Development Log: DOOM Monthathon #1

EDIT: The game is complete.  Download the level HERE (requires .7z extractor and copy of DOOM) to play it before reading everything, so you can play the level without spoilers.  Then read these dev logs to see the process.

Carrying on:

I've come up with a short list of possible themes for my DOOM level.

Chickenscratch, ahoy!

One of the things that has always stuck in my mind for some reason is the idea of making a lift like an elevator -- it can drop you off on many different floors.

So if an elevator is used as a central hub for the level, I could create at least four floors that each could have their own sub theme.

However, testing this idea in the editor was underwhelming.  Sure, it works, but it's not nearly as interesting an idea as anticipated.  It will serve as a hub if necessary.

Visually interesting it is not.  Maybe if I could look up.

But I decided to try a second hub style to see if there was a better way.  So next I tried a circular stair, making a tower or lighthouse-styled hub.

One of the reasons I first made a lift, then a staircase, as the hub is because I want the level to have a sense of verticality.  I remember once on a DOOM mod website, someone said that his biggest complaint with mods is that people rarely use height -- most DOOM mods are pretty flat.

This is kind of a problem because of DOOM's limitations.  You have to be extremely clever to make floors on top of floors, because in general you cannot overlap rooms from a top view, making the height axis a little tough to utilize.  DOOM is not much of a 3D engine in that regard.

I've taken that height advice to heart in all of my FPS level designs, even if they don't have the limitations DOOM has.  I like to give my levels a sense that you are either climbing high or low, such as scaling a mountain or spelunking.

Because the mountain wasn't there, I created it.

Anyway, I think the staircase style is more visually interesting, but traversing it is tedious.  I was considering having the level progress so that the player starts on floor 2, goes down to 1, up to 4, and down to 3 to exit.  However, with a staircase-style, the backtracking and overlap would be annoying.  I can still do that on the lift, but the lift has lost its appeal.

What I may do instead is have the player go up the stairs in a linear fashion, from bottom to top, but block the player's progress up the stairs until they have completed their current floor.  This gives the feeling of upward progress, as well as feeling like they are achieving something in each section, without backtracking.

An awful lot of climbing to do more than once.

After the hub, I experimented with two other themes for sections.

I considered making an area where the player must use radiation suits strategically, where one wrong move can injure them by having the suit run out before they make it to the end of an acid river.

However, each suit lasts about a minute, and that is far, far too long for this kind of test.  Having the suits last for 30 seconds, or 15, would be much better.  I also tried to make a straight line to see how far I could get before the suit ran out, and it was 32768 units (of course!).  The problem with that, however, is that a corridor 32768 units long glitches up the walls.

Heck, even the left side wall is screwed up!

I think that is out.

Next I tried to make a room which would begin small and get larger.  As the player moves through the room, the room goes dark, then the layout changes, and the room lights up again.  I would hope that this would disorient the player, but I think it didn't work as well visually as I had hoped.

It might work better if I change the doors to lifts that stay down, or have a combination, or create a maze that changes its configuration drastically once the player has reached one end (a key).

I like the idea, and haven't given up hope on it yet, but I think it's only the first one that is really cool that I've tested.

I'll try to come up with and test out a couple more ideas before making any commitments.  After the next log, whatever I have I'll stick to, and start building the level in earnest.