Open World Doom Wad

[PhantomTMac]

As you may or may not know, my main project has been my Silent Hill wad.

However, a couple nights ago, as I was switching back and forth between Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition and Fallout New Vegas: Ultimate Edition, I decided it would be a lot of fun to make an open world wad for Doom with multiple quests and voice acted characters (I already have a team of voice actors that do work for me on the computer games I develop).

I'm still in the planning stages for this wad, but I need some ideas for quests, characters, and weaponries that I should include.

I plan for this wad to take place mostly in a large city with a bunch of accessible buildings. One of my ideas is that some of the more powerful weapons would only be able to be collected upon completing a quest. One of these quests could involve a scientist trying to create a new plasma gun model, but lacking a single piece to complete it. The player could explore an old abandoned base (perhaps an underground UAC facility?) to find that piece.

Anyways, post your thoughts! Thanks!

[Egregor]

I recommend a post-colonized Mars scenario. The UAC finally was able to provide humanity with prosperity and several small Mars colonies were created. Humans are now even able to walk on the surface of Mars. But, by some currently unknown reason Demons started spawning and have ruined the colonies. You, one of the only survivors of this invasion have set out to discover what went wrong by traveling from colony to colony, and even cave systems and 'other' areas searching for answers.

[MajorRawne]

Please DON'T have quests where you need to find a person, then before that person can help you they need you to find another person, who needs you to find a missing object, so you're fannying around without completing any quests and nobody is actually helping YOU.

Also a random encounter theme would be good, you could have monsters beaming into the environment suddenly so you are never sure that you're safe.

Oh, and please don't have loads of NPCs who only say "Can't you see I'm BUSY?" or some such rebuff. If a character has nothing to say, they shouldn't be in the game. This could add a lot of depth to the game as everyone would have something interesting and maybe helpful to say.

Also, the even more wretched FPS cliches like invincible team-mates who leave all the work to you but still shoot harmlessly at the enemy, or "go here link up with alpha team, damn the way's blocked so go HERE to link up with alpha team, damn the demons closed a door on you so you need to go HERE to link up with alpha team - aw bollocks, too late, alpha team is dead".

[Quasar]

MajorRawne said:

Oh, and please don't have loads of NPCs who only say "Can't you see I'm BUSY?" or some such rebuff. If a character has nothing to say, they shouldn't be in the game. This could add a lot of depth to the game as everyone would have something interesting and maybe helpful to say.

Or my personal favorite empty threat, "Go away or I'll call the guards." :P

Though, having anonymous people who are not important around is to a degree more realistic. When was the last time you were, for example, in a city, and the only people you could find were ones personally relevant to you and, furthermore, if you found any that were not, they were all completely cheerful to have you up in their mug? :P

[Chopkinsca]

Open world projects can be a headache to create. You have to worry about a lot of things that never even come to mind when making regular levels. I'm not saying it can't be done, or isn't fun to do, you just have to spend more time on working out the web of events. A project like this will also need much more playtesting than a regular level. When it gets complicated, things break easily.

My advice (that I didn't follow with PI2) is to plan everything on paper. It will make lining up events and maps much easier if you have a plan going in.

I have no idea what I'm talking about though, so don't mind me.

[cortlong50]

Any word on this?
Sorry if anyone gets mad for my bump but I really love the idea.

[PhantomTMac]

Thanks for the bump! I was actually thinking about continuing this project just the other day.

Still open to ideas!

[datacore]

Doom Open World it is a nice idea for pvp but it will be difficult to create a map with lot of detailling.

[Devalaous]

Only real reason I'd see for tihs would be making the Doom intermission maps a real thing to travel across. The work that would require though..

[cortlong50]

what about this?
ive been playing a wad called "the golden souls" and it kind of has a super mario 64 feel to it in that you open certain doors to go to certain areas.

what if you were to do this but in a different way, as in levels that you can enter, and re-enter or backtrack into (the backtracking would start you at the end with all the monsters dead, unless you had a really kick ass random spawning script going on). it would give the feel of free roam without having humungous open world smashing poor laptops to pieces...if theres one thing ive noticed its that eternal doom sized maps dont run well on gzdoom.

anyway, it would add functionality and actually make it kind of...uh...it would make it possible haha, and so you could go to each map and have people to talk to, (or something not so cliche) to get missions/objectives ala "the island" and backtrack into areas retrieve the item asked for, or talk to someone, or escort someone, or whatever the objective is haha, which is where the random spawning of enemies would come into play, you could probably do like a map in the middle that would be a good place to launch into each of the maps (lets call it a forward operating base or FOB), which would (i geuss) lead you to other areas where you could enter into more FOBS, and do like three or four of these deep.
i would start with one FOB and three levels you can enter into which would all be different parts of a super awesome city, certain areas would lead you to a suburb (which would make it interesting going into individual houses and stuff), some to the industrial part of town, etc.

....or all of this could be retarded haha. all i know is i am definitely not capable of doing this, but i am capable of making individual maps. if you could get a crack team together to map, and you know what youre doing code wise...hell...its definitely possible.

[Shadow Hog]

Ragnor said:

Only real reason I'd see for tihs would be making the Doom intermission maps a real thing to travel across. The work that would require though..

I was thinking something like this, too. Think Powerslave/Exhumed for the Saturn/PS1, where you open up new areas with every exit, but eventually you get an item that gives you a new power, which lets you reach a new exit in an earlier level, and suddenly there's more stages connected together all over the place.

[Gez]

cortlong50 said:

it kind of has a super mario 64 feel to it in that you open certain doors to go to certain areas.

Opening doors to access areas is certainly the most innovative and unique gameplay element of Super Mario 64. :p

[joe-ilya]

Doom center

[cortlong50]

Gez said:

Opening doors to access areas is certainly the most innovative and unique gameplay element of Super Mario 64. :p

Snarky Sarcasm. I love it.

Anyway. That's my two cents. Dig it. Don't dig it. It's just a very long winded suggestion.