Attempting to make a Doom inspired game in Unity

The whole idea is to model the mechanics completely after Doom (E1M1 as a placeholder allows me to compare it to the original more easily) then utilize it as a base to make my own game that is just generally inspired by 90's first person shooters. Right now, I have the movement speed around what I could perceive is the running speed for Doom and am working on movable environment things like doors and lifts. Of course, I don't intend to have it just be a complete rip-off of Doom either, mostly just the mechanics so it has a similar feel, I intend to place completely original content around it.

Latest Doom Imitation progress:

So, its like a Freedoom in Unity?

Or like balls-to-the-wall action in Strafe?

I suppose you can say it's more like FreeDoom except it won't be in the same graphical style as Doom. It'll have whatever visuals are in my capacity to create, which will be quite a bit more modern. You might say, in that regard, it's a bit like Doom 2016. Feels like a 90's shooter but doesn't look like one except in the most basic fashion like having a stats bar. And, of course, it'll have more modern pleasures like mouse aiming and the like so I guess it'll feel more like a Source Port of Doom than Vanilla Doom.

I wouldn't bother with replicating enemy behavior, to toss that out there; going for more of a D2016 direction for that over source-port style would likely be far better. I don't exactly mean how slow and telegraphed they are, or that you have a variety of projectile throwers with different projectile properties, melee-only monsters, something that charges at the player as a projectile, etc.; I'm referring more so to the AI itself and how it's called, where a monster will only move every couple frames and when it does, it just stumbles around in basically random directions to try and get to its targets.

Something with actual pathfinding and ability to chase a player down would allow for so much more dynamic gameplay; though I can imagine monsters too far away from any player could be "stalled" or wander or something so that, say, a horde of pinky analogues that's meant to wander the map will not perfectly track down the player as fast as possible and the horde is capable of dispersing and coming at the player staggered / from different directions.

Yeah, fair point. The funny thing is it actually seems to be easier to make them have direct pathfinding than having it be randomized since Unity has a navigation system built right in, you just have to tell it what's walkable and what isn't and enemies make a beeline for the player.

Here's what I have so far. Doors/switches/lifts operate (Though, technically, most of them are instantaneous because I'm just using a move to code. When I make my own game, they'll be bone animated like the lift), health/armor/ammo with pickups (The shotgun doesn't have a mechanic yet, just adds shells and make the corresponding sound), a simple red stick figure to represent an enemy as of right now, and of course all the basic movements.

For some reason, the lighting and billboard sprites are bugged out but it shouldn't be a problem once I'm making my own game due to using my own models and levels (This exported level seems to be what's causing the bugs). The enemy also uses Unity's Navigation system and doors are rigged to open when colliding with the enemy to create the appearance of the enemies opening doors.

To Do List:
- More nuanced enemy behavior.
- More weapon behaviors.
- Level Exit Script with stats.
- Fix Environmental Hazards (The nuclear waste only occasionally harms the player currently).
- Weapon feedback (Bullet puffs, brief light, maybe bleeding from the enemy)

For those of you who are interested, I finally began making my own unique assets to begin to differentiate it from Doom.



I thought of a game where you chase this supremacist alien species that seeks to control all of reality through a series of dimensions, each level being a different kind of reality. Of course, each level will still very much have the same base elements of a 90's fps, it'll mostly just be aesthetically different.

I think it's really cool what you're doing, but going through dimensions seems like it would force you to create a wide range assets in order to make sense wouldn't it? That seems like a bit of an unnecessary additional work load rather than sticking to a tighter theme.

I was thinking I'd just make a small pool of assets that I simply package differently in each dimension. I got a little inspiration from Rick and Morty when I came up with the idea, actually, in addition to a little of Duke Nukem Zero Hour for the whole alien threat plot. I thought about having the first dimension having raw beef for water bodies, as an homage to Off.



Update: Working on a Double Barreled Shotgun.



This will serve as the only other "standard" weapon, only because Double Barreled Shotguns are wicked awesome. The rest will be interdimensional weapons of my own creation. So basically freaky alien weapons. I'll probably make some kind of alien equivalent of the BFG.

I think the character is holding the shotgun in a very awkward pose. Right hand front, left back, yet it's held at the right side. You should have them the other way when holding weapons on the right side...

Looks nice. I wouldn't mind using this engine if you release it.

Jimi said:

I think the character is holding the shotgun in a very awkward pose. Right hand front, left back, yet it's held at the right side. You should have them the other way when holding weapons on the right side...

True but I already made all of the animations for it and Blender doesn't have a flip things around that just works on all animations. Perhaps I can just move the Shotgun to the center as a quick fix, like how it is in Classic Doom.

Update: Actually, that's not true, Unity allows you to scale objects by axes so I just slapped a '-' in front of the x.

Coopersville said:

Looks nice. I wouldn't mind using this engine if you release it.

I can release the initial Doom replica that I'm building it off of if you want. I seriously doubt id will raise any kind of fuss over it but I can always just replace everything with FreeDoom assets if it came down to that. I don't intent to just release the finished product's source, though, since I hope to price it. If I ever learn how, perhaps I can make an in-game map editor or something.


I also made my first non-standard (Freaky Other Dimensional Alien Weapon) weapon. Basically, it's a Mini-gun made of eels chained together and it's going to fire hornets. By the time this game is done, people will swear I was on drugs when I made it.




Second Dimensional Weapon, this time an homage to Mario. A Turtle Head Rocket Launcher that fires explosive shrooms:

My first start at making a unique level. Moderately inspired by O' of Destruction except a cavern and heavily modified to take advantage of the completely 3D Unity engine.

It looks way nicer than mine, how many hours and lines of code you were working on this so far? I am asking cause I want to compare effectivity of just using Unity vs making my own engine and I am considering developing next game in Unity after finishing my current from-scratch one.