[Alpha] Virtual Rooms Vol.2

[snatcher]

I had an idea... but I don't have a plan.

New Volumes of Virtual Rooms must be the result of a collaborative community effort. We have to figure out everything: rules, content, plot, presentation... and we have to figure it out together.

I am not the director or supervisor of this project. I can act as a coordinator during the initial stages but consider me as simply another member. Anyone is free to volunteer for any role.

VIRTUAL ROOMS VOL.2 (ALPHA)

Whenever there is new content new alpha versions will be made available and the good news is that the first alpha is already here! Member @thebigh quickly figured it all out on his own and he already created the very first room for Vol.2: Thaumaturgy!

Please note Vol.2 is not available in the in-game downloader. It will be uploaded to the official repository only when the project is complete.

Manual install instructions:

• Download the alpha from here
• Create the folder "fms/vr_vol2" and place the pk4 there
• Launch the game and look for Virtual Rooms Vol.2 (alpha)

Room names:

Spoiler

1. Thaumaturgy by @thebigh

 

DISCUSSION

What do we want Virtual Rooms to be?

I propose we start with a basic set of Questions & Answers and let it grow from there. Can you help improving these Q&A?

What is a Virtual Room?

[Provisional] A Virtual Room is the container of an idea or an experiment. Anything that doesn't fit in a more serious project can have its home in the form of a Virtual Room. A Virtual Room can be large or small, simple or elaborated, short or long.

Are there any rules?

[Provisional] Yes, we want to have a cohering experience and for that we need a consistent set of main objectives. To keep things simple yet interesting the current main rules are:

• While having AI is not required being seen by AI is an instant failure
• There must be at least one optional piece of loot in the map
• The player must reach an exit point to complete the room

Each room (map) can have its own set of scripts, textures, materials, sounds... As long as the main rules are respected, you are free to do what you please.

Can I have extra objectives in my room?

[Provisional] Yes but think how you will let players know about them.

Do I have to adhere to a particular aesthetics?

[Provisional] No, you do what you want. You can opt for a blocky design or you can go with your own style.

How do I submit a room?

[Provisional] Upload it somewhere and announce it publicly. Somebody will eventually include it in the next Alpha.

Can I revisit the room I submitted?

[Provisional] Yes, of course. As many times as you want or need. It is your room after all.

In what order are rooms arranged?

[Provisional] "First come, first served". When we have a good number of rooms we can see if authors agree to different arrangements for a linear or cohesive experience, if such thing is even possible considering the different sources.

Will I be credited for my room?

[Provisional] Yes by default but you can opt out. Authors will be listed in the release page, in a readme, and we can probably add something in the briefing or debriefing.

Is there a tutorial on "how to create a room"?

Yes, check the next post.

Discuss!

Edited December 4 by snatcher

[snatcher]

*** WORK IN PROGRESS ***

VIRTUAL ROOMS - A TUTORIAL

1. SETUP
2. BRICKS
3. LAYERS
4. TESTING

I will try to explain here how to create a Virtual Room but be informed this is not a DarkRadiant or mapping tutorial. If you are new mapping and need help go check the boards, the wiki and other online resources. Please don't ask here general mapping questions, this is not the place.

1. SETUP

pk4 files are zip files with a pk4 extension. Go to the folder "fms/vr_vol1/" and extract the contents of "vr_vol1.pk4". Delete "vr_vol1.pk4" afterwards.

You must have this structure:

 

2. BRICKS

Open in DarkRadiant fms/vr_vol1/maps/vr1_00_template.map

A Virtual Room is created by stacking bricks together. Think of a 1x1 Lego brick. Our base brick is a cube of 64x64x64 Doom-units. Basic operations:

• Set the grid to 64 in the grid menu
• Select a brick (Shift + Left Click)
• Clone the brick (Space)
• Move the brick (Left Click inside + Drag)
• Or resize the brick (Left Click outside + Drag)
• Unselect the brick (Shift + Left Click or Esc)
• Or delete the brick (Backspace)

Textures & Materials

• Select a brick (Shift + Left Click) or select a surface (Shift + Ctrl + Left Click)
• Go to "window > Surface Inspector" (S)
• In "Texture Properties > Shader" choose a "virtual_rooms/vr_" shader.

 

3. LAYERS

• Go to "window > Layers" (Ctrl + L)

There are two layers that contain critical elements for a Virtual Room to work:

• World_Player
• World_Theater

You can do what you want with the rest of the layers. I personally use "Stage" for the bricks.

