Things that mappers do that annoy you.

Honestly @Ribbiks, you seem to forget that it's all harmless opinions about video-game aspects which we are free to express. No one's trying to infect anyone.

To be ourselves and enjoy our time with others do we only talk about joyful, positive things, or can we some times talk about things we dislike and give insight on why, without actually trying to bring anyone down? 

One's opinions are worth just as much as the other's, so we can try to listen and express our opinions, either they be about things we like or things we dislike.

I think an actually definitive list of "Do" and "Dont's", could be very usefull for a mapper like me recently smitten with doom virus, despite not having made any doom maps since the 90s

I can start the lists by saying this:

* DON'T use the same wall texture in 90%+ of your level

* DO make sure the level has a player start and an exit

4 minutes ago, CBM said:

I think an actually definitive list of "Do" and "Dont's", could be very usefull for a mapper like me recently smitten with doom virus, despite not having made any doom maps since the 90s

Everything expressed here are opinions so don't take everything for granted :)

Some people hate inescapable nukage pits, some don't mind them. Some hate build-ups, others find it necessary.

For most things expressed in this thread, you have to experience for yourself and see what you prefer -- reasonably, of course -- for so many are not necessarily bad or good.

When they don't make maps the way I want and like. 

-Putting health/armor in places where you are forced to pick them up to progress in a map. Especially really powerful items like blue armor or Soul Spheres etc. (The only exception to this is where you are forced to pick up an item before dropping into another Arena fight or somesuch. Sunder does this sometimes.)

-Misaligned textures

-Doors that open into the sky

-Maps that break immersion by not having an overarching 'theme' and consistency. (Very subjective I admit.)

-Not making enough classic Ultimate Doom megawads like Neis.wad and DTWiD.wad and Lunar Apocalypse. (A real deal breaker this one.)

Not so much an annoyance but... i don't understand why anyone would ever set their music choices aside as an afterthought (and i think this happens a lot), it is such a cornerstone of the atmosphere of any map.

35 minutes ago, CBM said:

I think an actually definitive list of "Do" and "Dont's", could be very usefull for a mapper like me recently smitten with doom virus, despite not having made any doom maps since the 90s

 

I can start the lists by saying this:

 

* DON'T use the same wall texture in 90%+ of your level

* DO make sure the level has a player start and an exit

DO spend ages checking out your favourite maps in the editor and figure out what it is you like about them and how they work, so you can extrapolate your influences into your own maps

DON'T arbitrarily impose limits upon yourself

...seriously my best tip to any new mapper is to just pick apart maps they like, i guarantee you will learn more overall from this than from reading forum posts and such :P

Ideas are good or bad according to my patience. As some people said , some mappers can transform shit into gold or the reverse.

On the other hand, it often annoys me when mappers ruin compatibility for nothing mainly because of some choices or bad testing , preventing you to make demos when the wad is gzdoom only for instance. I am thinking, for example, of Lunar Catastrophe, which is compatible gzdoom only because of the new location of the secret levels, while all the levels are vanilla compatible. I am also thinking of the last map of TNT revilution that requires a port while the entire wad was designed for vanilla.

12 hours ago, Spectre01 said:

The funny thing about it is that you could easily expand the card simply by adding inverted versions of half the tiles.

I don't necessarily hate anything but there are some instances of mappers trying things out, thinking it would work but it just doesn't.

One instance is in Valiant, I think it's map 8 or 9, there is this trap with pillars going up & down with items on them & a bridge that lowers extremely fast, trapping you in the pit full of super Imps & two Archies on top.

I get what Skillsaw was going for but due to RNG, it just doesn't work properly. The only part of the Valiant megawad I had to reload the save about 8 times to beat it. Or the part where about 10 Archies teleport & you have to navigate through the crushers & kill them one by one. Beat it in my 4 try.

Also, Scythe II is amazing but after map 22, it becomes a tedious set of slaughter maps. I don't mind them if they tell me: "Hey, you need to find something in this area to fight against the horde. Here's plenty of space for you to move but be careful."

But if it's just like: "Here's a horde of mid-to-high tier monsters right at your face! Have fun reloading that save! Oh, you running away? Here's another horde waiting for ya!" is just luck-based trial & error. Kind of like Ancient Aliens map 29.

Things need to be balanced.

Mandatory / unavoidable health and ammo pick ups. Just hate having to get a medikit or berserk when I'm at 95% health. Just as bad when you are at 48 shells and then have to pick up a box of shells. Makes me cringe. Please don't put that shit in your map. 

