Project Ideas Thread

[Patrick]

So you have a good idea? A project you want to make but have no resources? An idea for a TC? Help starting you mega-cool-whatnot project? Post here. All ideas are welcome. No trolling/flames Please. Screenshots should be posted in the "Post your Doom Picture" thread. Resources/Levels welcome. This is a good way for newbies to get their project ideas out and get feedback, long time members are encouraged to post here too.


EDIT:
Putting in a Few Ideas of My own:

(1) Starship Troopers: Maurauder TC - This seems like it could be pretty fun to do. The kind of gameplay I'd have in mind would vary between linear first person shooting like painkiller, and invasion maps like COD's Nazi Zombies. I'd want to keep to a set of weapons only featured in the movies. A weapon set such as: Morita Carbine (from ST1), Laser Rifle (from ST2), Morita Assault Rifle (from ST1), Grenade Launcher (from ST1) and Nuke. Possibly the Mech Suits used in the end of Starship Troopers 3? This could make for some good run 'n gun action.

(2) Remake Strife using the Doom 3 engine - maybe this doesnt fit under classic doom, but I'd like to see this somewhat underappreciated gem get a nice makeover and get the recognition it deserves.

(3) Cyberpunk Mod - I know that HacX is really one of the only good Cyberpunk mods available for Doom right now (and that one virus game thingy), but I'd like to see something newer that utilizes newer features. This would make for a nice Eternity or ZDoom project. Something that I would want to do is use really vivid colors to create a real world and have a stark contrast against a cyberworld (without making my eyes bleed like HacX) I'd want it to have the kind of atmosphere as Blade Runner, and something of an 80's-esque soundtrack. This of course would be pretty hard, but fun nonetheless.

[Rorix]

When I was messing around with Oblige, the thing I noticed the most was how much better it is than Slige. I thought that maybe with some modification, an Oblige WAD could be made to look genuine. If anyone is interested in helping with a modified Oblige megawad (or thinks I should be shot for even suggesting such a thing), please reply. Here are a couple of screenshots:

http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/6438/beforevsi.png
http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/8940/afterb.png

[Solarn]

Well, I had an idea for a particular map for quite some time now, but general incompetence had made me unable to do anything about it.

I want to make the Cyberdemon scary again. I'm certain that for most people, their first encounter with it in Doom's E2M8 was the scariest thing in the entire game up to that point, but since then, it's been, how to put it, watered down a bit. Sure, it can still provide a tough fight, but it's no longer anything special.

So I had an idea that could only be accomplished, to my knowledge, in Zdoom and derived ports (which I have absolutely zero experience with). The basic idea is a somewhat hellish techbase map with lots of flickering lights and a general abandoned feel. There would still be plenty of fights, of course, but there would also be stretches of empty hallways littered with marine and demon corpses. And in these hallways (and during some of the fights) thundering footsteps could be heard. Maybe even glimpses of an imposing figure when you try to open a door that gets stuck halfway. Or maybe you'll hear the sounds of a battle from an area ahead of you that you can't immediately reach, and when you do reach it, it's been blown to bits with corpses of enemies scattered everywhere.

All that should work towards building tension for the final confrontation with what's either a simple cyberdemon (possibly too underwhelming) or some kind of modified, graphically more impressive monster that still basically works like a cybie (so no Thamuz shenanigans). For maximum efficiency, no pictures of the monster or the final encounter would be released before the map is complete.

Of course, to do this well, I'll need to get much better at ZDoom mapping. And spriting. And scripting.

[printz]

A medieval conversion of Doom that has the player as a typical wanderer. His weapons would be that: shovels, blades, flails, bows, crossbows and all those. They'll have durability meters, so they should not be misused. But the player would be no magician. Everything should be simply Doom, but in medieval times.

Reason I can't: drawing sprites. I don't have all the utilities to animate well.

[ArmouredBlood]

As I understand it oblige maps are a bunch of pre-fabs pieced together. It'd be better for mappers to piece those pre-fabs together themselves than to have the computer chose without any 'in-building play-testing'.

