written by Blain Newport on Sunday, 27 March, 2011
Chris and I recently played DooM for the first time in half a decade or so. Even with some frame rate hitches and only playing two player on maps that are better with three or four, I had a great time.
I remember a psych teacher at Sierra College talking about a study where subjects who had experience with marijuana were given joints to smoke and asked to rate the experience. Subjects reported getting just as high with joints that had the THC removed as with normal ones, raising the question of how much of the experience is or can be learned behavior as opposed to chemical reaction.
There's definitely some learned behavior involved with my reaction to DooM. I enjoy being goofy. I enjoy blasting enemies. But DooM reverts me to a younger state of mind and kicks all of that stuff into a higher gear. I don't just enjoy pulling off that hard earned kill, I hunger for it.
At any rate, it was a special experience, so I decided to upload it.
Part 1 (download)
Part 2 (download)
Part 3 (download)
Part 4 (download)
Showing posts with label DooM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DooM. Show all posts
27 March, 2011
05 July, 2009
Stranglehold Design Discussion
written by Blain Newport on Friday, July 3, 2009
I played through Stranglehold again. I see the other difficulty levels (above Casual) but have zero interest in playing them. I just wanna wreck stuff. In this playthrough, I tried to get super high damage scores. By the end I had caused over two hundred and twenty eight million dollars in property damage. :) That number is misleading, though. In many fights I did barely any damage. The game didn't give me enough ammo. Instead I just moved from cover to cover and let the infinite ammo bad guys do the work for me.
The game wouldn't be anything without the environmental bells and whistles, I think. The bad guys aren't interesting to fight. Mooks with guns almost never are because all you can do is take cover and kill them. There's no dance.
In DooM, many enemies threw fireballs or shot rockets which could be dodged easily in the open, but got progressively harder to avoid in closer quarters or when there were a lot of bad guys throwing them. It gave the player more to do than just point and shoot. It was also fairly easy to interrupt enemies by keeping fire on them, trapping them in a pain animation.
There's no doing that in a game like Stranglehold. Sure, technically you can shoot a guy to put him into a pain animation, but why bother? Headshots are instantly lethal. In game theory this is called a dominant strategy, it's the only way to play if you want to win. In multiplayer it's fine. Keeping track of multiple humans trying to kill you is plenty of stimulation. But in single player it's boring. No AI has enough interesting behaviors that shooting it in the head doesn't get old after a couple hours.
But by giving me exploding propane canisters, precariously supported walkways, and destructible cover to shoot at, and rewarding me with extra "hero power" if I do it while sliding down a banister or diving through the air, Stranglehold keeps me engaged, looking for opportunities.
There's another game that's built around the premise of killing stylishly more than just straight head shooting. It's called The Club. I think I need to secure a copy.
I played through Stranglehold again. I see the other difficulty levels (above Casual) but have zero interest in playing them. I just wanna wreck stuff. In this playthrough, I tried to get super high damage scores. By the end I had caused over two hundred and twenty eight million dollars in property damage. :) That number is misleading, though. In many fights I did barely any damage. The game didn't give me enough ammo. Instead I just moved from cover to cover and let the infinite ammo bad guys do the work for me.
The game wouldn't be anything without the environmental bells and whistles, I think. The bad guys aren't interesting to fight. Mooks with guns almost never are because all you can do is take cover and kill them. There's no dance.
In DooM, many enemies threw fireballs or shot rockets which could be dodged easily in the open, but got progressively harder to avoid in closer quarters or when there were a lot of bad guys throwing them. It gave the player more to do than just point and shoot. It was also fairly easy to interrupt enemies by keeping fire on them, trapping them in a pain animation.
There's no doing that in a game like Stranglehold. Sure, technically you can shoot a guy to put him into a pain animation, but why bother? Headshots are instantly lethal. In game theory this is called a dominant strategy, it's the only way to play if you want to win. In multiplayer it's fine. Keeping track of multiple humans trying to kill you is plenty of stimulation. But in single player it's boring. No AI has enough interesting behaviors that shooting it in the head doesn't get old after a couple hours.
