Seed_Size.txt

SEED SIZE ESSAY
===============

Firstly, I use the term "seed" to mean a fundamental square on the
map.  The original idea was that they would grow to accommodate
their content, e.g. a seed containing a Spider Mastermind might
become 320x320 units.  That idea did not work out, but the name
stuck.

DOOM's inability to align flats means that the seed size needs to
be a multiple of 64 -- in order to make pedestals, ceiling lights
and eventually teleporters to work simply.  When the seeds were
256x256, the whole map was offset by 32 units so that the middle
64x64 area would have an aligned flat.

The basic idea of a seed is to have one thing going on in the
middle (e.g. a monster or a switch or stairs) and upto one thing
happening on each border (e.g. a wall, a door or a picture).

Since the main DOOM doors are 128 units wide, and some of the
non-boss monsters are 128x128 (arachnotron), then a seed size of
128x128 is too small.  Also some pictures, like COMPSTA# and
ZZWOLF#, cannot fit either -- you need a bit of wall on each side.

Anything above 256x256 is probably too big, you would need more
than one thing going on in each seed (more than one type of
monster), which goes against the basic idea of seeds.

One reason that 192x192 seems better than 256x256 is not really
technical, but aesthetic -- the rooms just feel more "natural" at
192x192.  With 256x256 seeds the rooms feel too roomy, dwarfing
the player.  (I actually think a value in between, say 208, would
be optimal, to give more space for thicker walls and wall detail,
but 192 is the closest).

With 256x256 seeds, a 2x2 or 2x3 room was OK (512 units is quite a
large area), but 4 or 6 seeds doesn't give much options to layout
the room.  With 192x192 seeds, the minimum room is now 3x3 seeds
and there are more room patterns that can be used.  This is
perhaps the most compelling thing about the 192x192 seed size,
getting rid of the boring 2x2 rooms which were common before.

A lesser reason to choose 192x192 is to use a single seed size for
every game.  Quake has a face size limit of 240 units (due to the
way lightmaps work), so with 256x256 seeds the faces from a seed
would often need to be split, hence Quake was using 240x240 as the
seed size.  Having a single fixed seed size would simplify a fair
bit of code.