dobu gabu maru Posted May 11, 2018 Like the thread title suggests, I'm curious if player control over these aspects help define what makes a map feel "90s". To elaborate a little on it, I'm specifically thinking of design that allows the player to away from an trap or speed through it and skip the encounter altogether. I was watching Suitepee play some of Memento Mori 2 and found myself quietly critiquing some of the design, like how in MAP05 "Rites of Passage", going across a thin bridge to the exit reveals two cacos to your sides and an HK directly in front of you, but like... you can just backpedal and duel them in a big open room. I found occasionally thinking "you shouldn't allow the player to do this" during certain encounters, but in a way I think I'm missing what made these wads special—namely, letting the player determine what they can and can't do. What say you? Could a "90s" map be made with tightly scripted encounters that allow for no refuge? Or does that break the spirit of the style? 7 Share this post Link to post
Linguica Posted May 11, 2018 I was about to say "90s WADs weren't really sophisticated enough to have tightly scripted encounters" then I remembered my AOD-DOOM map from 1996 had a section where you are in an arena with a lowering floor and enemies are revealed from the sides of the arena as you descend, plus timed teleports of monsters into the arena itself, so I guess it was possible even then. 0 Share this post Link to post
Cruduxy Pegg Posted May 11, 2018 It helps most players but those speed running the mapsets are the ones who are going to suffer the mappers full wrath. Not all traps have to be deadly areas with locked doors as well, makes the map feel more gamey if everything gets locked over and over. 1 Share this post Link to post
Tristan Posted May 11, 2018 (edited) I'd rather be able to retreat like that than be forced into fighting the monsters in a tight space, though at times cheesing fights isn't fun - thinking of times where there's lots of monsters and you just stand there for a few hours taking potshots. I feel like there could be a middle ground: Fights with multiple strategies, perhaps inevitably some will be more fun than others depending on your tastes, but none falling under actual cheesing. Forcing only one correct strategy sounds to me like its less 90s and more 10s - some maps nowadays are made with the sole intent of murdering the player over and over again. Whether I personally like that kinda depends on the map's theme I guess. It makes sense in Hell maps: You're in their realm now, bitch. It made sense in your Saturnine Chapel too. Generic UAC base on Earth? nah not so much 🙂 5 Share this post Link to post
Nine Inch Heels Posted May 11, 2018 23 minutes ago, dobu gabu maru said: but in a way I think I'm missing what made these wads special—namely, letting the player determine what they can and can't do. To me personally it seems like a lot of times monsters are put in places for the purpose of atmosphere, rather than the purpose of killing or even inflicting damage. If you are on a tight bridge, and you have something in front of you and to your sides show up to ruin your day, that creates some tension, even though the fight in and of itself might be fluff, doubly so when the player retreats to a more advantageous location, you're still being pressured into making a call (even if one is an "easy out"). I think that's part of what makes 90s wads feel 90s... Making people "retreat" to a more favourable position is interesting, psychologically speaking. I don't think we don't get to enjoy the privilege of making a call like that a lot nowadays a lot, in many cases there's either the lock-in, or it's obvious that a retreat is what's required to do. On the other hand I think we also get more interesting fights in return. 2 Share this post Link to post
Deadwing Posted May 11, 2018 (edited) IDK, at that time, if you placed 10 barons in a room, the mapper would consider this as a very difficult encounter, even if you could just go back and kill all of them behind a door. A more skilled player could also just stay there and dodge all their attacks, forcing a more proactive playstyle. On one way, that gives some control to the player, and this can be a good thing depending on his playstyle. Comparing with modern levels, some of them indeed doesn't give much options for the player to control the pace. You get in a room -> you're locked in (usually bars behind him or a trap which avoids you from retreating) -> you usually have two solutions to resolve the encounter: 1: Kill everything, then find a way to get out, or 2: If you have already played the level, you know how to run away and can effectively do it (not always avaliable, though). Some encounters features timed lockdowns, which are the ones that gives minimum amount of freedom lol Still, it is possible to find a middle ground too, and find ways that gives some control to the player but not that much. For example, instead of using bars, you could use a dropdown which you can go back by lift. A more proactive player would dive in and kill everything, a scared one would try to retreat, but he would need to activate the lift and survive until he gets to safety. Still, from what I've saw, if you put an obstacle to avoid the player to retreat, even if it's just a pool of pain sector, he probably won't do it, except if there's too much risk (he's playing without saves or the encounter is way too difficult) I don't think there's a right or wrong way, though. I guess people got tired of running away, though, and then mappers started focusing on forcing a more proactive playstyle from the players (which TBH has more interesting gameplay elements). 0 Share this post Link to post
