DieHard Wolfers

[Matthew]

I am planning to soon add a major new feature to Wolf4SDL -- connected maps.

In the original Wolf3D, and all mods I know of, levels aren't connected in any meaningful way. They are completely separate, and regardless of where you exit one level, you always start the next at the exact same location and direction.

There also are no level exit triggers, only end game triggers. So the only way to exit a level is to use an elevator. And elevators can only be used to go up, never down.

I'm planning to make it so that whenever the player moves from one level to another, the location and direction is preserved in the transition between maps, with overlap to create the effect of a continuous game world.

On each level, there will be a marker indicating the start position of the next level, which will be used to calculate the necessary offset so the player is at the exact same location on the next level. (If a level has a separate exit to another level (for example, a secret level), it will have a separate marker for that.)

It will be possible to move between levels in two ways -- level exit triggers, or elevators (which can move either up or down).

This will add a major new gameplay element, because it will result in effects such as the following:



* If there are separate areas where you exit, you will start the next level in whichever area you exited.

* You may be able to come back to a level later on, but may not even know it's the same map, because you're returning to a separate area that you weren't able to access earlier.

* There may be secret areas that can only be accessed by entering a map a certain way.



Games such as Half-Life do this type of thing to create the effect of a massive, continuous game world. Here is a video showing Half-Life's maps put together.

A few Wolf3D mods have 128x128 maps. But I think that instead of increasing the map size, it makes more sense to make the maps connected, so you can have an epic-sized game world, and seamless transitions between maps. What do you think?

[Tricob]

Matthew wrote:

...A few Wolf3D mods have 128x128 maps. But I think that instead of increasing the map size, it makes more sense to make the maps connected, so you can have an epic-sized game world, and seamless transitions between maps. What do you think?

I remember an entry in the Wolf-Extra series, and it followed some of the ideas you post here. It's easy for this approach to go horribly wrong, but from what little I played of it, I thought it was done rather well.

[ronwolf1705]

Wolf Extra uses this perfectly indeed. With this feature, would it also be possible to have alternative routes to levels e.g. you can go from level 1 to level 4? Or just from level 1 to 2, to 3, etc., with the exception of secret levels?

[RichterBelmont12]

I will Definaty use this in Wolf of Rage!!!

But I'll love to see this in Action tho because it looks kinda confusing

[Tricob]

ronwolf1705 wrote:

Wolf Extra uses this perfectly indeed. With this feature, would it also be possible to have alternative routes to levels e.g. you can go from level 1 to level 4? Or just from level 1 to 2, to 3, etc., with the exception of secret levels?

Source code-wise, I'm sure it's doable. I myself would just put something in the Objects Plane of the map, where you stand when activating the wall switch. That "something" tells the code what position on the map to send you to, and then a marker on the wall switch itself would tell the code what level to send you to.

The "something" on the floor would probably have to point to a square on the last row of the map, scanning the Objects Plane. The square on the map would tell the game what coordinates on the map you should be sent to.

If more than one elevator sends you to the same level - but in different spots - you'll probably want the "Blake Stone" approach, and have the data from all the maps recorded in your saved games. Blake Stone "remembers" what's on each map in the game by writing this data to a temporary file. But both PCs and Macs have enough memory that you can store all this in RAM.

Richter - if you want to see the Wolf-Extra game in action, here you go.