Author: StevenFan

I remember being incredibly excited to finally delve into the code of the grandfather to all FPS, which had turned out to be surprisingly more in depth and puzzle-like than what I’d expected from such a title and outward appearance. I wanted to create some sprawling dungeon or giant temple, something notably un-Doom-like despite usage of default textures. I remember the day we first downloaded Slade, I’d messed around with sky textures on columns descending from the ceiling, and the resulting abstract surreal columns of negative space made me excited to really create some novel stuff. Ideas like enormous Cacodemons firing Touhou-esque bullet hell waves of projectiles and lumbering Souls-like melee enemies were at the top of my list. Unfortunately, this time also marked a pretty rough patch I had in the middle of the quarter, where absences and late work built up and caused a bit of black hole of stress and backed-up workflow.

The resulting level I actually ended up making definitely carries a feeling of restricted creative flow, but I still think I managed to get some good ideas through in it. Dramatic lighting was one part I really wanted to learn how to convey well in the DOOM engine, and I honestly found the area by area lighting system to actually be more outright effective and efficient at times than Unity’s 3d lighting.

The other aspect I wanted to work with that DOOM really lacked was the verticality, though that’s more a factor of GZ Doom allowing for new features like vertical mouse movement than a creative decision in the original game.

Though it was technically very possible and straightforward to implement, one large flaw I noticed was that you immediately start to see how enemies and sprites were 2d images on a horizontal axis. Both of these design aspects would be revisited in my final project.

I’m really going to have to hustle and catch up on posts, so bear with me. I seriously regret not keeping up with everybody’s dev logs. They’ve all been really interesting, and would’ve seriously helped me stay inspired for my DOOM projects.

Going back to my speedrun was pretty nostalgic, but mostly traumatic. I didn’t remember which of my saved WADs was the actual successful run, and I had to go and just look through every single one of them, most of which were my most infuriating near misses and attempts. This ranged from being killed with the exit in sight, to making a perfect jump just to have the hallway bodyblocked by an imp, to perfectly doing everything just to run onto a nonexistent bridge because I didn’t manage to flip the switch when I rushed by earlier.

I still don’t regret my experience though. The first time I made the “jump” was an enlightening moment where the mechanics of DOOM suddenly massively opened up for me, and the actual mechanical, Nintendo-hard intensity of trying to get the perfect speedrun gave me a refreshingly familiar feeling of immersion in a game’s most core play. If I never did this speedrun exercise, I feel like the kind of levels I aimed to create during the modding period of the class would’ve been really different.

Through the first episode of Doom, I was surprised by the complexity and sophisticated puzzle nature of the levels, as all I’d known about Doom beforehand were the gory Hell imagery and testosterone-poisoning antics of Doomguy. However, I thought that this was the end of the level design beyond the FPS-founding mechanics that I thought was what made Doom so successful. The secret level in Episode 2, Shores of Hell, however, completely proved me wrong, providing a powerful form of environmental storytelling and world-building that I normally only expected from games such as Dark Souls and the like.

Entering the level is strange enough; it requires walking through a curtain of fire/blood after hitting a secret switch in a previous level to unlock, and the level begins by plopping you down in darkness before countless Baron of Hell roars descend upon you. The level is perfectly geometrical, bringing back reminders of the eerie final boss level of Episode 1, and the next room is just as strange, consisting of yet another geometrical map filled with only one kind of strong enemy. However, once all the noise and fury has calmed down, you notice a strange sprite flashing in a corner of the map, and realize that it’s an eviscerated hanging corpse of what you at the time knew to be the strongest enemy in all of Hell. The moment is a sort of climax to the strange sense of foreboding, and begins an actual feeling of overarching tension in the back of your mind for likely the rest of Episode 2, until you finally encounter your suspicions: that there are bigger fish in Hell.

The exit itself is strange too, as it consists of 3 consecutive gate doors, all containing the key to the next. It requires neither  mechanical skill nor heavy thinking to progress through, and gives off the feeling of magnanimous ceremony right before one encounters something of immense significance. The gate process finally culminates in simply a teleporter, adding even more to the sense of strangeness, which is only compounded when this teleporter, unlike the switches that needed to be flipped at the end of every other level in Doom, simply ends the level for you.

The level is a small, short gem of both storytelling and compelling gameplay, and will likely remain in my memory for a long time down the road.

Though I enjoy horror/creepy movies and games, I never touched Doom as it just had a sort of nightmarish bent I stayed far away from. These fears were quickly realized as soon as I entered the game, and the constant sounds of demons and possessed humans moaning and growling through walls everywhere constantly kept me on edge. What surprised me was the difficulty on default setting, “Hurt Me Plenty,” and how instantly immersed I was in the Doom experience despite my constant feeling of being creeped out and pressured, especially in the last few levels where the puzzle and discovery part took a massive upturn.

Mechanically, while I originally expected a very primitive fighting system, I was surprised to find myself eventually taking cover, shooting past walls, switching from shotgun to pistol to conserve shotgun ammo in taking down distant targets, etc., all practices I use in modern day first person shooters. Another large part of my mechanical progress in the game was realizing that moving forward and backward on my mouse were also controls for movement of my character in game; while this definitely helped clear a great deal of confusion about my movement, it was still extremely difficult to not move my mouse in a way that’d affect my movement at all. Even when I discovered that there was a way to strafe (alt/option + arrow key), I’d already habituated myself to turning and backing up to dodge attacks. This was the only way I managed to survive numerous late game encounters, as well as the final boss fight in a peek-behind-cover, shoot, and dodge in an almost Dark Souls-esque pattern.

Dodging