loveless Posted May 11, 2018 1 hour ago, dobu gabu maru said: To elaborate a little on it, I'm specifically thinking of design that allows the player to away from an trap or speed through it and skip the encounter altogether. Honestly, this right here makes me think of Skillsaw maps. Mind you, I've only played Vanguard and Valiant but they had this recurring theme. There was always immediate safety and set piece styled fights were immediately in a state of cleanup; a circle strafe. There was very little in the way of immediate threat and the immediate threat I can recall came from hitscan. In a sense, I feel he took this from 90's mapping and gave it a modern look. 0 Share this post Link to post
baja blast rd. Posted May 11, 2018 (edited) 1 hour ago, dobu gabu maru said: Like the thread title suggests, I'm curious if player control over these aspects help define what makes a map feel "90s". To elaborate a little on it, I'm specifically thinking of design that allows the player to away from an trap or speed through it and skip the encounter altogether. I was watching Suitepee play some of Memento Mori 2 and found myself quietly critiquing some of the design, like how in MAP05 "Rites of Passage", going across a thin bridge to the exit reveals two cacos to your sides and an HK directly in front of you, but like... you can just backpedal and duel them in a big open room. I found occasionally thinking "you shouldn't allow the player to do this" during certain encounters, but in a way I think I'm missing what made these wads special—namely, letting the player determine what they can and can't do. What say you? Could a "90s" map be made with tightly scripted encounters that allow for no refuge? Or does that break the spirit of the style? I'll speak to my tastes as a player: If an encounter isn't particularly difficult anyway, I'd much rather the map offer the freedom for me to play it the way I want to, and I don't see this as 'something the player shouldn't be allowed to do'. Tightly controlled design often tames reckless aggression as much as it removes trivial approaches. I don't think the quality of allowing the player to control their pace is a specific trait associated with the '90s. 99% of modern maps do that too. It's only the specific set of more tightly controlled 'challenge maps' that consistently resist that, but even then it's sometimes possible to figure out exploits ... and I'd say that's a good thing. Even in challenge maps, it's better for easier transitional fights and traps -- the snacks between the main course -- to be freer. Looking up the example you gave, I think that setup is totally fine. That sort of thing can offer a little jumpscare in saveless FDAs, then you quickly kill the monsters and go to the exit, all in all a plus for the experience. The odd thing about the setup is that easy has 8 lost souls replacing the 2 cacos. Now that sort of naivety is something I associate with the '90s! *Lock-ins can make sense for appearances -- sometimes it's important to avoid exploits when they look really bad, even if the encounter is easy without the exploit. But that is relatively rare. 8 Share this post Link to post
Bauul Posted May 11, 2018 I think generally this is a difference between older games and newer games, not just Doom. Older action titles were content to create a system, an environment for that system to exist in, an objective (e.g. reach the end), and just let the player go for it. There was less attempt to "control" the experience. As games got more sophisticated, AAA designers became more interested in curating the experience to ensure the player has the "ideal" encounters. I think this has filtered through to mappers too, and you have situations like the OP states: "you shouldn't allow the player to do this". The cool thing about Doom is the game fully supports both approaches. It doesn't matter which you choose, it's purely down to the mapper. I think there's a sense that letting the player just approach any encounter however they like is the braver approach, but it doesn't have to be. Doom is well designed enough that encounters very rarely "break" if a player approaches something differently. 8 Share this post Link to post