20 minutes ago, PeterMoro said:

Mandatory / unavoidable health and ammo pick ups. Just hate having to get a medikit or berserk when I'm at 95% health. Just as bad when you are at 48 shells and then have to pick up a box of shells. Makes me cringe. Please don't put that shit in your map. 

That too. Best way to put them is in the wider place & on the corners OR in the middle but have your place be bigger, so you can avoid it if not need it.

REVENANTS DON'T INSTANTLY MAKE AN ENCOUNTER GOOD

REVENANTS DON'T INSTANTLY MAKE AN ENCOUNTER GOOD

REVENANTS DON'T INSTANTLY MAKE AN ENCOUNTER GOOD

AAGH

Slaughter maps.

I find them incredibly tedious and boring.

Actually, that's a good one that Toilet_Wine_Connoisseur has bought up, but I'll qualify it in my own way - I do hate it when mappers submit slaughter maps to community projects that aren't explicitly slaughter-oriented. It often means you're playing through something of variable quality, that you may be enjoying, only to hit a brick wall. The frequency of this is what finally helped me kick my community project habit, both as a contributor and a player.

8 hours ago, Phobus said:

I think I'd be more interested to see a "things Doom players do that annoy you" thread by now. We've seen a lot of threads on players' pet hates, but what about us poor mappers, trying to keep people happy when they can't hit a 128x128 wall with an SSG at point-blank range, completely miss keys and powerups right out in the open and insist on getting lost in a corridor? :P

Of course :D people sniping lone enemies with the SSG is a classic. Bonus points if they do that while having more than 200 bullets and complaining that they don't have enough shells. Getting stuck on obvious things. Picking medikits when they have more then 90% health. Getting stuck and forgetting that they have an automap too.

Playing through Alienated currently, which is overall pretty good, but it gave me a perfect illustration of the hovercorpse phenomenon:

Good thing I don't have to revisit this area.

On 12/2/2019 at 7:39 PM, Dubbagdarrel said:

 I prefer my doom maps to be more linear, I know it's an unpopular opinion, but for me, I like to make constant progress and know where im going to go at all times. Nothing frustrates me more than walking around a level for 20 minutes with nothing going on because there's no idea where to go next, and so many paths that finding the right one is a struggle.

I doubt whether that view is as unpopular as you might suppose. Certainly the merest hint of things like linearity or symmetricality is likely to elicit tut-tutting from the majority of the mapping elite, whose voice is the prevailing one on this forum, but I suspect that a very high percentage of the gaming peasantry (of whom I would count myself one) are quite comfortable with such things. I too like to know what I'm supposed to be doing in an FPS game, and to get from A to B to C with the minimum of fuss.

Your own recent release, Shiver Hollow, could probably be described as pretty 'linear', and is none the worse for that.

6 hours ago, Gez said:

Playing through Alienated currently, which is overall pretty good, but it gave me a perfect illustration of the hovercorpse phenomenon:

 

 

Good thing I don't have to revisit this area.

my goodness

3 hours ago, Summer Deep said:

 

I doubt whether that view is as unpopular as you might suppose. Certainly the merest hint of things like linearity or symmetricality is likely to elicit tut-tutting from the majority of the mapping elite, whose voice is the prevailing one on this forum, but I suspect that a very high percentage of the gaming peasantry (of whom I would count myself one) are quite comfortable with such things. I too like to know what I'm supposed to be doing in an FPS game, and to get from A to B to C with the minimum of fuss.

 

Your own recent release, Shiver Hollow, could probably be described as pretty 'linear', and is none the worse for that.

well thank you i appreciate that very much.

29 minutes ago, Summer Deep said:

Certainly the merest hint of things like linearity or symmetricality is likely to elicit tut-tutting from the majority of the mapping elite, whose voice is the prevailing one on this forum

I don't feel so. If anything, the ideas that linearity is to be shunned and symmetry is to be aggressively avoided are more likely to be held by those with some expertise, but who don't yet have the most refined perspective. A nuanced view understands linearity and non-linearity as different 'modes' to different ends, with trade-offs between them, and symmetry as an instrumental building block even in a layout that might be defined by its irregularity. You can say the same about many mapping buzzwords like 'interconnectivity' and 'height variation'. 

44 minutes ago, Summer Deep said:

Certainly the merest hint of things like linearity or symmetricality is likely to elicit tut-tutting from the majority of the mapping elite, whose voice is the prevailing one on this forum

Objectively incorrect. My UDINO contribution, which replaces E3M6, is an entirely linear map, and it has not been criticised for being linear at any point in time. Not by accomplished mappers like Dobu, not by newcomers on the mapping scene like Galileo, and also not by others who have several maps under their belt already.

