Author: Qifan Huang

I finally have a decided idea on my final project. I will make a map which compared my house and Alice in Wonderland as I did before. However, for this time, I will connected those two closer. The story I have for now is that after watching the movie, Alice in Wonderland, I went to bed and had a dream about it. When I wake up, I realized that for some reason, my roommates are all monsters/zombie/vampire(determined  which looks better). I run out of the house yet there is just more zombies. After I realized that the world has fallen, I come back to the closest of my roommate and end the level. The story itself is a simple combination of previous stories. What I wish to complete is not only the story narration but also use flashback, teleport and abstract texture to express emotion.

 

I really hesitated about the idea of telling a story as I was afraid that I can not make my level strong and clear enough. In order to make the level strong, I will recreate textures. This time, I will convert picture of my home to sprite so that this time the washing machine will be recognizable. The main workload is on create emotional world and create art assert. I wish to make three world real distinct from each other. As the real world is very realistic and real, Alice is more fancy and warm and the emotional world is more abstract and confused.

I did not do much yet so I can only show some image I plan to use.

 

 

 

I just realized that I forgot to post the my post as I was to0 excited to enjoy my holiday. Last week we learned how to use hardware to mod Doom. I disassembled the mouse I brought from China. It was cheap yet firm. I really had a hard time when I tried to break it. The melting metal was also hard. I figured out how to get rid of the original metal with the help of Patrick. However, my addition of two wire failed apart once I back to home.

For the Arduino, I really had some problems. I was not able to catch up with the lecture and only able to make the blink work. Therefore, I could not make the left click mouse at a certain pace which was shown in class. 

For my final project, I have two approaches now. One is if I finally figure out how to use the Arduino to control, I will make one like Crypt of the NecroDancer, which the player can only move at beat. If I can not, I may make a game that is more about the environment and story rather than a level about killing monster. I probably will polish my Alice in wonderland and add more story into it.

As there is no project this week, I am not sure if there is a post for this week and what should I write about in this post. As there is no project to talk about, I will discuss briefly about my experience of day of the devs.

 

For the event, it really surprised me with both the quality of the games and the number of people attended. There are many different genres of games in the event. And most of the games are very developed and polished as if they are on Steam.

I came to the event with one of my non-gamer friend. And even with no experiences of game, she really enjoyed some of the games. Her favorite game was human regular basket. The game is quite hilarious as the game is not played between human but robots. And the game is definitely not regular. The fact that this game allows 8 players to play at the same time and the comedy created by the robot action made it a perfect party game.

(regular human basketball)

There are also some very dark and complicated games in the event. One of my favourite is everyting is going to be ok. The game is very dark as the player can chip hands of the animation rabbit. What attract me is that the game is based on the virtual computer and the player is both like a god who is able to control everything in the game while the characters seem to now that they are in the game world and talk directly to the player. The technique of breaking the fourth wall is used really well in this game.

(Everthing will be ok )

This week I finally made the idea of Alice in Wonderland works. Last week, I tried to make a level based on the experience of Alice but failed as Slade crushed so many times and I settled down with the idea of a world full of bug and bad signals. Luckily, the decoration script works much better than the texture system. For this week, I simply worked on the project I left behind last week due to the lack of the time. All ideas were planned and most of the textures were already found last week. All I did is to relearn the texture system and decoration script.  The key element, the well, actually appeared in my last week project. It was the strange exit circle which is covered by the green exit sign. The hallways with different height were also in my last week project.

As I worked with the world of Alice, I realized that the project I did last week and the week before can also be part of this week. Since I am able to create my own decoration and texture, I am free to make the level of my house looks really like the room I lived in. Also, the ability to implement my own weapon, keyboard, makes the bug room makes much more sense. The keyboard fits perfectly for both debug purpose and the theme of Alice in Wonderland.

 

The biggest problem I encountered is the inconsistency of texture. Since I am really bad at photoshop and drawing, I tended to google image and change their size to make my texture. However, doom really makes the color become weird or gives the item an outline. The lack of ability to produce my own sprite also makes my weapon and monsters failed to move smoothly. In order to overcome this problem, I will try to use some sprit from other games or learn to use photoshop.

The strange outline compared to the actual picture

This week we are required to replace all texture in doom to create a new level. What I planned to do initially was to construct a level which mimics the world of Alice in Wonderland. In order to show the plot, I planned to have a well in the first room. And after the player falls into the well, he will be transported to a normal size room. After this room, he will enter two room that looks identical but one with a very low ceiling while one with a very high ceiling to show how the size of player changes

However, it is obvious now that I did not accomplish my original plan. The texture system of Slade is very confusing to me. Once I added something into the Texturex, I could not delete them otherwise the whole wad just does not work. And the fact that the color will change strangely also made wonderland impossible as the blue turn into gray, making the atmosphere very strange. In the end, Slade crashed so many times that I was so pissed off by it. I realized that I could not finish the wonderland and decided to do a bug land, a level full of different wrong signal image, to show my frustration and depression.

