Delta Area

Perditions Gate Map06 – Delta Area:

Delta Area was truly a paper-map to Doom-map translation that worked like a charm. The layout Bob came up with for this level contained lots of teleporter hopping and tricky navigation which gave this level a different feel than the previous levels.

This level is where the toxic nukeage theme starts kicking in, many nasty pits full of toxic slime that the player did not want to fall into.

I recall watching some crazy “haunted houses” show hosted by Jonathan Frakes (Riker from Star Trek: The Next Generation) while building this level, that show actually inspired a few of the secrets in this map. I think that show was “Beyond Belief, Fact or Fiction” or could have been “The Paranormal Borderline,” two shows that Frakes hosted at one time.

Screenshots from Delta Area (click to enlarge)

Toxin Refinery

Perditions Gate Map07 – Toxin Refinery:

The Toxin Refinery level was truly unique for it’s time. Until Duke3d came along, most game levels remained very static, you never saw any massive changes to the geometry or layout of a level. At the time, making massive changes to levels like that in realtime was quite unheard of, so I decided to try and build a level that would take a central area and change it significantly right before the player’s eyes.

The big fancy trick here was this: The player entered into the Toxin Refinery level, made their way inside and would see this huge (Mario style) pipe coming out of the ceiling with a little stream of toxic juice pouring into a channel that drained elsewhere off the map. After doing a bit of fighting elsewhere in the level, players returned to the room with the pipe and see that that room had made a massive change. The entire room would be flooded, the drainage channel overflowing with slime, and the little trickle of toxic juice coming out of the pipe now a massive downpour of radioactive slime.

Of course, with games these days, this kind of thing is pretty standard, but this was considered quite an achievement back in the day.

Also, it’s worth noting, the next 3 levels also had shared exit and entrance geometry, so coming from the Toxin Refinery into the Drainage Tunnels would seem like traveling from one real place to another, instead of the standard hop-around-to-random-levels nature of most Doom maps.

Screenshots from Toxin Refinery (click to enlarge)

Drainage Tunnels

Perditions Gate Map08 – Drainage Tunnels:

This is one of my all time favorite maps…and…I have no idea why. Nothing super fancy was done in this level, but the theme and flow always felt wonderful. The wandering around in nukeage theme of this map paid tribute to some of the long nukeage running levels in Doom1 Episode 1 (like E1M6 and E1M7.)

Some basic deep water wad tricks were used in this map, also the large dark-forces style outside areas with the angled railing was something nobody had done before in Doom yet, so I was pretty happy with that.

There is a tribue to Doom1 E1M5 in here with a secret in a secret section leading down to a cool view of the large outside areas and a room full of goodies.

I later rebuilt a version this level in Quake2 for the Vengeance add-on pack.

Screenshots from Drainage Tunnels (click to enlarge)

UAC Experimentation Center

Perditions Gate Map09 – UAC Experimentation Center:

This is my favorite looking level in Perditions Gate, especially the main entrance. While developing Perditions Gate, Jimmy Sieben and I decided to build the last 3 levels of episode 1 to share similar geometry and texturing to Doom1 Episode 1. Some elements we used in our maps from Doom1 Episode 1 were things like the high windows looking out into the skybox, the baffles with the gray computer textures with red ceiling lights, and so on. This level was my first take on that style and it turned out being my favorite in the game.

The general size of all the major areas in this level along with wide hallways tended to a very solid multiplayer flow that made this map lots of fun in deathmatch.

Also, this level contained the first look at the dome architecture that would be seen in later levels where all the UAC teleporter experiments would take place.

Screenshots from UAC Experimentation Center (click to enlarge)

UAC Teleporter Labs

Perditions Gate Map11 – UAC Teleporter Labs:

The Teleporter Labs level was another level where I wanted to do a few things that nobody had seen before in Doom levels. Inside one of the teleporter domes, the door is locked down by a security system trapping a bunch of imps inside. Thankfully, the UAC built a “chamber purge” failsafe system into the teleporter domes in case a specimen came through the teleporters that needed to be suppressed quickly. Players get a chance to push a button, and watch all the imps killed by 3 scripted successive explosions, an event that nobody had seen before in a Doom level.

Other wad tricks that appear in this level are some basic deep water, an animated hologram, and finally an invisible sector that acts like a transparent window between players and the imps inside the teleporter dome, keeping players from shooting the imps and vice versa.

Screenshots from UAC Teleporter Labs (click to enlarge)

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