The notion that linearity is bad, and non-linearity is therefore better is not based on any grounds other than personal preference, and the same holds true for symmetry. Some people like it better when they get to make decisions (regardless of how arbitrary in the grand scheme of a map), some people like it better when they're able to follow a path to get right back into the action. On the other hand, some types of maps work better with a non-linear layout, while other types of maps work better with an entirely linear progression.

Having said that, I feel like you're misrepresenting "the mappers" of this community.

There is nothing wrong with either linear or non linear maps. However if we are to go down this discussion then if you are making a mapset, then it is probably wise to mix things up and have a mixture of both styles, or variations (as you can have a linear map but have plenty of optional stuff to explore for instance).

okay if there is a pet hate I now have, it is people who don’t align certain textures properly (like the stock metal textures). I mean I see a corner without the texture breaking correctly as something someone from the stone age would design....

My take on non-linearity is not that it's necessarily better than linearity, it's just that it's something Doom is particularly suited to.  Because you can move so fast, and the act of movement is usually pretty painless, exploring maps in Doom is infinitely easier than in most other FPSs.  While backtracking in another game can feel tedious, in Doom it's rarely an inconvenience.

I think therefore because non-linearity is a distinctly "Doom thing", people often like to see it.  I think its not so much linear maps are criticized, it's more non-linear maps can get 'extra credit' for leaning into one of the main things Doom does notably different to other games in the same genre.

Room full of damaging floors that I have to fight in are fucking terrible.

Starting the player under attack

Putting a shitload of enemies with not nearly enough ammo to even whittle down any

Large mazy levels where everything looks the same

Chaingun/Shotgunner firing squads

Open areas with hitscanners and no cover

more than enough archviles

tightropes

teleporter puzzles

1 hour ago, Bauul said:

My take on non-linearity is not that it's necessarily better than linearity, it's just that it's something Doom is particularly suited to.  Because you can move so fast, and the act of movement is usually pretty painless, exploring maps in Doom is infinitely easier than in most other FPSs.  While backtracking in another game can feel tedious, in Doom it's rarely an inconvenience.

 

I think therefore because non-linearity is a distinctly "Doom thing", people often like to see it.  I think its not so much linear maps are criticized, it's more non-linear maps can get 'extra credit' for leaning into one of the main things Doom does notably different to other games in the same genre.

I actually dislike non linear set ups, or at best find them tolerable. Having broad progression choices can be good (eg which of these 3 keys do I try and get) but when maps end up like a pile of spaghetti, even well made spaghetti I find it detracts from the core doom experience. I think I'm in the minority with this view though. 

My favourite maps are ones that appear to be non linear and give the illusion of a massive intertwined environment while having a broadly linear gameplay path and make it clear where you are meant to go at each stage

3 hours ago, Bridgeburner56 said:

I actually dislike non linear set ups, or at best find them tolerable. Having broad progression choices can be good (eg which of these 3 keys do I try and get) but when maps end up like a pile of spaghetti, even well made spaghetti I find it detracts from the core doom experience. I think I'm in the minority with this view though. 

My favourite maps are ones that appear to be non linear and give the illusion of a massive intertwined environment while having a broadlyineargameplay path and make it clear where you are meant to go at each stage

Exactly, that's how it should be done.

4 hours ago, Bridgeburner56 said:

I actually dislike non linear set ups, or at best find them tolerable. Having broad progression choices can be good (eg which of these 3 keys do I try and get) but when maps end up like a pile of spaghetti, even well made spaghetti I find it detracts from the core doom experience. I think I'm in the minority with this view though. 

My favourite maps are ones that appear to be non linear and give the illusion of a massive intertwined environment while having a broadly linear gameplay path and make it clear where you are meant to go at each stage

Couldn't have said it better. I share the same views.

Honestly, couldn't agree more with rdwpa and NiH. I personally much prefer linear progression when it comes to Doom

If you check the thread where a fella attempts to scientifically determine which original Doom 1 and 2 maps are linear or non-linear, you'll pretty much see that it's almost half/half.

Very interesting read, definitely do check it out:

On 12/3/2019 at 7:34 AM, Spectre01 said:

Pretty much this

especially the The Running on Nukage, Doors and try mapping for Vunilluh comments.

Also add 'Death Pits kill exploration"

Lazy level design. Meaning: no height variations, unaligned textures, BSP errors, empty box-shaped rooms.