j4rio
Senior Member
Posts: 1838
Registered: 07-10 |
Agentbromsnor said:
For starters I don't feel like going through my WAD map to find a single slaughtermap to point to. And second I don't want to focus on one map or mappack only, since that is not the subject of this topic. The topic is about slaughtermaps in general. I understand that you think that I don't know what I'm talking about, because you disagree with me.
It's a little soon to do generalizing regarding this genre IMO. It's a new trend and focusing on single maps does matter. They tend to differ per each author so much that it's like talking about separete sub-genres of slaughtermaps. Even different maps by the same author can be so different it'd be difficult to compare.
If you've read my posts, I already wrote that I concieved that some slaughtermaps can look pretty good. I'm not dissing any slaughtermap designer's skills in making maps, because I'm obviously mostly criticizing the bad ones (which in my opinion are more prominent then the good ones). Most of them however (again, I write MOST, not ALL) have only one texture style throughout one entire map, and seeing how long some slaughtermaps can take the design gets bland very quickly.
So if a slaughtermap looks good then you'd like it?
Nitpicking about looks in gameplay oriented maps is pretty low, if you ask me.
This goes back to my opinion that most slaughtermaps tend to be a borefest IMO. I like games / mods with a little story behind them, even though those are hard to achieve in Doom (I did play a few very good ones though). I can see that slaughtermaps can pose a challenge to some people, but most of the time when I see a slaughtermap, I just think of the potential that the map designer could have with making a singleplayer 'story' WAD.
There's no problem with disliking a genre, as I said. But judging from what you said, you've completely missed the point. If you like games with story behind, it's quite surprising you're actually on a doom forum at all. I think you're so far with your personal requirements that there's no real reason to continue with this debate.
myk said:
Feels how, hard? Hard could imply a shortage of ammo or health, practically unreachable annoying sniper monsters, continuous tight traps, or even monsters edited to be faster, more dangerous, tougher or hard to see. Slaughter mean you kill lots of baddies, so you need a lot of enemies for that. Some make these levels to have an easy time blowing up a lot of monsters, others, on the contrary, to create a huge challenge. I've heard some define slaughter levels only as the easier type with lots of heath and ammo, but it seemed silly to me because the hard ones are mostly meant for max demos, where the aim to to kill everything, classifying them also as "generating a slaughter".
Actually, not at all. It's not a difficulty related feel for me, rather a mix of many factors which does also include difficulty, although it's not that important factor. I'll try to name them, although usually when I wanted to think of some definition, my mind kept getting numb from too much thinking.
- It should have either RL or BFG and ammo sufficient enough for at least one of those to allow for more than enough missed or inefficient shots.
- Monsters usage should consist of higher than regular amounts of mid-tier projectile monsters (Imp, Demon, Hk, ... ,Archvile) and slightly to higher than regular amounts of bosses (MM, cyb). Light hitscan monsters are prone to taking out each other so their amount doesn't necessarily have to be higher and depends on situation.
- Infights possibilities, powerups, health, additional ammo, misc.stuff like jumps are distributed based on how difficult author wants the slaughtermap. The less/more - the harder/easier overall difficulty.
- Infighting shouldn't be mandatory to instigate to beat a map, but that's debatable. It can be a point that defines a good/bad slaughtermap.
- Slaughtermap shouldn't take place in 'claustrophobic' enviroments, or it can gain the status 'hard map' from me even if all above points are there.
For example, I find almost all of death-destiny maps to be hard maps rather than slaughtermaps. They are excruciatingly difficult, but they don't have too high monster counts, don't offer almost any additional ammo to spare and battles take place in closed cramped rooms more often than not. The only exception would be no chance which I'd consider as a excruciatingly difficult slaughtermap.
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11-23-12 17:09 
