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NiGHTMARE

Pet peeves in level design

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mouldy said:

damaging floors should provide an element of tactical choice rather than just compulsory damage. A rad suit or extra health kits nearby gives players a limited usage of that space, it then becomes a tactical choice of whether to use it or not. But to just have some floor that the player is forced to take damage from is punishing the player for simply playing the map.

This. So much this. I fucking hate it when some shithead puts swathes of damagesectors around with absolutely no way at all to avoid taking damage from them. It's not legitimately 'difficult', it's just some moronic/lazy attempt at being difficult. Throw monsters at me, put crushers across the non-damaging walkways, make me run from pillar-to-pillar, whatever. Do something more than just "lol u taek dmg now". It's shit and cuntish.

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Damage sectors can be a very good way of enhancing a fight in a map if used well. If used around islands of non-damaging sectors, they're an excellent way of restricting the player's ability to manoeuvre without simply making an area cramped or using low walls. This can transform the danger from otherwise relatively harmless monsters that would be nonchalantly strafed around, particularly hell nobles.

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Tech base textures in hell. Consider E3M4:






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I especially hate electrical light bulbs in hell:



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I understand that they were kind of going for hell mixed into base, but we had E2 for that. I think E3 should have been completely in hell.

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Please provide satisfying hellish light sources then. No, I don't want to put torches and candelabras everywhere.

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I find that any "pet peeve" you can have about mapping will have an exception... here are four that popped to mind and defeated themselves:

- DOORRED/BLU/YEL decorations around an active object that doesn't actually require that key to activate... immediately thought of a counter-example: the "blue" door in MAP05 of ALT.WAD which, when you discover can be opened gives you a feeling of pure relief

- lack of difficulty settings... contains its own counter-example because ITYTD has inbuilt ammo and health rules

- dislike of textures like ROCK2 or CEMENTx or whichever... until someone finds an impressive way of using that texture as a trim, or until TimeofDeath brute forces them into some strange architectural wonder and makes it look impressive

- items placed unavoidably on the main route... until you begin to appreciate intentionally evil placement of blurspheres and/or berserk packs to make a set fight harder

I hope people's pet peeves don't cause them to abandon playing a map where they're present, because the best stuff in Doom requires a little indulgence both on the author's part and that of the player!

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Memfis said:

Please provide satisfying hellish light sources then. No, I don't want to put torches and candelabras everywhere.


Torches are not "satisfying" for hellish designs......but tech base electric light bulbs are? Each to his own, I suppose.

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Forced pickups is my main pet peeve. And regarding the use of tech textures in hell i think that mixes like that can make the level more interesting.

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valhallaist said:

Torches are not "satisfying" for hellish designs......but tech base electric light bulbs are? Each to his own, I suppose.

I'm not saying that. But I don't want all light sources in my hellish maps to be objects, I'd like to have some on walls and ceilings too.

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Memfis said:

Please provide satisfying hellish light sources then. No, I don't want to put torches and candelabras everywhere.

FIRELAV, FIREMAG, or FIREBLU! You can push it into a wall a few units, and accompany with borderline textures next to it. It should work as a wall light source.

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Memfis said:

I'm not saying that. But I don't want all light sources in my hellish maps to be objects, I'd like to have some on walls and ceilings too.


There's always CEIL1_2 and CEIL1_3, though they look even more appropriate when the lights are recoloured to yellow ala Quake 1. Gothic DM has some useful wall textures, too.

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NiGHTMARE said:

There's always CEIL1_2 and CEIL1_3

They're fluorescent tubes / strip lights. Totally not hellish.

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valhallaist said:

Tech base textures in hell. Consider E3M4:

Indeed. The technical door as well as the abundance of weak zombiemen make that place hard to take seriously.

Does E3M7 have any visible light sources? I think they were, at most, the acid pools.

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scifista42 said:

They're fluorescent tubes / strip lights. Totally not hellish.


really? I had convinced myself they were skylights

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printz said:

Does E3M7 have any visible light sources? I think they were, at most, the acid pools.

You're right. Pretty much all sectors with liquid floors in this map seem to be brighter than their neighboring sectors. Sectors distant from any liquid floors are the darkest ones. No doubt that the light emerges from the liquid! It even appears as intentional design choice.

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re TECH/HECK (valhallaist): this is actually the style juxtaposition I enjoy most in Doom. Although it's best when the author intended it, and wasn't just fishing for the right colour texture (guilty).

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NiGHTMARE said:

#3 No or improper use of texture borders

Spoiler

No:



Yes:




This is the only one I agree with.

I actually think using "materials" is harmful to doom design, and it's something I've had to beat out of my system after years of monkeying about in Quark/Hammer and so on. Using textures and flats for their overall color and contrast is much better, given how poor vanilla's resolution is and how flat its lighting is. And this point isn't made irrelevant by ports since a lot of people still play vanilla via dosbox or chocolate-doom.

Further, using floor/wall trims and textures-as-materials as a rule, increases the time it takes to make an area and especially the time it takes to go back and edit an already-made area. It also runs the risk of a map looking like too clean and polished like e.g. an Afterglow map. And yeah I think a hell map that contains only brick, stone, and fire as part of some Miltonian interpretation of Hell, is childish and missing the point (as if Hell has a team of unionized masons and interior decorators who ensure it looks "Hellish" enough)

Establishing hard design rules also will hinder the creativity and strange ideas someone might have had, but we will never know! Establishing rules for individual projects is a different story, but that's not what is being talked about here.