3A. World_Player

This layer contains the player start location and the exit zone. Move the entities around but don't change their properties.

World_Player > info_player_start

• Name: virtual_room_entry_point
• Description: location where the player starts.

World_Player > info_tdm_objective_location

• Name: virtual_room_exit_point
• Description: location where the mission ends. The "Virtual Compass" points to it. It is grouped with the next entity.

World_Player > func_emitter

• Name: virtual_room_exit_emitter
• Description: An emitter that signals the exit. It is grouped with the previous entity.

3B. World_Theater

This layer contains essential brushes and entities.

The default size of the room is a cube of 3200x3200x3200 Doom-units. There is a "false floor" at the bottom where you can hide entities.

You should not change anything here, except for info_location to set the name of the room and perhaps "virtual_room_ambient_music".

• The mandatory atdm:ambient_world named "ambient_world" entity
• The default worldspawn that acts as the skybox, surrounding the arena
• A nonsolid entity named "virtual_room_false_floor" that hides anything that falls through.
• The default inventory items: the Spyglass, the Lantern and the "Virtual Compass" (always pointing to the exit)
• classname atdm:campaign_info named "virtual_room_campaign_info" that prevents weapons and ammo to be available in the next room.
• classname info_location contains the name of the current room (change it).
• atdm:speaker_ambient_music "virtual_room_ambient_music" has the default ambient music. You can change the music and add revert here if you want. Check the companion script functions "virtual_music_stop" and "virtual_music_start" to stop / resume the music on the fly.
• atdm:target_addobjectives "virtual_room_objectives" contains the objectives. You shouldn't change anything here unless you know very well what you are doing.

4. TESTING

1. Save your map and give it a number and a name: "vr2_01_name.map". A single word for the name is recommended.
2. Launch TDM, bring down the console and dmap it: "dmap vr2_01_name.map"
3. Test the map: "map vr2_01_name.map"

Does it work? Congratulations, your Virtual Room is good to go.

Edited December 7 by snatcher

[thebigh]

I gotta say, I had a blast making a room for this. 

[boissiere]

Would people go for puzzle-based rooms? The reaction to "Trials" in Vol 1 seemed a bit mixed.

[wesp5]

Sorry if I sound negative but I don't like the whole idea of these virtual rooms. Something similar happened in the Half-Life and Half-Life 2 modding community and basically destroyed it! Instead of creating real complete maps, sites like Planet Philip (now https://www.runthinkshootlive.com/), started doing Map Challenges and Map Labs very similar to Virtual Rooms and in the end people just created half-finished mini-maps for each idea they had instead of making full mods around them. I hope this doesn't happen here as well...

Edited November 17 by wesp5

[I.C.H.I.]

I agree with wesp5, such maps are visually very ugly because of the dev textures and overly minimalistic design, also they're quite boring to play because they don't provide the freedom of play style. It's like here is TDM for you but let's amputate everything that's great about it and replace it with the most bare-bone gameplay that's possible in these constrains.

[snatcher]

11 hours ago, wesp5 said:

Sorry if I sound negative but I don't like the whole idea of these virtual rooms. Something similar happened in the Half-Life and Half-Life 2 modding community and basically destroyed it! [...]

I find this of interest. I have been searching and I couldn't find where the debate is. Please point me in the right direction. I genuinely want to know more!

[snatcher]

I'll say it once, and only once: you all are free to criticize my work and decisions to your heart's content. It doesn't hurt, I won't comment. It's part of the process. Let's continue with "the bad" and get it out of the way. We can perhaps find something worth our time down the road. Otherwise all this will be quickly forgotten.

Discuss!

Edited November 17 by snatcher

[SeriousToni]

13 hours ago, wesp5 said:

Sorry if I sound negative but I don't like the whole idea of these virtual rooms. Something similar happened in the Half-Life and Half-Life 2 modding community and basically destroyed it! Instead of creating real complete maps, sites like Planet Philip (now https://www.runthinkshootlive.com/), started doing Map Challenges and Map Labs very similar to Virtual Rooms and in the end people just created half-finished mini-maps for each idea they had instead of making full mods around them. I hope this doesn't happen here as well...

I am also very curious of what you are talking about exactly in the HL universe. 

[wesp5]

11 hours ago, snatcher said:

I find this of interest. I have been searching and I couldn't find where the debate is. Please point me in the right direction. I genuinely want to know more!

