Evolution
In October of 2003, I began to work with fabricated space in video art, influenced heavily by the Vasulka's experimental video work and Jim Crutchfield's Dynamic systems collective. In the theme of capturing negative space, I used the Doom engine's Hall of Mirrors effect in conjunction with television feedback to illustrate the relationship between chaotic and controlled systems. In a follow-up to this study, I began to conceptualize a mod for the ZDoom engine for use in a video project about an ornate, intangible world. It was shortly thereafter that three pages of doodles became the characters for this project with one definitive picture that started the gears in motion. It was this sketch of a baron wasteland that became the concrete foundation for what was to become project Foreverhood.
The original Foreverhood was a single map divided into three sections, each demonstrating its own unique, bizarre atmosphere. In the early days of Foreverhood's conception, I wasn't a very good at creating environments. To compensate for this, I used a variety of shrub sprites I had created to enhance the maps.
Unfortunately, I did not understand the limits on the engine's ability to render spaces quickly and effectively. As more sprites where placed into the environment, the more the frame rate of the game began to drop. When all was said and done I was pulling in a whopping 4 frames a second on average leaving the project in a less than playable state. The above Screenshot is an illustration of the extreme I took my detailing process. Below is the same area in-game with a look at how much the frame rate suffered due to this detailing method. (Lower left corner shows the actual number)
After roughly two months of much needed inactivity, work resumed on foreverhood with the idea of fixing the frame rate. After several attempts to redefine my detail approach (or obsession), I finally gave up and began breaking the Foreverhood level into smaller chunks with more emphasis on plane variation as opposed to object detail. To further develop this project, I pitched the idea to my interactive screens class as an alternative to a DVD project we had been working on. With my professor's permission, I was given the means to redo the world of Foreverhood into something playable. By April of 2004, I had rebuilt the first section of Foreverhood, complete with a fully functional dialog system. The player could now interact with my once stale characters to allow for storyline development, specifically to understand the purpose of these creatures within my weird world.
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During the following summer in the eve of my senior year as a Graphic designer, an outlined proposal was drafted in the hopes of using Foreverhood as my senior thesis in art and design. At long last, I had the perfect opportunity; a practical application of the skills I had been taught artistically applied to a technical medium. In the end, the mere outline was a 40 page manuscript containing a full synopsis of the ZDoom engine, the Foreverhood story and a list of features I had hoped to create using the game's scripting language. With my professors in full support of the project, I began the arduous task of creating the content I needed to make the worlds I had envisioned come to life.
Beginning in October of 2004, the second wave of map construction was underway. However, at the time I was not a very bright texture artist. Many of the early wall textures where far below the quality I was hoping to achieve. Therefore, in an effort to make the space feel more alive, a solution to vary the wall shape was devised. It was thought that with an abstract landscape, the player would focus less on the texture and more on the environment. It was at this point that I went vertex crazy, creating in the process some incredibly organic-looking map structures.
Several structures never before seen within the Doom engine were also crafted out of the maps' architecture. These structures included tree branches, mushrooms of varying builds, and lamps
Game-play was one aspect I never originally expected to develop. Many people who saw the mod where satisfied with merely moving through the space. So when it came time to actually create a gameplay structure, I wanted to create something more unique to give the game replay value. Ultimately I settled on a side basted system where the player could ally themselves with either side basted on who it was they killed. Subsequently, the opposite side the player became allied with would become the enemies of the game. Combined with several automated spawning processes, creatures where now able to dynamically appear within the world and be directly in tune with the player’s current alliance level. Depending how good or evil the player becomes also influences the player's weapons. This ensures that game-play would always be interesting, no matter what skill the player is.
With the official release of version 1 of Foreverhood, the next stage of its development has begun. Learning from the mistakes of the past, Version 2 fixes many of the holes contained within the story as well as the holes created from the lack of gameplay. These revisions will finally bring forward what I had originally envisioned Foreverhood to be: a story driven action adventure game basted on an abstract little world I created by accident.