Super Jamie
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Posts: 2670
Registered: 03-08 |
I like almost all of Sandy's maps and I'll defend him to the ends of the earth. Sure, his colors are a bit wacky and there are plenty of other stronger individual maps in the IWADs but those authors contributed far less of the mapping in Doom than Sandy did.
It's easy to bash Sandy's work but keep in mind he came into the team very late - imagine if someone said to you *right now* that you had to make 15-20 good playable maps before Christmas only using 1994-era tools, and handed you some ugly untextured Tom Hall "realistic" map templates to play with. That's pretty much what Sandy got lumped with.
Reading these articles (I've actually got the Strategy Guide) you can see he is a great insightful level designer, it's just his execution was likely stressed due to his short timeframe, inexperience with the engine and lack of good tools.
I loved the magazine writeup, thanks Ryback. In particular:
Note that the proximity of Barons o' Hell is almost always marked with a big sculpture of same... [tip is illustrated with a screenshot of the illuminated Baron wall just before the first Baron in E2M4]
I never noticed this!!!
In Wolfenstein it was a major pain in the ass to run along all the walls, bumping them for secret doors: Doom did away with that, and now logic rules.
This is so well said. Even if you're open an obvious mistexture there's still a sense of accomplishment in finding any secret.
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11-22-11 17:45 
