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Frederick the Great

I had a dream about a Doom TC last night

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Harry Potter Doom!

My girlfriend's sister was playing some early 3D Harry Potter game on the original Play Station last night, and all I could do was talk aloud with various comment ssuch as 'That would be easy to re-create in Zdoom' or 'this could make such a fantastic TC'. After looking a frightfull dork, I retired to bed. That night I had intense dreams about the idea of a Harry Potter TC.

When you get past the initial childishness of the idea, Harry Potter could provide an excellent means for someone wanting to make a TC. The levels would be filled with amazing Architecture if left in the hands of an advanced level designer.

So many people in the past have come up with what sound like unique TC ideas, but are in fact rubbish. I once bumped into Pokemon Doom which sounded unique, but would have been impossible for the amateurs making it to produce anything of playable worth.

When it comes to making a TC the first thing that should cross a designers mind must be the level design; what are the possibilities/limitations? How will it look within the Doom universe?

Remember the original Star Wars Doom TC back in the early 90s? I always wondered why no one bothered to make an updated version; Lucas Arts produced a Doomesque style engine for their game 'Dark Forces', which had so many sprites that would have worked so well in the doom engine (The Empire officers, Stormtroopers, etc would look beautifull in doom). I always found the sprites in the original Star Wars Doom to be somewhat awkward, though very good for the time.

Batman doom for me remains one of the greatest of TCs, but even that is starting to look aged by todays design standards. I simply love the fact that the designers had hand drawn all the sprites from scratch, not that I see a problem with ripping graphics - but when someone manages to make something from scratch they deserve a pat on the back. It's one thing to make a set of sprites with poser 3D, but when it's done in MS paint it certainly warrents respect.

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Frederick the Great said:

So many people in the past have come up with what sound like unique TC ideas, but are in fact rubbish.


Are you suggesting that a Harry -faggot- Potter DOOM wouldn't be rubbish? (heh I really hate that kid)

Edit: Yet I admire a lot your work on the Berlin map

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Frederick the Great said:

It's one thing to make a set of sprites with poser 3D, but when it's done in MS paint it certainly warrents respect.


Making sprites from 3d models are no walk in the park either. I've made them in a number of ways and it all comes down to cleaning up the sprite, which is the boring part.

BTW. They didn't use MSpaint, they used Photoshop.

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Most other stuff does NOT look good in Doom. Plus, originality always wins over "remake x tc for game y". While I've enjoyed Harry Potter, I would never want to play a doom tc of it. It would be horrendous visually and probably be rather disappointing. If you argue "hey gzdoom supports models blah blah", why not go for an engine that would be more suited to it in the first place? There's also licensing issues and such, which is why you never saw an updated star wars tc.

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Mancubus II said:

Most other stuff does NOT look good in Doom. Plus, originality always wins over "remake x tc for game y". While I've enjoyed Harry Potter, I would never want to play a doom tc of it. It would be horrendous visually and probably be rather disappointing. If you argue "hey gzdoom supports models blah blah", why not go for an engine that would be more suited to it in the first place? There's also licensing issues and such, which is why you never saw an updated star wars tc.


I see now reason why the visual & gameplay can't be merged - I wouldn't argue that gzdoom supports models, as I prefer sprites anyday. Doom must remain doom in my opinion; features such as slopes and polyobjects simply enhance the possibilities for map makers, but they don't entierly change the gameplay of doom.

Why not use an engine that would be more suited in the first place? I personally believe the doom engine is simply a means to an end; probably dissapointing you say? Since no one has done the project, I can't make such a judgement. I'm not advocating that I personally am interested in making a Harry Potter TC, far from it. I'm simply exploring in my head different things that would be interesting to make.

Why would a Harry Potter TC, for example, have to be a 32 level megawad? Couldn't it be a simple 5 level death match TC? Change the Green Marine into Hogwart Student, and have them fighting with spells around Hogwarts.

Zdoom supports massive numbers of players in Deathmatch (64 isn't it?). In addition you have the option to have individual skins. A ww2 Battlefield style capture the flag would be amazing; playing EA's Godfather recently gave me ideas for 'Gang Warefare' capture the flag, based in a 1940s City. With the right level designer, such a level could be very playable.

I can't have pessimistic views with regards to ideas that are good. I'm not at all interested in what the negative outcome, since I value the judgement of those with talant to do something positive.

My 1945 Berlin Map is detailed, but I'm designing it with gameplay in mind. I often examine maps from other 3D games (as well as RPG games) and have come to the conclusion that it's simply a maze that doesn't look like a maze.

In fact, so happy am I with my Berlin Map that I've decided to make an additional 9 levels based on Return to Castle Wolfenstein as a build up to my Berlin Map. I'm working with two friends from the Wolfenstein3D community; One is an excellent sprite artist, and the other a level designer who'se done some excellent work for Doom. Though the level's architecture is similar to Return to Castle Wolfenstein in places, the level design in itself is original and more suited for the doom engine; I don't want to make an Emulation of RTCW (you may aswell play the original), but I can't see why I shouldn't be infulenced in my level design from it. Our ten level TC is going to be based on the original 1992 Wolfenstein Episodes, but with an updated fresh feel to the story. Laz Rojas emulated Wolf3D to Doom2, but I want to use the Doom Engine to re-tell Wolfenstein in a mature fashion; Castle Wolfenstein is to become Wewelsburg (The original SS Castle that Wolfenstein was based on). Nazi Occultism will play a key part; on the final map of Hitler's Bunker, for example, before you encounter Hitler you must first kill his dog Blondi, who'se been ressurected as a Hell-Hound by Occult Magic.

those who believe that my TC has alraedy been done know scarcly anything of it.

