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NiGHTMARE

Pet peeves in level design

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I just design rooms, as I did that one, to fit STONE1/2 with the edges aligned, including adjusting switches and the like if need be. The texture is drawn in a really dumb manner and it requires manual alignment to not look stupid.

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Vorpal said:

It also runs the risk of a map looking like too clean and polished like e.g. an Afterglow map.

Oi.

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A clean techbase can look "clean" if need be, but I think when that kind of detail is over-applied to a setting that wouldn't warrant it does look somewhat off. Detail for the sake of minute detail (especially when it doesn't make sense or actually hinders movement) is a touchy subject I guess. Some people like it, others don't.

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Fake exits are getting overused in megawads. But I shouldn't complain, since levels are supposed to be antagonistic. It's just frustrating when I'm killed by such an ambush, but that's the way of Doom.

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NiGHTMARE said:

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


The torches fit in with hell's more primitive atmosphere. And personally, I always liked the contrast between the high-tech base levels and the more fantasy-based hell.

Chord 3 would beg to differ. [/B]


Permit me to disagree.

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Afterglow said:

Oi.


My personal taste is for things that are messy, confusing, chaotic, and not too complicated in terms of detail. Your maps tend to be very geometric and "clean" like a modern highrise lobby that had an architectural wizard on the design team. While it's a negative for me, I didn't intend to make it seem like I was shitting on you personally ;-p

For what it's worth, the way you skillfully use textures (not just make/combine a texture file itself, but how it is implemented in a map) has only been matched by 3 or 4 guys in the community in the last decade (Ed Cripps and Esselfortium spring to mind)

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Woolie Wool said:

(in fact "don't be Sandy Petersen" is good texturing advice in general)..

NO

Woolie Wool said:

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

NO

Woolie Wool said:

Always have visible sources for the light in your maps:

NO

Woolie Wool said:

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

NO

Woolie Wool said:

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

NO

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Well you can like 1994-era "puke textures all over the geometry and call it a day" level design as much as you want, but I stand by my conviction that the adoption of the "materials" theory of textures by mappers like Afterglow, Espi, and Esselfortium (with Essel being the grand master of materials texturing) is the biggest step forward Doom architecture has ever had. That sort of texturing allows vanilla wads like Back to Saturn X to have architecture that completely humiliates 90% of limit removing wads. Compare BTSX to the flood of Tormentor667 imitators from around eight years ago--the latter would use tens of thousands of lines to produce astonishingly ugly levels because they had no understanding of using textures and colors effectively (the fact that "Detail Guide" levels tended to be relentlessly boxy and orthogonal didn't help).

Also I'm going to have to name maps who slap Nick Baker's horizontal/vertical textures (Episode 5, etc.) all over large expanses of wall as a pet peeve. This is inevitably really dull looking--those textures work well for structural members, steps, pipes, and accents, but for a wall you need something with more visual interest.

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Well, thanks for the praise there. I'd still consider Espi the master of material texturing (and a lot of other things). Suspended in Dusk blew me away when I first played it a decade ago; it changed a lot of my original perceptions about mapping when I was first getting serious about making Doom levels, and when I revisit it I still notice mindblowing things that have been casually hidden all over the place like they're no big deal.

With that said, I don't have any issue with Big LITE3 Walls or abstract lighting, and I genuinely think most mappers could benefit from paying more respect to the Sandy Petersen school of level design. ;P

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Well when I first played BTSX E1 my first reaction was "wow, Esselfortium sure has Espi's style nailed perfectly". It's a shame I suck too much to finish BTSX E2, the parts I played looked great but I just couldn't go on in the face of all those revenants and archviles.

As for Sandy Petersen, sorry, but Romero's my man, so much to the point that I've been working on an episode that, well, I think this should make it clear:



(most of my "yes" pics were from this map)

And anyway this is the "pet peeves" thread and if it wasn't a bit weird and personal it wouldn't be a pet peeve, would it?

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I think a Hellish level could use tech items and walls. They are not automatically medieval.

A Hellish lab would have tech, and even tech lights.
There could be electronics, but not much earth electronics.
There could be tools, but most should be Hellish tools.
Because most of the objects are earth tech, this becomes difficult, requiring Hellish style covers made from wall textures. Take the same light panel, and stick some of it on a wall bump as a strange kind of light source, and it could fit in fine. It looks like Hellish tech if it is some combination of small, irregular, and bloody.