But by giving me exploding propane canisters, precariously supported walkways, and destructible cover to shoot at, and rewarding me with extra "hero power" if I do it while sliding down a banister or diving through the air, Stranglehold keeps me engaged, looking for opportunities.
There's another game that's built around the premise of killing stylishly more than just straight head shooting. It's called The Club. I think I need to secure a copy.
27 January, 2008
Speed Mapping
As I mentioned previously, I'm interested in getting my mapping speed up. I tried to give myself an hour to put down the architecture for a co-op map. I failed miserably, of course. Here's about as far as I got.
I built a hill (on the right side). A cave with some pools (in the middile). And a big empty area with a nice looking lava pool (on the left side).
Spiffy, eh? Still, this wouldn't make a remotely playable level, the pillars on the hill are ugly as sin, and there are no monsters, weapons, or anything else that constitutes gameplay anywhere. Nevertheless, I did learn some important speed mapping tricks.
A more realistic goal might have been to plan out the general visual themes and flow of a co-op level in an hour. But the one time I tried to plan a single player map ahead of time, it was a complete disaster. I just had no idea how to get the concepts I had in my head into the game and it ended up being crap. Regardless, I should try again. Planning can save a lot of rework. I can turn off my brain and just map. Yeah. There are definite upsides to segmenting the process. Brainstorming. Planning. Implementation. Keep the order straight. :)
I built a hill (on the right side). A cave with some pools (in the middile). And a big empty area with a nice looking lava pool (on the left side).
Spiffy, eh? Still, this wouldn't make a remotely playable level, the pillars on the hill are ugly as sin, and there are no monsters, weapons, or anything else that constitutes gameplay anywhere. Nevertheless, I did learn some important speed mapping tricks.
- Map At Right Angles
Doom Builder (my editor of choice) doesn't have a "split linedef" function, so adding vertices only works if lines are vertical or horizontal. I can make everything all "organic" later. - Cut and Paste
Building common structures that can be cut and paste (and then fiddled with to keep them from actually being the same) can save a lot of time. - Stop Thinking
Easier said than done, of course. But the ideal mapping session involves only executing, not planning.
A more realistic goal might have been to plan out the general visual themes and flow of a co-op level in an hour. But the one time I tried to plan a single player map ahead of time, it was a complete disaster. I just had no idea how to get the concepts I had in my head into the game and it ended up being crap. Regardless, I should try again. Planning can save a lot of rework. I can turn off my brain and just map. Yeah. There are definite upsides to segmenting the process. Brainstorming. Planning. Implementation. Keep the order straight. :)
Energy Shield For DooM
I've got a basic version of the energy shield up and running. It took me way too long to draw the crappy graphics. But I did like my desktop looking like actual work was getting done.
After some tweaking and field tests I still have a few things to do. A pickup icon would be good, and I basically just gave up when I started drawing the device itself, so I could go back and do that. The truth is, once graphics got past Sam & Max Hit the Road, they got completely outside my drawing ability.
After some tweaking and field tests I still have a few things to do. A pickup icon would be good, and I basically just gave up when I started drawing the device itself, so I could go back and do that. The truth is, once graphics got past Sam & Max Hit the Road, they got completely outside my drawing ability.
21 January, 2008
More DooMin'
My gas gun works. I can now make puddles of gas (which is silent, so it doesn't alert any monsters) and shoot them to set them on fire. Yay! There are a couple more items on the checklist to make it just like the gas can in Shotgun Sunrise. You should be able to chuck the whole thing, then shoot it to make it explode. Also, it should slow you down to have it in your inventory. I should be able to pull that off by making the player press a switch to pick it up which runs a script that lowers their speed. But then if you chuck the whole thing, your speed should return to normal, right? Also, you should get incrementally faster as you empty the can, right? We'll see.
While looking at how some if the weapons in the weapon resource wad were created, I noticed there were a bunch of them I'd never seen in my playtest. They were bound to different keys, which apparently also means they don't come up when you scroll wheel through the weapons. I went back in to try them out and found this.
