Doom Classic Plus

A game that I loved playing when I was much younger. The extra I’m adding to this game is dodging and a hop, along with a power up that slows time down for everything other than the player.

First thing was making a quick list of all the stuff I would be making in the game. Then making all the gfx I would need for the game. For the mobs, I had to make each action (stand, walk, hurt, shoot, die, and dead) in eight different directions so that they could face away from the player. Then I created all the items, all the FPS actions (shooting handgun, cocking shotgun… etc.), then I made all the HUD and UI gfx, and finally I made all the textures.

Once development began, I realized that everything in the game that wasn’t the level would need to be a flat image facing the player the entire time. That involved using the single axis point at how do, with some extra work to figure out the trouble shooting. Then I needed the mobs to have their own direction so that they could face one of eight ways. Thankfully the Paper 2D plug in for UE4 has some flipbook functions to pull the current play location to plug that into the changed flipbook so that there was much less jumping from changing the facing directions.

Then there was the ray tracing shooting. To match the classic doom, it took more work than what they had to go through, because UE4 is a true 3D engine while Doom classic was not. So howI did it, was that I used a cone based on the distance of the weapon and the player’s facing angle to find any mobs inside the 2D cone, no matter what their height was. Then I would sort the list of potential hits by distance, then perform a ray trace from the player’s weapon to the mob, if the ray hit the mob then it was a hit. The rocket was a lot easier, it just shot out.

After most of the mechanics of the game were done, it I started in on the levels. Only three levels in total. It was a fun challenge. I learned a lot, did some things in a bad way but since I have, I can do better the next time.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R6YorTY2Pw

Game: https://www.gamedev.net/projects/1758-doomish/