The False Spear SDL

Hello everyone, WLHack here... It has been a really long time since I last posted here.
Anyway, let's get straight to the business.

After years of idling, I have started to work on Wolf3D mods on again and my goal
is to finally release ToS. But before that I will remake False Spear in SDL...

Here is what I have planned to do:

- Add new levels and fix the old ones:
Let's face it... The last levels of TFS were extremely bad (especially the final boss) so
I am going to alter the existing levels a bit.

- Add more walls, doors and items:
The problem with the DOS version was memory limitations. Because of that, there were not much
variation between scenery (I bet you can count all different wall types, excluding the wall decoration,
without even using all of your fingers). Also doors only had three different textures (compare to the ToS SDL-demo).

- Add some more guards (and maybe minibosses):
Nice little thing that gives the game more atmosphere...

- Replace the projectile shooting mutants with regular ones:
The rocket mutants didn't work that well, because most of the time they killed themselves due the splash damage.
So I decided that I am going with mutants more similar to the original ones (behavioral changes though)...

- Update the graphics:
TFS was a mess of "realistic" graphics and cartoony ones, so I have decided to update them a bit (and
recycle ToS ones). Also I will be using ToS-palette as I think it has the perfect colors for this mod.

- Explore the themes more:
Okay. We had the mines, dungeons, abandoned research facility etc... But due the 21 level limit each
different theme only had about 1-3 levels. This time I am going to add more than 21 levels and maybe add alternative routes.
In case of alternative routes I will remove total-playtime from the end of the game.

- Change the music to midi and replace the original Wolf3D sounds...

And much more...

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Download:
The False Spear SDL
Map-patch

Good to see you back. I'll be all over this once it's released, that's for sure.

Thomas wrote:Good to see you back. I'll be all over this once it's released, that's for sure.

Thanks I hope I can maintain the feel of original False Spear and still update it to this day standards..

Yes, good to see you back on the forums! Great news.

ronwolf1705 wrote:Yes, good to see you back on the forums! Great news.

Thanks...

Added progress list to the first post... Will update it weekly.

Well if it isn't the great WLHack being back. Can't wait to see this in action.

A legend has returned! Why change the screenname though? You still have your old one here. Fresh start perhaps?

This is super cool. Like beyond words super cool. In the past month, we have learned through the Haven that WLHack is back and through DHW that WSJ is still lurking around making things too. Two of the best independent authors to ever exist, two I had thought I'd never again see return, and now in under a month we know otherwise. As they say...Let the good times roll!!!

Even before thinking of ToS, the business of getting TFSpear (extended acronym because TFS is also The Final Solution) into SDL is definitely something I'm looking forward to. In a way it's a classic, but in another way I couldn't agree more it needs some patching up. Not convinced, or don't want to deal with the Dos bugs? Play his secret levels in Nazi Operation or E4L6/E5L8/E6L4/E6L9 of the Super Haven Mapset and even those will tell you that this is one author with some great capabilities and potential for interesting maps. Then play ToS Demo to see how he can code for SDL (enjoy the maps too though!). Put the two together, and we have a dynamo I'd say.

In short...I have no doubt ToS is set to be his eventual masterwork, but TFSpear in a much more stable SDL and all those enhancement is nothing to turn a blind eye to either.

WolferCooker wrote:A legend has returned! Why change the screenname though? You still have your old one here. Fresh start perhaps?

The e-mail address for my old account doesn't exist anymore and I lost the password...
I did post a pm about the issue to Eric so this userid might be just temporary.

WLHack, dear pal, how happy I am to see you here, was hoping you'll return.
You're one of the top modders for me, and one of those rare modders who are "all in one" pack - who can do good art, maps, sounds and coding - to be really independent on others in mod development. I think out of 3 - art is what you do best, I actually learned from you how to sprite well. Your artworks are really inspiring for me.
You're my dear friend, and I'll never forget working with you and how you gave an unknown wolfer a chance to have his first mod - without you there probably would be no DoomJedi here, and I'd stay on doom forums. I owe you for that big time, and whatever you might need - just ask

If you need a dev. forum to (privately) host your project - I can host it on our dev. forum, I've done it in the past for some other wolfers, and still do.
Any help you might need from me - you can ask me - and I'm sure all "Team RayCast" members will be glad to help you anytime. Needless to say you're always welcome to return working with me and join "Team RayCast" on all our exciting Wolf3D projects in development.

Good luck with all your projects and remakes!

