Ship Interior Design

[Zalausai]

Currently Working on a project for one of the users on the forums for the game Battleships Forever. The project is to turn the ship into a Doom level with a high tech blue theme.

Here is what I currently have. Just a small part of the bridge and a hallway.

This is the ship itself.


These are the Doom screenshots.

Spoiler

Hallway


Captain's Chair


Curved Stariway


Teleporter / Holographic Communications Projector

Are there any tips or suggestions that can help me along with designing and interior along the lines of the request?

[Ralphis]

I don't know the scale of the ship from the small overhead picture, but it must be pretty small considering only one person can fit through the hallways

[wesleyjohnson]

There is one difference between reality and "Star-Trek", is how big their corridors were.

Space-ships have much the same cost limitations as ocean-ships.
Only on passenger liners were the corridors wider, and that was usually just enough for a service cart to be squeezed past. Wide corridors cost money and fuel.
No open spaces were wasted.
This is what makes a space-ship look like a ship, otherwise it would look like any building.

On a military ship, corridors are barely wide enough to squeeze past chest to chest. Only wider if needed to move equipment, like an airplane. Notice that they would fold the aircraft wings rather than make the corridors wider.

Need to decide if this is military, passenger, or "Star-Trek".

Not many space-ships used concrete as a building material.
I would suggest something metallic, with panels.

[Gez]

The texturing looks very dull unfortunately. The blue stripes aren't enough to provide some contrast. The gray textures also look like concrete, which isn't exactly ship-building material. Some silver or shawn texture would work better.

wesleyjohnson said:

There is one difference between reality and "Star-Trek", is how big their corridors were.

There is further differences between reality and good Doom gameplay.

[Xaser]

I dunno if it helps or if it's just a plug, but I made a doomy a ship map for No End In Sight that might be of use as a stylistic influence. The map in question is E2M4 ("Derelict Vessel"), if you're so inclined.

[esselfortium]

It looks really cramped. The scale overall is smaller than it probably ought to be in relation to the scale of Doomguy. Looking at the chair in shot 2, not only is a bit too narrow for Doomguy to squeeze his fat ass into, but he'd only just barely be able to walk between the computer panels surrounding it.

The lighting pillars sticking out 4 units from the walls in the first shot are going to be really intrusive on player movement, given the narrow width of the hallway not allowing you to stray far from the walls. Even in a larger area, it's best to avoid small bumps like those. You could get a similar visual effect in other ways without having sectors jutting out and interfering with gameplay, for instance by indenting the lights into the wall rather than extruding them outwards.

I'd agree with Gez that it looks rather dull, though at the same time I think the overall texture choices are generally alright. Instead of necessarily switching to a different texture theme, I'd suggest looking into incorporating stronger lighting variation within scenes, using brighter lit and darker shadowed areas, and more complex architecture where applicable -- varying the ceiling height across a hallway or room can make it look less plain without altering its gameplay.

[Zalausai]

To answer some questions.

This is a military ship. I want it to function as both an internal model and a playable level.
The idea to use silver and Shawn textures is good. However I am having trouble coming up with rooms for it as well.

I want the map to be able to work with the ship, so I am treating each pixel of the screenshot as a 64 x 64 area to work with. It is supposed to have a crew of 2000 or something, it should hold at least that many doomguy sized monsters comfortably when it's done.

[wesleyjohnson]

I agree that going totally realistic cannot be achieved in Doom.
Doom guy cannot turn sideways, cannot crawl, cannot drop stuff to get through a tight area, etc. etc.. Even the furniture has to be a bit oversize (compared to straight forward calculations) to look and play right.

However, the level appearance is compared to expectations gotten from our accumulated experiences, and that is what makes it feel right.

It seems that doom levels look the best when doom guy has the height of a 14-16 year old.

