Looking for feedback on the scale for my Wolf clone - LOST

[Marscaleb]

Hello fine people!

I had an idea to make a Wolfenstein 3D clone with a focus on exploring large inter-connected maps; I'm calling it Labyrinth of the Seven Talisman (LOST). I'd like some feedback regarding the map scale.

 

First I should explain, while I am keeping the grid-based map style, I am taking a cues from a few Wolfenstein contemporaries to expand it a little bit. I'm going to have variable wall heights, as was done with Shadowcaster, ROTT, and Ultima Underworld. I'm also taking a cue from Jurassic Park (SNES) and making the map's cell-size smaller so I can have more varied detail in my walls, so a single cell will be a quarter the size of Wolf (half in each axis; 32 pixels.)

 

But while I was working on some of the artwork, I realized that I could have better control over making the environments if I made a “single” ceiling be three cells high instead of two; I'd have a scale where a wall is 96 pixels high instead of 64; enemy sprites are around 75 pixels instead of 50.

 

I threw together a prototype to test the two different scales. I'd appreciate it if you could take a look and give me your thoughts. I have a downloadable game or just watch a video I recorded.

 

This is just a mockup-prototype; I'm using a lot of art stolen from other games, nothing works other than movement and wall collision.

 

Download: (20 megs)

https://eightballgaming.com/downloads/LOST.zip

Video:

https://youtu.be/TJXjBLSFDxA

 

It's two maps built to the different scales; press F1 to swap between them. Each map has similar features to test how it feels in similar spaces.

The first room is build to the short “single” floor height, there is also another room built to just one-cell-higher and an outdoor area with some “military trucks” to try to capture some of the environments I want to use. The doors don't work but you can just walk through them.

 

Which scale do you like better?

[Marscaleb]

What I disliked most about the original Wolfenstein was the lack of variety in the environments. Not counting decorations, you had something like ten different wall tiles for the entire game, and each level only used about three. I don't want my game to just have a small handful of stone walls to craft arbitrary shapes; I want more variety and environments that look like places. This is part of the big draw of using the larger scale.

 

I already notice it makes a profound difference to the player experience; with the larger scale a narrow hallway can feel more narrow and a small room can feel more cramped while still actually giving room to move. The classic scale feels a bit more freeing in the movement, but decorations like pillars and boxes take up a lot more space and there's overall less freedom to create more unique environments.

 

The outside area particularly shows the advantage of the larger scale; the trucks feel more appropriately sized, and a narrow gap between them feels more narrow. Likewise with narrow corridors; there is more narrowness making tight areas feel tighter.

I figure a big room will feel big no matter what, but with the classic Wolfenstein scale I can't make a tight space feel as tight.

 

The movement feels widely different between the two, even if they actually move at the same speed.  The small scale feels faster, which works for run-and-gun.  I could increase the speed for the larger scale, but this feels like the right speed in the tight corridors.

 

I don't know; tell me what you guys think.

[realjohnmadden]

May as well give it a shot:

- The Big level feels like a GZDoom game, with the slowish movement and the large levels. Personally I'm not a fan, as I prefer Wolf more, but it would be more suited to the sort of gameplay you'd see in Duke 3D where everything is more methodical.

- The Classic level feels more like Wolf3D, with faster movement and would be better for a run-and-gun style of gameplay.

- I like the environment design in the outdoor sections with the trucks and whatnot. The rest is a bunch of random textures that I really can't comment on, though.

- Change the executable name. It ends up being detected as what I assume to be some anime furry game by Discord:

- Rendering bugs:

Spoiler

This one is just the skybox texture being weird, but I'll still include it. The others are presumably to do with Z-clipping or something - I'm sure Unity has a fix for it.

 

 

[Marscaleb]

Thank you for the response!

 

On 3/25/2024 at 11:23 AM, realjohnmadden said:

- Change the executable name. It ends up being detected as what I assume to be some anime furry game by Discord:

Well that's unexpected.

 

Yeah, I'm aware of the rendering bugs.  It wasn't worth fixing for a quick mockup.  I forgot to mention that in the post.

The sky is simply because the texture isn't finished and doesn't tile.  It was actually just a stock photo that I resized and colored to match the palette.  It was just so I could have something to test the sky functionality.

The textures clipping through is because I am using sprites for the walls as it was a quick and easy way to add some fake contrast; I'll use proper geometry later once I have real artwork to use.

 

What exactly do you mean by saying the gameplay in Duke 3D is methodical?

Edited March 27, 2024 by Marscaleb

[realjohnmadden]

Duke's gameplay is more methodical compared to Doom - Doom is purely run-and-gun, but Duke also lets you incorporate more strategy and an element of stealth by using pipe bombs to attack enemies without being in their line of sight or while above them, and the shrinker/expander to efficiently deal with problematic single enemies so that you can focus on the rest. Meanwhile, Doom's arsenal consists of melee weapons, hitscan weapons, and projectiles that always go straight and are not affected by gravity.