Haaslok's Art Thread

[Ferk]

I wasn't planning to continue responding so as to not hijack Haaslok thread since I believe it was meant to be for his art.

But since we are back to discussing theme ideas, I'd say that I do like the Lovecraftian inspiration and it was Lovecraft precisely what I was thinking about when hoping for a more hellish and less scifi theme for the sprites that aren't meant to be techy. That's why I mentioned the original "Alone in the dark" Cthonians. Lovecraft mythos involve ancient creatures from the depths that have been in slumber for eons and who perform strange rituals to wake their old gods. Its horror is a dark horror for the unknown, anything that you could call "alien technology" in the mythos would be so alien that it wouldn't resemble anything like the technology as we know it, and thus it would be indistinguishable from magic. Lovecraft elder gods are ritualistic, their culture is incomprehensible for a human mind, and anyone trying to do so would be driven insane. Even an apparently simple statuette of green-black stone (as in Call of Cthulhu) can be a powerful arcane alien artifact. Such aliens would have no need for techy metal armor or laboratory equipment, not in any shape or form that would be recognizable for us. They would not be dealing with genetics or any other scientific field that humans can comprehend, they are beyond that, they have old knowledge lost in the eons that cannot be contained in a human mind.

 

That's the type of "alien" I had always in my mind for Freedoom. I do not expect them to have any type of techy equipment except for the ones that are actually meant to be fused with human technology (like the revenant, cyberdemon, mancubus, etc). This is why I think the current scifi direction for the aliens is messing things up and straying away from the dark mysticism of the unknown. It's becoming more of a stereotypical aliens and robots theme.

 

2 hours ago, MrFlibble said:

For PWADs, my only concern is when one comes with edited Doom sprites or textures which creates a certain degree of art style clash, but this may be fixed by loading a small PWAD on top with selected Freedoom assets to replace the derivative ones.

This was exactly my point. The Pestmeister as hk/boh was just an example, but there are some other sprites that also clash.
Where would that small PWAD come from? Would that also be GPL and maintained by the Freedoom community?

Why not rather do the opposite? Leave current Freedoom as a non-clashing Doom.wad replacement like it was originally intended and have a separate PWAD targeted to more advanced engines (and thus able to create custom monsters with custom names) that follows some other scifi theme, leaving all the clashing sprites in there. You can leave the current maps in the non-clashing IWAD and make custom maps with starting urban areas and scifi story for the PWAD.

 

Currently Freedoom doesn't know what does it want to be. It tries to be vanilla but it ships with dehacked patches trying to change strings even though they are not supported by every engine or can be overridden by PWADs.

 

Edited August 25, 2018 by Ferk

[Teivman]

14 hours ago, MrFlibble said:

I think it's worth pointing out that while the "hellish" theme texture set is in the IWADs for the sake of PWAD compatibility, there's absolutely no reason for Freedoom to actually use it in the levels. The inclusion of the Aquatex set on the top of stock textures/flats in the IWADs is proof positive that Freedoom has very considerable freedom (no pun intended, but hey) in where level design may go, as is the earlier inclusion of Double Impact in the Episode 4 slot: this means that a different sky design may be used without detriment to PWAD compatibility.

 

My opinion is that it would be more interesting to explore new themes for Freedoom instead of trying to fit the "definitely not Doom" story into the Techbase - Corrupted Techbase - Hell theme set of the original game.

 

For example, what about a largely urban themed Episode 1? There's some urban levels in Phase 2 (echoing those of the original Doom II to an extent), so the respective texture/flat set is in there, and I think that these resources could be used quite creatively for a unique feel of an episode completely unlike that of Doom.

 

I'd also very gladly vote for levels in an Ancient Greek/Roman setting, provided we can find appropriate textures and mappers to play around with them.

It would be interesting if Freedoom had some sort of Time travel plot. 

[A Nobody]

I'm still working on a concept art for the Minigunner. I finished the gun, I just have to think how he should look like.

[MrFlibble]

On 8/25/2018 at 11:15 PM, Ferk said:

This was exactly my point. The Pestmeister as hk/boh was just an example, but there are some other sprites that also clash.
Where would that small PWAD come from? Would that also be GPL and maintained by the Freedoom community?

That's absolutely not what I had in mind. I was talking about a clash when you use a Freedoom IWAD but the PWAD comes with edited Doom sprites. The art style clash as I understand it is only in having these alongside each other, not in the Pestmeister allegedly not fitting with the hellish castle texture set — I'll repeat that I have absolutely no problem with that.

 

And the small PWAD I meant is just a PWAD with the monster sprites being loaded on top of the custom level(s) PWAD. Freedoom actually had a separately downloadable WAD with sprites only, available with versions up to 0.8. Very useful in some cases.

 

On 8/25/2018 at 11:15 PM, Ferk said:

Why not rather do the opposite? Leave current Freedoom as a non-clashing Doom.wad replacement like it was originally intended and have a separate PWAD targeted to more advanced engines (and thus able to create custom monsters with custom names) that follows some other scifi theme, leaving all the clashing sprites in there. You can leave the current maps in the non-clashing IWAD and make custom maps with starting urban areas and scifi story for the PWAD.

As stated above, I don't believe there's any "clash" in the sense that you imply, with any of the current monster designs (leaving out those which are obviously in need of editing/quality update, e.g. the Combat Slug and the Flame Bringer). After all, it's a matter of taste. Would you prefer to have the old Baron replacement back instead of Raymoohawk's work?

 

I just dug up that email John Carmack sent to @fraggle, and it's pretty straightforward about the do's and don't's:

You can make a completely different game using the code with our blessing, but if it has imps, cyber demons, BFGs, etc, then you are treading on thin ice. <...> You could make and release a new DOOM wad that replaced everything with similary looking original art, but it would still be bound by the restrictions we place on community derivative work, so it wouldn't be "free" in the sense that the GPL'd codebase is.

My point is that it is perfectly possible to make a completely different original game while still maintaining the goal of PWAD compatibility, but in the sense fraggle described in the quote above, i.e. that there are adequate replacements for all textures and flats.