Insert Your Own Clever Piss-Take Here - lunaran.com

# Lunaran.com Matthew Breit Level Designer | Texture Artist

## Insert Your Own Clever Piss-Take Here

#### Mon, Aug 9th, 2004 | 2:46am

How was your day?

I already wrote a better account of mine on the Awful Forums, and they're public at the moment so go read: Gallons of urine dumped on my sightseeing boat and passengers

Edit: I'm almost barely not in the article.

[ pisscruise1.jpg ] [ pisscruise2.jpg ] [ pisscruise3.jpg ]

Needless to say I'm not done with Doom3 yet, spending so much time in the Leaky City, but so far I'm bothered by the same stuff a lot of other people are.

Some of the combat is really cheap. The goal of level design is not to hurt the player however you can, id. It's to put the player in danger of being hurt. Survival should be up to the player's reflex and ability in avoiding that danger. When you leave spring-loaded monsters that cannot be dodged and hitscan enemies that do too much damage for their accuracy, you leave survival more up to luck of the draw. Even if you know all the little surprises and tricks they use in each little scene (especially the oh-so-lovely 'monster randomly shows up behind you while you're shooting something else' device this game beats to death) you still have to play it over and over, quickloading until you're satisfied with how much health you lost.

That, of course, will need to be fixed. When crafting the Byzantine project, I vow to never cheaply spawn enemies directly behind you and not make any noise or anything to announce it. I also vow that should an imp get too close and use its claws, your vision won't be thrown off by a whole fucking radian, just so you can, you know, actually still have a chance of killing it. Also, when they jump at you there will be a slight pause to recognize it, and if you sidestep in time they will jump past you. Remember fiends? Those guys were awesome.

So much to do on that project. Voice actors are lined up, however, I've actually purchased a portable digital sound recorder for $160 for voice and sound effects, and the plans are, of course, well laid.

My full 'review' of the game will be up when I'm done with it.