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Sigvatr

Sandy Petersen Worship Thread

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If you don't like Sandy Petersen's maps, then you aren't allowed to post in this thread. You have to make another thread for the map designer you like.

This thread is only for Sandy Petersen fans.

The best map in the entire Doom series is MAP16: Suburbs. To me, this map represents what Doom II tried to be the best: large battlegrounds where demons are teleporting in from hell and where you must duke it out with monsters at close range while plenty more of them are quickly surrounding you.

My favorite moments in Doom are when all the odds are stacked against you; when you are literally surrounded by hordes of monsters trying to claw and bite you and the only way to escape is to kill your way through them, leaving mounds of bodies in your wake. This to me represents what Doom is all about; there are no other games where this is pulled off as well, if at all. I love this style of gameplay so much that it is how I make my own maps. I'm not necessarilly looking for victory over the game or even a guaranteed chance of survival; I will die a happy Doom Marine if I have expended all of my shells and been forced to fight a horde of revenants with my fists or something other ridiculous.

Moments like these really don't even exist in other games at all anymore. Modern games are designed to have a guarantee that you will be able to beat them no matter how difficult the challenge is. This is actually really boring. I love taking on impossible odds and I don't care if I can't win in the end. This more or less explains the general idea of my Cesspool map that everyone hated.

Anyway, this is what I like about all of Sandy's big, detail lacking maps. They might not be very hard by todays standards, but back in the day, maps like Downtown, Suburbs and Monster Condo were fucking terrifying and brutal because of the hordes of monsters that came at you. Back then, the odds were very much against you, and my moments playing Sandy's maps over a decade ago are one of my primary inspirations for playing and modifying Doom today.

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Sigvatr said:

If you don't like Sandy Petersen's maps, then you aren't allowed to post in this thread. You have to make another thread for the map designer you like.

You gonna ban us? :(

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Sigvatr said:

This more or less explains the general idea of my Cesspool map that everyone hated.


I quite liked Cesspool, I just thought it was kind of silly on UV. But then, if giving the player a chance to die gloriously was your aim with that then I suppose you succeeded. :P

Pretty much everything I have to say about Sandy's maps I said in the other thread. tl;dr his maps are sometimes super fugly but he had a good sense of gameplay and layout most of the time and for that they usually succeed.

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While they don't look like anything recognizable, the gameplay is fun. I enjoy his maps, I don't understand the hate he seems to get.

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I wish DOOM2 multiplayer only cyberdemons were included in the single player game. I got disappointed by the fact that other than map32 there's no real fight with a cyber in DOOM 2 (the closest is map29 but you can easily pass it). Map16 would be epic for a cyber or two roaming around, it would be what most doomers were waiting for, a battle with a Cyberdemon in an apocalyptic scenario. Perhaps it was too much for the time, but it'd still be epic.

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I know what you mean. The fucking Doom 2 box art and title picture is a Cyberdemon battle that looks fucking legendary but it never appears in the game at all.

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Sigvatr said:

If you don't like Sandy Petersen's maps, then you aren't allowed to post in this thread. You have to make another thread for the map designer you like.

But I still have the right to criticize you in this thread, right? You Jew-Nazi!

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Vegeta said:

I wish DOOM2 multiplayer only cyberdemons were included in the single player game.

Then play 1-player coop.

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Sigvatr said:

My favorite moments in Doom are when all the odds are stacked against you; when you are literally surrounded by hordes of monsters trying to claw and bite you and the only way to escape is to kill your way through them, leaving mounds of bodies in your wake. This to me represents what Doom is all about; there are no other games where this is pulled off as well, if at all. I love this style of gameplay so much that it is how I make my own maps. I'm not necessarilly looking for victory over the game or even a guaranteed chance of survival; I will die a happy Doom Marine if I have expended all of my shells and been forced to fight a horde of revenants with my fists or something other ridiculous.


You pretty much just described exactly why I hate Sandy's maps.



On another note, what kind of name is Sandy anyway?

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Sir Nigel said:

You pretty much just described exactly why I hate Sandy's maps.

Shhhh, dummy. Remember the RULES that Sigvatr put down on this thread. If you speak out of expected context, he'll get the mods on you.

On another note, what kind of name is Sandy anyway?

The story is told in great detail in Masters of Doom. When at the beach, Perterson got Sand trapped in his cracks and the id team started posting 'Sandy Vagina Peterson' memos all over the office. They also made a specific texture with the name printed on it and hid it around Doom. Sandy had to check all the Doom maps to make sure it didn't make it's way into the retail game. Now, of course checking everyone else's work made it difficult to complete his own maps.

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Sir Nigel said:

You pretty much just described exactly why I hate Sandy's maps.



On another note, what kind of name is Sandy anyway?


His actual first name is Carl and his middle name is Sanford Joslyn, so I assume he got the name Sandy from his middle name.

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Marnetmar said:

His actual first name is Carl and his middle name is Sanford Joslyn, so I assume he got the name Sandy from his middle name.

This story is completely fabricated and has no merit.

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Most* of his maps are kind of shit, but he did have some great ideas and made some good contributions to id during his stay. Quake probably wouldn't have been what it was without him and American.

*Not all of them are crap, I remember liking a few though I can't recall which ones right off hand. There are some good reasons why his maps were kind of bad and I'm sure you guys already know that, but eh, it happens.

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I love all of Doom II, regardless of all the hate it seems to get. Heck, I would take Doom II over all the great megawads out there. The Plutonia Experiment is probably the only other game that would be its equal for me; and some of its levels were inspired from Doom II. Personally, I'd take gameplay over visuals, and Doom II's levels may not be as pretty to look at as Alien Vendetta or any of the other greats. But I never really felt they were THAT bad to look at, compared to some of the amateurish WADs out there. Sure, Sandy's levels have room for polishing, but the gameplay is certainly there; at least for some of us.

