Spear of Brutality - end of year update

Year is ending a despite my good efforts (and general laziness) I  was not able to meet my goal for this year. Biggest factor here however were the fact that I started studying my Masters degree during Autumn and that took a considerable amount of my free time.

As promised in the first post I have decided to share parts of what I have so far for Spear of Brutality and the Trail of Schabbs:

• Brutal Spear stuff
• Trail of Schabbs textures.

Feel free to use them as you see fit as long as you credit me.

I will continue working on the Trail of Schabbs next year and keep updating, if not monthly, bi-monthly about the status.

Spear of Brutality - late October update

So the end of the Year is closing in fast so I though it is time to set some goals for these last two (or one and a half) months.

Last month I was basically planning what kind of enemies should be in the demo and came up the following list:
- Mechanic (normal soldier),
- Soldier in hev-suit
- Dog (non-cybernetic),
- SS

Soldier in hev-suit and the dog is already finished so this months goal is to get the mechanic and the SS done so in December I can focus on finishing the demo. Alongside the enemy graphics the rough scetches for the levels should be ready.

This is it for the late October update, more information at the end of this month / beginning of the next.

Spear of Brutality - late July update

Sorry for the late update, also this is a short one...

Turns out that trying to organize the object ids was a mistake and it brought more problems than I anticipated... After trying the whole month to get things in order I decided it would be better to return to using original ids instead.

This month I will be reverting the ids back and also looking into enemies again.

Spear of Brutality - June update

This month I was decided to spend time on something that has been bothering me for some while: structure of VSWap.

Normally the sprites in the VSWap are in order objects, enemies, bosses, weapons and additional sprites... That additional sprites part has always bothered me because at least in my mods it is not in any order as I have just added stuff as I have needed; however now for ease of use and to make it simplier for people to use this mods as base I decided to order the whole thing so that it would follow the structure of original Wolfenstein...

Also while I was organizing the VSWap I also started looking into object ids. There are big gaps between the enemy ids and the objects so for the ease of use I decided to streamline that as well: all object ids will be in order without the gaps between.

After doing these changes I started modifying the map object lists and sprite info that ChaosEdit uses but ran into problems... For some reason the new made map objects weren't working at all and everytime I tried to select them ChaosEdit would crash so currently I am investigating the reason for that.

However as plan B I also started to look into WDC once more to see if I could get it working better with the modified object list.

So basically now goal for July is getting the mapping working again.

Spear of Brutality - May update

Another unproductive month due to a little thing called GDPR... Those who do not know what GDPR is, basically we are talking about a change in European legistlation that gives the customers more power to regulate what kind of data corporations are allowed to gather and store. As my clients systems are quite old it has taken rather huge effort to make them GDPR complient as otherwise they would have needed to face sanctions based on their annual revenue.

Spear of Brutality - April update

Some unfortunate new... Due things getting hectic with work I was not able to meet the goals I set for the month: to finalize the first few levels for the Spear of Brutality.

If there is anything I can take from this experience is that I should start making schedules and allocating time (e.g. couple of hours per week) to work on the project to ensure that I get things done in time.

So what would be the goal for this month?

Well, to finally start working on the maps seriously and complete them one by one. If everything goes smoothly next time the sewer section (3 levels + boss) is ready.

Spear of Brutality - March update (eyes on Experience)

Sorry for making this update bit late, due the Easter holidays I had other things to do... Anyway this blog post is bit special as I will be talking about the Experience some people are had been asking about.

So what is the Experience?
As mentioned in earlier blog posts it started as a short mod to test whether I was capable of doing something interesting anymore but soon it turned to a full blown TC that I have worked along side Spear of Brutality. Basically it is now a spiritual successor to Trail of Schabbs.

How much is ready / what still needs to be done?
Basically all wall textures are done and also the static sprites:
https://www.dropbox.com/home/BrutalSpear?preview=Experimence+sprites.mp4

However what needs to be done is to complete the enemies aside from the factory workers and HEV-suits, weapons and of course the maps.

Talking about the maps, the concepts for every level is done and the structure of the game has been decided starting from the boss fights till the ending.

Here is some mockups:

Spear of Brutality - February update

Let's talk about mapping for a moment as for the past month I have been studying the way iD software did their maps.

 When I am creating a map myself I try to come up with realistic structures and room desing that could be found from real locations...

This usually leads to the map layouts being quite similar across the levels (e.g. there is always a storage room for ammo next to storage room for health) with quite many copy-paste rooms found and all the rooms using only pure geometric shapes. Also what is common to my maps that I try to break them in thematic sectors that are usually connected by some sort of central room.

 Maps created by iD software are way different...

In iD's maps the rooms come in all shapes and sizes and usually what the room represents can be deducted from used sprites and textures (e.g. sewers use grey/dirt bricks, dungeons blue bricks, strages red bricks and castle grey walls and marble).

Also what is typycal to levels made by iD is that they tend to be circular: each area of the map is connected to each other in a way that the player can do a circle if all the keys are collected. Exception to this is the boss levels that follow quite simple funnel like structure: player starting area that leads to ammo/health storage followed by the boss arena just before the elevator.

