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What is the best way to make Half - Life or DOOM style levels?
Hello. In my game I want to create levels similar to the ones in the original Half - Life / DOOM games but I'm not quite sure what would be the best approach to doing this. I tried using various planes to create walls but that proved extremely inefficient and messy.
I have considered using blender to model the levels and room before hand and then exporting them into unity with unwrapped UV's. Would this work well? Does anyone know what would be the best way to go about doing this?
$$anonymous$$ind of a forum question, I'd think. But I actually remember taking tutorials to completely clone Doom in Unity. Watching some of those on Youtube might help you out.
Well I actually already cloned it near completely in the way of enemies and guns. All the AI and stuff works great but I'm a programmer first and a level designer dead last so I'm just having trouble figuring out how to make good levels.
Well, I think that the best option is to make a level editor. You can do it with Unity. You can get ideas from other editors, for example Doom WAD editors. Or maybe there is something in the asset store.
The objective is to do something that you can distribute to friends or anybody interested. Then make your game able to load and test the levels.
If it is easy to use and the results are fun and playable, then maybe you can find people with good skills.
The problem is that you cannot get those levels and sell them as part of your game. But, hey! Even Nintendo has a game called Super $$anonymous$$ario $$anonymous$$aker that is all about players designing their own levels.
Thanks for the reply. This is one of the things that I am considering doing. Do you know of any good links or documentation that I could read to get started with that?
Creating a map editor from scratch? It's easier to use an existing one and just write an importer for the map format ^^. The half-life / source "map" format is text-based and easy to parse, however it's the "uncompiled" map, so no visibility checks / hidden surface removal applied yet. It's actually kind of a CSG map format so it consists of "convex brushes".
It's not that easy to import such a format, however if you ever tried to create a user friendly map editor from scratch you might get a feeling about the complexity involved. As a programmer myself i have to say that WorldCraft (aka Hammer editor) is easy to use (at least for me ^^).
Though if you really want to create your own mapeditor write it as an Unity editor extension ^^.
Answer by UrielKane · Nov 30, 2016 at 08:18 PM
Well i'm trying to reach the same goal and for what i learn in the last month's there is a couple of things you should know. First of all let me say that there is not a properly way to do so. And thats the tricky part of the metters becouse any of the "sugested" ways have their pro and con if that is the correct way to say it in english. Next i would give you a little idea of what you can do.
1) Using an external 3D engine like maya or blender : The biggest problem you will find in this way of doing it. Is that you will have to be very carefull with the dimensions and size as well as the orientation. The only 3d model engine i have use so far is blender and is well known that have problems with orientation and dimensions. So this is the first problem you will encounter with external 3d aplication. The other problem is that if you have any trouble with the mesh or anything. You'll have to jump into the 3d aplication and fix it from there, unless you have a mesh editor tool for unity like probuilder or so.
2)Using modular 3d environment : Well this was my second option when i found very frustrating with modeling entire levels in blender. But of course you will encounter another kind of problems here. The first one is that you will need to adjust the modules very precisely or you will have a lot of trouble making the nodes fit well. Another problem is that you will be limited in creativity to the number of modular pieces you have. So for example if you have only one corridor and two types of rooms is obiously that will be almost imposible to reproduce the variety of doom 2016 as a reference.
3)Using some unity's 3d plugin: I have't test them all for obius reasons the have to be bought and is not precisley cheap. I know that in the asset store you can find a variety of those. The only on i have use is probuilder so i will speak of that one. It is a very powerfull tool but also a complex one so forget about easy learning curve. But this dosen't mean that is very hard to learn anyway. Lets talk about the pro's. With one of this tool's you can relax about the dimensions and orientations becouse you work on unity editor itself. And is very easy to twick and fix mesh or uv problems. But at least probuilder have not all the options you will spect or hope to have in such a tool. This means that you have not advanced mesh deformation like the ones you can find in external tools like blender or maya. So for example if you want to create a complex shape like a vaulted ceiling like in a cathedral you are going to have a bad time.
Finally my conclucion after trying every one of the mentioned building methods. I found that in order to reach my desired goal of making levels like doom but having a good visual impact like doom 2016. I have to find a proper balance between all of the three methods. Now i'm not working on environment in my project so this is freezed for now. But this is what i have in mind for building my environment.
Sorry for the bad english and the long answer. Hope you can get something usefull from all of this stuff.
This is generally what I settled on in the end. I make most of the level in blender and then port it over to unity and add some environment props. It works out pretty well as long as you set the normals in the right direction in blender and use a mesh collider in unity.
Answer by Potatobob · Nov 24, 2016 at 02:46 AM
The original doom can be reproduced in 3D with box colliders for the walls and a capsule collider for the player and ennemies. (In my opinion) I think the textures play for a lot and the models are all Low Poly.
I hope this helps a bit , Finally I think the Camera settings are the one you might want to play with (if you want visuals like those old games)
I've already created visuals that look like the old 90's style pseudo 3D games and I've programmed AI and guns in that style as well and they all work well together but I'm wondering what in your opinion might be the best way to create the walls of a complex level?
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