Yep. That's me with a light saber, reflecting missiles back at a cyberdemon. If you reflect a tracking missile back at a revenant, it even tracks. I love that weapon with a high intensity and am already considering how I could alter it to make some type of energy shield. It'd be perfect for my close combat class in the co-op project I never get around to. :) Of course it's almost so cool that I don't care. I want a Jedi player super jumping around while the heavy weapons player pumps out the plasma and the third player is using the ZDoom Portal Gun (a nice hack of the Portal gun... FOR DOOM!) to zap through tiny spaces to open new passages and telefrag boss monsters.
I gotta learn how to map faster.
And of course, I'm completely forgetting how I reinstalled Unreal Tournament today and wish I also had time to make levels that would let players take full advantage of the supreme awesomeness that is Lazy Matrix and Matrix Moves combined. Runnin' along the wall, headshottin' bots.
While looking at how some if the weapons in the weapon resource wad were created, I noticed there were a bunch of them I'd never seen in my playtest. They were bound to different keys, which apparently also means they don't come up when you scroll wheel through the weapons. I went back in to try them out and found this.
Yep. That's me with a light saber, reflecting missiles back at a cyberdemon. If you reflect a tracking missile back at a revenant, it even tracks. I love that weapon with a high intensity and am already considering how I could alter it to make some type of energy shield. It'd be perfect for my close combat class in the co-op project I never get around to. :) Of course it's almost so cool that I don't care. I want a Jedi player super jumping around while the heavy weapons player pumps out the plasma and the third player is using the ZDoom Portal Gun (a nice hack of the Portal gun... FOR DOOM!) to zap through tiny spaces to open new passages and telefrag boss monsters.
I gotta learn how to map faster.
And of course, I'm completely forgetting how I reinstalled Unreal Tournament today and wish I also had time to make levels that would let players take full advantage of the supreme awesomeness that is Lazy Matrix and Matrix Moves combined. Runnin' along the wall, headshottin' bots.
20 January, 2008
We Don't Need No Water
This is a test image from my latest project. The floor starts covered with cheesy looking pools of gasoline and a demon facing away from me. I fire, igniting the nearest pool and waking up the demon. He tries to run at me through the burning gasoline. He dies. Beautiful, really.
I learned some important lessons today. For some reason, giving my new DECORATE object (the pools of gasoline) an ID of 6000 meant it would never appear. Giving it an ID of 10000 (like the examples on the ZDoom Wiki use) worked fine. Nothing else is using the 6000 ID, as far as I know. And I made a spreadsheet of every ID on the wiki, so I should know. I found out about spawn numbers. (They only go to 255, with over 150 already in use, so stick with names.) I also learned that SkullTag is using a fairly old version of ZDoom, as one of the functions I used didn't work until I tried the deprecated (in other words, obsolete) version.
But enough shop talk. I have gas. Now I need to put it in a "gun".
I think I've got old school fever. I've also been thinking we need to play some Unreal Tournament (the original) at the next LAN party. The joy of assault and domination modes combined with the glory of the Lazy Matrix and Matrix Moves mods still satisfies like nothing else.
17 January, 2008
DooM Weapon Resource Wad
While I was working in the lab, late one night, my eyes beheld an eerie sight. That's a problem of working out of the ZDoom Wiki. Occasionally you find something awesome and have to waste an otherwise productive evening playing and blogging about it. :)
The Weapon Resource Wad represents the work of many modders in the community, with a healthy dose of editorial oversight to keep them from being completely overpowered. There's some darn clever code in there. There's a pistol which has a special ammo type all it's own, to represent it's clip. When you run out, it does a reload animation, grabbing a new clip's worth of ammo from your bullet inventory. There are mines. There are grenades that allow you to charge your throw so you can choose how far you lob them. There are throw then detonate pipe bombs (from Duke Nukem). There are freeze rays (from Hexen). There are molotov cocktails. There's an icon thrower weapon that spawns friendly monsters. Oh yeah, and half these weapons have secondary fire modes. It's pretty insane.
Here's one of my personal favorites, the Necronomicon. First you summon a ghost.
Then it raises a monster which now fights for you.
The first time I used it, I had a huge pile of corpses from testing out other weapons. So what do I do? I spawn a cyberdemon and selectively respawn barons (or try to; the ghosts randomly pick a nearby corpse) and watch the fun. Of course the fact that the icon gun can spawn friendly archviles is pretty mind blowing as well.
