[WK 2-3] Initial Decision Making Doom vs Quake
I have a personal interest in understanding how early design decisions were affected by the advancements in technology and graphical capabilities at the time, so I was immediately very drawn to Doom.
My initial choice was to make a level for Classic Doom however after looking into it I discovered the game Quake. I played quake and watched a few videos comparing the two as well as different discussions about the level design featured within these games and I decided I was going to work in Quake instead.
The introduction of the 3rd dimension offered more options to play around with verticality in level design and affordances, which can be seen heavily influencing the evolution of the Quake franchise. For example, the bounce pads that were brought into Quake 3.
As a player in Quake, I feel there’s more tactically you need to consider because there’s a lot of enclosed spaces the player must balance their own use of the more powerful weapons such as the grenade launcher / rocket launcher with the limitations of the space and number of enemies. I found myself utilising the positioning of the walls / elevations to escape shots so affordances are a more important part of the level design in Quake.
I watched this video [insert video] analysing the work of level designer Sandy Peterson for Doom and I was very intrigued by his design of booby traps and abstractions within the level, which creates intrigue and a sense of dynamics within the level because the world is reacting to the specific inputs of the player more than it just being a sequence of events played out. It reminded me a lot of a game called Animal Well that is well known for featuring layered secrets that the player is always discovering by a metroidvania style of backtracking. I would like to take inspiration from the secrets and puzzle design within this game to replicate the mystery and dynamicism within Sandy Petersons work. The difference between Animal Well and Quake however is that Quake is fast paced and moment to moment whereas Animal Well is more of a work your way through and discover the intricacies of the world type of thing so I’ll probably have to iterate and work at balancing the fast pacing with the intricacies of Animal Wells design.
Another game I’d like to look at for inspiration is the puzzle box dungeons of the Legend of Zelda because they’re really clever at setting up puzzles so that the revelation feels natural to the player, which I think will help with the balancing issue I mentioned earlier.
Considering the 3rd dimension verticality, I’m thinking it would be fun to experiment with some sort of mine setting / downwards location. I haven’t seen this idea featured too much in any of the gameplay I’ve played so far / videos I’ve watched of the game plus it works well thematically with the idea of demons and hell like the player is physically moving closer to a more morally ambiguous space. Given that there are a lot of mines around Cornwall as well, I could gather primary research from these sort of places and record my experience within them to get a better understanding for how the player should feel.