With that in mind, a 'human oblige' contest might be cool. Have the contestants take oblige pre-fabs and construct a few maps, then texture them how they want. Then everyone can pick another map and tune it up like the 1994 tune-up challenge.

----
I've also been thinking about might and magic, and how it could be re-made as a doom TC. Very far-fetched, but the system is basically there already in hexen/strife, so very possible in this engine. There are tools that already extract basically all the sprites and textures for MM6,7, and 8, just making the decorate entries and converting to doom palette could get those over. The biggest problems would be the scripting and house interactions ... with HUGE blocks of text and a myst feel to the house interactions it might be better just to do away with them. Things like combat and levels should be pretty easy to do though, with doom in hexen format and decorate.

Even if that fell through, I've always wanted to see how a blood titan would do against a cyberdemon :D

[Doom64Marine]

strife. it has cool midevil related weapons and characters.

[ArmouredBlood]

Heh. The things keeping me from doing it are how much stuff there is to the might and magic games. Even the starting island area of might and magic 7 would take up 2 maps by itself, and that pales in comparison to the rest of the game. I guess trying out at least that much would give some ideas to make it easier. Least there's a dragon there, to keep things interesting (as in you get in his cave, you run like hell away).

[Jimmy]

I have a weird, abstract mod called "Sadness" in the works that I may never finish. I wrote a new NPC dialogue system, action menu and inventory system, and made a hi-res font for it. I even outlined some of the (crappy-ass) plot.

Unfortunately a certain someone beat me to the black-and-white-cel-shaded-Madworld-esque-abstract-world punch. :P

[Patrick]

Jimmy91 said:

Unfortunately a certain someone beat me to the black-and-white-cel-shaded-Madworld-esque-abstract-world punch. :P

Care to join efforts?

[Ninjalah]

I started on a progression wad (My 1st map, then 2nd map, then 3rd etc to see how much better i was getting with map making) and it had a pretty cool Red/Blue room that was supposed to be a dimensional shift and what not. Blue = Techbase stuff with a hint of Hell Red = Hellish stuff with a hint of techbase.
Here are some screenshots without monsters:
http://i28.tinypic.com/2lm2liu.png
http://i32.tinypic.com/116m0xf.png
http://i29.tinypic.com/33x7975.png
http://i31.tinypic.com/33biu5k.png
http://i27.tinypic.com/ta0djr.png

Here's one of the middle room if I were to lower the walls:


I didn't want to f**k this thread up so most of these pics will be in URL's.

EDIT: This is the 4th map in my WAD, but I have no serious intentions on getting it done anytime soon. I just started working on my first episode (Name not decided yet), so this may end up scrapped.

[The Ultimate DooMer]

printz said:

A medieval conversion of Doom that has the player as a typical wanderer. His weapons would be that: shovels, blades, flails, bows, crossbows and all those. They'll have durability meters, so they should not be misused. But the player would be no magician. Everything should be simply Doom, but in medieval times.

Reason I can't: drawing sprites. I don't have all the utilities to animate well.

http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=20941&sid=eb8865201e8217fa715477921aac0e9e

[Jimmy]

Patrick said:

Care to join efforts?

Depends what you mean. :P The project never evolved beyond a stupid test level complete with NPCs whose sprites I shamelessly ripped from DeviantArt. If you really want it I guess I can send you it. :P

[Patrick]

Jimmy91 said:

Depends what you mean. :P The project never evolved beyond a stupid test level complete with NPCs whose sprites I shamelessly ripped from DeviantArt. If you really want it I guess I can send you it. :P

I'm curious to see what you've got. I may have some use for it.

[Kyka]

I have had an idea kicking around for some time, that I haven't really had mapping time to put towards, but it is simply this.

A remake of all 32 levels of Doom2, where each new level would have to be based on the theme and the spirit of each level of the original Doom2. Doom2 modernised, you might say.

For a couple of good examples, I will put forward Chris Lutz' remake of MAP29 here.

And my own remake of MAP07, which neubejiita was good enough to upload for me to his Doompage here

Once I clear up a couple of other things, I may seriously consider following this up. Unless someone else wants to do it. There may be enough quality remakes already in the archives to make this project "relatively" simple. Feel free to suggest other potential maps, just outta interest

Anyway, that was my idea. Probably not very original, but if it was done well, I think it would make a fine megawad.