Ordinarily, I might not sidetrack onto something like this. I like the default DooM weapons and probably wouldn't add anything else to my co-op wads. But I've been following a Penny Arcade impromptu modding team who are working on a mod for the Source engine, tentatively titled Shotgun Sunrise. It's a co-op only mod, so that got my interest immediately. The first player spawns as a survivor of some sort of zombie outbreak, weakened and with few supplies. The survivor tries to stay alive. Subsequent players spawn as better armed rescuers, trying to save the survivor and collect whatever supplies they need to keep their convoy on the road and well stocked. The idea of a co-op rescuers map was one I had many moons ago, but they've added some mechanics and twists that make it interesting again. With the examples in the weapon resource mod, I think I might be able to give them some prototypes to playtest some of their concepts with.
The Weapon Resource Wad represents the work of many modders in the community, with a healthy dose of editorial oversight to keep them from being completely overpowered. There's some darn clever code in there. There's a pistol which has a special ammo type all it's own, to represent it's clip. When you run out, it does a reload animation, grabbing a new clip's worth of ammo from your bullet inventory. There are mines. There are grenades that allow you to charge your throw so you can choose how far you lob them. There are throw then detonate pipe bombs (from Duke Nukem). There are freeze rays (from Hexen). There are molotov cocktails. There's an icon thrower weapon that spawns friendly monsters. Oh yeah, and half these weapons have secondary fire modes. It's pretty insane.
Here's one of my personal favorites, the Necronomicon. First you summon a ghost.
Then it raises a monster which now fights for you.
The first time I used it, I had a huge pile of corpses from testing out other weapons. So what do I do? I spawn a cyberdemon and selectively respawn barons (or try to; the ghosts randomly pick a nearby corpse) and watch the fun. Of course the fact that the icon gun can spawn friendly archviles is pretty mind blowing as well.
Ordinarily, I might not sidetrack onto something like this. I like the default DooM weapons and probably wouldn't add anything else to my co-op wads. But I've been following a Penny Arcade impromptu modding team who are working on a mod for the Source engine, tentatively titled Shotgun Sunrise. It's a co-op only mod, so that got my interest immediately. The first player spawns as a survivor of some sort of zombie outbreak, weakened and with few supplies. The survivor tries to stay alive. Subsequent players spawn as better armed rescuers, trying to save the survivor and collect whatever supplies they need to keep their convoy on the road and well stocked. The idea of a co-op rescuers map was one I had many moons ago, but they've added some mechanics and twists that make it interesting again. With the examples in the weapon resource mod, I think I might be able to give them some prototypes to playtest some of their concepts with.
30 December, 2007
It's The Final Countdown
My DooM map is approaching completion, which is a good thing because the LAN party I hope to play it at starts in fifteen hours. I've restricted myself to monsters from the shareware episode, just to do it. But they go down so quickly, I'm worried my many hours of work will be played through in less than ten minutes. Oh well. There's nothing to do but finish the final battle and hope there aren't any showstopping bugs once multiple players enter the mix.
I took some time out this morning to play some Rogue Trooper on GameTap. I'm pleasantly surprised, thus far.
I took some time out this morning to play some Rogue Trooper on GameTap. I'm pleasantly surprised, thus far.
29 December, 2007
Mappin'
Today's gaming time was spent on mapping. My DooM co-op level is now much bigger in size. Not having people to test it with, I fear it may suck. But in the meantime it's still fun to read about new features. The DECORATE lump is frigging awesome. I still only read about it in passing, as I'm trying to keep my ambitions modest to meet my limited schedule. But every time I read about it, I keep thinking how cool it'll be when I can bring some of my ideas to fruition.
Then I think that without regular players, I'll probably lose steam and forget about it, like every other game dev project I've attempted. Meh.
Then I think that without regular players, I'll probably lose steam and forget about it, like every other game dev project I've attempted. Meh.
22 December, 2007
DooM
WARNING: This post assumes you know a metric butt ton of DooM editing information that, unless you're Chris, you don't know. Just nod and smile.