There wasn't much debate. Just look at the site I cited! It started as a great repository where cool Half-Life and Half-Life 2 maps were shared. Now the only thing left are these Map Lab collections featuring mini-maps according to a theme. The real maps have just died out over the years, because making mini-maps is much easier. Many of them look similar to your work in that the mappers doesn't even care to texture them anymore but are using default tool textures. This is why I was immediately reminded of this! Make no mistake, I love your modding work adding new features to the game itself, but as I.C.H.I. wrote, the unique charakter of TDM is lost in the virtual rooms idea and we have so little new missions already...

Edited November 18 by wesp5

[datiswous]

On 11/17/2025 at 9:09 AM, wesp5 said:

Instead of creating real complete maps, sites like Planet Philip (now https://www.runthinkshootlive.com/), started doing Map Challenges and Map Labs very similar to Virtual Rooms and in the end people just created half-finished mini-maps for each idea they had instead of making full mods around them. I hope this doesn't happen here as well...

Well currently most veteran mappers make bigger and bigger maps (except Sota), so I don't think they would be very interested in changing this pattern, except in a chalange (hint!). Although it could be a nice inbetween. Then there are people that currently don't map (like you) which might find making a mission too dounting (like me). So could be a nice entrypoint. I think currently VR is still in beginning phase and so it looks barebones because Snatcher just wants a starting point. The details can be added later. as can be seen on many even recent maps, quality depends on what the mapper want. If I want to create an hour long chalange. I can do so fine. So I don't think mappers are being inflenced to make less interesting maps/missions for tdm, but it can be a place to try out small projects that can also motivate people into making more interesting stuff later. So I don't really see negatives myself.

[wesp5]

1 hour ago, datiswous said:

Then there are people that currently don't map (like you) which might find making a mission too dounting (like me). So could be a nice entrypoint.

That is probably what the HL and HL2 community thought as well, but the end result was that mappers had less time for big projects, because they were busy competing in the challenges. At least this is my theory, it can also be that HL and HL2 were just becoming too old ;). Anyway, lets hope TDM is different, but I just had to give a warning at the similarity.

Edited November 18 by wesp5

[datiswous]

Btw. I was under the impression I was still posting in the previous thread. I guess it doesn't matter.

[datiswous]

On 11/15/2025 at 11:25 AM, snatcher said:

Whenever there is new content new alpha versions will be made available and the good news is that the first alpha is already here! Member @thebigh quickly figured it all out on his own and he already created the very first room for Vol.2: Thaumaturgy!

So every time someone makes a new chalange a new alpha version has to be created?

Is it not possible to make one base installation and then upgrade that installation with more modules/maps ? I think if the naming of every file in the pk4 is different you might just have a pk4 for every virtual room. Or does that not work? Well you have to update the tdm_mapsequence.txt 

 

On 11/15/2025 at 11:25 AM, snatcher said:

It will be uploaded to the official repository only when the project is complete.

But when is it considered complete?

 

Experimental ideas:

There is a relatively new feature that was added with gui debrief. You can override the map file to load in the mission briefing. I think it has never been tested. This might be a good testcase.

This way you could select which map you load on start.

(You might have to ditch the campaign implementation.) Every time inside the briefing you select the mission you want to play from a list.

I was also thinking that you could show the objectives inside the mission click-to-start screen. I think this is a gui you could customize yourself.

Edited December 4 by datiswous

[datiswous]

On 11/16/2025 at 9:06 AM, thebigh said:

I gotta say, I had a blast making a room for this. 

I just played it. Very nice!

[thebigh]

1 hour ago, datiswous said:

I just played it. Very nice!

Did you find the loot?

[datiswous]

Hmm, no. I think I forgot.

[datiswous]

On 11/15/2025 at 11:25 AM, snatcher said:

Go to "fms/vr_vol1" and extract its contents. Delete "virtual_rooms_vol1.pk4".

So the tutorial speaks of vr_vol1, while the current alpha is vr_vol2. Is there a difference in the template files?

[snatcher]

It's the same template in both vr_vol1 and vr_vol2. People are free to improve the template and share a new version.

Thinking of beginners it is best to stick to Vol1 in the tutorial for the moment so that they can open other rooms with Darkradiant and see how it was done.

Is your first room progressing well, @datiswous ? 

[datiswous]

No not yet. still in the thinking phase. But I have an idea..