Big Ol Billy Posted May 11, 2018 (edited) This is an interesting discussion. I think Bauul is onto something, even though it's a little tricky to argue that games in general have become much more curated experiences in a world where open world sandboxes are now the standard AAA formula. My sense, admittedly being pretty out of the loop as far as actually *playing* new games, is that claims of "meaningful player choice" in modern games are often oversold (famously, when it comes to stuff like loot boxes, these claims sometimes serve to obfuscate a design philosophy that is about as far from promoting meaningful choice as you can get). Still, it's interesting that modern games attempt to appeal to players' desires for independence pretty regularly, even if there's a good bit of hype in such appeals. My theory, putting on my sociologist's hat, is that both modern Doom maps and modern games have to deal with problems of abundance and near-instantaneous access that you didn't have in the 90's. Basically, there's enough competition for a player's time that the possibility of players having a very bad experience is a lot more worrisome for creators. Late 80s/90s games in particular, in genres ranging from Sierra adventure games to tournament fighters to action-packed games like Doom, were often happy to just confront you with mysterious systems that you had to figure out with little guidance. Back in the day, just figuring out how fairly basic controls and interactions worked basically counted as gameplay. And I think back then at least, when getting something else to play meant going to a physical store or (at least) starting up the ol' modem and slowly browsing through Doom sites/newsgroups, flailing around trying to figure stuff out could produce enough "eureka" moments to actually sorta *be* fun. Now, with greater abundance of games and quicker, readier access to new things to play, the conditions just aren't in place to produce that kind of fun as reliably. It's too tempting to just pick up something else that will give you a more immediate fix. You could perhaps make an analogy between vinyl records and streaming services. More important than the "warm sound" of vinyl, imho, is that a record creates a different listening experience from streaming by just being a more demanding object in everything from its size, need for care, and the length of time it will play music before it needs attending to. (This is part of what's helped vinyl hang on as a kind of boutique form of music consumption--it's great to have music you respect and have deep attachment to make real demands of you.) As many thinkpieces have pointed out, the conditions of musical consumption that streaming services have created have changed the way pop music is structured--artists try to put hooks and other "wow" moments at the beginning of songs, engineers need to master song so that they'll "pop" in virtually any listening environment, etc. Underlying it all are some of the basic dynamics that we see in he game industry, and arguably a great deal of, let's say, late capitalist commodity production: an abundance of goods, intensified competition, methods of rapid distribution that allow and indeed encourage consumers to switch to new products quickly. Basically, in other words, I think 90's wads (and games more generally) had the historically specific luxury of being able to demand more of the player--not so much in terms of difficulty, obviously, but in terms of figuring things out and potentially confronting "bad" gameplay experiences on the way to making discoveries about how one *could* play. (Sandy's sandbox maps are an especially good illustration of this specific kind of demanding gameplay imho.) Not only could designers get away with creating experiences like this, but these experiences may have been fun then in a way they can't really fully be now in the late 2010s. Edited May 12, 2018 by Big Ol Billy 15 Share this post Link to post
Linguica Posted May 12, 2018 I agree with basically everything @Big Ol Billy said. In the 90s, the act of playing a custom map for a FPS was novel enough that the "quality" of the gameplay and monster encounters was something no one really cared about that much. Nowadays players are FAR more sophisticated and demand what is effectively a professional level of polish and gameplay tuning in anything they play, and if it's crudely done, they'll check out almost instantly. It ties into something I mentioned in my talk with @ella guro on her podcast but couldn't express very clearly: that Doom's sheer age and timelessness as a moddable game makes it noteworthy and interesting in a way that most games can never be. We have vanilla Doom maps from 1994, and we have vanilla Doom maps from 201x, and the only "real" difference is the sophistication of the authors and of the audience. Looking at Doom maps over the years and decades can tell you a lot about the sort of people that made / played them and what they found important, since the base game hasn't changed. This is one reason I am so big on vanilla-compatible maps and mods, because it's continuing a tradition that's almost 25 years old, and you can actually directly compare things across that timespan because Doom as a "vanilla" experience has been preserved so well. Compare that to, say, GZDoom mods, which can be interesting in their own right of course, but they are wildly divorced from the "classic" Doom experience and historical context. 13 Share this post Link to post
