Eye of the Beholder Textures [Released]

[Enjay]

OK, 'tis done. I was going to tweak it a bit further, but my computer has been making some weird noises, and failed to boot twice today. I think it's dying so I thought I'd get this out before that happens.



Eye of the Beholder 1, 2, 3 and dungeon Hack texture resource.

DOWNLOAD
http://www.aspectsweb.co.uk/enjay/doom/ ... xtures.pk3
Test map included. Just load and play (recommend doing so in Heretic).
It works with any IWAD but Heretic is best IMO (not that it really matters - it's just a bunch of walls and no gameplay).
In Hexen the switches are silent because of the switch sound set up in that game.
In Doom the chat and switch sounds are less fitting then those in Heretic.
But all GZDoom supported IWADs basically work.



What's included:

• Most of the textures from Eye of the Beholder and Eye of the Beholder II are represented in some way.
  Some of the textures from Eye of the Beholder III and Dungeon Hack.
  The above involved a lot of cutting pasting and other tweaking because the original graphics are not set up for an engine like Doom at all.
• The EOBIII textures are more limited in number simply because most are either not really suitable or not particularly good looking. EOBIII (which was not developed by Westwood Studios as 1 & 2 were) is almost universally regarded as a very poor relation to the previous games.
• Dungeon hack uses the same engine and many of the same poor resources as EOBIII. DH was a random dungeon generator game. It applied coloured filters to its limited range of textures to increase variety. So, I did that too, but with an eye on making the colours complimentary to those from the previous games. The DH wall features (switches etc) are often not as pretty as the EOB1 & 2 ones, but because they are designed to be universal, they can probably work on more backgrounds.
• I spent a bit of time trying to prettify the above, but the style of the original graphics and the economical use of mirrored textures and other graphics in game mean that they will always be of a simpler style to even those of Doom. Some wall features don't work desperately well because they are meant to be 3D (an alcove, or something sticking out of the wall) and in Doom you can clearly see that's not the case.
• I used a TEXTURES lump to combine base wall graphics with their appropriate feature patches. I kept them as separate graphics to allow mixing and matching rather than baking the features on to particular backgrounds. People may, or may not, find that useful.
• Anything that I thought worked well as a switch has been set up as one.
• Many other textures that have different appearances but which may not work well as a switch have been scripted to change in the test map so that people can see the effect.
• This includes the teleporting portals. It's worth pointing out that the portal animation that I used is a very, very rough approximation of what's in the game. I did it this way to minimise the size of the scripts and the patch combinations but if someone really wants to make an exact copy of the effect, the resources are there to do it.
  
  For what it's worth, I recorded a video of the original game portal animation. It looks like this:

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  So, if anyone wants to match it, I guess they could, perhaps using that as a guide.
• All textures that I thought could benefit from brightmaps have one.
• A small number of textures have animations.
• I also included an "extras" folder for a few items that might work well as decoration sprites and inventory items. These are not implemented in any way other than being present.
• There are also a couple of misc graphics (title screens) and a couple of mod music tracks just to make the map feel more EOB-ish.

Screenshots

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EOB1: Waterdeep Sewers



EOB1: Dwarven ruins


EOB1: Drow


EOB1: Slimy Green dungeon

EOB1: Xanathar's Lair

EOB2: Mezzanine Area


EOB2: Dungeons below Darkmoon

EOB2: Silver Tower


EOB2: Azure Tower


EOB2: Crimson Tower (I dunno, it looks more gold or brass to me, but it's called crimson so whatever)


Misc Doors etc

EOB3: Marble

EOB3: Mausoleum

Dungeon Hack: Misc Keyholes

Original post

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I've spent quite a bit of time copying/pasting/cloning/palette adjusting and so on to get something that I think works reasonably well in GZDoom. The textures are not very Doom-like in nature and they are even a bit stark for Heretic/Hexen but they might be of use to someone for something.

That being said, with a bit of added noise, darkening and a mild bit of Doomifying, some can actually convert quite well to Doom textures. I have no immediate plans to do that, but I have trialled it and some textures worked pretty well. I may o a Doomified pack of some sort at some distant point in the future. I may also look at EOB3 but I didn't like that game as much and I also find the files harder to work with. So, i have no immediate plans to do anything there. If I can get a good rip of the wall graphic from someone, rather than having to wade through the files myself, that would make an EOB3 set more likely There are some good resources in there (even though I didn't like some of the art direction)...

The game sprites are not well suited for conversion to Doom AI enemies. One or two static decorations exist and I'll include a sprite or two but there really won't be much and no DECORATE/ZScript for them.

As Cherno pointed out in the WiP thread, EOB textures are really suited to a size about 75% of Doom scale. That makes the base texture size 96x96 with is a pain to work with in Doom mapping. However, I have tried to make as many textures look reasonable (or made suitable alternatives) so that they can be used in a 96 tall room and still look OK with their top 32 units chopped off. I think it's a good compromise.

The base graphics came from my own ripping efforts and those of Diodeus.