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Actually Manc, I think if handled correctly, you could create a really fun Doom TC based off Harry Potter. Make it a bit of an adventure game with an inventory and your "weapons" are different spells attatched to your wand. Freeze spells, fire... maybe there are spells for unlocking doors, opening passages, and you could use scripting to rig it so that spcific weapon attacks activate the script to ulock a door. you could scour hogwatrs dungeoun, fighting silly snakes or spiders, collecting some treasures and stuff along the way (maybe you collect those magician cards from the chocolate frogs). NPCs of Hermione and Ron, Snape, Dumbledore (SNAPE KILLS HIM!) are al available to talk to through the new strife dialogue system.

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Frederick the Great said:

When it comes to making a TC the first thing that should cross a designers mind must be the level design;

The FIRST thing you should think of when designing a TC is "How can I make this into something other than 'Doom with wands'". Level design is secondary to a good game mechanic and interesting game design.

Frederick the Great said:

Why would a Harry Potter TC, for example, have to be a 32 level megawad? Couldn't it be a simple 5 level death match TC? Change the Green Marine into Hogwart Student, and have them fighting with spells around Hogwarts.

That is a terrible idea.

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Not a terrible idea, just a classical attitude.

And besides, some of us don't have the time in our life to learn every aspect of the doom engine that we are able to create NPCs, entierly new game concepts, etc... some of us are just level designers looking for a means to demonstrate some unique level concepts.

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DEAR GOD NO. YOU ARE NOT GOING TO RUIN DOOM WITH HARRY POTTER.

You are mixing one of my favorite things with one of my most hated things.

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Hmmm... maybe you can create a great parody of Harry Potter. The little child, who turns into a living dead zombie and has to fight in hell, where he meets his other dead friends (zombies) :-P!

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Frederick the Great said:

And besides, some of us don't have the time in our life to learn every aspect of the doom engine that we are able to create NPCs, entierly new game concepts, etc... some of us are just level designers looking for a means to demonstrate some unique level concepts.

Then make gorgeous maps, don't half ass a TC because you can only do some of the work. I'd prefer a coule excellent maps to a half baked TC which replaces the shotgun with a guy holding a wand in some pretty maps. Do it right or don't do it at all.

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*Ahemsnapekillsdumbledoreahem*

Ok, when I was little, I've tried to make a Harry Potter map, but it didn't got completed.

Besides, I don't like Harry (dope) Potter much.

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Offhand, I can only think of two spells from Harry Potter that are meant to injure/kill an opponent, those being Sectum Sempra and Avada Kedavra. I suppose Incendio could be used as an attack also, but really, most of the spells that can be used in a fight have other effects like immobilizing you.

Even disregarding this, I'm not sure how you would make the gameplay pan out. I just don't see Harry running around trigger-happily blowing stuff up Doom-style.

Edit: Actually, if you want someone running around trigger-happily blowing stuff up in a Harry Potter setting, maybe you could make the player a Death Eater, if you don't mind telling it from the "evil" point of view. This would have the added bonus of making it justifiable to add the Avada Kedavra spell as an attack. I'm still not sure it would work out that well though.

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kristus said:

Making sprites from 3d models are no walk in the park either. I've made them in a number of ways and it all comes down to cleaning up the sprite, which is the boring part.


That's what I did with QDOOM, screenshots of the 3D models, then paste into PSP, resize, import the DOOM palette, clean up the bad pixels (usually horrid pink pixels, everything was so brown and drab in Quake).

Some monsters had 100+ sprites for all the actions needed. And I trimmed down the number of frames for each action too. I originally wanted to do 5-7 frames per action to make it look smooth, but it was just way too much. I could do one monster, all actions, in an evening.

No way I could have done all that by hand from scratch. :)

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How about a map where harry potter drinks some psycho potion (that somebody decided to store in a coke can) and then goes on a psycho killing spree with an axe?

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deathbringer said:
How about a map where harry potter drinks some psycho potion (that somebody decided to store in a coke can) and then goes on a psycho killing spree with an axe?

You mean Quake?

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Fanatic: Heh, yeah. That's waht i am talking about. :)

When I made Hyena, all those years ago. I drew it all up in Animation pro. All of it. I could use the legs from Doom as template, but basically it was all new even yet.
Weapons, monsters etc.

In Nimrod I used 3d models for most of it. Even some textures.

Render, move the lights, the camera, etc. Render again, etc.
Into Animation Pro, clean it all up. Fun to be had by the whole family. :p

In Phobia I made the sprites from drawings that I scanned and touched up in Photoshop. Luckily I didn't do too many of these. But the end result was quite gratifying.

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