[Jodwin]

Kyka said:

Once I clear up a couple of other things, I may seriously consider following this up. Unless someone else wants to do it. There may be enough quality remakes already in the archives to make this project "relatively" simple. Feel free to suggest other potential maps, just outta interest

Anyway, that was my idea. Probably not very original, but if it was done well, I think it would make a fine megawad.

If that gets on the road, I could grab Focus. Thematically speaking it was always my second favorite map (right after Living end) from Doom 2.

[Torn]

Kyka said:

A remake of all 32 levels of Doom2, where each new level would have to be based on the theme and the spirit of each level of the original Doom2. Doom2 modernised, you might say.

That is what I want Flashback 2 to be. :P
(after flashback 1 gets done sometime in 2311)

[Ariander]

Jodwin said:

If that gets on the road, I could grab Focus. Thematically speaking it was always my second favorite map (right after Living end) from Doom 2.

I'll do Map23. I already have one in the works so I may as well use it.

[zap610]

I think it would be cool to do a a remake of Doom 2 in ZDoom. Like with a retelling of the story with characters and cutscenes and all that crap. And of course with progressing levels that look like they are on Earth.

[Jodwin]

zap610 said:

I think it would be cool to do a a remake of Doom 2 in ZDoom. Like with a retelling of the story with characters and cutscenes and all that crap.

No.

[Creaphis]

I've had loads of ideas for great projects. Considering that I've never managed to finish anything (even crea_one.wad was supposed to be the beginning of something about six times bigger) it makes sense to part with the ideas that have no real chance of ever being executed. Here they are. All of these ideas attempt to expand on Doom in some way, and bring new gameplay elements or moods into the Doom experience. I have little interest in those ideas that would only result in more of what we already have.

1. A moderately-cinematic mapset from the perspective of someone on Earth during a "Hell on Earth" scenario. Despite ostensibly taking place simultaneously with the events of Doom 2, the player would not cross paths with or influence the Doomguy in any way. The player is merely on his own quest to survive. Level design would also be completely different from that of Doom 2, and would be as close to realistic as possible within the engine used. This project was inspired by The Zombie Survival Guide, and the gameplay would revolve around resource conservation, avoidance of unnecessary confrontation, and making logical navigation choices. (This street seems deserted, but there's a semi-circle of corpses all splayed outwards from an open window. Is it safe?) The player would face resistance from hellish invaders, zombies, AND well-armed but extremely suspicious human survivors.

2. "I Wanna Be The Doomguy". My recent infatuation with The Sky May Be has led me to realize that it's similar to I Wanna Be The Guy in its design philosophy, in that it's hard, but always creative enough to keep you trying, trying and trying to get past each separated challenge. This project would put more IWBTG-esque gameplay into the Doom engine, because I think it belongs there, but would also be a successor to The Sky May Be. The Great God Imp, seeking revenge, has captured you and returned you to his toybox, but has upgraded to Windows Vista in the interim. Fend off extremely dangerous monsters in mystifying constructions, while dealing with the frustrations of User Account Control. Your only chance of survival stems from capable usage of weapons such as the Snowballer, with projectiles that grow bigger and more damaging as they travel, and remain as temporary fortifications upon impact, the infinite-barreled shotgun (reloading is a bitch), and the Toggler - the ultimate weapon - which kills everything that's living in a large blast radius, and resurrects everything that's dead.

