Make a Doom level, part 2: design | Hacker News Reader

Make a Doom level, part 2: design

eev.ee

113 pointsfcambus11 comments

Even if building for Doom may look outdated, this article has very solid insight at the start about level design that can be applied to any physical game.

The idea to look at levels as works of art, and design them using the same principles is a nice one. This brings a lot of artsy theory baggage (regarding storytelling, layout and aesthetics). I hand't thought applying those to the assessment of a game level before, not explicitly.

It's one of the tricks of any creative form to set down a lot of design rules and conventions - and not necessarily to make something more easily, but just to make it distinctive and cohesive. This is something I never had explained to me, but it encompasses so many different forms and aesthetics.

I haven't played Doom 2 much, so the following comment is only regarding Doom 1.

I've always found the level design of both Marathon [0] and Dark Forces [1] much better compared to Doom 1. Both games had levels which in my opinion gave the player much better feel that they're in environments that could be real.

Both games were released around the same time as Doom 2. I only played a little Doom 2, because it bored me for containing so little story.

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[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_(video_game)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Dark_Forces

Looking for Dark Forces custom levels was my gateway drug to the QMODEM, BBS, and news groups back in 1995. Similar to Doom's wad files, dark forces had gobs. Eventually a dos base editor, DFUSE, was released, but I remember one level creator (dons3d, I think) that came out with a level created without any gui based tools. He plotted out all the X, Y, Z coordinates for the vertices, calculated texture stitching offets, enemy locations, etc by hand. It was amazing. Just the act of adding a door that slid open involved a special scripting language, coordinate geometries, texture lining, etc.

That man was my hero. I learned so many technical and spacial skills by trying and failing to make a good custom dark forces level.

Good times.

An odd, but very enjoyable and in depth commentary of the DOOM modding community and DOOM in general is done by Liz Ryerson in her "DOOM mixtape" series. I think the later tapes are more interesting, but feel free to skip around.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJDeaa7aXQ8&index=1&list=PLE...

Doom2 levels are awesome. Far better than Doom 1's in my opinion. So, if you want to play Doom, I recommend Doom2.

I highly recommend the "Whispers of Satan" add-on campaign [0], played through a modern source port like Zandronum [1]. Beautiful level design [2]. Good difficulty curve. Clever secrets. Just a great overall set that uses the DooMII engine/monsters to maximum effect.

[0] http://www.paulcorfiatis.com/wos/HTML/wos_index.htm

[1] http://zandronum.com/

[2] http://www.paulcorfiatis.com/wos/HTML/wos_screens2.htm

Awesome, thanks.

It depends on what you're looking for. D2 had better monster variety and more gameplay variety than D1, but has more abstract levels than D2. I'd like to see D1's levels recreated with D2's monster/weapon variety in mind.

Overall, I don't think Doom 2 is actually much more abstract than Doom 1. I suspect the real difference is that all of Romero's levels were clumped together in the shareware episode of Doom 1, which is what everyone remembers. Sandy Petersen (who does the really abstract weird stuff) did episodes 2 and 3, but his Doom 2 levels were strewn throughout the game, even in the Earth-like sections that you'd expect to be more realistic.

FreeDoom is nice too, and it works for ANY doom2 wad, even for the GZdoom ones.

Oh, and for hardcore GNU folks, Gloome has no propietary code, it loads freeDoom and/or brutal doom and any GZDoom game.

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