This is my monthly project. I set myself realistic deadlines and
see what I can do with an idea. After 15 Nov, I will declare closure
on this one and move on.
My charcters are captured by IZM and held in their laboratory dungeons
while they await the fate of having their DNA extracted. I thought it would
be a fitting sort of homage to set IZM’s labratories in one of the Doom dungeons.
I chose E1M1 of D1 as my starting point, since it is a passable
lobby for a high profile bluechip firm.
A couple of screengrabs with sector size and texture co-ords from WHY
(A python based Doom editor !!!) and I was ready to go. I spent a little
while working out the dimensional rations and lenses and stuff to look
as close as I could get to the original. I was prepared to find the low rez
textures were horrible, but surprise…
Anyway, there’s no way I could have taken such a slapdash approach without
a brilliant new feature being previewd in Blender v2.3.: the
ability to recenter a background graphic when rotoscoping.
There’s lots more in 2.3 too, but I’ll let you find out for yourself.
Do be warned that there are still a few stability glitches, and a mild
sense of disorientation may be experienced. But the UI team is to be
heartily congratulated on a superb effort to produce this redesign.
There are other new features too… take a look.
,
It’s all a dream, light passing by on a screen
And here’s you and I on a beam
Speeding through the universe
Thinking is the best way to travel…
I’m not planning on doing this as a game, although you =could=…
There are loads of user-build WADs out there, and the interface is
fairly well documented, with level editors etc. But what would be fairly
nifty is a wad2blend.py that would import whole levels at a go and
set them up to run in the blender game engine.
What I am doing is a lot less ambitious, simply a homage to one of the
classics of computer games to be included in one of my animations.
Like a quote in a book, or a musical reference to a well-known tune.
As a one-off it doesn’t have much potential to go anywhere. I won’t
need the game logic, so I won’t even try to implement it. All I want
is a half-convincing backdrop. This means too that I can make lots
of kludges wherever it is too much trouble to do a faithful copy of the
original. Eventually I might upgrade some of textures, particularly
to replace the UAC trademark with the one of my fictional corporation,
but for now the challenge is to make the two models look roughly the
same.
A general purpose tool is another thing altogether. You can justify the
extra effort with the knowledge that your work will be re-used again
and again.
The big question is indeed “Why?”
You’ve made me think about the broader question, so here are
a few possible answers:
WAD editing makes you really appreciate Blender. No fooling,
keeping track of the way wall are pointing, avoiding disconneted vertexs,
not to mention crossed lines is enough to make my head swim.
Doom’s graphics, which used to seem so cool and 3d are now starting
to look a bit… well splotchy. User expectations have increased as game
quality has gotten better and without immodesty I think I can say that
the graphics produced by casual tinkering with Blender far outstrip what
Doom could portray with tiny 64 pixel square images.
It would prove just how cool Blender is, but nobody who has learned
to use Blender will really need to have that proved.
You could bring a higher level of enlightenment to Doom. Unlike the
truely hell-like desert of Doom, a Bloom game
(Bloom: sounds better than BlenDoom, and Boom is taken)
could have flowers and trees, and sprites that weren’t out to frag anything that moved.
So far, ahead of schedule. The basic level is complete, minus
the secret area.
Still a little tidying to do, then the real work of adapting the Doom layout
to my own set. I think I’ll be replacing some of the textures. I wanted to
see if it would really look Doom-like, but many of them could be improved.
It is a very dingey place. Needs curtains and a paint job.
I like the general feel of it, but I have a suggestion to turn down the value of the blue for the water material. Water is the color of that which is underneath it, the reflection of that which is above it, and any pigmentation or sedimentation, which is usually brownish.