Bauul Posted May 12, 2018 1 hour ago, Big Ol Billy said: I think Bauul is onto something, even though it's a little tricky to argue that games in general have become much more curated experiences in a world where open world sandboxes are now the standard AAA formula I said action games specifically, as I was more thinking things like hack'n'slashes and FPS titles. Sandboxes are kind of different (and obey different rules, like how they mitigate your ability to attack something from a long way away). 6 minutes ago, Linguica said: Looking at Doom maps over the years and decades can tell you a lot about the sort of people that made / played them and what they found important, since the base game hasn't changed. Something I'd be fascinated to see worked out would be some kind of curated list of wads that together showed how mapping fashions evolved over the years. The Cacowards are great, but the best maps of each year aren't necessarily indicative of the trends of the time. Obviously it'd be subjective (as all history is), but I for one would find it fascinating to play through them. 2 Share this post Link to post
ella guro Posted May 12, 2018 (edited) @dobu gabu maru Memento Mori 2 Map 05 is a minor masterpiece imo (though map 27 is the real masterpiece). i like you can approach that map from different angles and while it breaks the scripted feel it makes it feel more like it's own world. that was one of my favorite things about Doom 1 episode 2, particularly E2M2 and E2M7 which feel like they should be mostly linear but have moments that break that progression. i wish Paul Noble ever really did anything else. i'd say the level design trends in the Doom community often reflect larger design trends in the industry. 90's maps are all over the place, of course, but tended to have tighter spaces and more trap-oriented gameplay which reflects the design of 90's FPSes around technological limitations and just trying to wring as much out of the limited scope as you can. in the early 2000's a lot of maps tended to be higher detailed sets of corridors and hallways, like increasingly tightly-scripted linear action games of the 2000's. Or the spaces became much more open and filled with enemy activity and infighting, echoing how more games of that period became about big open spaces and a lot of emergent gameplay that came from that. and now i see way more people talking about "flow" in a level's design than ever before, which also echoes the game industry's increasing self-consciousness about design with independent games, and game design theory terms entering the popular lexicon via bloggers/youtubers/games writers/etc. obviously there are many things that don't fit into these trends, but the general patterns tend to echo how game design has been conceptualized more broadly pretty well. i'm not sure whether that's bad or good? i think it's easy to be dismissive of things which don't meet a checklist of "good design", and that's something that i try and challenge as much as i can. on the other hand, being more able to critically talk individual elements of a level's design has been a really good thing for the Doom community and videogame spaces as a whole. and of course, improving how a map feels via iterations, testing, and feedback can certainly be very beneficial too, though it can help certain types of levels a lot more than others. btw, the link to the podcast episode @Linguica mentioned above is here: https://archive.org/details/beyondthefilter17doomisanartscene_andrewstine 4 Share this post Link to post
kb1 Posted May 12, 2018 I think in the '90s wads, map authors were just figuring out what Doom could do. There was less sophistication, and less tight player control, cause not many people knew how to do it well. Also, today, the FPS genre is quite mature, and everything has been done. People are sick and tired of certain constructs that were barely known in the '90s. For example, nowadays there is a big push for non-linearity: allowing the player to choose which way to go out of multiple choices. People are tired of linearity being pushed upon them from years of titles that scripted the whole experience. But, in the '90s, people were just glad to be walking through a 3D space. Many '90s maps suffer from vanilla constraints, and from not having access to good map editors. Map authors did the best they could with the limited tools, and within Doom's internal limits. Today, the map author can take a step back from the mechanics of editing, and instead spend their energy imagining the level, and then drawing it. This allows concepts to be executed more precisely. 2 Share this post Link to post
Angry Saint Posted May 12, 2018 I'm old, and for me what is generically called "'90 gameplay style" is what should be a good style in a doom level. I'm old and I hate the modern "force close the player with the monsters" and "only one correct combination of action to survive" style which seems to be standard today, so standard that modern mappers do not even understand anymore good old '90 wads. Freedom of exploration, freedom of managing battles, is what attracted me in Doom in the ancient 1994. Sorry, I'm old. 1 Share this post Link to post