Some Heretic and Hexen texture have been used to help increase a bit of variety for floor textures (EoB doesn't really have floor textures as such) and some work is from scratch.

I've tried to make walls that feature as many of the interesting switches, locks and whatever and included brightmaps where appropriate. I just need a few more days to tweak things further and I'll release them for people to do with as they please.

[Nash]

Very nice; hope to see some dungeon crawler levels made with these. :)

[Jimmy]

These are really cool. Might use them once they're ready!

[Cherno]

Very nice; hope to see some dungeon crawler levels made with these.

Makes me want to work on a dungeon crawler toolset.

Good job on the textures, I really like the Waterdeep Sewer set for some reason

[Enjay]

These are really cool. Might use them once they're ready!

Yup, no problem at all. I would be delighted if people found a use for them.

[Enjay]

One thing that I have found interesting about digging into this game further is that I think the 3D window that the player sees might not be a proper 3D view in the way that Doom or even Wolf3D is. All walls and wall fittings have 3 or 4 variations from the close-up detailed one to a much smaller, darker version for how the item in question looks from a distance. There are also versions of the textures for what they look like from the side. The floor and ceiling is just a pre-rendered image. So I think the game just assembles a flat image of the world from these components (and it works because the player can only move in block-steps the same size as the differences in the wall detail images).

It doesn't apply to everything. Enemy sprites, pickups etc don't have this system (but some projectiles do - i.e. a "moving" projectile going away from the player is a series pf progressively smaller sprites). So there must be some position/lighting/scaling going on in some way for the enemies and many other items but the "world" seems as if it may just be a flat image that the game sprites are drawn on to.

e.g. using the pre-rendered dwarven level floor/ceiling



and some wall patches




I created a close-up view of a wall with a keyhole on it (it's a bit rough, but it shows the idea)



then used the smaller, darker set of wall patches to look as if I had stepped back by one block



and two blocks



All done in Paint Shop, not in game. There must be some jiggery-pokery going on with the floor in game because it appears to move. Looking at it in game, I think its as simple as the game mirroring the image every time you take a step. There is a lot of mirroring going on anyway. Many of the items only exist as half images that the game mirrors and stitches together to make a whole item (e.g. the eye pedestal in one of my screenshots in the first post, or the banners on the walls etc only exist as half-images in the game files). Got to keep those file sizes down. EOB1 is already a bit too big to fit on one 1.44 MB floppy!

[Cherno]

I would assume that the graphics aren't even pre-rendered, but rather drawn by hand.

Recently I ripped all tile graphics from Hired Guns (1993 Amiga) and this game goes one step further and features up to 20 height levels, which means that each wall and floor/ceilng graphic has to be drawn dozens of times for each distance and angle relative to the player.

[Rachael]

@ Enjay: Your discovery with the pre-rendered scene graphics makes sense with Lands of Lore 1, which makes use of exactly the same engine.

In fact, the only thing that Lands of Lore did that EOB didn't was a departure from the standard Dungeons and Dragons format, instead electing to create its own storyline elements for the game and its own character progression system, which maybe I am biased because I played Lands of Lore first, but I think it's superior to that of EOB's and D&D in general. The EOB series and the LOL series can also somewhat be considered the grandfathers of the highly graphical CRPG games of their era. Arguably the last game that continued down this line was World of Warcraft (in my opinion) - but even in the very basic version of this game from before Blizzard sold their soul to Activision, a lot of magic was lost that most prior games (Ultima, Everquest, et al) had - and simply seems stripped away - that game, itself, became the father of modern CRPG games which, in my opinion, don't have quite the same charm that the 90's and early 00's titles did. Probably some notable exceptions may be the Witcher series and the Dragon Age series, but even they don't have quite the appeal that the older titles did.

[Enjay]

I have to confess that I never completed LOL, but I have dipped in to it a few times - and I've probably seen most of it in one way or another. I keep meaning to give it a proper go.

I think the problem for me was that I got completely obsessed with EOB - I mean, really, really obsessed. It's pretty much what got me into PC gaming properly. EOB2 was bigger and badder and I really enjoyed it too. I was absolutely stoked for EOB3 and desperate to complete the trilogy with my battle-hardened party from the first two games. However, the updated engine for EOB3 was awful and barely ran on even pretty beefy (for the time) hardware, the art direction had shifted slightly (my character portraits looked a bit different for starters), the plot was a bit trite and, basically, it was really missing the Westwood Studios magic. So, that soured me a bit - not against Westwood (they had nothing to do with EOB3) but my momentum got lost.

So, I tried to make the jump to LOL and despite it having the better (older) engine and the Westwood feel, it wasn't the game that I wanted to be playing. It looks really nice and I really should get around to playing a proper run through at some point. I'm sure I'll enjoy it once I get into it.

