Advice for executing a really unorthodox map concept? (White Desert)

[Caru]

This is one of those ideas that's probably terrible, and I've been telling myself for weeks now that it's a terrible idea and it could never work, but I can't stop thinking about it so here I am.

 

Just a rundown on the concept of the map: First of all, it's enormous, but not in the way most enormous maps are. The physical size of the map is very near UDB's limits (from about -32k to 32k in every direction; about a square mile), but the content within is extremely sparse and minimalistic; there's also a fairly thick fog that has the effect of making the map feel even bigger. The idea is that, where projects like Sunder overwhelm the player with the sheer scale and detail of their architecture, this map is meant to drown the player in emptiness, and the sheer scale of that emptiness; it is meant to be to Doom gameplay what an early Samuel Beckett play (in particular Godot or Endgame) is to the theater. The art style -- this is a map that, by its nature, will have to consist almost entirely of custom textures -- is heavily inspired by a location from the game Yume Nikki known as the "White Desert" (from which this map gets its name -- though this is not meant to be a recreation of that place, only an evocation), full of surreal yet simplistic body horror, and limited strictly to a palette of three colors: almost exclusively black and white, with the rare appearance of striking red. Gameplay will naturally be extremely difficult to work out, but I think it's safe to say enemy placement will be similarly sparse, with the possibility of housing intense encounters in very small spaces within the map (inside of buildings, for example); if there is to be any large-scale fighting appropriate for the map's size, it would occur all at once at the very end. The attached WAD is more of a proof-of-concept than an actual first crack at making this thing, but it should do a decent job of communicating the intended "feel".

 

I don't really have a specific question this time, I'm more seeking general advice here. Has anyone tried anything approaching this kind of gameplay and/or visual style before, and if so, did you learn any techniques that you found helpful? In particular, I would love to hear from anyone who worked on the Monochrome Mapping Project (esp. any of its "black/white" style levels, e.g. MAP21 -- a couple of whose flats I lovingly stole for the aforementioned proof-of-concept), as I have quickly found that working with such a small palette creates unique problems -- for example, as the attached WAD demonstrates, most enemy projectiles are virtually impossible to see against a white backdrop. Is it possible to disable the fullbright effect on projectiles on a sector-by-sector (or hell, I'll take map-by-map) basis? Is there another, better workaround for this problem? Are there any other problems I should be looking out for, especially in terms of communicating information to the player?

White Desert.zip

[Nevander]

If it's supposed to be pure white, using line horizons would help immensely. You could greatly reduce the physical size of the map space but retain the effect. The only issue is hitting the map bounds sooner, but I suppose you could get clever and silently teleport the player somewhere so it feels endless.

[Caru]

I'm already using line horizons actually (just on the edges of the map), but yeah, I might experiment with them a little more.

 

One thing I'd really like to do is have the edges "wrap" around (so if you go past the right edge you get silently teleported to the left edge, etc.), but the problem is that you get weird inconsistencies if things end up near those edges -- things appearing to pop in and out of existence, as well as anything you can see in the distance suddenly vanishing if you cross over the line, that kind of thing (there's a section of "Impossible: A New Reality" that intentionally demonstrates this to extremely disorienting effect, but it's not what I'm going for here).

[HQDefault]

Okay so I was thinking of ideas of how to try and lead the player along so they don't get hopelessly lost, and I am reminded of the Haunted Wasteland in Ocarina of Time:

It uses these big flagpoles to denote the path in an expansive foggy area. Maybe this on a larger scale, perhaps using different designs of poles or different colors to represent different paths... I think this could work.

[P41R47]

Its not a bad concept at all.

Emptiness is a theme we need to explore more as a community.

The vasteness of the minimalism is only comparable to the sheer amount of baroque detailing.

The concept of emptyness remind me this photo from the WIP BTSX Ep.3:

[Gez]

On mercredi 11 novembre 2020 at 7:17 PM, Caru said:

One thing I'd really like to do is have the edges "wrap" around

You can achieve that with portals. Here's a GZDoom example:

 

infiniteplane.zip

[Caru]

12 hours ago, Gez said:

You can achieve that with portals. Here's a GZDoom example:

 

infiniteplane.zip

Thanks Gez, I was worried the sheer size of the linedefs would make it unfeasible performance-wise, but it seems to run fine so far.

 

There isn't something I can set in MAPINFO that could disable fullbright by any chance, is there? That's the main problem I just can't seem to get past: projectiles being virtually invisible because they're at fullbright against a white background.

[Gez]

In a roundabout way, there is: fullbrightness is disabled in fog. So set a white fog and no more fullbright.

 

Though given your description of the problem, I figure what you really want is get rid of projectile transparency. It can be turned off as an option, but I don't think it's settable through MAPINFO. There's always the possibility to replace projectiles with copies that change their renderstyle to opaque, though.

[Caru]

That's interesting, I'm already using a white fog. Fade is set to #FFFFFF, I've even turned up the fog density to 50.

 

EDIT: Oh wait, I think I see what you're getting at. Just as an experiment, I changed the in-game settings to force vanilla-style transparency, and it made all the difference. You might have the right idea with replacing the projectiles, maybe I can use a specific imp variant on this one map that's identical save for throwing opaque projectiles -- or maybe there's a compatibility setting I can adjust that forces vanilla transparency, idk.

 

EDIT EDIT: Okay, no compatibility setting, but maybe I can do it with scripting. Incidentally, all my failed attempts to make this work have given me wonderful ideas for unique lighting setups. xD

Edited November 14, 2020 by Caru