I think? this is the final blog post I have not written, so here was my thought process in making my first original DOOM level!
I really wanted to toy with the idea of something cinematic and pretty linear for the player, but not something gameplay heavy. While critiquing my level someone compared it to Brendon Chung’s Thirty Flights of Loving (I had experienced the game in TCS 110), it was definitely something that contributed to my thought process in designing this level. I think more of a direct inspiration for me was Terry Gilliams 1985 film “Brazil”, where a bureaucratic worker dreams of being somewhere else (among many other things). The narrative of the film breaks several times and cuts to different surreal dream sequences involving the main character. This was exactly what I wanted my level to feel like. I had also wanted the spaces that the players traveled to in the level to be abstract, as if the player were examining their own mind.
I started with the idea of the player trying to reach the end of the room and have them completely dissociate (the room with the sky box on the floor), and have different rooms of varying stages of abstraction on the way there. I think this project would have fared a bit better if I had been using GZ Doom rather than chocolate Doom as a way of playing the game. Initially I had the first computer room much larger, so that the player could not see the end. Chocolate Doom could not handle it so I just shrank the room but I think an ‘endless’ path of computers would have really helped this level.
I think that’s my last blog post — it was great seeing everyone’s levels and I hope to see you guys in the VR class next quarter!!