Can you still see Doom enemies as "monsters" and not "pawns with specific AI"?

give me all the cold, sterile, lifeless calculation you can muster, baby!

it's a spectrum, depends on context. Some maps have adventurous/immersive/whatever elements, others have a "gameplay-only" attitude, some maps have a mixture of both... some have neither :p... How I view the environments as a whole depends on what I happen to be playing.. and how: Am I recording a speed-run? If yes then fuck everything related to atmosphere it's all about hitpoints and hitboxes. Am I dicking around casually? Well if the map's pretty enough maybe I'll take my time to smell the roses and briefly pretend these pixels actually represent something.



edit: yeah, pretty much agree with phml's post above mine.

Phml said:

It's entirely unfair to make the default assumption there's no emotion if there is skill (and the similar assumption if there's no skill then there's emotion).

*sigh* That's exactly what I tried to avoid. You guys view it in black and white, it's either that or that. I was just throwing thoughts around and I thought I made that clear but you still took it it face value. I tried to formulate that post in a non-confrontational way but I guess some people need to find an insult even if there's none.

Cold calculation >>MIGHT<< lead to loss of 'emotion'. You might get so focused on technicality that you start losing focus of everything else. You might pour your heart into your work and still miss something important. That's what I meant.

Sure, there's a place for all kinds of design work. I've never argued otherwise. I just stated MY opinion and MY experiences in the context of the thread, that's it. No need to jump into foregone conclusions.

And in the context of the thread what I say is that mappers often treat monsters in a pure technical manner which might lead to players treating them in such a lifeless way. And POTENTIALLY, SLIGHTLY getting away from cold calculation of enemy placement aimed for maximum challenge MIGHT result (for some players) in treating enemies less as health/damage hitboxes and more as actual beings.

Again, it's not black and white. I'm not making any definitions. I do not universally hate the technical approach. I do not think careless creativity is universally better. I'm not saying all technical maps have no soul. Just sharing thoughts.

Rhetorical "you". I'm not out to target anyone either, it's the idea I'm against. If we were playing the blame game I think there's a lot to say against popular culture; from movies where the scrappy young kid triumphs over the more skilled antagonist because we have to be able to live that fantasy that us, too, with absolutely no training whatsoever could do something extraordinary, to TV shows with genius characters who deduce everything thanks to their innate abilities because it wouldn't feel as good if they were better than us simply because they work harder.

There's such a low moral value on expertise and a tendency to adopt the demeaning view of people who achieve proficiency in anything as aliens or "them" rather than human beings like "us". People aren't shitty for having these ideas but these ideas are shitty nonetheless.

GoatLord said:

A combination of dim lighting and marijuana makes PSX/N64 Doom as frightening to me as it did when I was a kid. Without it, it's still loads of fun, but I think the altered state brings out that inner child in me that was legitimately frightened by the experience. The monsters still fee like monsters to me. When I map, I like to think about the how the enemies fit within the context of what I've created. Maybe two barons are guarding something from their world, or perhaps an archvile is preparing for a surprise attack. Maybe this place was occupied by a lot of humans that are now possessed. Perhaps arachnotrons are loners that prefer to keep their distance in isolated areas. Enemy placement can make the maps feel more alive, both literally and figuratively.

I am going to have to agree with everything said here having done this a bunch of times before.

GoatLord said:

A combination of dim lighting and marijuana makes PSX/N64 Doom as frightening to me as it did when I was a kid.

Couldn't agree more. Ahh... the magic of gaming on drugs. Download an emulator and try this one with an altered state of consciousness. Just do it.

Yes doom monsters are basically just objects to me now

As long as any monster isn't coded to act differently than it looks. I wouldn't consider a Zombieman with the strength of a Cyberdemon more than just an object with AI.

I see them as monsters with specific AI.

Ragnor said:

And this right here, is primarily why I despise slaughter maps.

I've actually started to really like slaughtermaps, but only ones with good visuals/atmosphere, and where the hordes of monsters fit that atmosphere. Having a randomly textured large box stuffed with high-tier monsters doesn't do much for me, but a large planned out area full of things that want to kill you definitely gives a sense of danger and foreboding.

I see them as monsters. I treat them like pets. Ill-mannered pets, but pets. I love them and train them to be well-behaved. Those that are untrainable are, of course, put down.

Seriously, about the only time I think of them as "AI pawns" is when the designer does some gimmick that relies on AI limitations, which tends to make them too predictable, and too-obviously with the brainpower of a chicken.

And my fave game experiences tend to be those where I find myself thinking, "Wow, look what the monsters did (or built)".

Some maps (not necessarily hard maps, more those where you can get gigged by surprise) still inspire that frisson of fear. Would AI pawns inspire that? of course not.

So, yeah. Monsters. My eyes are full of monsters!!

Joe667 said:
It's reasons like good monster placement that I love Doom. Ones like these:
Taken from Earth.

Yeah, I love touches like that.