Want the appearance of those lamps jutting out from wall, without getting hung up on them with every step down the hallway (doom guy cannot duck past each one), so ...
* Corridor clean at doom guy height.
* Jutting lamps above 56, so doom guy walks under them.
* Hallway clutter below 24 high, so doom guy steps over it cleanly.
* OR .. Make use of texture lights
* Slightly higher ceiling so the proportions are right, it "looks" narrow and cluttered.
* Odd textures pasted on walls (in little insets or outsets), to represent the mysterious boxes that are everywhere. Lot of pipes running between all the boxes.

Military observations:
* Not much decorative covering over heavy equipment, but space-ships would shield much just to keep floating stuff away. It is mostly exposed for easy access. Because of regulations, military is much better at keeping covers on, than freighters which cannot be expected to keep the covers on anything.
* The secret equipment is built into a safe with multiple locks.
* Squeezing in a much as possible is more important than head clearance.
* Strange bulges in walls, ceiling, and other strange places, usually because some important new thing would not quite fit in the next room.
This happened even on brand new ships.
* People stuffed into all kinds of odd areas. They had submariners sleeping over the torpedos.
The, Cannot-Make-The-Hull-Larger problem vrs the we need another specialist to run the new special equipment problem.
* Batteries in submarines were under the floor. Remove the floor to get to them. Must be something similar in a space ship.
* Need, in order of importance:
propulsion, steering,
main weapons,
port facilities (docking, doors, hatches, ramps),
ammo locker (protected, but designed to release explosion)(on a space ship this could be charged super-conducting coils, chemical lasers, or something exotic like anti-matter ),
sensors (radar, sonar, etc..) equipment (outer hull, big, bulky, important and usually hot (needs cooling)),
command center (bridge),
weapons control center (usually separate from the bridge because the bridge usually took severe damage),
sensors and operations room (usually separate because of special needs, like low lighting, and keep quiet),
food preparation,
eating area (commons room, meeting room, all in one),
small weapon storage,
radio room,
emergency doors (airtight, watertight, etc) at damage control bulkheads,
food storage (some food lockers, otherwise everywhere and anywhere), emergency equipment (life boats, spacesuits, emergency air, etc.),
crew sleeping areas (almost last as they were the most flexible and adaptable),
ropes, tools, and sundry supplies.
[[ Won't get ALL of that in a small Doom ship, but would look right if there are hints that such exists on your ship. Modern ships have gotten much more livable, and space ships would be adapted to long-term inhabitation, less grease, more backup equipment. Also doom guys limitations prevents realistically implementing most of the above.
But the tendencies are still there, and military ships have that
all functional, lack of comforts, look. ]]

[Unholypimpin]

The textures you chose dont make any sense, I mean come on concrete walls in a spaceship?

All of the rooms look very empty and the walls are all exposed. With the lack of lots of electronic equipment and floor paneling as well as metal walls this map looks more like a building than a spaceship.

I can see you are still new to mapping, so I would suggest studying other maps with the map theme of your choosing then try to reproduce what they do.

Hope this is helpful.

Keep practicing though!!

[Xaser]

Alwaysdoomed said:

The textures you chose dont make any sense, I mean come on concrete walls in a spaceship?

Doom's textures have always been on the ambiguous side. It could easily pass off as plastic coding as easily as it does concrete. At any rate, it isn't particularly jarring to me, but this is coming from someone who knows the alpha GRAY variants well (and has used several), and those tend to give off a much more "space-y" vibe and less concrete.

Having said that, I do think that the existing structures could benefit from STARGR a bit, but only because STAR* is an awesome texture when used right. :D

[Zalausai]

Here is a view of a "reactor" type room. I am using the standard textures for it. It is located at the back area of the ship under area with the little circles.

I took people's advice for textures and am going more with panels and metal looking things. The brown area at the bottom of the pits is stone-like, but it also looks like rust, which works. Each pit is an instant death sector, since teleporters shouldn't exist within a fuel waste vat.
To keep it Doom-y, there are no guard rails to prevent falling.

Spoiler

[bcwood16]

This does look fun :)