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Gotta agree. I test most of my maps in Chocolate Doom. Every now and then I load one up in ZDoom, and am always disappointed with how flat and bland everything looks.

Lower resolutions + software mode adds a very satisfying graininess to everything.

I guess one of my pet peeves is people playing maps designed for Vanilla in higher resolution, or hardware mode (barf).

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Vorpal said:

And this point isn't made irrelevant by ports since a lot of people still play vanilla via dosbox or chocolate-doom.


It kinda is, not everyone will want to play vanilla, so they make their maps in whatever else way and make it look as good as they can for their preferred port, just as you would for looking good in vanilla's way. They aren't forced to cater to make it look good in your preferred way, and you aren't in theirs.

So I just say use whatever textures look good, regardless of material or colour and to hell with what port others choose to make their maps for, stick to the ones for yours then.

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scifista42 said:

They're fluorescent tubes / strip lights. Totally not hellish.


So there are beings in hell capable of designing and applying cybernetic enhancements, but fluorescent lights remain a completely unknown science there? Right, okay.

It's kind of difficult to see what non-artificial light sources you could have as textures or flats, other than things like lava and fire which already exist in doom(2).wad - glowing crystals and mushrooms, perhaps? Pretty much anything else would be better as a sprite.

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NiGHTMARE said:

It's kind of difficult to see what non-artificial light sources you could have as textures or flats, other than things like lava and fire which already exist in doom(2).wad - glowing crystals and mushrooms, perhaps? Pretty much anything else would be better as a sprite.

Wall torches like these ones would work if they were parts of walltextures.

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Or they could be floating items, that's how I did my torches.

Hell could totally have neon lights if it wanted though.

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Having the player use a normal shotgun against multiple 500+ health monsters including an archvile with the ssg hidden as a secret.

This has happened a few times in my D2Reload sessions.

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NiGHTMARE said:

So there are beings in hell capable of designing and applying cybernetic enhancements, but fluorescent lights remain a completely unknown science there? Right, okay.


Cyber enhancements are one thing, but I can't think of a reason why demons would need electric lights at home. The enemies in Doom have always been able to attack you accurately in total darkness. Besides, it would totally mess with the decor, man.

But OK, it may be possible to have electric lights in hell. The only trouble is, all the light bulb textures in doom are a little too ordinary looking. They just stick out too much to me, like pink curtains and a flowerpot at a jail cell window. If there are light bulbs in hell, it should be more aesthetically hellish. Remember, hell in Doom is a dark, twisted, surreal and alien dimension. The biggest issue is that I just can't think of a way to make electric lights look anything but ordinary.

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long boring stretches of bland prolonged game-play with nothing more to do than hunting a switch or simply running around for nothing.

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valhallaist said:

The biggest issue is that I just can't think of a way to make electric lights look anything but ordinary.

Something like this, maybe in a different (more terrific) shape, and with a contrasting border, either organic, or distinctly hellish in another way.

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scifista42 said:

FIRELAV, FIREMAG, or FIREBLU! You can push it into a wall a few units, and accompany with borderline textures next to it. It should work as a wall light source.


I personally love firewall myself. It's a great hellish texture plus gives you an excuse to add lighting. Bricklit is another one, but only if you like sandy brown textures (I certainly don't). The original Doom textures simply doesn't have good enough wall and ceiling light textures. Maybe the zdoom textures have some better ones.

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valhallaist said:

But OK, it may be possible to have electric lights in hell. The only trouble is, all the light bulb textures in doom are a little too ordinary looking. They just stick out too much to me, like pink curtains and a flowerpot at a jail cell window. If there are light bulbs in hell, it should be more aesthetically hellish. Remember, hell in Doom is a dark, twisted, surreal and alien dimension. The biggest issue is that I just can't think of a way to make electric lights look anything but ordinary.

Quake has "electric" lights which look like runes. It also has ordinary fluorescent lights but they seem to fit the "metal" theme.

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valhallaist said:

Cyber enhancements are one thing, but I can't think of a reason why demons would need electric lights at home. The enemies in Doom have always been able to attack you accurately in total darkness.


Surely by that logic, there should be no burning torches in hell either?

Besides, it would totally mess with the decor, man.


Chord 3 would beg to differ.

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Memfis said:

Please provide satisfying hellish light sources then. No, I don't want to put torches and candelabras everywhere.


Make a metal border for a "light fixture" and put lava inside it. Why does the lava float in the ceiling? Because it's hell. That's why. Just don't be Sandy Petersen and turn an entire ceiling into lava (in fact "don't be Sandy Petersen" is good texturing advice in general).

Also don't use STONE1/STONE2 alongside hell bricks, it clashes terribly and you cannot convince me that STONE1 is not made of modern cinder blocks.

Never make a LITE* strip wider than 32 units, and even 32 units usually looks worse than 16:


NO


YES

Always have visible sources for the light in your maps:


NO


NO


YES

Don't wallpaper light bulbs over an entire ceiling and never let them be cut off:


NO

Instead use versions of the flat with no light to fill the empty space and place lights individually or in small groups:

YES

Never use STONE1/STONE2 without aligning them vertically to the floor and ceiling:


NO


YES

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Woolie Wool said:

Never use STONE1/STONE2 without aligning them vertically to the floor and ceiling:

I disagree. It's not my problem that the texture is drawn that way. The default that everyone is used to is to see half parts of STONE2/STONE3 hidden by the floor and ceiling. This is even more apparent when STONGARG and switches are used.

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