I'm not going to go into my long and storied history with DooM in this post. That's a time commitment. I'll just say happy 14th birthday and talk about what I'm doing with DooM right now. First, I'm playing it. Call it research. Call it procrastinating. I decided that if I was going to be working on a co-op wad for the new years LAN party, I should regain my feel for the game. I played through chief.wad, an old co-op favorite. I forgot how simple those levels were. They were also generally hub based, which meant that wherever you spawned, the action wasn't too far away. Good design. They were super basic, architecture wise, and sometimes painfully linear and cramped. I don't enjoy co-op when it's basically a conga line of marines each waiting for the guy in front of them to die so they can start shooting.
I've also been playing b2b.wad (Back to Basics) by Espi. It's a replacement for Episode 2, but generally feels too light and happy, not like a descent into hell like the original. Also, the levels are so huge I frequently found myself checking the map to figure out where this key I just got was supposed to go, but then I sometimes did that in the original DooM as well. The main thing I get out of it is the occasional deja vu of seeing structures that resemble ones from the original DooM, and since I'm using those textures, it's good to have a refresher.
How am I using DooM textures in DooM 2 you may ask? I'm taking advantage of the awesomeness of the Skulltag source port. It's crazy sweet. I just add DOOM.WAD to the command line and instantly have access to all the old textures and flats. In fact, there's no longer even a distinction. If I want to put a wall texture on a floor or ceiling (or vice versa), it's no problem! I can't tell you how convenient that is compared to how editing used to be.
I'm also using "Hexen" format, which has good and bad elements. It gives me access to all the funky fresh features like poly objects and lines that trigger scripts, but it removes a bunch of the old line types that I really liked. I can tell you right now, I'm never making a deathmatch level in this format. I love OpenCloseFast doors way too much. In the meantime, I've put a fair amount of thought into ACS and the DECORATION lump (the replacement for old DeHackEd patches). I would really like to try a class based co-op experiment. I'd also like to try some new monsters. I won't have that ready for the LAN party, though. For that, I just want a playable, decent looking level with lots of baddies to kill.
Oh yeah. And OpenGL is cool.
I'm not going to go into my long and storied history with DooM in this post. That's a time commitment. I'll just say happy 14th birthday and talk about what I'm doing with DooM right now. First, I'm playing it. Call it research. Call it procrastinating. I decided that if I was going to be working on a co-op wad for the new years LAN party, I should regain my feel for the game. I played through chief.wad, an old co-op favorite. I forgot how simple those levels were. They were also generally hub based, which meant that wherever you spawned, the action wasn't too far away. Good design. They were super basic, architecture wise, and sometimes painfully linear and cramped. I don't enjoy co-op when it's basically a conga line of marines each waiting for the guy in front of them to die so they can start shooting.
I've also been playing b2b.wad (Back to Basics) by Espi. It's a replacement for Episode 2, but generally feels too light and happy, not like a descent into hell like the original. Also, the levels are so huge I frequently found myself checking the map to figure out where this key I just got was supposed to go, but then I sometimes did that in the original DooM as well. The main thing I get out of it is the occasional deja vu of seeing structures that resemble ones from the original DooM, and since I'm using those textures, it's good to have a refresher.
How am I using DooM textures in DooM 2 you may ask? I'm taking advantage of the awesomeness of the Skulltag source port. It's crazy sweet. I just add DOOM.WAD to the command line and instantly have access to all the old textures and flats. In fact, there's no longer even a distinction. If I want to put a wall texture on a floor or ceiling (or vice versa), it's no problem! I can't tell you how convenient that is compared to how editing used to be.
I'm also using "Hexen" format, which has good and bad elements. It gives me access to all the funky fresh features like poly objects and lines that trigger scripts, but it removes a bunch of the old line types that I really liked. I can tell you right now, I'm never making a deathmatch level in this format. I love OpenCloseFast doors way too much. In the meantime, I've put a fair amount of thought into ACS and the DECORATION lump (the replacement for old DeHackEd patches). I would really like to try a class based co-op experiment. I'd also like to try some new monsters. I won't have that ready for the LAN party, though. For that, I just want a playable, decent looking level with lots of baddies to kill.
Oh yeah. And OpenGL is cool.
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