shit.

Work on the TC has progressed by leaps. The Eternity engine is now at v3.31 beta5 and looking even better with each new version increment. Mordeth's dehacked patch is now obsolete and completely redone from scratch in EDF. If you haven't tried EDF yet, I recommend you do... editing new stuff has never been easier! You are not only able to (re)create any number of monsters from scratch within minutes but you even have access to custom-made behaviour, attack pointers and sounds while keeping the syntax simple and readable. You can assign new Thing/map id's to your custom-made horrors and you can make up new frames as you go without hassle. Amazing ;)

There has been a humongous amount of work done in the level department. One more level has been completed after being totally revised twice... Well, almost totally... I'm sure there are one or two area's left that went unnoticed and got spared. Revisions were neccessary because of hitting the SEGS limit (...again) and because Eternity won't have hubs after all... or at least not in the foreseable future. This meant some changes in the gameflow and thus level design. Plus there were the usual esthetic make-overs... that screenshot section is now SO out-of-date! :) I've also made a cautious attempt to recreate one of the lost levels, and I'm using some unused level parts to start a new one. But yes, the amount of work lost due the last year's burglary is hurting the project to this day.

Graphics work has had low priority. Most of the in-progress sprite work was lost as well and I haven't had the heart to redo most of this. The texture set is more or less complete but there are still a few things missing which I haven't gotten around to do yet. The site could use some maintenance itself, too. Another thing I haven't had time for.

No word from the rest of the "team", insofar I actually still have one. But then again, I haven't contacted them either... guess I finally grew sick of reminding people to actually work on their levels only to have them die on me again one draft later... Like, when you were a young kiddie and your guppies died again (possibly because you overfed them and they exploded) and you finally convince mom to buy you a new batch... that'll only work a couple of times before you remain stuck with an empty tank and heaps of small smelly dead fishies and you move on to bigger and better things (possibly a white pet rabbit). Of course, I'm still hoping against better judgement to get a couple of levels from what seems to be my last remaining contributor (yes, that's you Nick 'Nightmare' Baker).

As for attracting new level designers... You might want to read the older news section here so you can see how well that has worked out over the past couple of years. It's a shame really, because having just one or two additional ACTIVE designers brings a release very, very close indeed. But you never know... maybe an established level designer is reading this and can convince me he's up to the challenge.

Well, yeah, that's about it for now... apart from a word on email. I guess I ought to consider the basic principle behind emails, and actually start reading them. That is, after I'm done setting up a spamfilter for all my incoming mail to filter out that one legit email from amongst hundreds of spam messages. Whee, seems like i've got myself a new New Year's resolution! Sorry to those people who have tried to contact me but didn't get a reply... For now, people who want to contact me need to include the word "DOOM" plus a short description in their topic or it'll probably get discarded as spam.

ATTN Rob B. ... your change-of-adress email got discarded as spam as well.... only noticed it was from you when the 'delete' button was already pushed. Can you resend?

May 14th, 2003

Wow, this is about time I updated... it's been way too long! After last time's pretty disastrous news we're all about due for some good news for a chance. Well, you're in luck. Most, if not all, lost episode 2 resources have been rebuild and the status of most levels is now way beyond what they used to be - despite me not having been able to work on this TC for the past two months. I'm also building for Eternity beta 2 now, including using its new features.

Here are a couple of screenshots... visitors of the Doomworld Eternity Forum might have seen these already:

Notice how the Imp in the second screenshot is walking ON the suspended crossbeams, thanks to Eternity's 3DMidTex feature. This feature can also be used to make breakable surroundings, such as Demons breaking through metal grids and double-sided breakable windows... Mad stuff! Can't wait to play around with the next beta, when we (hopefully) get some kind of scripting language.

December 21st, 2002

Well, this time around the news is pretty disastrous... two weeks ago my house got burgled while I was at work, and stuff got stolen. Among which my computer and all Mordeth material. This kind of thing would almost make me nostalgic about the usual "another designer up and leaves" kind of news one has come to expect around here.

Meanwhile, the rest of the team have sent me an older Mordeth draft, and our losses seem to be not as crippling as I first feared:

• Latest texture resources.
• Advanced 'episode 3' level draft, older draft still available.
• Village in forest/swamp level draft (ep. 3)
• One entire 'episode 2' level-in-progress.
• Advanced 'episode 2 level draft, older draft from before June still available.
• Several sprites in various stages of design.
• Some re-texturing of ep. 2 secret level.

Also, I'm still trying to get back in contact with Ola Bjorling, Anthony Soto and Rob Berkowitz... and I don't have their current email addy's anymore. Anyone? If you read this, please contact me! I'll be offline roughly from next monday until the first week of January, in case you do.

And the saga continues...

For still older news, check out the Yesterday's News section.