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Marnetmar said:

His actual first name is Carl and his middle name is Sanford Joslyn, so I assume he got the name Sandy from his middle name.


No, the real story is that "Sandy" is an acronym of the five legendary mappers who grant Petersen aspects of themselves, to wit...
* the versitility of Scuba Steve
* the planning of American
* the detail of NiGHTMARE
* the stamina of Dario Casali
* the power of Yonatan Donner

Anyway, I like Warrens.

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Monster Condo and Spirit World are both masterpieces. They both have the Lovecraftian atmosphere, twisted and abstract level design, enjoyable layout and fun gameplay that I was hoping to see more of in DooM 2.

Entryway also has it's charm as well.

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DeathevokatioN said:

Monster Condo and Spirit World are both masterpieces. They both have the Lovecraftian atmosphere, twisted and abstract level design, enjoyable layout and fun gameplay that I was hoping to see more of in DooM 2.

I agree; too bad they're both filled to the brim with green and beige spheres.

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Sigvatr said:

This thread is only for Sandy Petersen fans.


I'll post anyway! :D


The best map in the entire Doom series is MAP16: Suburbs. To me, this map represents what Doom II tried to be the best: large battlegrounds where demons are teleporting in from hell and where you must duke it out with monsters at close range while plenty more of them are quickly surrounding you.


Strange. MAP16 ranks among the absolute low points in Doom 2 for me, right after MAP21. I just find it one of the ugliest maps in the entire WAD and gameplay-wise one of the most uninspired because if you are clever you just grab the invulnerability at the right time and skip most of the dull slaughterfest fight.

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I don't really see how being able to skip a fight by being clever translates to uninspired design...

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If that fight is supposedly the major showpiece of the map it's rather pointless to even allow it...

This map ranks among the few where I question each time what's the point of it.

This entire map can be completed without ever really facing the monsters:

Just grab the blue key, then the invulnerability, then go to the blue door and grab the red key, then run to the exit and be done with it.

I normally manage to get there before the invulnerability wears off so there's no real challenge in there at all. I prefer maps where you actually have to engage the monsters to get somewhere.

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I agree that many of Doom 2's maps had a bland visual design, but it was fun nonetheless. And I agree with whoever said that Sandy's maps were perhaps not the best looking, but they had decent if not fun, gameplay.

To the fellow above me: don't forget that the important thing is how the map plays at first, and not much later when speedrunners have found an easier route.

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How does it play at first? I ran away from the monsters seeing that I got the key and there was nothing of interest nearby.

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map16 was always one of my favourite maps for coop in the 90's and it undoubtedly remains one of the best DM maps in doom2. it proved great for 2v2 TDM, by the way. this might be related to the 'poor' architecture - it's kept plain and simple, so no one has to crawl through tiny corridors with stupid obstructive corners and pointless detail.

i do like the visuals, too. it's one of the first maps that really starts to feel 'hellish'. also isn't this one of the first (if not THE first) maps to use the teleporting horde ambush? that's, like, the cornerstone of nowadays doom design. also gliding was discovered on map16. also, quite possibly, bumping items through walls.

even if reduced to a test map for these tricks and exploits it'd still be one of the historically significant maps in doom. and yet you ask what's the point of it, heh.

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dew said:

map16 was always one of my favourite maps for coop in the 90's and it undoubtedly remains one of the best DM maps in doom2. it proved great for 2v2 TDM, by the way. this might be related to the 'poor' architecture - it's kept plain and simple, so no one has to crawl through tiny corridors with stupid obstructive corners and pointless detail.


Agreed. For deathmatch this map's layout definitely works netter

i do like the visuals, too. it's one of the first maps that really starts to feel 'hellish'. also isn't this one of the first (if not THE first) maps to use the teleporting horde ambush? that's, like, the cornerstone of nowadays doom design.


No. The same technique was used in E1M9 and E3M5 of Doom 1, albeit with not as many monsters as here. Also, calling this a 'cornerstone' of today's level design seems quite a bit exaggerated. This is still one of the things that brings down many maps quite a bit for me.

Anyway, why should a map called 'Suburbs' look hellish? (Although if you mean 'hellishly bad' I certainly agree. :D) That's quite a contradiction in terms even though none of Doom 2's city maps looks even remotely city-ish.

also gliding was discovered on map16. also, quite possibly, bumping items through walls.


... both signs of bad map design... :D

even if reduced to a test map for these tricks and exploits it'd still be one of the historically significant maps in doom. and yet you ask what's the point of it, heh.



See my previous remark. This also just exemplifies the bad-ness of this map's design if it can be used as a showcase to demonstrate engine exploits.

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"Suburbs" is actually also one of my alltime favorites, I have fun traversing through it, and I also have fun killing monsters in it. So therefore the gameplay felt inspired to me. The map represents earth slowly falling into decay, with the second section of the map feels more like a nightmare.

At the end of the day it comes right back down to personal taste though, sorry for taking this cheap shot, but for example the mapset that I feel is the most uninspired and laughably boring is kdizd. Cramped detail that still looks ugly, things you can get caught on, dull gameplay that has no flow that is actually just a chore for me to slog through, these are all things that I find to be signs of bad map design.

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Well, obviously tastes differ. I find nothing of what you describe in KDiZD. I think it's an excellent piece of work with outstanding gameplay.

I also find nothing of what you guys like about MAP16 in that map. To me it's a butt-ugly borefest.

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