Through the Looking Glass: A ton of mods over the years have offered radically different takes on id Software’s classic first-person shooter. Voxel Doom, on the other hand, is remarkably subtle, given that it basically transforms the game’s characters and props from 2D to 3D.
ModDB user _chillo posted a new mod this week that replaces most of Doom’s original 2D sprites with 3D voxels. You’d think the change would clash with the visual identity of the game, but if anything, the voxels complement it.
The last mod I tried that added 3D character models to a 1990s 2.5D FPS was one of the optional settings in the EDuke32 source port for Duke Nukem 3D, and I quickly turned it off. It can be a fun distraction following spending many years staring at the original graphics, but games like Doom and Duke 3D work through optical illusions that make 2D look like 3D. This style does not match true 3D polygons perfectly.
Voir aussi : 3D Game Rendering 101, The Making of Graphics Explained
When playing Doom with voxels I almost can’t tell the difference from the vanilla game until I get closer. Demons, props, and explosions are still just as pixelated and don’t stand out once morest 2.5D environments. Perhaps one of the mod’s greatest assets is that it retains the original animation footage.
The main change is that when the camera moves around the sprites, they no longer have that spinning billboard effect that usually breaks the illusion of 2.5D shooters. Instead of trying to make the 1993 FPS look modern, Voxel Doom completes its fake 3D presentation.
Unlike something like the ray tracing mod which adds a totally new and fascinating lighting system, the voxel mod is reminiscent of whoever used a neural network to improve sprites in 2018. This mod was also looking to just smooth out some visual edges of Doom. , especially when players got close to the sprites.
It would be interesting to see both applied to all other 2.5D shooters like Duke, Wolfenstein 3D, Blood or Star Wars Dark Forces. Modder _chillo is currently working to add Voxel Doom to Doom II.
Those looking to try it out can download the zip file from ModDB and then drag and drop it onto a GZDoom executable. To play it, you need GZDoom 4.8.2 or later and the original Doom.wad file.