[EffinghamHuffnagel]

Always loved EOB. Always thought it would work nicely in Hexen. Somewhere I still have my original 5-1/4 floppies along with all the other Gold Box games. I've always had a question about EOB. I've searched intermittently over the years, always unsuccessfully. I wonder if maybe you've found the answer in your research. Was there a missing level? The game seemed to be set up as four 'episodes' of three levels each, and a final boss level. But one episode only had two levels. I think it was seven and eight. I know something was wrong because I always had one extra unused key afterwards. And the teleporters felt like a 'kludge'. Were the authors pushed up against a hard deadline? Is that why there was no big finale/glorious return animation at the end of the game? Just one screen of text and back to DOS.

Really looking forward to this. If it's well-received, I'm hoping someone with sprite skills might be inspired to convert some of the D&D monsters, or maybe all of EOB. Surprised so few monsters have been adapted/converted. Thri-kreen would seem to fit in any of the id games.

[Cherno]

We'll never see a sprite sheet for any of the EoB monsters save for one made from scratch.

The Amiga version of EoB added an ending sequence in the style of the intro.

[Enjay]

@EffinghamHuffnagel
Yup, I know what you mean.  I don't *think* there was a missing level but the last quarter of the game does not fit the pattern of the rest of the game.  There are three sewer levels (red brick) followed by three dwarven ruin levels (blue-ish stone) and three drow levels (purple stone).  These are followed by the green mossy levels but there are only two of these.  However, they are classified as "Xanathar's outer sanctum" and the final pink-ish and rather palatial final level is "Xanathar's inner sanctum".  So, together they make a group of three maps, but they are a non-matching set.  Perhaps that indicates that there was meant to be 3 mossy levels and one was cut, or maybe it was always meant to be that way.  However, like you, I did always feel as if I had arrived at the final level a bit suddenly and that is probably due to me expecting three mossy maps.


Speaking of the drow levels, I used to find them really quite difficult to wrap my head around.  It was the fact that in quite a few places, there are areas that can only be reached by going to a lower level, finding a set of steps back up and then returning to the lower level.  Prior to that, there was really only one way up to/down from the maps (pot holes etc not withstanding) but the drow maps allowed you to to nip up and down in a few places and the only way to visit every room on the top drow level was to get to the lower ones and then find the extra way back up from the lower map.  I'm not sure why, but it really warped my brain.  It still does with multi-map hubs in games like Hexen.


I'm not sure about the key thing.  There was definitely something to do with the portals.  I *think* it was that there was no stone symbol for one of the activation panels.  Either that or there is a symbol, but no portal that uses it.  I'm not sure if it was ever planned to exist, but there is definitely one portal less than the key/activation panels might lead you to expect.


As for the ending of EOB, it has to go down as one of the biggest anti-climaxes in my gaming history; hours and hours of gaming where I nurtured my party, nursed them through the poison spider levels, defeated the drow and finally vanquished the great beholder only to be greeted with two panels of dull text (oohh, we got teleported out of the dungeon, great!) and dumped unceremoniously to the DOS prompt.  What a disappointment.


However, they did fix this in the Amiga version of it (getting the Amiga version was a major deciding factor in me getting an Amiga - I said I was obsessed).  In that version, you appear in front of the Lords of Waterdeep.  Initially they are a bit snarky and dismissive (asking if you have managed to kill a sewer rat).  Then you dump one of Xanathar's eye stalks onto the desk in front of them, the Lords apologise and ask you to share your story with them and the video ends with a bit of text saying something like "thus begins a legend".  I'm sure that there are some youtube videos of the ending.



At least EOB2 had really quite a good ending animation.




While on the subject of EOB and similar games, the older game "Dungeon Master" was also really good (IMO).  The PC port was a bit clunky because the game was actually developed for the Atari ST and later the Amiga.  The PC port was much later but quite cursorily done (it even prompted you to insert floppy disks when saving, using Amiga disk drive names).  Graphically, it was also quite simple compared to EOB but gameplay-wise it was a very strong game.  I never really got into Dungeon Master 2 though, but I believe it is pretty good.

[Ozymandias81]

Damn, freakin' amazing!
They look all so vibrant and well detailed, wasn't the same when ripping EOB games via xWe... This is definitely a step up!

Maybe in future you may take a look to these and cook up detailed textures for Ultima Underworld ehehe

[Enjay]

Slight delay. I expected to have this done by now, but I remembered that I had a very small number of EOB3 and Dungeon Hack textures kicking around, so I decided to include them.

EOB3: Marble


EOB3: Mausoleum


Dungeon Hack: Misc Keyholes


For those who don't know, Dungeon Hack was an EOB3 engined game (so, that's not a great start) that could generate a customisable randomised dungeon for you to go into and hack your way to the big boss (kind of an official Oblige for EOB - but actually styled after NetHack). It had no real story or anything, just a randomly generated dungeon. It was reasonably good fun but the lack of story made it far less engaging than the full games.

[Cherno]

Great art. I believe I've seen some Dark Crypt textures as well some time ago? Although as an Amiga exlusive, it has a limited color palette which kinda shows.

I recently discovered that Nash has worked on a Dungeon Crawler for GZDoom many years ago (2012):



I wonder if something like that is feasible. The main problem I see is the mouse look; It would have to be turned off manually by the user, otherwise even if the player angle is reset each tick there will be jittering when the mouse if moved quickly.