Underused Level Themes

There are loads of same-y techbase, hell, and city-themed PWADs. What kinds of level themes would you like to see more of instead?

My examples:

• Pandemonium-style flesh mazes. The gross, meaty textures from Doom 1 are so woefully underused. I see so much potential for surreal and nightmarish maps set inside the flesh of rotting giants, stuff like that.
• Outdoors-based Mars levels. Doom2016 did this a lot and I never realized how much I wanted it. It's a nice change of pace from cramped metallic corridors all the time.
• Snow. I love snow. We do actually get a good amount of winter-themed PWADs but I need more. It sustains me.

I like castles. They don't have to be hell castles, like a good ol' abandoned European style castle.

Sounds like the foundation for a community project focusing on underused themes.

ruined open-area facilities are the best whether it's a castle or an old graveyard or a messed up tech facility or airstrip or what have you

actually my fave setting is pseudo-realistic real world storyline area preferably with sniping russian zombiemen standing on every possible chimney stack, silo, rooftop and sector-art car

I've always loved Lost Civilizations. Whether it's a forgotten Mayan jungle tomb/temple, an abandoned moutaintop city like Machu Picchu, Anasazi ruins or an underwater Atlantean outpost, something different than Tech/Gothic/Hell. They don't need tons of new monsters/textures; just enough to remove it one or two steps from normal Doom.

More:

"Mackenna's Gold", "High Plains Drifter" - Someone is always wanting a new 'Fistful of Doom' mapset. And how many Old West ghost stories are there?

"The Lost World", "Jurassic Park" - I have yet to see a good Dinosaur in Doom.

"Total Recall", "Forbidden Planet" - What did the ancient races look like? What did their buildings and doors look like?

"Journey to the Center of the Earth", "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" - Deep Underground/Underwater. Did I just wake something up? Is that a leak?

"Alien vs. Predator" - Ancient yet Technologically Advanced and all under ice. Works for me.

Cthulhu - You can never have enough Cthulhu. Ia! Ia!

- Star Wars dark Forces-like maps even though the texturing is rather grey. (but with Doom monsters, like Doomed Space Wars)

- Stock Doom / Doom 2 textures only maps with no replacement music. Especially E2 and E3 themes and Romero, Petersen-like city maps.

- Bizarre, psychedelic abstract maps with original textures or modified stock textures (not cc4tex) and crazy music.

3 hours ago, TurrboAnklet said:

There are loads of same-y techbase, hell, and city-themed PWADs. What kinds of level themes would you like to see more of instead?

 

My examples:

• Pandemonium-style flesh mazes. The gross, meaty textures from Doom 1 are so woefully underused. I see so much potential for surreal and nightmarish maps set inside the flesh of rotting giants, stuff like that.
• Outdoors-based Mars levels. Doom2016 did this a lot and I never realized how much I wanted it. It's a nice change of pace from cramped metallic corridors all the time.
• Snow. I love snow. We do actually get a good amount of winter-themed PWADs but I need more. It sustains me.

Pretty much all of my levels are outdoor moon bases. I am making a 6 Episode (6 levels each episode) megawad atm.  I even have a level dedicated to "flesh mazes" and a Ice Cavern.  Far from done however but I hope to be putting the levels up by the end of this month on Wads In Progress.

Abandoned bases reclaimed by nature, greenery, some tech, water...thinking Portal 2 somewhat in the earlier stages- of those lovely photos you see of old towns and places left for the trees and plants to take back.

I have examples for sewers chasms high tech security complex's warehouses tombs and even caves

Didn't this topic get made 2 or so months ago?

Hmmm underused themes... snow? Jurassic Park? Heaven? Skate parks? Shrunk Doomguy on a kitchen table? Roller rinks?

2 hours ago, Fuzzball said:

Abandoned bases reclaimed by nature, greenery, some tech, water...thinking Portal 2 somewhat in the earlier stages- of those lovely photos you see of old towns and places left for the trees and plants to take back.

+1, I feel like this might be like a visual blend of TNT and Plutonia when translated into Doom.

 Honestly though if we're talking portal 2, I'd love to see stuff like from the middle-later parts of the game, like those huge vertical caves and old test chambers. That 50s aesthetic was amazing 

In general, it seems like there's very little in the way of "mixed" themes beyond the E2 Hell/Techbase theme. This might be because of how hard it is to actually mesh two themes well, but I'd still be interested in seeing what could come of a project designed around meshing two themes (I've actually started working on one that mixes an Ice theme with the GothicDM textures)

10 minutes ago, Eris Falling said:

Square rooms with 150 hell knights

Techbase,Hell or City themed square rooms with 150 hellknights?
I personaly want more Wild west,lovecraftian,mediterranean (greek,egyptian,atlantis themed),moon and lava cave themed square rooms with 150 hellknights.
 