A Hellish corridor could have tech lights, but probably not the ceiling lights because they are a product of mass production. But I think that similar tech lights replacing the usual torches would work as long as they maintain the Hellish look and look to be produced by Hellish tech.

They could also have stolen and brought back stuff from raids.

One tech wall is out-of-place and does not look right. But if it is a panel brought back to the Hellish level, then it could obviously be movable and covering something. For that to work it cannot just be stuck on some wall segment in a corridor.

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Woolie Wool said:

Well you can like 1994-era "puke textures all over the geometry and call it a day" level design as much as you want

I definitely do, but that's not to say I don't like modern mapping like BTSX, because I like that too. I gotta have both. :)

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Woolie Wool said:

As for Sandy Petersen, sorry, but Romero's my man, so much to the point that I've been working on an episode that, well, I think this should make it clear:


I can see some John Anderson influences in there too, particularly the lighting :)

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Another pet peeve of mine: using the Doom 2 blue/red skull switch where neither of those keys is required.

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This is a big pet peeve of mine, actually much bigger than the texturing-related things: inconsistency about whether a certain flat is a damaging floor. DON'T. DO. THIS. The damage effects applied to each floor type should be consistent throughout a wad project--if blood is safe, it should always be safe, if brown sludge is harmful, it should always be harmful. And lava should ALWAYS be a damaging floor, period. If you keep changing your mind you are literally altering the rules of the game in the middle of play, which is a game design deadly sin (safe lava or nukage has the additional problem of violating common sense, which makes it doubly obnoxious). Imagine if the behavior of monsters would suddenly change (gaining or losing attacks, gaining or losing flags like MISSILEMORE or FUZZY, random and radical changes in hit points) without warning. That is basically what you are doing if you cannot keep the effects of your floors straight.

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Eh, yeah it is annoying if you aren't always right about what floors hurt you. I think within the same level the floor damage should be consistent, but I don't mind if different maps in the same pwad have different rules. If everything is always static and predictable in the environment, things get stale. Like you wouldn't want crushers to only happen to you on a certain flat would you? Then it's way too easy to predict when you're going to get mushed. Plutonia and Alien Vendetta alternate damaging floors kind of often.

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I don't like when people complain about this. Oh, so hard to stay in blood for 2 seconds to see if it hurts in this level or not. Maybe I don't want to change it to water in this level because it needs more red color.

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Memfis said:

I don't like when people complain about this. Oh, so hard to stay in blood for 2 seconds to see if it hurts in this level or not. Maybe I don't want to change it to water in this level because it needs more red color.


Yes.

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I can withstand inconsistently damaging liquids, but as I said it another thread, I prefer and appreciate when they stay consistent, within the whole wad or at least episode. If they don't, then the damaging ones could use some indication of being damaging at the beginning of each level, for example Radsuits in player's sight, and the safe ones could be demonstrated by a mandatory crossing through them. I prefer to have a certainty. Which doesn't mean that I 100% hate uncertainty, I say it before someone misinterprets it that way. It's just something I generally find comfortable.

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I can't really have any pet peeves with anything that has been done in an iwad, especially doom & doom 2. Except for things like HOM, slime trails & whatnot which seem to be obviously unintended.

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My big one is bumpy floors. Excessive (defining this as "no longer aesthetically pleasing") detailing in general, but it just becomes obnoxious when it's on the floor.

And yeah, liquid inconsistencies in the same map are annoying.

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scifista42 said:

I can withstand inconsistently damaging liquids, but as I said it another thread, I prefer and appreciate when they stay consistent, within the whole wad or at least episode. If they don't, then the damaging ones could use some indication of being damaging at the beginning of each level, for example Radsuits in player's sight, and the safe ones could be demonstrated by a mandatory crossing through them. I prefer to have a certainty. Which doesn't mean that I 100% hate uncertainty, I say it before someone misinterprets it that way. It's just something I generally find comfortable.



There could be environmental clues to whether it's damaging or not like having corpses in it or warning signs around it. Just something so that it isn't just blind guessing.

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Fitting warning signs would be good. Corpses have the disadvantage that they can be misinterpreted for mere decorations for the sake of having cool gory decorations, which are common in many maps.

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