 Hello and welcome to this podcast from filmsbychrist.com. That's Chris of the K. I'm Chris also with the K I thank you for joining me today today. I'm just gonna talk about I just finished recording a rather lengthy video on creating a dune level Dune the game from the mid 90s best game ever in my opinion. I think it still holds up today people still work on it It's still there's mods and levels I don't think there's any other game that has this much support this far into its life The source code has been made open source under a GPL license and that has allowed people to make many different ports adding functionality to it even before it was open source people were able to modify it completely and Completely create their own games and as I mentioned in previous videos like When it was probably my one of my first steps into really getting into programming even though I didn't really do much programming with it But just designing the game and just the ability to do the things I was able to do I bought my first scanner for my computer which cost me over 300 bucks It was a cheap feed through scanner or cheap was 300 bucks feed through scanner And I would take pictures with my film camera my friends Have you like can stand there take a take a step because all the characters in the game were just 2d sprites And you would have them, you know Taking a step so it'd be a I know five or six shots of them taking a step But then you would have them turn 45 degrees do the same thing turn 90 degrees Do the same thing all the way or at least halfway around then you'd flip it for the other side And I'd take all these pictures of my friends scan them into my computer and actually to save money on film I would actually only have them do half of it and then flip it for them walking So I would really have them take like two steps and then just flip it and Then I would color things by hand back in the day with adobe photo deluxe and You might ask why why why Chris are you doing videos on this in 2018 like 20 over 25 years after the game? Was originally created. I tell you the truth. I still play the game almost every night There's so many modifications out there so many new levels that people have created over the years that I'm able to Continuously play and not have to play the same game. So as I'm running low now the I've gone through the most popular Mods on the site but for years now I just play a couple of levels every night And so I've been going through a lot and the fact that the game has that is just amazing And the fact that people still work on it a lot of them are still there's less people working on it now Then they're used to be I'm hoping that my tutorial on creating levels might inspire some people to start creating levels But why why should you as a designer as a programmer? Care about a 25 year old game and and learning how it works. Well first of all looking at how early software works because they were very Limited on their resources. So they had to be very smart on how they program. So looking at how clever Any programmer from back in the day program things is is worth looking at but John Carmack was a genius and in the stuff he accomplished whether it was making a complete Port of Super Mario Brothers 3 for the PC look that story up if you haven't it was something a side-scrolling games was something that Companies big companies tried to do on the PC and it just didn't have they didn't have the hardware that Dedicated machines like a Nintendo had so doing the side-scrolling just didn't happen on PCs. Well John Carmack figured out how to do this Just like in his spare time by just not refreshing the whole screen only refreshing pixels that need to be refreshed Which is a basic concept. It's very concept Concept that's very common when it comes to like video compression don't update every pixel only update the pixels you need to update and You just a genius and doom was just an amazing game So and now the source code is available It's something that you should look at and play with people have added to it over the years And they're still like I said people creating new ports and mods and adding functionality to it over 25 years later But also when it comes to design The levels in doom doom is not a 3d game and it's a 2d game that's designed to look like a 3d game I'm not going to go into details because I probably don't think I would explain it very well But there are videos out there that explain how this works But it's the fact that it's so simple Makes it easy so you can create good-looking levels Rather easily Newer games give you a lot more options when it comes to 3d You can create so much and you can put so much detail onto stuff And you can create things that obviously look better than the original doom But it takes a lot of time a lot of skill a lot of effort to get into it the doom levels Once you understand the concepts, which are a little weird again because you're creating something in 2d That is going to be displayed in a 3d looking environment It's so simple that it's hard to really make something look bad With a little bit of time a little bit of effort you can create good-looking things Not spectacular looking things although some people do some amazing things in doom once they get clever with the levels But the fact that it's so simple makes it easy for anybody to create something decent which is an amazing amazing thing to me I Just love to see the fact that anybody can mod this years ago. I had a friend I said something about how modern games back in the day with doom and quake and Duke Nukem You had editors you could create your own levels and there was this community around create and there's still modern communities But you're a lot more restricted on what you can do They are very limited and it's because the games are so much more complex in one way It's because the games are so much more complex It's harder for just the average person to be like hey I want to make a level where anybody can make a doom level and it's even easier now than it was 20 years ago But my buddy said oh companies don't you do it because of quality control? They don't want their game looking bad Which I think is a might be true But a poor excuse because you gotta understand that if you're downloading there were a lot of really crappy mods Out there there still are That people created with horrible graphics horrible sounds even horrible levels It's just bad design, but you knew that you were downloading it from somebody not the official company and and Users should be able to tell the difference that if you went to a website and downloaded a mod That it's an unofficial mod that it might be crappy You can't blame the original game for that and I don't think anybody ever went Oh doom sucks because there's so many horrible mods out there for it I know the original game is great, and I tell you 100% Honest from my heart there are mods that people have made out there for fun that Just level designs that are way better than the original game and the fact that we have that and and you have Pages where these levels are posted and people vote on them on how good or bad they are and they can write comments on why They think they're good or bad, and it just gives you so much on just think of whatever your favorite game is Can you still play that game today years later? I mean think of an older game not something that just came out something That's you know think of like the original Halo or something like that as far as I know You're not going to you can't Continuously play that and have new levels like I do with doom because there's such a modding community out there for it There's just new levels that I can't even play them all and I can re-experience this game new all the time So as a designer I suggest that you play with doom You don't have to allow it just see how it worked And I think it will make you a better designer check it out play with it Look at the source code look at the levels look at how the art was done the sound was done that sort of thing and Really, it's just a great game. I still enjoy playing it. I know not everybody I know I've done videos on doom before they had a comment on one of them where I was playing doom where someone said to be honest doom looks fairly sketchy or something like that something and The way it the the comment was posted it sound like this person had never seen doom before which if you've never in 2018 which is when I'm recording this You've never seen doom before this is your first time seeing doom your opinion means very little to me when it comes to games and But and you can also go. Oh, you know, it was good for its time. It's it's it's not great anymore That's a personal opinion. I think it still holds up to today Obviously the graphics aren't what what what what graphics are now, but the gameplay is still smooth I had a friend come over and play doom with me and he hadn't played it in years And he's like wow like the controls and how the game moves Really holds up to today's standards and and yes Originally doom didn't have really a mouse look feature which now you can use your mouse and keyboard and WASD it used to be you use your arrow keys and control and alt and your hands we cramp because they're right next to each other on the keyboard Yes, there have been improvements on that And the fact that it's open source and that people were able to do that is amazing But the gameplay is still smooth and still it's it's still a good game Even though the graphics may not be to today's standards the gameplay. I feel still is so check it out play doom and I suggest just spend a day Creating levels for it and playing them and I think it will make you a better programmer designer. Thank you again Films like Chris calm. That's Chris the K. There's a link in description and I hope that you have a great day