35 minutes ago, SOSU said:

Techbase,Hell or City themed square rooms with 150 hellknights?
I personaly want more Wild west,lovecraftian,mediterranean (greek,egyptian,atlantis themed),moon and lava cave themed square rooms with 150 hellknights.
 

A whole community megawad, 32 levels with 150 hellknights each, each one themed differently than the last

Make it 150 Barons and we have a deal.

Cyberpunk/cyberspace and different kind of void themed wads please. 

6 hours ago, EffinghamHuffnagel said:

Cthulhu - You can never have enough Cthulhu. Ia! Ia!

I'd love to see this. We still only have Strange Aeons and Rylayeh and it'd be cool to see some more.

8 hours ago, Pegleg said:

Sounds like the foundation for a community project focusing on underused themes.

I second this. What's the ongoing community thing where the mappers choose a restriction to base their map on? Maybe we do a poll for which underused themes to have in the next one?

2 hours ago, Impie said:

I'd love to see this. We still only have Strange Aeons and Rylayeh and it'd be cool to see some more.

If you're very, very generous with your definition of what makes a map Cthulhu-esque, there's also this Metallica inspired wad and anything based on Quake 1. Kind of?

4 hours ago, THMG said:

A whole community megawad, 32 levels with 150 hellknights each, each one themed differently than the last

Heh I started a map today based on that idea

8 hours ago, THMG said:

In general, it seems like there's very little in the way of "mixed" themes beyond the E2 Hell/Techbase theme. This might be because of how hard it is to actually mesh two themes well, but I'd still be interested in seeing what could come of a project designed around meshing two themes (I've actually started working on one that mixes an Ice theme with the GothicDM textures)

I think Hellbound pulls it off. map set has a bad rep because it's very sloggy but the thought put into the architecture and theming still amazes me

5 hours ago, SiFi270 said:

If you're very, very generous with your definition of what makes a map Cthulhu-esque, there's also this Metallica inspired wad and anything based on Quake 1. Kind of?

That's kinda true about Quake 1 stuff. Quake had a lot of Lovecraft elements, but did a good job of making the mythos its own distinct steampunkish offshoot. Actually, speaking of...

9 hours ago, Myst.Haruko said:

different kind of void themed wads please. 

...what's the name of that Quake mapset series that's all maze-like castles and bases floating in the void? Coagula?

Dimensional based maps. Maps that involve warping to different dimensions such as Interceptions Secret Levels.

Anyone remember hell raiser doom? 

That had some interesting abstract themes if I recall, maybe a modern remake of that could be interesting.

(Wasn't the status bar face from that WAD Gordon Freeman? The 90's were a strange place.)

Snow/arctic maps.

What about a map where you are in an abandoned hospital? Or a cementery, like in Icarus mapsomething, only way more creepy. Realistic spooky environments I mean. They might exist already, I never had the pleasure to play them yet.

Heaven themed maps are something I havn’t seen a lot of. Only examples I can think of are Map32 of Bloodstain and the final map in Deus Vult 2.

2 hours ago, A2Rob said:

Heaven themed maps are something I havn’t seen a lot of. Only examples I can think of are Map32 of Bloodstain and the final map in Deus Vult 2.

Demons in heaven? Hmm. Interesting concept. I wonder what the back story would be, aside from a standard "war in Heaven."

Unless you're proposing to play as the monsters, in which case the war in Heaven still works.

And the Heaven in Deus Vult 2 looks more like a stereotypical heaven than does Map 32 of Bloodstain, which looks more or less like a demon-infested castle made of white stones. The background is even red, which doesn't scream Heaven to me. Not that I didn't like how the level looked, just that it could be any white castle.

Check out ancient aliens map 24 for a heaveny theme

People in need for snow maps will be pleased by Joy of mapping 5, a whole one episode of snow (two other episodes  are based around liquid water, but still.)

On 12/4/2017 at 9:42 PM, Eris Falling said:

Square rooms with 150 hell knights

On 12/4/2017 at 10:32 PM, THMG said:

A whole community megawad, 32 levels with 150 hellknights each, each one themed differently than the last

And this now exists and is still short 3 mappers, as of December 14. I don't think the rooms are all square, but all the levels will feature 1 continuous "room."