Banteay Samre, 15 km north of the main Angkorian clusters, consists of
a central temple on a stone island, surrounded by a (now grassy) moat,
in turn surrounded by a square high wall, surrounded by a walkway a
couple of metres wide, surrounded by another high wall. At the middle
of each side of the square the walkway is interrupted by doorways. The
central temple is small, dim, and gothic - almost crypt-like. The end
chamber in this temple is in darkness. The entire thing was deserted.
The wall on the inner moat has pillared windows - more pillar than
window. There are blocked up passageways and windows in the outer
wall. It reminded me strongly of Doom.
Did you ever play "Doom"? Perhaps you don't play games in the first-person shooter genre, perhaps it's too old, or perhaps you don't play computer games at all, but
despite its technical limitations it and Doom2 remain enjoyable games a
decade and more after release. If you were lucky, you missed the movie.
While modern FPS engines are often
3D -- in other words, they can cope with multiple levels such as floors
in a building, bridges, and tunnels, -- most early FPS including Doom
could not. They are thus known as "2.5D games", because they provided
a 3D perspective, but not a truly 3D world. The maps for such games
can be defined in two dimensions provided that the height of floors and
ceilings are also defined. Angkorian
architecture has generally similar limitations - there is slight
overhang on ledges, but only only Preah Khan has a truly two-level
structure, and the appearance of this is unusual.
Not all Angkorian temples resemble Doom levels - many of the larger
ones consist of three-tiered pyramids topped by a quincunx of beehive
temples - a large central one and four smaller ones at the corners of
the top tier. Others are single beehives or a series of them, and again there's
no resemblance. Angkor Wat, on the other hand, though incorporating the beehive look, is all pillars, pits, walkways and courtyards. I first approached it from the quieter Eastern entrance. It screamed "Trap". While I doubt any deliberateness in the resemblance of some Doom levels to Angkorian architecture (there were other examples - passageways with sequential "doorways", multiple gothic temples at Thommanon and Banteay Srei), I found them interesting as examples of convergent design.
There are resemblences of Angkorian places to other games, but
these are less accidental. For instance, Neak Pean is a cross of four
smaller square pools surrounding a centralsquare pool. The pools were
dryish, and grassy-bottomed. The place had an arena-like feel and
would have fitted quite easily into Shadow of the Colossus. And unsurprisingly, there's a Tomb Raider levels based on Ta Prohm since part of the movie was filmed there.
The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time - Bertrand Russell
