Here’s some screenshots of a long-term wad/megawad project I’ve been working on that’s tentatively being called The Other Realm. It’s an atmospheric / horror themed wad that celebrates the concept of Quake 1.
After playing Quake I really felt like there was a lot of unused potential. The atmosphere was fantastic and the textures, despite the limited palette, really brought out the Lovecraftian gothic atmosphere. The next time I was in Doombuilder, I decided to load up the Quake texture set to build a Quake room. I’d only ever made original Doom map format maps, so I went a little more ambitious and made a UDMF format map. That let me add some slopes, and then I decided that I needed one or two sprite replacements to suit the mood. Before I knew it, I was knee deep in a project that existed partly to celebrate Quake but mostly to teach myself DECORATE. It’s been a slow journey. I’m still inexperienced and learning as I go. It’s currently a gzdoom-exclusive level pack, 3 levels in so far.
The lighting has been a problem. Quake textures don’t look good in Doom’s normal bright lighting, and every gzdoom sourceport update that tweaks the rendering completely messes the visuals. It hasn’t helped that I didn’t discover dynamic lights until I was 3 levels in (and to be honest, my experiences with mods with lots of DL isn’t great). Everything is carefully crafted sector-based lighting. To help ensure the mod looks the same for everyone, I’ve set it to force dark sector lighting but there’s still plenty of graphical work to get done.