P.S. I wonder if you had a chance to play any of "Team RayCast" mods...especially "Eisenfaust". I'd be honoured to get a feedback from you.

doomjedi wrote:
Any help you might need from me - you can ask me - and I'm sure all "Team RayCast" members will be glad to help you anytime. Needless to say you're always welcome to return working with me and join "Team RayCast" on all our exciting Wolf3D projects in development.

Well, I would be glad to help Team Raycast when I get more familiar with the code again. Too much C# and Visual Basic has rotten my brain.

doomjedi wrote:
P.S. I wonder if you had a chance to play any of "Team RayCast" mods...especially "Eisenfaust". I'd be honoured to get a feedback from you.

Well, what I have played so far, I really like Eisenfaust. It was nice change of concept also Sonder was one of my favourites as well..

Hack, you DO realize that Eisenfaust IS the modified version of Sonder right? The maps and gameplay are the same, but the storyline and art/graphics are changed.

WolferCooker wrote:Hack, you DO realize that Eisenfaust IS the modified version of Sonder right? The maps and gameplay are the same, but the storyline and art/graphics are changed.

Yeah, I know that... But the concept was still interesting.

Indeed. But there are some more good mods to come.

Great to see you back Toni, I been asked by more people about if you are coming back than I have about any other person. You really have been missed! The False Spear has always been one of my favourite mods and I am immensely excited to hear that it's getting an SDL makeover. If you need any help with it or any of your other mods please let me know, either myself or Team Raycast would, I'm sure, be more than happy to assist
Will you be updating your website? If you want to join back at DHW and are having any problems getting in let me know and I can fix up your log in like Eric has done here. I know we've kept your profile.

Dean wrote:Will you be updating your website? If you want to join back at DHW and are having any problems getting in let me know and I can fix up your log in like Eric has done here. I know we've kept your profile.

Yeah, I will put the status there too... Also I think I will start doing reviews again.
Also I sent you a pm about the DHW.

Okay... Updated the status of the project and futher updates can
be read from here: http://wlhacksmods.blogspot.fi/ (of course
I will update the progress to the first post aswell)...

Awesome news! Can you please make the Bosses in TFS a little harder? They were quite a bit too easy in the Dos version.

Sent you back a PM

Dean wrote:Awesome news! Can you please make the Bosses in TFS a little harder? They were quite a bit too easy in the Dos version.

Well, I see what I can do... I think the boss-levels themselves add difficulty so maybe redoing them as well.

Will there be some graphics changes compared to the DOS version? The grassy textures for the floors and walls for the outside levels look a bit too plain IMO.

WolferCooker wrote:Will there be some graphics changes compared to the DOS version? The grassy textures for the floors and walls for the outside levels look a bit too plain IMO.

Allow me to answer that with a quote:

WLHack wrote:
- Update the graphics:
TFS was a mess of "realistic" graphics and cartoony ones, so I have decided to update them a bit (and recycle ToS ones). Also I will be using ToS-palette as I think it has the perfect colors for this mod.

So yes...

Oh okay. Silly me.

Interesting... In ChaosEdit if you place a floor/ceiling texture with ID 255 or higher, it will be saved with ID 0 or higher.
I hope this doesn't happen in WDC. Well, if it does, I just alter the code to change the floor/ceiling tiles with id 0-64 to 255-319...

If you are using high/low bytes, the maps only hold 8bytes 0xFFFF, the first two FF's for high, last two FFs for low, 0-255, so unless you up the size, then I would imagine it does overflow.

Does this sound about right with what is happening?

insurrectionman wrote:If you are using high/low bytes, the maps only hold 8bytes 0xFFFF, the first two FF's for high, last two FFs for low, 0-255, so unless you up the size, then I would imagine it does overflow.

Does this sound about right with what is happening?

Yeah, this is most likely the case. Well, I do some testing to see what is going on.
Thanks for the advice.

insurrectionman wrote:If you are using high/low bytes, the maps only hold 8bytes 0xFFFF, the first two FF's for high, last two FFs for low, 0-255, so unless you up the size, then I would imagine it does overflow.

Does this sound about right with what is happening?

Indeed that is what happens. I've had this problem myself, and fixed it by adding a fourth plane. You could do that, if you wish.

A fourth plane? Didn't think that was possible in Wolf3d.

It is possible. My original DOS mod DOOM: Legions of Hell had 5 planes (wall, obj, patches, floor, ceiling), I did re-work it to 3 in the SDL version simply because I couldn't get the 4th plane working on the SDL version. I am not sure why, but I didn't need it.

