The Joy of Re-interpretation

I don't know what it is, but I have a mild obsession with the idea of alternate takes on a preexisting creation. It's part of the reason comics were so interesting to me, because I loved seeing the immense amount of adaptations that stemmed from several iconic characters. It's also why I have an entire folder on my desktop simply dedicated to MIDI demakes of songs, hearing how someone interpreted an advanced music piece on an inferior soundfont is just supremely interesting.

Now to actually get to the point of what this is doing on my level design blog. I have made a few map remakes in my time, but there are only 2 that I have publicly released. One was a conversion of Blood Covenant from Quake Champions into TF2, the other was a remaster of the level "Toxin Refinery" from Doom in the GZDoom source port. 

The Blood Covenant remake was started by basically completely re-blocking out the map to completely developer textures. I knew from the start that I didn't want to simply emulate the art style of the original, so I gave it a brand new artpass from the ground up, as if it were any other TF2 map. I guess I was also feeling a bit out-doorsy at the time, so I came up with an excuse to have more of the map take place outside. Where most TF2 maps have tech-base theme towards the edges, as you move inwards, the theming becomes progressively more rugged and rural. I decided to flip-flop it for this. I made the inside a tech base hybrid of RED and BLU, and the outskirts of the map had a more unassuming mining/industrial theme. I think it was a good choice, it made for a very striking central area.

This map was later picked up by the mod team for "Open Fortress: Deathmatch" and is frequently in their server rotations. They did, however, give it an altered artpass with the entire base being RED across the board. It was a little disappointing, because I liked the contrasting central facility, but because their deathmatch isn't team-based, it just didn't fit the mod's direction. So I understand why they made the change.

The remaster of E1M3 Toxin Refinery was a bit of a different beast. I was mostly going for the same art style as the original, but I wanted to take advantage of limit-removing source ports to simply add droves of additional detail. This meant I had to individually look at each room and think to myself: "What were the developers probably going for here?" I think all in all, I did a good job of making this version of the map feel like an actual space that makes some semblance of sense in universe.

Anyway, I'm probably not going to be adding this remaster to my official portfolio, so in the mean time you can download the map here if you're interested: https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/115886-e1m3-remaster-udmf-practice/