DECK: Doom Engine Creator's Kit

[JPL]

Update!

I updated the DECK page on my site with the project's current status. Might as well paste the update at the top here:

The call for art assets last July led to some excellent submissions from several talented contributors. High in quality as the submissions were, it became clear after a while that in total number they did not form a large enough content base needed for the simple standalone example game as originally outlined below. Also the stylistic differences between each submission might have proven difficult for DECK users to work with.

I thought about this for a while, and determined another way to meet the project's goals: find one or two skilled pixel artist(s) who'd be willing to do all the work and pay them for their work via crowdfunding. The amount of work would be very clear cut, and the target funding amount would be based entirely on their rate for the work to be done - no stretch goals or uncertainty beyond funding itself.

The profile and portfolio of the artist(s) enlisted would be a nice, clear proposition to potential crowdfunders: a talented artist, whose prior work you can assess for yourself, will produce this content, which will be released into the public domain for anyone to use once the target funding is reached. As before, my own role in this I'd do for free on my own time: assembling these assets into a small example game, collecting everything into a distributable form, documentation, etc.

Right now I'm busy with other projects, but I do definitely want to revive DECK in the way described above once I have more time. The next step would be to find artist(s) who are interested in doing the somewhat substantial work required as a paid gig, so if you are such an artist or know of one who would be a good fit, email [redacted]. Like I said I'm busy with other projects now, but the art is the bottleneck so any leads on that would be a great thing!

Thanks again for the support and interest.

TL;DR: We got some great submissions, but it wasn't the example-game-shaped pile of content we needed, so I think a better solution is to find one or two artists who could knock out all the artwork needed in one fell swoop, pay them for their work via crowdfunding, eg something like IndieGogo (various reasons I don't think I'd want to use Kickstarter), and release that work to the public domain as planned. To be very clear: DECK would still be free of charge, but if you wanted to help make it happen you could chip in a few bucks.

Anyone who already submitted content: obviously I haven't released anything, so please do with your work what you will - if you want to rescind the CC0 license implied by the submission please feel free, I would never consider releasing anything you sent me under any future version of DECK without re-confirming your permission if the project returns in a new form.

I am very busy right now getting a new commercial project off the ground, so I can't justify spending any time on DECK at the moment. I'm just posting here to say thank you so much for the support and those of you who submitted such excellent contributions. I still want it to happen at some point, just not right now. In the meantime, feedback on this new plan is welcome! Thanks again, be well.

[torridgristle]

If you're going to pay people to make content, you should at least tell those people that their assets will be 20% taller in-game so you can have what they thought they made.

[TerminusEst13]

Good to hear that this is still kicking, was worried about it for a good while.

Honestly, I think probably the biggest problem is still the FMOD sound system. Though I'd still support any endeavor for gathering artistic resources, they can still be gathered over time--the licensing issue surrounding G/ZDoom's audio systems is the biggest elephant in the room to handle at the moment, and one that an answer is significantly more murky about.

[XCVG]

If you're going to pay people to make content, you should at least tell those people that their assets will be 20% taller in-game so you can have what they thought they made.

I'm wondering if it's better to say this or to change a couple lines in the code and disable aspect ratio correction. Because if you're not actually playing Doom, there's not a lot of point in having it.

Good to hear that this is still kicking, was worried about it for a good while.

Honestly, I think probably the biggest problem is still the FMOD sound system. Though I'd still support any endeavor for gathering artistic resources, they can still be gathered over time--the licensing issue surrounding G/ZDoom's audio systems is the biggest elephant in the room to handle at the moment, and one that an answer is significantly more murky about.

I'm planning to build a GPL-compliant version of GZDoom, but not until 2015 or later. If I had someone who actually knew C++ onboard, that would really speed things along.

[Enjay]

I'm wondering if it's better to say this or to change a couple lines in the code and disable aspect ratio correction. Because if you're not actually playing Doom, there's not a lot of point in having it.

Yes, actually the 1:1.2 pixel size ratio is a pain in the neck when you want to do something not strictly Doom related IMO, especially when you start involving models.

[torridgristle]

If you're going to pay people to make content, you should at least tell those people that their assets will be 20% taller in-game so you can have what they thought they made.

I'm wondering if it's better to say this or to change a couple lines in the code and disable aspect ratio correction. Because if you're not actually playing Doom, there's not a lot of point in having it.

You could note to go into Video Mode and force 4:3 aspect ratio. Apart from seeing less of the sides of the screen I don't think that it'll break anything except for mapping since Doombuilder and such will not display what you'll see in GZDoom without the proper aspect ratio, unless there's an option to force 4:3 there as well.

[XCVG]

If you're going to pay people to make content, you should at least tell those people that their assets will be 20% taller in-game so you can have what they thought they made.

I'm wondering if it's better to say this or to change a couple lines in the code and disable aspect ratio correction. Because if you're not actually playing Doom, there's not a lot of point in having it.

You could note to go into Video Mode and force 4:3 aspect ratio. Apart from seeing less of the sides of the screen I don't think that it'll break anything except for mapping since Doombuilder and such will not display what you'll see in GZDoom without the proper aspect ratio, unless there's an option to force 4:3 there as well.

4:3 stretches it quite badly when your actual screen is 16:9. 16:10 is closer. I wish there was a way to properly disable it. There are literally two (maybe three) lines in the code that you can change to disable the correction. If I can ever get my build setup working I'll make those modifications just to see what it looks like.

I'm not sure if GZDB does correction or not, because things don't look the same in the editor as they do in game.

[JPL]

Cool, thanks for the reminder about aspect ratio. I'd definitely rather do everything for DECK as square pixels; dependence on old Doom conventions only where it's useful. I'll put this in the "remember for when DECK gets going someday" file.

[GooberMan]

You'd be hard pressed to find a port that is fine with non-scaled assets. To do it properly, you'd need some way of identifying what is a Doom asset and what is a generic asset so that the engine knows how to scale it internally. Simply disabling the scaling code is 100% the wrong way to do it.

[Onslaught Six]

You'd be hard pressed to find a port that is fine with non-scaled assets. To do it properly, you'd need some way of identifying what is a Doom asset and what is a generic asset so that the engine knows how to scale it internally. Simply disabling the scaling code is 100% the wrong way to do it.

Isn't the point of this project to have 100% "not Doom" assets?

[Gez]

I think aspect ratio should be a MAPINFO/GameInfo setting.

[GooberMan]

I think aspect ratio should be a MAPINFO/GameInfo setting.

Still wouldn't be good enough. Use stock Doom textures with a new non-scaled texture in a map? Something's gonna go wrong.

If you're trying to target the Doom engine with non-Doom assets, you're going to have to suck it up and convert it yourself until source ports start handling non-scaled assets.

[Gez]

If you want to have some per-asset control, [wiki]TEXTURES[/wiki] supports scaling for a reason.

[GooberMan]

Yeah, MODELDEF also handles that for model resources. But that's fairly ZDoom specific. If this pack is meant for any given Doom engine, some kind of standard way of defining scaled assets would be required.

[Gez]

It's not meant for any given Doom engine. It's fairly GZDoom specific.

DECK will be a public domain collection of game assets that will, combined with the modernized GZDoom version of the Doom engine and a resource and level editing program such as SLADE3, allow you to create 3D games using one of the most proven game engines of the past 20 years. The project will also provide documentation to help newcomers learn the basics.

Note that DECK resources are already making heavy use of a recent, devbuilds-only, ZDoom-specific feature: long names.