(The green texture which is gray in the actual game)

(The texture that is too colourful for Cholocate Doom)

I tried to reuse as many elements of the wonderland design as I can. I did the two connected rooms with different height ceilings and the reused the idea of well at the end of the exit(which unfortunately did not work). The problem I entered with my bug land is that one texture I used was too colorful for Cholocate Doom to handle and it just crashed. I tried to remake the map but it turned out that it can only be shown in the GZDOOM. For the next week, I will try to connect the bug land with the wonder land since I really want to do a fairy tale style doom level.

 

 

For this week, we are required to make our own doom level. When I started the project, I wished to make a level that mimics a building in the real world. I tried some famous sites but failed as I am not familiar enough to them. Then I realized that I could make the most familiar place, my house, into a doom level as the video we watched in class. Since I lived on the first floor while all my roommates all lived on the second floor, I decided to make the game start in my room and end at my roomates room. The story is that  I wake up, realzing there were monsters in the house, killed them and came to second floor to inform my roomates and realized that they are the monsters. In the end, shocked and sad, I climbed inside the clost in the inner room on the second floor.

(my level)

(the floor plan of my house)

Since my purpose is to tell a horrible story under a familiar, daily context, I tried to minic the house as precisely as possible to bring the players into the scene. Also, I placed the fictional elements like monsters and guns which are not very likely to appear in my house in resonable place. For example, monsters are mostly in the living room and dinning room, places where my roomates and I spend a lot of time in. Blue water is placed near the medicine clost in the real world and guns in the kitchen(I wish to do a knife but doom does not give me that option) and a saw in the toolbox. The most difficult part of the level design is making the door. What I wish to do is a door with handle and can be opened by push or pull like real doors. I realized it is not possible and even the build in door required hours of work. In the end I only made one door works.

 

Speed run totally changes the experience of playing Doom. During costless failed attempt of complete the level, speed run alter Doom from a shooting game into a chasing and running. At first, I wanted to do E2M6 as the glitch video in class really left an impression. It feels like a switch between real world and dreamlike world like Inception. However, I can not  find the right angle at the corner. On the world record video, the move to glitch is so natural as if there is a door right behind the player. All he did is simply walk back and he is in the abstract world. It did not happen to me.

After the failure, I decided to try E3M1, which is the map I did tour. Being familiar with that map, I got through the easiest level within 1 mins. However, after I finished the first difficulty, I wanted to challenge myself by choosing the second difficulty. It turned out to be much worse than I expected. Since the level has a lot of long hallways, what I planned to do is to run into the hallway so fast that the monsters are blocked by the door. It worked well for the first difficult yet not workable for the second as there are so many monsters that they just crowded into the hallway. My strategy ends up me in the hallway with monsters at both end.

The long hallway is where I dead as there is a pink monster right at the turn so the door can not be closed quickly enough to block monster at the room out.

This week, moving from the shareware version, I start to play the episode 2 and 3 of Doom. This time, as the goal shifted from experiencing Doom to exploring the map of Doom, I was introduced to the cheat code and command line argument for Doom. I am familiar with cheat code and debug mode in my pervious game experience of The Sim3 and The binding of Isaac. However, I used the codes in The Sims 3 to mimic the game experience of upper class families and test the effect of different combinations in The binding of Isaac. Using cheat codes in order to explore the map, which slower, rather than speed the game, is still a new experience to me. The code I used are IDFA, IDBEHOLDV and IDDQD. I also tried to use non monster command line but gave up as I feel the monster should also be a active part of the level design. As long as I will not take damage from them, I am not distracted by them. Firstly, as I still tried to have a game experience, I used IDFA. However, as there is a possibility of being killed, I can not help but constantly killing monsters. Than I tried IDBEHOLDV, the temporary invulnerability, which is too temporary for me to pass the level, leaving me with no choice but IDDQD, invulnerability.

(The weapons, walls and monsters all turn into white. I do not know if it is a bug or not.)

The level I choose to talk about in the presentation is E3M1, Hell Help. I choose it for its simple map and distinguishing art design. As the introductory level of episode 3 which is set in hall, the color and elements of Hell Help are very different from previous level. And the beginning of the level, a meat and bone room, impressed me a lot. The previous rooms seems to be more human made while this one is made by human. By constructing a single room, the increasing danger and power of the monsters and level was implied even before the first monster is shown.

(The meat and bone room with  the eye as a trigger)

As a person who does not play FPS game and is not dexterous enough, I choose the easiest difficulty for my first Doom experience of the first level.  It turned out to be a good decision as after a summer holiday of The Witcher 3, I had a hard time to fight without dodge or fire. Also, spoiled by today’s graphic technology, I am not used to the graphics of Doom. The first thing I realized about Doom is that it is hard to keep balance as the view changed dramatically with the mouse. Also, the pixels also make finding path and realizing which direction should go difficult. I would say that a map will be necessary as I always stuck in a maze. The first several levels were short as I played in the easiest difficulty.  However, as I played the levels that involve black area, I was often trapped in the mazes. The elevator also confused me as I often unable to tell if I had went through this floor or not. I would summarize my overall first experience of Doom as dizzy, both physically and emotionally.

This is the level which I hd real difficult time to find the way out.