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Do you ever wish Doom could support more complex geometry?


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I will firstly say that what mappers are able to do with doom mapping nowadays is absolutely insane, looking at Eviternity 2 and going down! Though sometimes while playing other first person shooters I sit back and begin to wish that doom had support for more complex geometry. Room over room to be exact. The idea of walking around cat walks, going into a basement, and imagining what mappers could do with more freedom in their mapping often comes to mind. With all the amazing maps, mapping tricks (my house.wad), I suppose it isn't necessary, as it can be "faked". I love doom game-play, I just sometimes wonder what it would be like if the mapping engine could support fully 3d environments like quake or anything modern, and what we could be seeing from this amazing community if such things existed. But what do you guys think?

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GZDOOM/UDMF format allows the creation of room over room, mirrors and much more complex geometry (including use of 3D models and voxel renderings of the sprites via the Voxel DOOM mods.

 

A large amount of games have been released (some published by 3D Realms/Apogee) using the GZDOOM engine.
Age of Hell, Selaco, etc.

 

A great tutorial on creating complex geometry is available on Youtube by Bridgeburner. 
Bridgeburner's yt tutorial on slopes and arches, including a 3D Dome.

Edited by DeetOpianSky

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1 minute ago, DeetOpianSky said:

GZDOOM/UDMF format allows the creation room over room, mirrors and much more complex geometry (including use of 3D models and voxel renderings of the sprites via the Voxel DOOM mods.

 

A large amount of games have been released (some published by 3D Realms/Apogee using the GZDOOM engine.

 

A great tutorial on creating complex geometry is available on Youtube by Bridgeburner. 
Bridgeburner's yt tutorial on slopes and arches, including a 3D Dome.

Thank you for this! Do you know any wads that take advantage of this?

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I did my best with my first 2 maps (not released on idgames yet/wip).

 

This one features a spiral staircase with 3 floors (per room/area, 1 for each key). I did this before discovering Bridgeburner's tutorial, only having seen the Chubzdoomer tutorials at that point using the GZDOOM Builder software which is much more labor instensive than UDB when creating such areas.

ProtoSlayer is a great example with some fantastic lighting/fog/dynamic lighting effects. The lead dev has a degree in game design.

 

I've been more focused on MBF21/DSDA focused projects lately so I haven't kept up with GZDOOM as avidly as I did before.

 

 

 

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You should definitely check out some ZDoom and UDMF wads because what you're suggesting definitely exists, but for me I don't really feel the need. To me the limitations are a lot of the appeal to the engine, both in using tricks in my own wads and in seeing the tricks other people use in theirs. It's very satisfying to me, much more so than ZDoom.

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9 minutes ago, DeetOpianSky said:

I did my best with my first 2 maps (not released on idgames yet/wip).

 

This one features a spiral staircase with 3 floors (per room/area, 1 for each key). I did this before discovering Bridgeburner's tutorial, only having seen the Chubzdoomer tutorials at that point using the GZDOOM Builder software which is much more labor instensive than UDB when creating such areas.

ProtoSlayer is a great example with some fantastic lighting/fog/dynamic lighting effects. The lead dev has a degree in game design.

 

I've been more focused on MBF21/DSDA focused projects lately so I haven't kept up with GZDOOM as avidly as I did before.

 

 

 

I will check both of those out! thank you so much! Just to be clear, you made that first one?

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Short answer:
Yes

Long answer:
Yes, God yes. I am trying to build things like mountains and temples/fortresses in Boom format and the added room over room would make it so much easier to make great looking complex structures without using mid textures.

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I've been on a big Build Engine kick lately, and while I greatly enjoy the games, I don't think the added engine features amounted to all that much. Trial and error guess-the-combination puzzles "to break up the pace", an occasional set piece where you drive a wonky "doomcute" tank around for a minute. Meh.

 

Maybe if someone made a game that played almost like an adventure/platformer along the lines of Jedi Knight (would you call them "traversal puzzles" in the current parlance?), that would be fun. But from a pure gameplay standpoint I don't find anything in the Build games more compelling than the Doom/Doom2 IWADs.

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Well I think vanilla doom has really good geometry already, considering its a 1993 game. If anything more could be included that wouldn't be too much for early 90s computers, it would be something like portals in Duke Nukem.

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1 hour ago, BunnyBun said:

I will check both of those out! thank you so much! Just to be clear, you made that first one?

Yeah, Tower of Terror is mine, it's a much shorter experience than my first map Maintenance.

 

Maintenance uses a lot of 3D floors but they were made when I was still learning the concepts and implementations and before the later parts of the level they're used primarily for DOOMCute stuff.

The screenshots on the link are from an earlier version than the download/current version.

Edited by DeetOpianSky
Corrected text.

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Not really, then it would just stray further from what Doom is to me.  I think what's possible now with UDMF is fine, if maybe a bit overkill in places.  Then again, I prefer architecture components that are blockier and use fewer faces to greater effect.  All of this is probably why my maps feature very few super-curvy walls and very few slopes and why I switched to Eureka as my editor of choice.

 

3D floors are a godsend, however.

Edited by Remilia Scarlet

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4 minutes ago, Remilia Scarlet said:

Not really, then it would just stray further from what Doom is to me.  I think what's possible now with UDMF is fine, if maybe a bit overkill in places.  Then again, I prefer architecture components that are blockier and use fewer faces to greater effect.  All of this is probably why my maps feature very few super-curvy walls and very few slopes and why I switched to Eureka as my editor of choice.

