was a story ever chosen?

[raymoohawk]

and if so is there a place to read it? :)

[Korp]

As far as im concerned, there is no real story, and fraggle said he'd rather not have any.

[gwain]

freedoomguy can grow a better beard than doomguy so he flexes by killing more demons by him

 

surpassing doomguy and in total humiliation doomguy calls it quits and freedoomguy is forever known as cooler than the doomguy

[raymoohawk]

5 hours ago, Korp said:

As far as im concerned, there is no real story, and fraggle said he'd rather not have any.

really? i thought he was troubled by the lack of story

[MrFlibble]

Well, there certainly can't be no story at all, because there are intermission screens that narrate some of what's supposedly happening in the game world.

 

That there is apparently no consistent background lore explained somewhere is another thing.

[lokbustam257]

even if it does have one, it will probably the same as Doom: "oh no evil demons came from hell because of a failed experiment by some greedy corporation"

[DannyMan]

Anything is open for interpretation, so there's probably no real story to Freedoom.

[raymoohawk]

how do mappers deal with the lack of story?

[RagnarRandom]

it's not hell though... it's like some other tech-savvy alien dimension or some shit.

 

story would be cool, i think as MrFlibble said/alluded to, a consistent background/lore/setting would be better. Like a style guideline for the Freedoom world. Instead of haphazard "we need a bad guy that fills in for x, somebody make something cool"

 

story seems to be something to the effect of: "you were imprisoned by AGM, an evil corporation that uses closed-source software to create mutant soldiers and advanced weaponry. you escape your imprisonment somehow. now go forth, you are free to kill. at some point you will updated with vague intermission scenes talking about bases and spaceships and some dimension or planet or something like that called Horizon."

[MrFlibble]

On 4/4/2022 at 2:41 AM, raymoohawk said:

how do mappers deal with the lack of story?

I believe that historically, mappers were mostly inspired by the original Doom / Doom II maps and their progression, putting various twists here and there, which were often leaning into the sci-fi aliens theme instead of hellish invasion. For example, an old version of E1M9 (which I believe has been replaced since) had a room with rather highly detailed teleporter pads (connected to some sci-fi device-looking prop) that warped in a wave of monsters, which was replicating a similar moment in Doom's E1M9 where demons teleport in over a star-shaped engraving on the floor.

 

As far as I can tell, further development focussed a lot on refining the existing maps, or creating replacements with similar progression gameplay-wise, rather than trying to weave in a consistent story/setting by means of level design. I think that this generally tends to work fine overall, considering the fairly abstract environments of the original Doom.

 

It would be very cool to have a solid narrative grounded in map layouts and design, akin to HacX or Hell 2 Pay though IMO, but I don't think it's been attempted so far. I've outlined this kind of ideas here and here a while ago. But on the other hand, following them would imply scrapping the already existing maps, most of which are pretty good as far as I can tell, in favour of a different design philosophy that could as well warrant a separate fork or even a completely new game altogether.

[RagnarRandom]

and btw since raymoohawk is here, i just wanna say that i love your lavamander. i think it is much better than the weird bird boss sprites. it's never been merged but it should be.

[raymoohawk]

i like the lavamander too :)

it's not mine tho, Rei made it based on one of the sprites i left unfinished

i suspect swapping the tail for a shorter one and thinning down the legs a bit might make it easier to imrpve the walk animation

Edited April 13, 2022 by raymoohawk

[Korp]

3 hours ago, raymoohawk said:

i like the lavamander too :)

it's not mine tho, Rei made it based on one of the sprites i left unfinished

i suspect swapping the tail for a shorter one and thinning down the legs a bit might make it easier to imrpve the walk animation

heh, funny you bring him up, i tried to turn the lavamander into a new mancubus

the idea is still on the table, i just got too lazy lol

Edited April 13, 2022 by Korp

[RagnarRandom]

a new mancubus is sorely needed too. i think the fleshslime thing now is kind of blah. lavamander might be better as manc than bossa, that looks good.

Edited April 13, 2022 by RagnarRandom

[raymoohawk]

 

19 hours ago, Korp said:

heh, funny you bring him up, i tried to turn the lavamander into a new mancubus

the idea is still on the table, i just got too lazy lol

 

oh that looks really cool!

 

i do still like the combat slug tho

 

@MrFlibble i wish i had not oppossed story proposals back then, truly i was a bad take machine. do you have a copy of what impie wrote? also i am skeptical that maps would need to be discarded to give freedoom a story. i think a tune up project where a few mappers edit the existing maps could work

Edited April 14, 2022 by raymoohawk

[MrFlibble]

4 hours ago, raymoohawk said:

do you have a copy of what impie wrote?

I didn't realise that he edited that post and removed the original text. Thankfully it's been preserved via the Wayback Machine here.

 

4 hours ago, raymoohawk said:

i am skeptical that maps would need to be discarded to give freedoom a story

Well, I was referring to a scenario where maps would reflect the kind of story which I imagined, with an escape attempt and so on. I also toyed with the idea of possible gameplay alterations -- like limiting the amount of ammo and other useful pickups in a level while making every encounter with enemies more challenging. Imagine starting unarmed and having to use stealth/avoid combat to get around, then you find a pistol with limited ammo and can take on the starting enemies, etc. I was a bit inspired by this game. But of course there may be other ways to put more story in the maps.

 

Even the current designs and episode/map names hint at some kind of more or less consistent setting, but it's all rather vaguely defined. I suppose that if someone were to take a more Duke Nukem 3D-esque approach and try to go for a more realistic depiction of locations (e. g. a lab, a military facility, satellite launch station or whatever), this would probably require a hefty overhaul of the existing maps at any rate. Just compare the first few HacX levels with Freed∞m levels -- the former are much closer to Duke3D while the latter are often more similar to vanilla Doom style maps.

[RagnarRandom]

i think the techbase to hell progression from doom is fine. and horizon kinda has to be hellish to use as an iwad for community wads.

 

i like the idea that agm is evil interdimensional corporation, you are imprisoned but escape (possibly a wolf-like cell with a dead pistol zombie for the start of e1m1 could be added?) horizon is a hellish dimension. agm is using some sort of infernal hell energy to make mutant warriors and fuel high tech weaponry. atleast that's the story in my head when i play.

 

but i am nobody :p

[MrFlibble]

45 minutes ago, RagnarRandom said:

horizon kinda has to be hellish to use as an iwad for community wads

To be fair, any kind of hostile-looking alien planet would do for that purpose, it does not have to be another dimension or infernal for that. Some time ago in a similar discussion, someone mentioned they had trouble reconciling mediaeval-looking castle designs with high-tech aliens in powered armour, but I think those elements are not mutually exclusive. After all, no one thinks it strange that there are mediaeval castles with full suits of plate armour and what not as decoration, populated with 20. century soldiers with automated rifles in Wolfenstein games.

[RagnarRandom]

i really think the textures are just about perfect as is

[Frost-Core]

Yeah, i mean the story text is non-sense, is horizon even a weird word?