More importantly, I doubt asking modders to use a coordinate system they're unfamilar with is going to go over well. There's a rich history and knowledge built by these groups and I doubt anyone is going to upend that to use a tool which is slightly easier to use.

I love the idea of modders sharing geometry between games. It means there needs to be an explicit conversion process rather than being transparent. It might not be something many people want to leverage anyway, so currently leaning away from the idea of a standardised coordinate system.

Textures are applied in world space, and now I've changed what world space means. To fix I have to introduce the adaptor layer back into the app again so it’s not just an IO concern. Feels like what an adaptor does should be obvious, rather than having mystical effects scattered throughout the app.

Then there's weird stuff within the *same* engine. Blood’s player capsule seems 50% larger than Duke’s - despite the engine and coord system being the same. You’d expect geometry built for Blood levels to be sized slightly differently to accomodate.

This process irons out certain quirks - Doom's coordinate system is flipped on one axis, Build's up axis not only being inverted and also a different system from the ground plane. It's nice to be able to author tools that work on the same rules without having to take all this stuff into account.

Blood, Duke and Marathon all share similar coordinate systems. Doom’s units seem tiny by comparison. Dark Forces is smaller even still. So scale vertex coords up accordingly and now the 3D viewport doesn’t need to know any engine specifics and I can throw any level at any engine which is kinda neat.

Originally I thought the only sane option would be to convert all maps into a universal coordinate system. This means your adaptor layer sits in front of IO and during normal editing is rarely seen or heard from again. Well, that was the intention anyway.

A small rant / brain-dump around design. I was under no illusions that doing something like this was going to be technically challenging so not surprising that things have started to get tricky now that I’m going beyond basic map geometry. 🧵

#retroshooter #modding #gamedev

Possibly a misnomer by me. At the moment everything is converted to a consistent set of internal units (a choice that I'm now thinking I need to reverse) but it does afford me the ability of throwing maps into any engine on a whim.

I don't see why not. Trying to design the app so that core functionality is kept game / engine agnostic as much as possible. Supporting another game should be just a matter of authoring an adaptor layer.

Still a few missing textures but mostly parsing the Marathon map format. If you haven't played Apotheosis X, I highly recommend.

#alephone #retroshooter #modding #gamedev

I've got a few shots of Marathon Apotheosis X (I thoroughly recommend playing if you haven't) but they're a bit unremarkable at the moment. Marathon's files seem notoriously under documented, but the community is guiding me through how they're put together. More screens soon!

Thank you!! I don't see why not - these games are pretty similar insofar as the wads / geometry / textures are defined. Wish me luck when I get around to more complex stuff like triggers / scripting if I ever get that far! Excuse the screenshot - I assume I'm using the wrong palette for Heretic.

Abusing the universal map format. Hard to make it out but this is Hollywood Holocaust running in Blood and GzDoom (notice I haven't fixed doom coords - tut tut).

#duke3d #bloodgame #GZDoom #retroshooter #modding #gamedev

Oops.

Running Duke levels in blood.

#bloodgame #retroshooter #modding #gamedev

Duke texture indices and rotations fixed. Really need to start looking at those texture coords :)

#duke3d #retroshooter #modding #gamedev

Better!

Love how the devs were able to nail the SW aesthetic despite the primitive tech at the time.

#darkforces #retroshooter #modding

Ok so it *almost* looks like SECBASE? Still a lot of work to get Dark Forces maps look nice.

#darkforces #retroshooter #modding

Better loading of Doom textures (still not perfect). Multi-selection editing of textures now supported.

#gzdoom

Cross-engine map viewer / editor. Is this a bad idea? Probably!

#alephone #eduke32 #gzdoom