DECK: Doom Engine Creator's Kit

[JPL]

UPDATE 2014-12-14: this post has some news on DECK - read that post before anything below. TL;DR: it's not happening right now, but it still could once a few things fall into place and I have more time. Thanks!

Hi everyone. I've lurked at the edges of the Doom community for years now, though I've only released one thing publicly and wrote a widely-circulated article analyzing Doom's design and legacy.

I recently started a project that I hope will make it easier to make stuff that is - how to put it? - more different from Doom than the average mod or TC. It's called the Doom Engine Creator's Kit:

http://vectorpoem.com/deck

All the relevant info is on that page so check that if you have questions, but TL;DR: this will be a G/ZDoom-focused IWAD of public domain (ie no restrictions on reuse) art and sound content that people can use to make things with, different from FreeDoom in that it provides assets for various avenues of non-Doom-like gameplay and takes advantage of G/ZDoom-specific features likes ACS scripting, conversation trees, fancy decorate stuff, etc.

A few weeks ago I put out a call for contributors on the makegam.es forums, and got a few great responses so I now feel comfortable extending that call to the masters - you folks.

The asset list page shows some of the contributions so far, and outlines what we consider a good minimum base of content to build a small-but-complete game from. The submitted content packs are great, but the latter sections - the asset list entries - are what we could use some help with... the IWAD will need more mundane stuff like health pickups, trim textures, etc. This seems like work that will fall easily if enough people take a chunk.

One important note: because we intend to release this content as public domain (CC0 license), the work can't be derived from copyrighted assets, or must be modified enough to constitute an original work. This is sort of a fuzzy line, just steer well clear of palette-swapped imps, stuff ripped from obscure games, any kind of minimal modifications.

Also please make sure what you're submitting is your own work; there's been a lot of fantastic stuff made over the years in the Doom scene and people are pretty free about sharing, but we want to make sure not to ruffle someone's feathers by swiping their work.

One more point, on asset resolution: avoid super hi-def content, anything that tries to look "triple A" - part of the DECK's goal is to show people how easy it is to make cool stuff with Doom, so textures and sprites that are original Doom res are fine. High-fidelity sound assets are fine, though.

Feedback on any aspect of the project is most welcome. We want this to be a resource that existing Doom creators find useful, as well as new people who may be coming from eg the DIY or indie game spheres who are looking for a cool engine with great level design tools.

Thanks much!

[TerminusEst13]

I FUCKING LOVE YOU.

[Nash]

Echoing what I said in the other thread. :D

(Perhaps the two threads could be merged?)

[wildweasel]

The problem with your suggestion, Nash, is that if I were to merge these threads, insightguy's post would then become the first post in the thread due to the date sorting.

[Nash]

... holy crap, you were Bioshock 2's lead level designer, weren't you? :O

[fanboyism intensifies]

[torridgristle]

Be sure to mention that everything is 20% taller in-game. http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Aspect_ratio

[JPL]

Echoing what I said in the other thread.

(Perhaps the two threads could be merged?)

Ah yes, I didn't see that one. Maybe closing out the old one, as there weren't that many posts and this one has a clearer title?

[Hetdegon]

This is a great idea!
Giving a quick-and-easy pack of assets for developers and modders to use as production sprites or placeholders is certainly something that will be appreciated. While there are a large number of things available for people to use, the licensing is dubious at best due to sprite rips and edits, and most original assets don't even have a license, which makes asset reuse difficult if you plan on using a license, such as CC or even BSD/GPL. Gathering assets under a CC license is just plain convenient.

EDIT: Since you didn't seem interested I removed the images. I'll just carry on, good luck with this.

[GooberMan]

More AAA quality for modern Doom. Woo. Keep it coming.

[Cardboard Marty]

This is a fantastic idea and reading through what you have, I'm really excited for what comes out of it. I noticed you are not taking sound admissions quite yet but I would love to do any player/zombie/monster sounds whenever the opportunity arises. I look forward to seeing progress on this!

[kodi]

Love the idea. I could share this high-def water

---

(though not Bioshock-tier it's probably too "triple A" and RAM-gobbling for this) and a few tiling rock, brick and grass textures.

[Amuscaria]

Guess I could submit all my original Sprite and texture work from DE? Or am I misreading something?

[JPL]

Guess I could submit all my original Sprite and texture work from DE? Or am I misreading something?

I think so! Thanks for the interest, your work is awesome. Caveats - not saying that either of these would be a problem, just in case I didn't explain them well initially:

1) We have to be careful about anything that's sourced from copyrighted assets, eg identifiably based on Doom/Heretic/etc sprites. As best as I can tell, the law is kind of fuzzy on how much modification needs to be done to an asset for it to become an original work - obviously any texture painter will do things like use photos or existing images as a grit layer, paint over something heavily, etc. I think it just comes down to a gut check - if someone used an asset and even charged money for it, would we be in any danger of legal action from id or whomever? Use your judgment.

2) Make sure you're okay with your work being public domain, under the CC0 license. This technically means someone could make a derivative work, take your name off it, and pass it off as their own. In practice, anyone caught doing this would be a huge jerk and treated as such. As with things like OpenGameArt, 99+% of users honor the spirit of public domain / open source release. I will absolutely make sure that every contributors get full credit in any form DECK is distributed in that's under my control - an in-game credits screen(s), a text file included with the project, etc.

[Amuscaria]

I have no issues with public licensing my works. pretty much already is the case right now. And personally, I think worrying about some jackass stealing your stuff of the internet and passing off as their own is meaningless, regardless of license, unless I had the financial means to sue them (which I don't ; it'd be much more amusing to have 2 thieves accuse each other of stealing one another's works (it's happened with my stuff on DeviantArt before...was quite the show).

I might need to get rid of the faces on my hell weapons, though. Some of them have those rusty-faces on them. Drew them myself, but still a copy. Not sure if that's an issue.

[XCVG]

I'm wary of this, but also super excited. Yes, there's lots of resources out there, but having resources that are not Doom-like and freely licensed is even better. I'd say the biggest obstacles to indie development are programming and art and this would do a lot to eliminate both of those.

An experienced audio programmer could help free ZDoom from its licensing dependence on FMOD: While DECK's content will be public domain, the licensing situation for ZDoom/GZDoom is a complicated mess, posing problems for any creators who want to distribute their source code for a game based on these source ports. (To be clear: you can do a lot with DECK without modifying any engine code.) The single biggest thing keeping these projects from being able to relicense as GPL-compatible is their dependence on the FMOD Ex proprietary audio middleware. Efforts have been made to replace FMOD with OpenAL, but these have stalled due to maintainability and robustness issues with OpenAL. It's not clear what the best solution for this is, but it seems like an experienced audio programmer could at least point the project in a better direction, if not do the work needed.

I guess I'm not the only one who thought of this. I wish I could contribute more, because this in particular would be immensely liberating to me personally.

I'll look at this more and comment in a more productive manner tomorrow.