 So now my goal is in Spear of Brutality to create a feeling like you would be playing levels from Spear of Destiny while still keeping some of my own usual tropes.
Aside for studying maps and making some tests I have mostly focused on working on the enemies for both Spear of Brutality and the Experimence... One of the new enemies that player will face is the guards in radiation suits:

Green Arrow -review

Another superb superhero-mod from the Team Raycast that is well known from such much as Operation Eisenfaust: Origins and Legacy, Batman: No mans land and Batman Vs. Bane...

In the Green Arrow you step into the boots of Oliver Queen to fight your way through 15+2 levels to hunt down Deathstroke and to stop his evil plans... As you are only equipped with your fists and your bow you need to use your wits to survive.

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Aesthetics wise this mod is beautiful despite still using the original Wolf3D-palette for textures and sprites (some of the backgrounds however use more colors)... Each different environment is really detailed and the lightning effects really create intense atmosphere. Also in some levels there are special effects that will blow your mind, but not to spoil anything I let you to discover them yourself.

Overall the visuals in this mod were great, however considering how much detail was put to the animations I wish there would have been one for the guards to blowing up.

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Music fits the levels well giving a boost to the atmosphere, though there were couple of songs (or to be exact parts of those songs) that sounded little odd to me during the first time I played... However after listening them through again and again and again, I learned to like them.

Also the sound design was good and it was nice to see little things like water splashing sound when walking in water added to the game.

Only issue that I have is that sometimes when there was multiple sounds playing at once, the sounds drowned to a obscure beep (however this might have been beta-testing weirdness).

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Aside from visuals, map design might be one of the best parts in the game...

Each level have their distinct look and feel and they offers something new to the mod... Despite the diversity, the levels still feel well connected and nothing felt out of place. However this might be also the downside...

In my opinion some of the best levels in the mod were in the middle so the latter part felt bit weaker in comparison. Though I have to say that the last four levels had the most innovative gimmicks I have seen so far implemented in any Wolfenstein mod (actually I would have liked those gimmicks to be used more)...
Another problem with the levels were that as they are quite huge, it is easy to get lost in them so that you end up searching the doors...

Anywayy mappers really have done a great work to create rather atmospheric and interesting levels that are fun to investigate... Though be warned, one of them has a sort of a time limit forcing you to act fast...

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Final thoughts: Overall this is one great mod with great atmosphere and level design full of surprises around every corner... However I wish there had been some more levels so that there would have been more changes to utilize the new tricks implemented in the latter levels.

 I'll give it the final score of 8.5/10

This is a solid mod that you should really play even though you wouldn't be into superheroes or the Green Arrow. I assure that you will have a mind blowing experience.

I am not dead!

For the past couple of months I have been working as Java-programmer so I haven't had that much time to actually work on this mod... Still I am slowly progressing so no worries. Next time I update this blog, I hopefully have something more concrete to show to you.

Trail of Schabbs - weeks 8-9

As the Christmas is just around the corner, progress has been slowed down. I have however finished the SS-Gruppenleiter and made some new sketches for the bosses...

Trail of Schabbs - weeks 6-7

For the last two weeks I have been planning the appearances of the bosses and making new walls. Also now the percentage of the walls complete is updated (amount of planned wall textures might change in the future)...

New Trail of Schabbs SDL - weeks 2-3

Time for a minor update... I have been mostly working on the source for this two weeks merging the guard statetypes and adding functionality for all the different enemies. I have also added all the new weapons and programmed their behavior. And I organized the VSWap-file and added some new features like object based ambiency.

That's all for now... Next update in 1-2 weeks.

New Trail of Schabbs SDL - week 1

Time for the first official blog update...
Project has started quite smoothly and currently I am making walls and objects for the different settings of the game... As stated in the Wolf3d Haven-forum this game will have total of five different chapters and basically each of them has a theme of their own.

As a spoiler, here is a list of the chapters names (might change in future):
- Icy business
- Dark research
- Imprisonment
- To the monsters den
- Eisenfaust

I will be updating the progress every two weeks.

The False Spear 2.1

Hello there... Thanks to DoomJedis help, here is the final update of the False Spear! In this file you can find not only the updated game but the sourcecode and ChaosEdit definitions as well.

Just for fun I also added a test executable for the_fish's advanced shading (can be found from the game folder with the name "wolf4sdl_flash", press 'B' for flashlight)...

EDIT: Updated the download link with file containing a version with the map-patch and a bugfix included.

The False Spear

After so many delays, it is finally here: The False Spear!
Hopefully you enjoy the game as much I enjoyed making it.

Next I am going to follow the trail of Schabbs.

Here is patch that fixes some issues with floor/ceiling and the hud.
NOTE: Your old save files won't work with it.

This patch removes intermissions from loaded game and fixes frozen guard in level 2...

This patch fixes some mapping errors.

The False Spear final week...

This will be final update before release. Currently the game is in testing phase and after I get the results, I will make necessary changes and fixes (if there is need) and then the game is released.

The False Spear weeks 19-20...

Okay... Here is the deal. I am planning to get this done to the end of this month and if I do not succeed, I will release the mapping kit anyway.

The False Spear weeks 17-18...

Game is nearly finished for testing... Unfortunately I have been busy with work so I haven't had time to completed the missing things. Hopefully next week I am done.

The False Spear weeks 15-16...

Forgot to post update last week...
Anyway, one more level to go and then the maps should be all done (minus the musics). Hopefully two more weeks and this game is ready to be sent to the beta-testers...