Antroid's Doom LPs - currently between projects

Touchdown said:

I guess where some see 'plenty of room for imagination', I see 'a graphical mess and lack of coherency' (again, that's only true for how it looks in DOOM 1/2, not the idea itself). I don't believe visual aspect should resort to 'imagination will fill the gaps' too much.

In my opinion the visuals are probably the only one area in games where imagination can have better results than perception as-is. Unless some revolution in graphics happens, they will never be realistic enough to be able to taken "as is" without question. A simple aspect: repeating textures. You can look at the ground, see a particuar flower or a twig or something, dramatically increasing the feeling of "being there", and then walk a meter away and it's there again, and that feeling is yanked from you violently, never to be returned. I know it sounds ridiculous but it genuinely kills immersion for me when I think about it, and I can't help thinking about it after any sort of glance directly at a texture or some model. Which one of these dozens of identical rocks in the grass in my sight right now is supposed to actually be there? So you'll never really be able to trust graphics to depict what they are trying to depict with absolute accuracy, you'll still have to believe (and unless you are half-blind, actively delude yourself into believing) that grass, trees, rocks, ground, whatever else is actually all unique in this world that you are seeing in the game. Same with polygon angles, they're pretty much always visible. Or meshes clipping through other meshes. Or decorative models. If it's a meticulously detailed model, it's just so much more blatant when it's reused for decoration repeatedly. Nobody doesn't notice that it's the same model. It only stops being a problem when the depiction is vague enough. When you walk through a corridor in a castle and every suit of armor has noticeably identical scratches on the breastplate? I'd refer pixelated sprites instead or at least models on the level of, say, half-life one. I'm aware how silly that sounds but personally for me it's true. I'm not saying everyone should feel like that, I'm just saying that people should be more open to the idea of using imagination, especially since it's mostly happening subconsciously, instead of salivating on polygon amounts and shaders. And it's not like I'm against modern graphics at all, Skyrim was still wonderfully immersive for example between these bouts of understanding that it should not have been. The point is that more realistic and complex doesn't universally mean better, although I guess you weren't really saying that...

Anyway, for me at least, all these little things that are just wrong are so much worse when the graphics are otherwise very realistic-looking. To bring the term back from some previous discussion elsewhere, it's going into uncanny valley territory. With simple graphics like Doom's though, they are more of a suggestion than an attempted faithful depiction, so all these inevidable graphics shortcuts do not have the same disastrous effect once noticed. Basically, since graphics are never absolutely true to what the artists were painting, you should not look for a perfect image of anything in them and should always apply some level of imagination, which is easier when there's actually room for it.

Sure, when the graphics are more complex it's easier to believe that whatever is being depicted is intentional and supposed to look like that, and with simple graphics it's way too easy to scrath everything down to laziness and lack of care, but I still think that's a wrong approach. You shouldn't require proof before playing that the artists weren't working blindfolded. Similiarly it shouldn't really matter whether something was intentional or not. Although I'll reserve for myself the right to say that doesn't apply to storylines, only to visuals.

I feel like I'm repeating things I've said before but nonetheless I wanted to restate this all again.

Alrighty, before someone calls me a hipster or something equally stupid, here we go, last part of this session, finishing up Borderlands while suffering horrific abuse at the hands of everyone, zombiemen in particular.

I personally disagree with that. I think players generally forgive games a lot. You can say it's the case of not paying attention... but to me it falls into the category of something that's just acceptable in the world of video games. Hey, we can argue that you're sitting in front of a monitor so immersion is not possible at all.

I understand it might affect you but (i) I don't think most people care unless it's ridiculously obvious and (ii) if that bugs you, then probably a large number of "it's a game" elements also ruin the immersion for you. Bottom line, things you mention, to me (and to probably most people) are something that I/we just accept because we know it's a video game. That doesn't necessary destroy the immersion for us.

To me graphics right now are generally 'good enough', I don't have any problems with being immersed in what I see. To me a much bigger problem are facial animations (or animations in general) that are, quality-wise, completely out of sync with visuals. I don't think I've ever felt my immersion being broken because of tiling textures or visible polygons.

Yeah I may have exaggerated my point a bit, and I know that not everyone thinks that (which I thought I mentioned). Basically my post was a defence of the position of preferring (or even just accepting) older graphics.

There's definitely other elements destroying imersion but for some reason I tend to do better with gamey stuff, probably because I never do not expect it. But the tiling texture thing, as ridiculous as it is, really happens to me. In Skyrim or Far Cry 3 or some other game with a very immersive world I do sometimes just look down at the details of a texture, because those miniscule things do initially add a lot to the feeling of the place depicted. But then they take that back and more, when I remember that it's just a texture and the piece of the world that I saw beneath me is repeated every meter or so and isn't meant to be taken literally.

Although people do forgive a lot of shit, I mean in Bioshock Infinite there almost wasn't a room in which some object didn't clip through some other object but I've never seen anyone complain about that, while I was walking around not being able to immerse myself in the world because I was so disgusted at the laziness of the designers.

Bottom line is, I'm sorry you can't fully enjoy the crazy environments made with Doom level graphics but I think there isn't really a good reason behind that inability. Oh well!

I'm only late by a day and yet it feels like years have passed since I last updated!

In any case, the beginning of the last session is here. As my luck would have it, I was more awake during this last session than ever before, so you may find me speaking slightly less agonizingly slowly, or managing to finish more of my thoughts, or other pleasant things like that. I don't really dare claim that it affected my playing in any positive way, though. But we did finish the wad, indeed, and there'll be seven parts again, since it took me another three and a half hours.

