Development Log: The Sacrifice - Part II: Level 1 First Draft

Level 1 is a short level that introduces the player to the hub, and gives the player something realistic and earthly before dragging them down into the chaos of Hell.

Since Sacrifice begins in the normal world, and since the hub needs to make sense as a place you would visit over and over, I decided to make the first level be the church that the cultists worship in.  So once out of the sacrificial pit, the player finds the nave of the church with wooden pews and marble altar (and a crucified body on the wall).

Church always seems to fill up from the back.

There is a mass in session, so there is a priest (one of many) giving a sermon at the altar, with the cultists in the pews.  I decided to separate cultists from priests by having normal cultists be pistol-wielding, while priests are shotgun-wielders.

The nave has a front door that requires a yellow key.

Keeping up with the theme of sacrifice, the next corridor beyond the nave has a series of self-mutilation rooms, where individuals cut themselves and pour their blood in basins as an offering to Satan.  In a way, these replace Catholic confessionals, since the cultists would have no need to confess their sins except to gloat, rather than to be forgiven.  The player finds a blue key in one of these chambers to gain access to the next area.

Like shooting fish in a... self-mutilation... barrel...

Next, the player goes up a long staircase to a tower room where the main priest has his office.  On the easiest and medium difficulties, this area remains sane, in that it seems that humans are running the show.  However, on the hard setting, imps make their first appearance here, showing that the resurrection of demons is already a lot closer than you think.

Beyond the tower room, the player winds back down and goes even further until he reaches the catacombs.

The staircases are hidden on the map because I want the player to have the sense of impossible architecture, as though the staircases overlap.  DOOM does not allow this to actually happen, but I thought the spiraling stairs, from the inside, would give off the impression.

The catacombs are in the shape of a ribcage, which the player can see on the map, with the coffins representing the empty spaces between the ribs.  The player enters and exits from the throat.  One coffin has its lid removed, revealing not only a body but the yellow key, which the player needs to open the front door in the nave.  This coffin is where the heart would be in the ribcage.

Ribcage catacombs with the player standing where the heart/key is.  Also you can see most of the level from here, except for the spiral staircases that are hidden from the player.

On medium, the catacombs are the first instance of imps, showing that, while they exist, they do not yet appear to control the cult.

The player must come back up the spiral stairs, through the head priest's office, back down the other stairs, through the corridor with the mutilation chambers, and back to nave, all of which are now crawling with new baddies.

Once the player makes it to the front door, however, I had an interesting time trying to come up with an excuse for why the player can't just leave and be done (besides that it would be a very short game).

So here comes the first instance when things aren't quite right.  The player can see the way out (so it appears), but is blocked by a switch.  I considered making the switch blockade simply a brick wall a la The Matrix when Neo gets déjà vu, and I might go back to that in the end, but I thought it might be a better tease to show that there is the gate right outside but impossible to reach.  Throughout the episode, I will be making a lot of little moments that make the player feel ill-at-ease with the logic of the world, especially considering there is so much order elsewhere.

With the original DOOM levels, the design had no logic to it, so there was no real feeling of unease at things being not-quite-right because everything was not-at-all-right.  So for this mod, I'm trying to at least start off with a solid grounding in reality (this church looks quite a bit like a church), and spice things up with surprises and odd ways to navigate the level, until it eventually becomes flat-out surreal by the end.

So the switch reveals a hidden door behind the altar which leads to the proper exit.  This brings us to the second level, which I am currently working on (I'm about half done).  Since the player is exiting through a hidden door, rather than a more logical exit, the player should wonder what the heck they're getting into.

On the easiest setting, this is where the first imp appears, as a tease of what to expect from the next level.

For each difficulty, I tried to make it seem natural for the enemies to be in the areas they are in, while still being lenient enough to have solid gameplay and great fights.  This has a secondary effect of slightly changing the storyline, which I always want to be careful about.

One of the problems I know I am currently having with this level is that the corridors are too tight and there are few opportunities for cover.  The stairwells aren't bad, because the enemy has the same disadvantage as the player, but the pit, the nave, and the catacombs all suffer from the same problem: you walk into a room and get blasted on all sides.  I'm thinking I'll need some major restructuring to get the set pieces to work for gameplay.  I think they work well visually, and the player can figure out what each room is supposed to be, but it doesn't make for fair fights.

The gameplay video you see is on the easiest difficulty setting, partly because I just want to show the level without too much trouble, and partly because the difficulty gets a little out of control on higher settings.  Sometimes I can't even beat it on "Hey, Not Too Rough", so I'm sure I need to revisit the level architecture to get something with a decent challenge without the player being handicapped by the level design.