Landship design

I'm planning to create a landship like this:

for a gzdoom level.

The player starts in a desert, then reach the landship and goes onboard from a lift positioned between the wheels.

The main problem I have is, how to realized some good looking tyres. I could use a lot of sloped ceilings to resemble an half cylinder (the other half being invisible inside the landship) and a ceil5_1 texture but it would be too flat for a tyre. Tyres have usually a complex pattern on them.

Do you have any suggestion?

Voxels?

Yes but I fear I need a very good tutorial for it...

How big you want this Landship to be exactly?

There's a level in Strange Aeons (E2M5ish?) that takes place on a machine just like that, and I think you even walk along the treads at one point. Open it up and see what texture Impie used.

@Maisth The inside should be so big to have space for a mid-size level. Something like a giant ship on wheels.

@not jabba: I will look for, thank you!

Why you limit yourself to stock textures? You take pic of real tire and resize to 64x64...

The tyres for such a landship would be more like 1024x1024... so I should find some hi res texture.

Or just take a pic of real tire by a camera. 1024^2, you are planning this to be Sunder-scale? :D I was thinking about 256^2 originally.

On 5/26/2017 at 5:08 PM, Angry Saint said:

Do you have any suggestion?

Anything that has a complex shape is probably best approached using models. Or, as scifista42 suggested, voxels.

Despite the wonders that are possible using GZDooM's 3D features, they can (at best) provide approximations of complex geometry.

You could modify the design so the ship uses tank treads. The geometry would be easier to pull off and I think a land ship that size would more likely use them over giant wheels. Just my two cents.

Is it important that the ship is a single map?

Here's an example:

Like Doom, Wolfenstein 3D does not support rooms over rooms. However each individual level is called a floor, and each map ends with a lift that takes you to the next floor. Suppose you made several maps, one where you can see the ship from the outside, another where you are on top of the ship, another where you are inside the ships hull, etc. That may be less intense to make because you can focus on the gameplay and details where it matters while still communicating the illusion that you are still at this one location. Also you can tell people that your wad is x amount of maps which might be more enticing to play than a single humongous experimental map.

Also, if you make the landship stationary and switch the texture of outdoors to scrolling and voodoo-doll unlock the mechanisms that will cause instant death after crossing the lines around landship and maybe add some jump moving scenery around, then you will get the getting onboard part and landship move part in one map. Also, after that it could even stop and you would unboard, while the cave exit where you came from would be closed and the new one would open. So whole landship thing would appear in the middle of map. This would require a lot of fucking around with voodoos but its possible.

Also, if you are doing it for gzdoom, it would be a lot easier

18 minutes ago, 40oz said:

Like Doom, Wolfenstein 3D does not support rooms over rooms. 

He's planning on using GZDooM, so he can definitely consider creating room-over-room constructs. However, I agree with you about splitting a massive "vertical" level into several maps. It gets extremely unwieldy to manage sectors with increasing numbers of rooms-over-rooms.

In fact, GZDooM also allows using a hub system, which will allow the player to return to previously-traversed maps. If that is one of the OP's intentions for his game.

The original plan is to have 3 levels: the outdoor desert, where you can see the landship from outside, walk around and under it (as the big wheels put its bottom above ground), the inside, full of machinery, steampunk, etc... and the main deck, where you are outside on the higher part of the landship (full of cranes, tanks, stuff etc...).

But I like NinjaLiquidator idea of having the illusion of moving, maybe while closed in the comand bridge for a short time. And then coming out into a new level.

I don't know yet if the levels will be connected via hub or not. Let's see.. design first, gameplay later (I know, this is not the best).

I'm quite concerned regarding the outdoor level. The ship is going to be big, and I fill that exploring / fighting around a metal building among rocks and sand can be boring...

53 minutes ago, Angry Saint said:

.... the outdoor desert, where you can see the landship from outside, walk around and under it (as the big wheels put its bottom above ground)....

 

I don't know yet if the levels will be connected via hub or not. Let's see.. design first, gameplay later (I know, this is not the best).

 

I'm quite concerned regarding the outdoor level. The ship is going to be big, and I fill that exploring / fighting around a metal building among rocks and sand can be boring...

 

Why not consider a model for the entire landship? In this way you can get a convincing structure, while freeing yourself of the tedium of using sectors to create it. As your intention for that level seems to be to allow walking around and under it, but not inside it, you shouldn't have any issues with using a model.

Regarding hubs, they should be introduced as part of the game design, and not necessarily just as part of gameplay development. This is particularly true if you will require the player to return to previously-visited levels, or allow the player to traverse maps freely.

Outdoor level, particularly vast ones, tend to create a challenge for good fights. Perhaps you can make it a combination of puzzle-solving and traps.

I'd be tempted to ditch the massive tires and replace them with massive fans, and say it's a hover-vessel.

1 hour ago, ReX said:

tedium of using sectors to create it

I actually like to build 3d structures using 3d sectors.

@Urthar: the fans are a good idea, but I think I will use it for something like an airship level

1 hour ago, Angry Saint said:

I actually like to build 3d structures using 3d sectors.

I do, too. However, building complex shapes with 3D sectors, especially when you want to impart realism, can be exceedingly difficult to achieve effectively. For example, it took me hours to construct what you see in this screenshot. And those are simple compared with the landship you envision.

Still, best wishes in your endeavors.