 

3D floors are a godsend, however.

Wow these look amazing! I'll check them out! Thanks so much! What is the difference between room over room and 3d floors?

 

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2 minutes ago, smeghammer said:

OK shameless self promotion...

 

Yes I love playing with 3D floors. Check out some of my maps:

 

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames//index.php?search=1&field=author&word=Smeghammer&sort=time&order=asc&page=1

 

Especially

 

Fuck you Escher!

Corporate Nightmare

Scorpions Den

Tubeworm

 

Though to be fair, most of my maps used projected 3D floors somewhere.

Thank you for this! I'll give these a look! I guess 3d floors are more common than I thought!

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1 minute ago, BunnyBun said:

Wow these look amazing! I'll check them out! Thanks so much! What is the difference between room over room and 3d floors?

 

They're the same thing, just with a different name.  With a 3D floor you create a control sector, give one of its lines type 160, set up some tags for it and the sector you want the 3D floor to appear in, maybe adjust the flags, and the result is it's essentially rendered "inside-out".  UDB has a special mode for it, but I've never used it.  I always did mine by hand.

 

You can also do RoR with portals, but I avoid portals like the plague.

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1 minute ago, BunnyBun said:

Thank you for this! I'll give these a look! I guess 3d floors are more common than I thought!

just so you know, it's ill-advised to double post on forums. if you wanna respond to two or more people, it's proper etiquette to combine them into one post. like this!

 

2 hours ago, mrthejoshmon said:

Short answer:
Yes

Long answer:
Yes, God yes. I am trying to build things like mountains and temples/fortresses in Boom format and the added room over room would make it so much easier to make great looking complex structures without using mid textures.

i hate you

 

alternatively, if you only wanna respond to a specific section of another post, you can shorten it down to include only that part in the quote

2 hours ago, mrthejoshmon said:

Long answer:
Yes, God yes. I am trying to build things like mountains and temples/fortresses in Boom format and the added room over room would make it so much easier to make great looking complex structures without using mid textures. 

i really hate you

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At this point, i don't think so, no. Almost every geometry can be made in UDMF albeit with some limitations. Trims? slap 3d floors. Room over room? slap portals. Something more complex? Slap 3d models. Only problem is to adjust collision but imo even modern games are just boxes under the mesh fluff. Tho i would've liked somekind of slope support for software engines, just personal peeve.

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5 minutes ago, roadworx said:

just so you know, it's ill-advised to double post on forums. if you wanna respond to two or more people, it's proper etiquette to combine them into one post. like this!

 

i hate you

 

alternatively, if you only wanna respond to a specific section of another post, you can shorten it down to include only that part in the quote

i really hate you

Ah okay! Sorry! I am new to doomworld and online forums as a whole. Thank you for letting me know!

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I don't know how to make polyobjects that are not infinitely tall. They're great when there's only one floor high, but when you want to have some action underneath or above them, you're forced to go for other solutions...

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Absolutely not. That's what other games are for. Part of Doom's charm is the older, simpler style but also seeing how far port authors and mappers can push those limitations while still making things look quintessentially Doomy.

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50 minutes ago, roadworx said:

Just so you know, it's ill-advised to double post on forums. If you wanna respond to two or more people, it's proper etiquette to combine them into one post. Like this!

This is sound advice, you can quote the same post multiple times then edit them to trim them down to the section you are responding to, or in this case, do the public service of capitalising letters for the unwashed philistine:
 

55 minutes ago, roadworx said:

I hate you

 

Alternatively, if you only wanna respond to a specific section of another post, you can shorten it down to include only that part in the quote

 

56 minutes ago, roadworx said:

I really hate you

See how much better that is? Always follow correct etiquette, especially when teaching etiquette!

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I'll second that remilia scarlet has some super pretty looking almost quake-like maps. Definitely a treat to explore them and worth a playthrough!

I'd also like to give a shout out to an I guess older wad at this point, Warphouse by Ed C. that uses portals, slopes and other such gzdoom fanciness to make a beautiful adventure in a techbase twisted by hell. Super unique concept for a description lol... but the map itself is a uniquely grand experience. 

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3 hours ago, Naarok0fkor said:

I don't know how to make polyobjects that are not infinitely tall. They're great when there's only one floor high, but when you want to have some action underneath or above them, you're forced to go for other solutions...

K8Vavoom supports 3d polyobjects, but I don't know if any other ports do yet or not.  They're extremely similar to normal polyobjects, and can be controlled via some new ACS functions.


Some examples:

Spoiler

^ Freaky Panties IV

 

^ Eschatology 1

 

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4 hours ago, Remilia Scarlet said:

Not really, then it would just stray further from what Doom is to me.  I think what's possible now with UDMF is fine, if maybe a bit overkill in places.  Then again, I prefer architecture components that are blockier and use fewer faces to greater effect.  All of this is probably why my maps feature very few super-curvy walls and very few slopes and why I switched to Eureka as my editor of choice.

 

3D floors are a godsend, however.

Exactly how I feel.

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Honestly, while there's definitely been some steps made to make it closer to Build, it's got one thing missing that to me is one of the most important parts of Build and that's being able to stick any sprite, or any texture as a sprite, wherever you want.

 

I love Doom, I love what people create with it, but in terms of raw mapper functionality I'll always prefer Build. It's what I've spent the most time with.

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Rumor has it, there's a version of the Doom code out there somewhere that can run more complex gemoetry...

 

...Legend calls this code, "Quake."

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