An alternative that I was going to do, if I needed 255 separate floors/ceilings was to create an offset. Instead of 0x00 being tile 0, it would be tile... 256 or something to that extent.

This would ensure plenty of walls, and no worry for the floor/ceiling tiles to be limited to 255. Although I haven't implemented this concept yet, I'm fairly certain it would work. ChaosEdit's 3DEdit wouldn't show the correct tiles visually, but numerically, they would be correct.

insurrectionman wrote: An alternative that I was going to do, if I needed 255 separate floors/ceilings was to create an offset. Instead of 0x00 being tile 0, it would be tile... 256 or something to that extent.

I think this is what I am going to do, because there isn't that many floor/ceiling
textures over 255 so there is no need to add extra planes.

Okay... After seeing the awesome picture of Wolfenstein 3D Lite,
I started to work on shading as well...
Currently things look like this:

Spoiler:

Basically I am porting the code the_fish made for Wolf4GW
and I will post a complete tutorial after I have finished porting the code
(still need to add shading for the objects and make it read level shading
from the 4th plane).

I don't see the picture

Me neither.

Changed the link... Hopefully works now. Also now the objects are also shaded.

Looks nice but I see that floor/ceiling bug whenever you edit maps, though I've read you can fix that.

WolferCooker wrote:Looks nice but I see that floor/ceiling bug whenever you edit maps, though I've read you can fix that.

Um... Actually that bug has been fixed and can't be seen in the screenshot. Those strange green and black things in floor/ceiling are
caused by lack of floor/ceiling tiles (so I can see wether the light effect works with the floor/ceiling tiles turned off).
Later today I will post a better screenshot...

Ah okay. Silly me.

Updated the current status...

Spoiler:

Two more pics of the advanced shading...

The shading system works with both hi- and lores texture and
players weapon is shaded according to the shading level (so if
player stand under lamp, the weapon is lighted).

Currently the lightmap is generated by the mapobject and walls
but I will make it work with the 4th plane. Also there is still
some problems with generating lighted areas as you can see in the
second picture...

The bottom pic reminds me of the advanced shading in Level 23 of The Lost Relic. Yours is even darker compared to this:

Spoiler:

BTW, are the weapons are still the same in this version (6-7 total)? Or will there be any additional ones or reductions?

How many maps (of the 21 total) in TFS SDL will be completely redone, and how many additional ones will be changed significantly (enough that there will be entire sections I may no longer recognize)?

With the total drought of anything new (or even revamped) coming out this year so far (okay, Strife II was brand new) I'm definitely looking forward to this, and glad you are back in the community!

WolferCooker wrote:
BTW, are the weapons are still the same in this version (6-7 total)? Or will there be any additional ones or reductions?

Weapons will be mostly same.

WolfForever wrote:How many maps (of the 21 total) in TFS SDL will be completely redone, and how many additional ones will be changed significantly (enough that there will be entire sections I may no longer recognize)?

With the total drought of anything new (or even revamped) coming out this year so far (okay, Strife II was brand new) I'm definitely looking forward to this, and glad you are back in the community!

Let's see... Atleast boss and bonus levels will be redone, also every single
level will have a minor touch up. How many levels will be completely redone, that
I am not sure yet.

What about "Desert Fox"?...it looked promicing...no plans on resurrect that one?

doomjedi wrote:What about "Desert Fox"?...it looked promicing...no plans on resurrect that one?

Well... After TFS and ToS I think I start to work on that again.

Great! It had great potential...

This is blowing me away. The screenshots look very good. Not something I ever thought could be possible with the wolf3d engine. Keep up the great work man, and hopefully someday we can work together again!

WLHack wrote:Okay... After seeing the awesome picture of Wolfenstein 3D Lite,
I started to work on shading as well...

I like where you're going with this. A tile-based shading scheme for Wolf4SDL is long overdue.

lilmanjs wrote:This is blowing me away. The screenshots look very good. Not something I ever thought could be possible with the wolf3d engine. Keep up the great work man, and hopefully someday we can work together again!

Thanks... It would be a honor to work with you again.

Updated the status... Now all the weapons are done and nearly all items (only pick-ups for one of the weapons is missing). Also the first level is done.

I spent this week mostly on the advanced shading and this:

Spoiler:

This feature can be turned on/off in the feature-menu, but I have yet to decide
whether I actually include it in the False Spear.

What feature?