3. "Chaplain". While playing Thief I realized that it might be possible to create similar stealth-based gameplay in the Doom engine, by fooling around with sound-blocking lines and the REJECT lump. It would be necessary to have a silent weapon capable of delivering a KO to dormant monsters. It would also be a plus if monsters would return to a dormant state in their original positions if left undisturbed for a certain length of time; I never investigated if that's possible in any Doom engines. Gameplay would revolve around stealth kills, of course, and logical route choices in an open, explorable environment. A nice aspect of Thief gameplay is that you get to feel smart for choosing routes that avoid the greatest danger, and this is a feeling not provided by linear shooters, so I thought it would be nice if it could be brought to Doom. Like "Thief", "Chaplain" is meant to be a simple, attention-grabbing title for a game featuring an unorthodox protagonist who is extremely vulnerable in open combat. My conception of the main character became fairly complex: I imagined him as a trained spy, working for some other corporate entity, who was posing as a chaplain in a UAC military base to steal secrets when demonic disaster struck. Some mildly-cinematic scripted sequences viewed from a first-person perspective and some text-based exposition (or, better yet, Thief-like spoken exposition between levels) would show that our protagonist gradually identifies more and more with his ministerial facade. Eventually he can only explain his improbable survival as the result of divine intervention.

4. The least necessary project of all time: a collection of Romero head showdowns, like those that fill out the Map30 slot in most megawads. This would be a half-serious project, executed much more casually than the above ideas. I might still make some of these maps as practice, or as an outlet for quirkier ideas.

5. The Escape from Castle Chezcrea: Director's Cut. As mentioned before, I intended for crea_one.wad to be part of a level about 6 times bigger, leading up to a captivating, unorthodox encounter with an aging Icon of Sin. I soon re-imagined that level as an episode, with fairly traditional Doom gameplay but with a dark, rich, gothic-industrial atmosphere, and released what I had made so far by itself, intending to start over from scratch. I then re-imagined that one episode as three episodes, in which Doom's cosmology would be turned on its head. With my track record I'll obviously never make all that.

I also have a few well-fleshed-out conceptions of large, epic single-level projects that I'll keep to myself, because those have a chance of existing some day. Preliminary steps have been taken to make them realities, but just barely.

[40oz]

One project idea that was inspired by the Doom Movie's lame FPS scene that I had but never bothered to get anything done in it was making a wad that was purely for show and make a youtube video of it.

It would be a heavily (HEAVILY) detailed and very linear map with lots of underdetailed areas that look like they can be accessed but the player can't actually get to (to make the map look more immersive and realistic but not valuable to the video being recorded). I'd make the textures myself, specific for the map and not very useful anywhere else. I could also make new monsters by replacing some of the graphics of existing monsters with fresh new ones. I wouldn't even need to finish the behind graphics because the monster would only be used during recording and not meant for real gameplay. The video would be recorded with the sound turned off, with sound and music edited into the video later on. The video would be recorded while playing in a sourceport such as JDoom (due to being better for show than real playing), with no hud and the crosshair removed, and with mouselook enabled. During recording I'd twitch my arm with the mouse to simulate recoil when firing, and shake violently in explosions, and glance at the ground or something when taking damage, to make it feel more like a movie and less like a game.

[andrewj]

A remake of Serious Sam, using a GL port and high resolution sprites instead of models so that you really could have hundreds of monsters on the screen at the same time, those epic battles which DOOM does so well but modern model-based games suck at.

I'm not comfortable ripping graphics and putting them on the net, so I probably wouldn't do this unless there was some automatic way of converting the models from the original games to sprites (so you'd need the original game to play it).

[NiGHTMARE]

andrewj said:

those epic battles which DOOM does so well but modern model-based games suck at.

http://www.totalwar.com/

[Captain Red]

A re-imagining of the first doom episode. It would be a large Hexen style HUB, with the emphasis on exploration, atmosphere and survival. Taking some ques from the doom bible and games like system shock 2 and super metroid, The levels world actually resemble a military base/lab where people might actually live and work and in which items would be logically placed. Need health? Find an infirmary. Guns? That's what armories are for. Want some hi-tech equipment? Well you're going to need to bust into the labs for that stuff. You could add logical hurdlers such as needing to switch from emergency power at the power plant, but if you do that, the security system will come online as well and not necessarily help you out.

Like Metroid, you'd need items to get through certain areas: Keys for security doors, Explosives to clear some walls, A hacking device that would disable gun turrets (possibly making them turn on the monsters), radiation suit for uhh... radiation.

Monsters and some items would be randomized for each play through and respawn to give the player something to do, as this would involve some back tracking.

