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TraceOfSpades' weird habit of constantly imagining real world locations as Doom maps

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Whenever I'm walking around anywhere, I look around and think of how I can recreate the environment I'm in as a map. Does anybody else find themselves doing this? Have you ever tried recreating your job sites, homes, favorite hangouts, or anything like that?

I have made my house and my old job site.

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Only if the geometry is really unique or bizarre, I mostly just note the style or little quirks to the whole thing.

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I was walking around a huge theater thinking about how I'd remake it in Doom, so no, I wouldn't say you're crazy. Seriously though, this thing was ornate as fuck.

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I wouldn't say you're crazy at all. To be honest, I once thought about recreating the high school I went to as a Doom map.

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MFG38 said:

I wouldn't say you're crazy at all. To be honest, I once thought about recreating the high school I went to as a Doom map.


Eh, there's a certain stigma that comes with that kind of idea. Haha

But I started to remake my high school. The problem I ran into was that the classrooms all being similar in size and all of the hallways being rather symmetric, it just made for a boring map that only alumni of said high school might find fun to play. That's a small niche.

However, as a mapper I suggest taking on such an endeavor just to sharpen your mapping skills. It's also fun to run through the hallways for nostalgia's sake.

Also, it's fun to show to old classmates. I just showed it to a buddy I went to high school with and said, "Try out my new map.". When he started playing it, he goes, " Okay, let's see if I remember how to get to home room.". He recognized it instantly.

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Obsidian said:

I was walking around a huge theater thinking about how I'd remake it in Doom, so no, I wouldn't say you're crazy. Seriously though, this thing was ornate as fuck.


I'd be curious to see said theater.

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One time, back when I mapped almost every day, I was walking past some shop, looked at it and thought "how the hell did they make this without 3D floors? oh wait...".

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Memfis said:

One time, back when I mapped almost every day, I was walking past some shop, looked at it and thought "how the hell did they make this without 3D floors? oh wait...".



Now that's funny.

Fun fact, I still have no idea how to do 3D floors despite using GZDoom and would love to learn how.

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I find inspiration in all sorts of places. The oldest example, that I can remember, is looking at an IBM crt monitor while making Flay the obscene 2 and thinking "hmm, that could look cool in Doom." Maybe it's not, but nevertheless it became the small exit building of that level.

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Not so much macro level architecture, which tends to translate badly to games (especially a 2.5D game) but I do take note of brickwork, tiles and stuff and think "that would make a cool texture" though I generally forget them by the time I'm back at the computer.

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TraceOfSpades said:

Fun fact, I still have no idea how to do 3D floors despite using GZDoom and would love to learn how.

Use UDMF map format. Give a tag to a sector where you want the 3D floor to appear, then create a new dummy sector outside the map, select one of its linedefs and give it "Sector 3D Floor" linedef action with appropriate sector tag, Type = 1 and Alpha = 255. The dummy sector's floor and ceiling heights and textures will be used as the 3D floor's heights and textures in the target sector.

On topic: I occasionally think about real life architecture I see as if it was Doom engine architecture (and wonder how this or that would be possible to recreate, including height tricks), but most of the time not.

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I am rarely tempted to recreate RL places in Doom as invariably the layout would be boring or not accomplishable without making comprimises that defeat the purpose.

I do sometimes look at parts of buildings in RL and think how they could be interesting in Doom. Say how a building's pillars or windows have been designed for example.

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One time I walked out of my house and noticed that the design in real world cities is so shitty by Doom's standards. Almost everything is rectangular. Lots of bleak and boring colors. There are ridiculous amounts of copypaste. Every street is filled with random signs, adverts, etc with no consistency at all: different fonts, different colors, different visual styles. It's pure chaos. I just think it's interesting how realistic stuff often looks boring in Doom, and real life also seems crappy if you look at it as a Doom level.

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Memfis said:

One time I walked out of my house and noticed that the design in real world cities is so shitty by Doom's standards. Almost everything is rectangular. Lots of bleak and boring colors. There are ridiculous amounts of copypaste. Every street is filled with random signs, adverts, etc with no consistency at all: different fonts, different colors, different visual styles. It's pure chaos. I just think it's interesting how realistic stuff often looks boring in Doom, and real life also seems crappy if you look at it as a Doom level.

Crap is king!

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When I'm in a place, I never think about how to make it a map, but I have made a few real life locations in Hammer; untextured, unfinished. I almost finished designing my uncle's real life town in Doom. I've made a few real life buildings in Minecraft, interior and exterior.

Because I'm a programmer when I'm in the real world, I usually do think about how to program things. I think about the logic in dogs, cats, people, a character's motivation. Like if a character in a movie or TV show wants to kill someone versus wanting to torture someone. Wanting someone to live versus die how it all gets programmed. Then I program it in one form or another.

So you're not crazy, its just your passion and its on your mind.

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There were some threads that touched this topic before, for example this thread. A certain post sticked in my mind till this day:

darkreaver said:

I remember walking into a room once, I think it was at a party or something. 5-6 people were staning close together and talking to eachother. The first thing that popped into my mind was where to shoot a rocket to gib all of them... :S

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There was a time while I was working on UAC Ultra 2, that I could see the doombuilder canvass with all sorts of sectors drawn under my eyelids before i went to sleep.

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Years ago I remember walking over a bridge on campus and getting a sudden inexplicable pang of anxiety when a car drove under it, as if it would be infinitely tall or trigger an instant floor action or something. This is probably incontrovertible evidence that playing video games melts your mind (-:

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I've made some real places into maps.. home, some subway place and the streets/buildings around the place I lived. Maybe some buildings had interiors too. Maybe I've tried a school map too.

And when I walk outside and look at the buildings and stuff, sometimes I might see a building that looks like Doom or something that makes me think: hey that's impossible, how did they do that (as if real life stuff had Doom engine limits)?

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Map11 of the first DK_DM is an almost exact replica of my old workplace, an IGA. It's very slightly scaled up, turns out it makes a fun DM area as well. I played this with my friends who were also employees and they loved it, and even the boss loved it which was awesome.

DK_DM_4 has a lot of real world remakes too. Map05 is a loosely based bit of beach with some shops near where I live, Map07 Is a very condensed version of a shopping centre I work at (The Glen) and Map09 is a HUGE version of my real house, probably about 2x as big (in reality, my house is tiny, 2 rooms + a bathroom)

I love remaking real areas in Doom!

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There was a thread on here years ago where someone was critiquing an art museum as if it were a Doom map. I can't remember who posted it anymore.

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WildWeasel said:

There was a thread on here years ago where someone was critiquing an art museum as if it were a Doom map. I can't remember who posted it anymore.


Creaphis, I'm pretty sure.

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Kontra Kommando said:

Sometimes, I look at structures, and think, "I could probably make that in Doom Builder 2".


Not to get off topic, but out of curiosity how does Doom Builder 2 compare to the original? I love the original, but its been years.

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You know you've been playing too much Doom when you think about Doom building every place you visit.

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I'm sorry, but what does "too much doom" mean? English is my first language, don't get me wrong, but I can't seem to understand for the life of me what you mean by that.

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I never felt to recreate real life buildings, at least modern ones. I may just take some inspiration, where I live there are lots of buildings with pillars and arches and I tend to put lots of pillars in my maps.

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TraceOfSpades said:

I'm sorry, but what does "too much doom" mean? English is my first language, don't get me wrong, but I can't seem to understand for the life of me what you mean by that.

You probably don't know that early meme where a list is made about what you do when "you play too much X".

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