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_42_

Barrels O' Fun - The Bane of My Existence

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I was playing Barrels O' Fun and realized I would die if I kept playing. The level design made me dry heave, the usage of PE and Archviles was bad, and the Spiderdemon at the end was awful. Who else agrees? 

 

Edited by _42_

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Definitely do not agree at all. I always liked the gimmick of the map, you either escape from barrels or use them to your advantage. The level design imo turns questionable only at the open part in the middle, because the chaingunners are out of your aim most of the time, while they can drain your health without problem, if that's something that irks you too then yeah I agree. About the PEs, it's clear that if you don't kill them fast they'll soak up all your ammo, and that's why the barrels are there, but there are so many and scattered in the room that is very dangerous to do something, so I think their usage is fine. Of the two archviles, the roamer one can surprise you and not give you time to cover, the other one denies a lot of space, so their usage has some purpose. The spiderdemon is there so you can realize she and the arachnotrons are only related in design similarities, not in a mother-children way, and the cover available plus only rockets give her an imposing role for beginners or another iwad-ish simple boss encounter for experienced players.

 

Anyway, that's just my opinion. 

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Barrels o fun is one of the most memorable maps in doom 2 imo. Maybe it aged a bit but still one of the best parts of doom 2 e3.

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I'll probably be the first person here to loathe Barrels O' Fun. I don't like the textures, it's an annoying map, and the gameplay is crap. And it's not fun either.

 

I understand the way it's meant (or should be) to be played and the design in itself, but I can't help but feel only strong hatred for it. BoF is one of my least favorite maps from all the IWADs. But oh well, at least it's doing a better job gameplay wise than Habitat, this one doesn't have even that...

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The vile camping a lot of space still has short range unless you bother trying to snipe him (hell it is one of the few areas where you can figure out their attack behavior by yourself), just get the megasphere and rush into any of the teleports.

 

The mastermind zone is probably one of my favorite parts in the entire game because of how memorable it is. You can hide between the rockets, you can hide in the soul sphere closet, you can go gun blazing, you can try to telefrag the mastermind, you can lure them to one tunnel then rush to the teleport etc. One of the few areas with way too many ways to handle it. 

 

The only part I hate is the stupid chaingunners trap by the exit, Learning to zig zag past those barrels takes some practice. Doesn't help it isn't as cheesable as the start. 

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Barrels of Fun is cool. I actually like the part where you have to run like hell while monsters wake up behind you, start shooting at you through the barrels, and explode themselves.

 

 

I just really like maps where monsters explode themselves.

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But where else will I derive my self-worth if not through the validation of my opinions by other people?

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3 hours ago, Gez said:

Barrels of Fun is cool. I actually like the part where you have to run like hell while monsters wake up behind you, start shooting at you through the barrels, and explode themselves.

 

 

I just really like maps where monsters explode themselves.

The first custom Doom map I ever made (long since lost to the ravages of time) had a part near the end where I put a ring of a whole bunch of barrels around a Baron of Hell for exactly that sort of thing.  I bet a lot of people trying out map editing for the first time did similar.

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47 minutes ago, Xaser said:

I hope this recent-ish trend of "i hate thing x" threads reverses itself at some point. We all love the game here, so let's express some love for a change.

Nah, more clicks and replies with clickbaity what do you hate the least title.

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Interesting gimmick but gameplay and map design are both garbage. There should be a project on redesigning the shitty maps of Doom 2.

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i don't get it

how should barrels of fun play to not be "garbage"? maybe make the monster placement more conventional rather than the surprising way it is now? more imps maybe?

how should the map design look to not be "garbage"? maybe apply more conventional texture pairing instead of the strange things it does, maybe a three key hub instead of the interesting layout it has?

 

maybe you could take the barrels out and put all the encounters in a string of square arenas?

 

thank god all the interesting doom 2 levels avoided this noose

Edited by yakfak

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1 hour ago, yakfak said:

i don't get it

how should barrels of fun play to not be "garbage"?

I have a few ideas.

 

Before I start I want to say that barrels of fun was definitely a prodigal map in a way that probably best influenced the intensity of how diverse Doom mapping has expanded to today. I really don't think Doom would be so popular if every part of the game was contained in the boundaries of realism and efficient monster placement. It has a lot of "what if this happened" type scenarios which showed mappers that anything is possible and invited all sorts of people to attempt to contribute to the game. Consider how complicated and detail oriented modern games are and imagine how many people want to mod those games for fun. We should all be grateful for Barrels of Fun for that reason.

 

That said, if barrel's of fun were a pwad I'd play it once and forget about it the next morning. Why? For starters, the way the map was designed abandoned any concept of a physical location. I can usually see through the absence of detail and get an idea of what the designer was going for, but the fact that it looks like anything at all has to be completely by accident. I imagine Sandy was probably thinking something like this: 

 

"I would make it look like a sonic the hedgehog bonus round except Adrian Carmack only gave me these brown ambiguous brick and stucco textures to use so I can't make it look fun and silly like it should be. Also we have 29 maps plus this weird little barrel experiment thing I did so I might as well put an exit room on it so we can hit 30."

 

All the sectors that make up the map only have some sort of utility associated with them and seemingly nothing else.

 

"I can't can't get across this gap in the middle, so I'm gonna put this big ass triangle here so he can walk across. I guess I'll put some textures on it too so the player can actually see it. I don't think I can make this jump so im gonna drag this ledge over here, and and bend this wall over there, etc. etc."

 

If this visualization is any indication, the soulsphere and rocket stash in the northeast had to have been added late into the maps development to make it fair and playable to a new player. Presumably, this map wasn't ever truly meant to be in the game. It's just not very ambitious or necessary and loaded with experimental stuff that does nothing to contribute any sort of narrative that's built up in the beginning half of the game.

 

I'm basing most of this on cloudy memory because I'm not at my home computer right now, but I think the map could have been better with fewer monsters, and/or more shotgun shells. It could probably use some sort of impressive visual landmark, and make the map a bit more "mission objective" oriented because it kicks off with a frantic "don't die" scenario but the adrenaline makes a hard stop with the heavy monster grinding and little direction of where to go and what to do when its over.

 

Again, the above would only make it a better map when viewed from a lense that obfuscates the rest of the package MAP23 is contained within, but I also believe that a map like this, as is, was essential for delivering on Doom's astronomical potential in the surrounding community, even if that was a side effect of Sandy Petersen's design and not his original intention.

Edited by 40oz

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4 hours ago, Nirvana said:

I just hate the midi.

Funny, I always loved the midi, even before I had heard the song it was based on.

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13 minutes ago, Bauul said:

Funny, I always loved the midi, even before I had heard the song it was based on.

I do too, but it could use a solo or an extra riff. And what's with that whistling in the second half of it?

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It's a good experimental map that changes gears halfway through. The start and end build on the concept of barrel excess but the middle plays it safe (although it does have some decent Arch-vile usage and excellent Mastermind placement). So yeah, I think it's half "well-realized gimmick map" and half "engaging gameplay map", but it doesn't do either aspect justice. MIDI's really nice though and it suits a gimmicky map. I'd give the map a meme/10.

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Barrels o fun is probably one of the few Doom 2 maps that I still get any enjoyment out of pistol starting. It doesn't look like anything? lol why is this criticism suddenly being leveled against map23 in particular, did people get bored of using it on downtown or the pit?

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Besides the Pain Elemental section and those distant Chaingunners, the map is really good: the monster placement is exact, the music is catchy, the design is consistent, and the gimmick is pretty damn cool.

 

There's always this debate about why gimmicks exist (most notably in the film industry) and that they're cheap? I say we need more gimmicky things!

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