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Catpho

What stories do doom pwads tell you? Beyond the given story in the wad i mean.

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Its interesting, you know? Its that i can make some guesses about the environment the pwad author lives in just based on one the maps they made. Does anyone feels the same?

I think its the "art" in video games in general.

2edgy4me "shivers"

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5 minutes ago, Catpho said:

Its that i can make some guesses about the environment the pwad author lives in just based on one the maps they made.

Interesting, tell us more.

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Ah, its hard :P

I got the idea after playing some wads from people like Bigmemka, Eternal, Shadowman, and i find similarities in them. And i usually deduct that "high detail, artsy wads must be Russian! Especially the ones with .ogg music, and sort of realism in them!"

Of course there are exceptions, i dunno, i think im straying far from my own idea here :P

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this is interesting.  never even thought about this or paid attention.  i have made a handful of maps most of them terrible but of the four i have posted here on the forums only one isnt completely random and its a gothic church. maybe i try extra hard to keep my environment out of my maps or maybe i just dont have the same eye you do?

i would love some examples though from other custom maps you have played

 

edit you replied!

 

i will have to play these wads now. i never once thought about music choice. music can tell a lot about someones personality i agree!

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The kind of maps people make are usually a tell in terms of what they enjoy playing (okay, that's a no-brainer), but in a sense they can also provide tells as to how people play doom. On the other hand, watching someone play can also tell you something about their mindset when it comes to mapping. Maybe I just read into things too much at times, or it's wishful interpretation, but I think it's hard to argue that maps have "personalities", for lack of a better term.

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Maybe Marswar is a good example. It has many references to oldschool computing, demoscene, cult video games, etc. While playing it you can feel just how geeky the author is and kind of imagine his "nerd programmer working in the office" personality.

 

Also, by playing Garrulismo and some other wads by Eye del Cul I think you can tell that he has some issues with the Spanish government. There is something satirical about his cities overrun by monsters, the use of SS Nazis, etc.

 

Or Lainos. His levels tend to be dark and depressing, and he pretty much admits that they are a reflection of his inner world.

 

Then there is King REoL. Some people speculate that he made his levels hyper detailed due to some kind of ego problems.

 

And perhaps the fact that almost all of my levels are short and small-scale is related to my very low self-esteem... Like I'm too shy to do something epic.

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For some bizarre reason, Hadephobia is the first thing that comes to mind in regards to visual storytelling that isn't included with the given story. Aside from what's provided in its flavor texts, the level design and music choices tell a more depressing story than what you'd normally expect in a PWAD; it feels like less of a badass romp through demon-infested bases and caverns and more like a desperate escape from certain death. 

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All kinds, man, all kinds. Though hard to put into words. I find it pretty fascinating how a game where you're a goddamn space marine shooting demons on Mars can feel so emotional and expressive that you feel like you learn something about the person that made *this* particular virtual space where you shoot down *these* particular sets of demons. If that's largely an illusion, it's at least one hell of an illusion.

 

Case in point is of course Going Down, where I felt like I really understood something about mouldy's gross, goofy, and oddly precise sense of humor that really connected with me, plus his fastidiousness as a designer. I'm playing a bunch of Jim Flynn (R.I.P.) maps right now and am really connecting with (what I take as) his evident love of otherworldly abstraction and unbounded imagination. There's a sense of joy and innocence in a lot of Jimmy's work that doesn't hit me quite as deep personally but is still something I appreciate and "feel" on an emotional level. Lainos is probably the ultimate example of an emotional connection with a mapper, though others have described it better than I could (I remember kmx doing quite good writeups on his cacoward year maps). I don't know if any of these count as "stories" per se, but there's definitely something about shooting these dumb pixel art demons that has quite a personal effect on me. It's at least got the flavor of great biographical art.

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hellcore 2 has always felt like a work of intense paranoia

so many empty cityscapes robbed of their utility and packed with absolutely deadly ambushes

the early levels feel precisely like being mugged

the later temple-y late 90s detail maps don't land for me at all, it's all about the ghost towns

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Omg, your response is cool memfis :)

I found out a lot of asian authors that i know tend to make vibrant and colorful maps, Eddie Nguyen with the "Uca" series, Antares031, Huy Pham with DV series (okay, he might be technically was born outside of asia), and the JPCP crew. Asians are hyper crazy and active i guess :P

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