Let's Make Doom a little more... Reelistic

So I discovered a mod for Doom called Reelism recently, and man is it fun. It's a wave-based shoot-em-up, similar in concept to CoD : Black Ops Zombies or Killing Floor, but it takes on a new tone, one of its biggest features being the slots-based randomness element they throw in at the start of each round, randomly choosing between game modifiers like environment changes, weapon spawns, and enemy spawns as well.

Don't just take my word for it. Play it yourself!
http://thekinsie.com/reelism/

Plus, that's not the point of this particular blog post. The point is more along the lines of...

So I starting modding a mod called Reelism for Doom lately. Currently, I've been playing around with creating a level for the mod. Well, not necessarily creating... I'm taking an existing level from Doom I and adjusting it to work with Reelism, hence the title.

Work is going very smoothly so far with it. After finding some quick documentation that came with the mod, I was able to open up the map in DoomBuilder and quickly start replacing the normal Doom guys with spawners for the new baddies.

However, my choice of E2M4 at random was not the best choice for an arena type level. There are loads of thin corridors and the original level is very linear, including key door puzzles and areas blocked off by teleporter access alone.

Right now, I've added a lot of changes to the original map, while trying to keep it consistent with the original level design. Many of the secrets have become corridors leading to other areas of the map, and teleporter destinations have been tweaked to make it easier for the player to hop from place to place.

All in all, it's going pretty well and I hope to have it available soon, once I figure out the best place to upload this single level. Also... maybe some better looking screenshots. I keep trying to take cool ones, but die horribly while trying.

I'm also not sure how cameras work in ZDoom yet, so hoping to get deathcam view in there soon.