Doom Level Exercice on Doom Builder

Roles : Level Designer, Level Builder

Introduction

As an exercice of level design, I was assigned to design and create a level using GZDoom Builder, the Doom 2 fan custom level maker. My main intention was to experience via level design the effects and scenery stairs are able to give, deeply inspired by architectural works : (Alvaro Viera, Tadao Ando, Daniel Libeskind, Marcus Scherer)

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Level Design

First of all, I gathered informations I could about Doom and its level design, in class, playing the actual game and watching analysis to have statistical informations such as the damages rates, projectiles speed, pain rates (here from the Mark Brown video about Doom) as well as architectural references to have a interesting mise-en-scène.

I design the level on paper, keeping in mind : to have contrast between arenas and corridors and times to breathe a little, to use verticality in the level, to have an interesting use of enemies regarding their capacities, to keep the fun and frenesy from doom, to keep also its freedom in exploration, traps and secrets.

I then build the whole level in doom builder, correcting rooms, scales and cutting uninteresting parts thanks to playtests:

Here’s a commented (in french) video of the whole level :