I'm reminded of a set of fairly weird maps where one ends with a courtyard and a big slaughter, and the next map starts you in the same courtyard... with all the corpses neatly swept into a pile with a flag planted on top. I remember standing there for a while wondering who the hell did that??

And there's some antique map where you discover various monsters feeding on dead marines, tracking blood down the corridors, or peeing in the urinals.

Well, at least they're housebroken...

Anyone who opens a door to a screaming Revenant in their face and doesn't at least immediately panic isn't human.

Onslaught Six said:

Anyone who opens a door to a screaming Revenant in their face and doesn't at least immediately panic isn't human.

That doesn't happen to me.

For a while, yes. I was fiddling around with decorate and messed around the AI of the monsters for my own personal amusement. It was then that I saw them as pawns.

That experience disillusioned me.

I took a break for quite a long while.
Started playing again, they felt a little bit like monsters to me again.

You just can't recapture the innocence, excitement and feeling of wonder of when you first start playing a game; y'know?

Hectic said:

As long as any monster isn't coded to act differently than it looks. I wouldn't consider a Zombieman with the strength of a Cyberdemon more than just an object with AI.

But even that can be done well. Strain's fragile but dangerous BFG Trooper was both scary and a strategy-changer, where now you had to seek and kill the weakest enemy first, or he WOULD get you... "Shit, who gave that guy a BFG??!" Two bullets well spent.

But if Zombieman could ignore your attack and kill you with one punch, or if Cybie falls to your single punch, yeah, that kinda blows internal credibility.

Heh, reminds me of the rocket zombies from Obituary. I always liked those guys - on the one hand, super deadly if you weren't paying attention, but they also added an element of chaos to the battle, as they were just as likely to splatter themselves or other enemies. So therefore, they were dangerous, but not predictably dangerous - like lobbing a grenade into the middle of the fight, you never knew exactly what was going to happen or who was going to get blown up. Most of the time, you add a more powerful enemy to the fight, there's one simple outcome - the enemy becomes more dangerous. In this case, however, while the danger was increased, it also made the battle itself more unpredictable. I mean, most of the time, you can anticipate the infighting and whatnot, but because of the nature of rockets, you could find unexpected infighting, and of course zombie suicide.

A combination of two.

When editing, I see them both as gameplay pawns and as creatures that belong in their own habitat, so to speak. I take into account their strengths & limitations, along with their aesthetic appeal and go from there. It creates a whole new type of immersion for me; makes me able to somehow see them both as artificial things and something that belongs where I see it. As someone said earlier in the thread, it makes some maps much come very much alive. This is even more so if there's new/custom monsters involved. You have to take into account what they look like, what they will do and how you want to use the monster.

It also makes me agree with phml's POV as well. "No atmosphere, no soul"? Sometimes it takes the kind of mind where challenge actually provides the atmosphere, IMHO. under comes to mind...namely, Pale Monument. That map had quite an impression of me. Still my favourite map of the whole set thus far.

Black Star said:

When editing, I see them both as gameplay pawns and as creatures that belong in their own habitat, so to speak.

That's a good way to put it.

In our long-delayed MythTC, we have snakes (fragile, but so small they're hard to hit). The snakes are found mostly in caverns, where they're a continual hazard and tend to collect at the foot of slopes, just like real snakes. Damn things have sent me running more than once and I knew they were there!!

I guess I'm at the point now where I see them simply as gameplay elements: obstacles to be overcome or manipulated. I still jump when a revenant pops out in front of me, but not because it's a miltarized undead skeleton, rather because it's a source of homing projectiles. Not to say I still don't recognize them as monsters, just on a lower level.

As a player, that doesn't bother me any, but my tendency to not think of them as gore-spattered demonic creatures sometimes gets me in trouble with my wife when I don't think twice about letting my kids watch me play.

I still see them as monsters. Sure, I know how they "work", but to see them as a mere obstacle is a sure sign of one's lack of imagination and involvement.

Suddenly appearing monsters may still startle me, from time to time, and whenever a I defeat a cyberdemon, I let out a sigh of relief.

Getting cornered when you know there's no way out alive is also unpleasant. In a good way.

I'm not one of those crazy good skilled people, but I'll pitch in anyway. I say: both.

What I am beginning to really love about this game, now that I'm seeing it through older eyes, and the reason I am liking slaughter maps so much, is that Doom is a puzzle with tons of geometrical elements. (Yeah, I'm a physicist.) Monster behavior and level design go together, and you have to calculate the limits of the architecture along with way the baddies move, attack, and interact in combination with the ammo and health you have available. It's completely complex and engrossing to keep track of all of that at once and make it work out.

This may seem emotionless and cold to those who don't feel absolute joy at solving puzzles and frustration at failure the way I do. Killing monsters doesn't do it for me. Solving the problem does.

I'm still scared of getting killed, and I have a love of Gothic architecture and big voluminous spaces that is satisfied by many doom pwads. (Sunder, daaamn! Pale Monument is awesome, but Furnace will always be my favorite. Deus Vult too.)

Phml - I like how your brain works. Everything you post makes sense.