Lot's of hidden weapons, enemies and bosses. Ideally, it would be easy to get to the end only ever finding a shot gun and a few grenades. But if you wanted to see everything you'd really have to look. The randomization of monsters and items would make multiple play troughs interesting.

It would up the difficulty in several ways without resorting to things like bumping up the hit points or adding stupidly large amounts of monsters, instead the realism would be nudged up slightly; Ammo would be scarce, weapons would need to be reloaded (and reloading half way through a clip would result in the remaining of the clip being lost, weapons wouldn't actually be dropped by monsters anymore, you'd have to find them, monsters react faster, possibly make the weapons a little more lethal (a single shotgun blast at close range would kill zombie men AND YOU), and finally, in what would probably be the most controversial idea, Slow down the player speed :O
Not really realistic, more 'tactical'.

The idea would be to make the game a similar experience to the first time you played it before you new every nook and cranny. Sort of the doom I played in my head when I was new to the game.

Reason I never made it: It's stupidly ambitious. Everything suggested is possible in GZDoom, but pretty difficult. Needs lots of ACS scripting to make a HUB, and I'm not much of a mapper anyway. I'm kind of fussy about what I want for this project, so I want to work alone on it.

I did gather a whole bunch of resources for it, and actually started a map or two. I still fiddle with it now and then though.

[Solarn]

Creaphis said:

5. The Escape from Castle Chezcrea: Director's Cut. As mentioned before, I intended for crea_one.wad to be part of a level about 6 times bigger, leading up to a captivating, unorthodox encounter with an aging Icon of Sin. I soon re-imagined that level as an episode, with fairly traditional Doom gameplay but with a dark, rich, gothic-industrial atmosphere, and released what I had made so far by itself, intending to start over from scratch. I then re-imagined that one episode as three episodes, in which Doom's cosmology would be turned on its head. With my track record I'll obviously never make all that.

Please, if you do nothing else in your life, FINISH THIS. It would be epic. crea_one is already one of the best maps ever in my opinion.

[ArmouredBlood]

NiGHTMARE said:

http://www.totalwar.com/

Didn't empire total war just come out a few months ago? O.o

[Patrick]

Creaphis said:

5. The Escape from Castle Chezcrea: Director's Cut. As mentioned before, I intended for crea_one.wad to be part of a level about 6 times bigger, leading up to a captivating, unorthodox encounter with an aging Icon of Sin. I soon re-imagined that level as an episode, with fairly traditional Doom gameplay but with a dark, rich, gothic-industrial atmosphere, and released what I had made so far by itself, intending to start over from scratch. I then re-imagined that one episode as three episodes, in which Doom's cosmology would be turned on its head.

Do this. You're not allowed to post here until you have :P

[40oz]

NiGHTMARE said:

http://www.totalwar.com/

Didn't Napoleon lose to Russia?

[Devalaous]

Kyka said:

I have had an idea kicking around for some time, that I haven't really had mapping time to put towards, but it is simply this.

A remake of all 32 levels of Doom2, where each new level would have to be based on the theme and the spirit of each level of the original Doom2. Doom2 modernised, you might say.

For a couple of good examples, I will put forward Chris Lutz' remake of MAP29 here.

And my own remake of MAP07, which neubejiita was good enough to upload for me to his Doompage here

Once I clear up a couple of other things, I may seriously consider following this up. Unless someone else wants to do it. There may be enough quality remakes already in the archives to make this project "relatively" simple. Feel free to suggest other potential maps, just outta interest

Anyway, that was my idea. Probably not very original, but if it was done well, I think it would make a fine megawad.

YES, enough with the 62760 Episode 1 remakes, Doom 2 sorely needs something like this. I was thinking about something like this last night, while completing PSX Doom. Things like Downtown, Suburbs and The Citadel at the very least stand out in Doom 2 to me.

Is your project alomg the lines of Wonderful Doom (I need to finish this, goddamn Episode 4 buttrape) or something that takes the overall premise of the levels along with the story and goes with that? (Fighting your way through to the infested starport, then battling through the ruins of a city, assaulting a giant demon stronghold built around the paortal to hell they came out of, and ultimately closing the portal by blowing up the Icon powering it)

[Patrick]

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