Report of progress on Chaos Zone, with screenshots!

The next version of Chaos Zone is nearing completion. This new release will feature another new zone as well as proper support for race mode in the full lineup of zones.

Also new in the next release will be the name of the level pack. Since the current one is lame and lacking in originality, the next release will be titled Blue Heaven.

And now, some screenshots.


As you can see, I've shamelessly lifted the bridge design from Red Volcano. That's about the only similarity it shares with said zone, however.


Current stages also have some modifications from last release.

You all can probably expect a new release before the year ends. It all depends on whether or not I can get the rest Burning Cavern finished, and what Real Life has in store for me in the coming weeks.

Looks great! Can't wait for it.

I've been trying to get work done on my mod too, even though it's crap. :(

Nice job though!

WOW, You actually showed some screenshots! Good job!

I aggree with the other people in the topic, The maps look good, I like that Lava picture, well done.

how'd you get your shots like that?

If you mean without all the HUD information like rings and score, I use a short script in my autoexec.cfg file for that. It's fairly simple, if you want you can copy these lines to yours.
I use o for my screenshot key, you can replace it with any letter, number, or almost any other key if you want. And due to how the autoexec.cfg file works, there must be a break at the end of every line, so just press enter at the end of the second line after you paste them.

Tets, you need to work on the lighting in that lava zone. Given that the only source of light(the lava) is at the bottom of the room, the shadows should be casted upwards, not down like normal. And honestly, that isn't all that hard to do; just use 3DBlock no-shadowcasting. Also, colormap the area since, you know, the lava is the only light provider.

Speaking of lava-light colormaps, whatever happened to the awesome colormap you had in the lava room from poisoned paradice? You should bring that back.

Just my two cents, there. Anyways, I look forward to the next beta!

Add pointless un-Sonic-reachable platforms near the walls to reduce the sense of unused space.
It'll be totally awesome, man. And it'll allow one to place secret moniters or emblems on one of them without it appearing too obvious. :o

Whatever source of light you might imagine exists in Burning Cavern, it's coming from the ceiling. So, shadows project on to lava. Besides, if I were to make shadows on the ceiling, I'd have to modify every other sector in the zone to reflect the change. And to be honest I don't want to get into advanced lighting methods in the Doom engine. It would just look ridiculous.

By the way, let's take a vote here. How many people will still download and play this level pack after I've revealed that it's going to require the Shufflarb2 exe? In addition to the other lovely things that it already had, I commanded Shuffle, at gunpoint, to add Lava Reef-style flame jets, and they're now in Burning Cavern.

I will still download and play this level pack after you've revealed that it's going to require the Shufflarb2 exe.
Because Lava Reef-style flame jets win.

I will still play it even if it requires Shufflearb2, just because this level pack is good.

Well, since Shufflarb2 is becomming my main exe, I'd still download it for Shufflarb2.

SRB2-Playah said:

I will still download and play this level pack after you've revealed that it's going to require the Shufflarb2 exe.
Because Lava Reef-style flame jets win.

Click to expand...

You know, Lava Reef styled jets could probably be SOCcable or something :o
But to many other people, they would probably think, it sucks.

I WOULD download it... If I could find Shufflarb2. It's looking great so far!

I would think it would be a very unwise idea to have a level only playable in a different exe. If you want people to play it, you should have it accessible to all who want to play it.

Boinciel said:

I WOULD download it... If I could find Shufflarb2. It's looking great so far!

Click to expand...

Because Shufflarb2 isn't done yet.

By the time I'm actually finished with this next version, I imagine Shufflarb2 will be available in some form the to general public. Considering how slow I work this shouldn't be a problem.

As for Torgo's comment, that's perfectly understandable, and is the reason I posed this question to you all in the first place. To explain my position, there has a problem I've been experiencing a lot lately, in that there are a lot of ideas I have planned for my level pack that just aren't possible with the current version of plain SRB2. Mostly straight out impossible. There are some that can be done with socs, but they would be incredibly difficult to code with very little gain in the end, not to mention extremely buggy. Case in point, jets of flame in the style of Lava Reef in Sonic and Knuckles.

My hope is that eventually any ideas I have that are coded into Shufflarb2 will be good enough to be absorbed into the official exe, and then we'll all be happy.

On to my next announcement! I've decided to "officially" drop co-op support for online play. It's becoming a real pain to design levels in mind of cooperative play. It's that case, again, where an excessive amount of work is being done for little gain in the end. This does NOT mean multiplayer is being completely removed from the pack. In fact, I've redesigned most of the levels with modifications for race mode, in order to work around particularly slow segments.