Also, predictably, slightly more discussion on the apparently fascinating topic of "Doom 2 hell" in these last videos! I feel like that's definitely a huge selling point!

The next part might be late by another day since I may not be arsed to edit anything tonight (believe it or not, these videos require some actual editing!).
But since it's the last batch of videos, I don't have to throw them all out by the next weekend, so huzzah! I can afford to be a little lazy!

Outdoor sandbox maps existed outside of the Doom 2 e2 city theme. Mt. Erebus was created as a Hell sandbox for e3m6, before Doom 2's development even began :P

Dead Sea was actually originally created as a D2TWID e2 submission, though.

And Leap of Faith was started while the original DTWID was still in development, though it underwent some major revisions later on.

esselfortium said:

Outdoor sandbox maps existed outside of the Doom 2 e2 city theme. Mt. Erebus was created as a Hell sandbox for e3m6, before Doom 2's development even began :P

Oh shit, how could I forget about that wonderful map.
Although a big point I expressed earlier was that Doom 2's hell isn't nearly as open as Doom 1's was (after all, it also had e3m2, plus most maps had considerable outdoor portions up until e3m7). I suppose maps like Dead Sea and Borderlands are that sort of d2twid map that I can't really argue against fitting in their map slots, but still have a hard time associating with them. Such open sandboxy levels just don't fit into what I think of when I remember Doom 2's ep3. While I think that iD making D2's hell less open in general might not have been fully intentional (maybe they didn't like the sky just like I don't? :D ), it does very much seem like they concentrated all their sandboxes in e2 and for a pretty good reason.

If I can say one thing for certain, it's that if I had the power I would've certainly did some reshuffling of these maps in the final release. Take Wharf and Causeway further apart, perhaps move Borderands and/or Dead Sea to e2, flood the library with blood and shift it into e3, perhaps replace either the Gorge or Damn Strait with another map (since they are really similiar as far as I'm concerned)... And also enforce some heavy alterations upon map03 :P

Antroid said:

The next part might be late by another day since I may not be arsed to edit anything tonight

I lied!

Well, not exactly, since I said "might"... but I got around to preparing it, unlike tonight, so the NEXT part may be a day late, and this time I mean it!

Guess what's back whether you wanted it or not!

I edited and rendered the rest of the videos after having a very busy week or two, and now the rest of these will come out at a steady pace again.

It's funny how we had all these talks about Hell levels before but now when the videos are in E3 I don't really have that much to add. There were a couple of things I wanted to mention but I didn't take notes and now I can't remember stuff from previous updates.

Yeah I was kinda expecting that to happen with our discussion kinda coming to a close before I even got to the hell levels.

I quite liked this Alfonzo map from 4-4, though. I'm surprised you didn't at least like the more doom1hell maps like that one or the hitscan hell whatever it was with the green marble and shit from before. Or did you mention them and I forgot?

Would've been up 8 hours ago or so if I remembered that it was uploaded and waiting for publishing, oh well :>

Only one part left after this one!

Anyone has a wad they made that they would be interested to record with me in this same way? I have no real plans for after D2TWiD so if anyone has a suggestion I will probably either take it or very strongly consider at least.

Some short random notes.

Gotta say I really like Painkiller, had a lot of fun with it.

I definitively prefer DOOM 1 soundtrack over DOOM 2, it seems more fitting. With that said, I don't really like DOOM music that much. I have recently made an experiment. One day I thought to myself that I really hate DOOM 2 music and decided to change it to something else. I replaced each and every track in DOOM 2 with music that I thought was more fitting and holy crap, the difference in in-game atmosphere was vast, even throughout D2 levels that I don't like that much.

I don't think an actual music / songs playing in the background are suitable for modern, more realisitic and elaborate games. The soundtrack has to perfectly match the environments, something like most of the music in Portal 2. Alternatively it can be something that's not really music, sounds that seem to come from the environment but are not actually part of it. Kind of like ambient but not really, hard to describe.

Then again, my favourite game of all time, the first Deus Ex, has a lot of 'actual' music playing (like the Hong Kong music) and that seems to fit it pretty good. I'm not sure why is that. It wouldn't make sense to have constant music in Half-Life but in DX it seems to work well.

Antroid said:

I'm surprised you didn't at least like the more doom1hell maps like that one or the hitscan hell whatever it was with the green marble and shit from before. Or did you mention them and I forgot?

Actually I don't think I've made any comments on D2TWID E3, just the original DOOM II. Can't say I'm a huge fan of any of those maps. I did have fun with Dead Sea, though.

Touchdown said:

I don't think an actual music / songs playing in the background are suitable for modern, more realisitic and elaborate games. The soundtrack has to perfectly match the environments, something like most of the music in Portal 2. Alternatively it can be something that's not really music, sounds that seem to come from the environment but are not actually part of it. Kind of like ambient but not really, hard to describe.

From the latest games I've played that had constant music in the background, I'd say Serious Sam 3 did it the best. It was pretty awesome throughout, never really wore on me but definitely enhanced the atmosphere, and that final level track? Pure awesome.

LAST PART OMFG

If you've been saving huge involved comments on anything related to the LP, now's the time. If you weren't, well it's expected yet still disappointing.

As I have no immidiate plans for now, this thread may sink for a while again, but it will return at some point!