Name a single distinctive trait from each decade of Doom mapping

[dobu gabu maru]

Hey, so this could be fun: For the 90s, 00s, and 10s, can you name a single mapping trait that exemplifies the style of each decade? Just curious how many different types of answers we'll get.

[Linguica]

1990s: Can't Have Detail

2000s: Needs More Detail

2010s: Needs Less Detail

[Aquila Chrysaetos]

90's: Creativity

00's: Detail/Features

10's: Gameplay

[Yugiboy85]

90's: i don't really know

00's: Borders, borders and even more borders

10s: Simple and clean

[lupinx-Kassman]

90s: That one Head Like a Hole NIN midi

00s: Zdoom maps with that default yellow fonted ACS script that prints text to the screen.

10s: Mods mods mods!

[Nine Inch Heels]

90's: Casali
00's: Alm
10's: ribbiks

[Misty]

90's: Yay, mazes and corridors!
00's: Maybe we should use less of them?
10's:Do not dare use any mazes and corridors, it's unacceptable. 

[Ed]

90s:

Gothic

2000s:

Cleaner

2010s:

Eccentric

Edited October 5, 2018 by Ed : Wordy

[Gaia74]

90: classic maps

2000: New Monsters and new things!, Thanks zdoom!

2010: Oblige!! :v

[antares031]

90's: DEU & DeuTex
00's: Doom Builder & XWE
10's: GZDoom Builder (Bugfix) & SLADE 3

[gaspe]

90's: recreational creation of your own house in wad format

00's: crazy features, also slaughtermaps

10's: custom palettes (especially slaughtermaps)

[galileo31dos01]

90's: rectangles

00's: detailed rectangles

10's: curves

[Roofi]

90 : Cool vanilla tricks !

00 : More detailed maps

10 : Lot of GZdoom stuff which make Doom a totally different game.

[yakfak]

90s: silver corridors
00s: brick and support3
10s: glowing floor patterns

[DMPhobos]

90's - Let's see what we can recreate in doom!
00's - Lets overdetail a map!
10's - ...on second thought, let's not overdetail a map, tis a silly thing to do

[leodoom85]

90's: Startan ftw

00's: Startan is ok

10's: No way in hell I'll put startan!!!

[hardcore_gamer]

4 hours ago, Linguica said:

1990s: Can't Have Detail

2000s: Needs More Detail

2010s: Needs Less Detail

 

lol true.

 

Though to be honest, is there even such a thing as too much detail? Could one not argue that there is a difference between "too much detail" and "ugly detail"? What exactly is too much detail?

[Sparktimus]

15 minutes ago, hardcore_gamer said:

 

lol true.

 

Though to be honest, is there even such a thing as too much detail? Could one not argue that there is a difference between "too much detail" and "ugly detail"? What exactly is too much detail?

Too much detail, to me, is when you can tell a mapper blatantly favors looks over gameplay. There's nothing wrong with having a good looking map, but most likely, the people who load up that map are going to expect a good looking map that also plays well.

 

Could also refer to when something is just tacky. Like when a room looks like it just has too much going on. Hard to articulate exactly what I mean, but maybe when something tries to be complex just for the sake of it and just ends up looking too complex.

Edited October 5, 2018 by Sparktimus

[Spie812]

46 minutes ago, hardcore_gamer said:

is there even such a thing as too much detail?

 

If the detail doesn't add anything to the level, especially if it interferes with the gameplay in any way, it's too much. Gothic99 is probably the most famous example of this. The excessive detail doesn't even look that good and most of it adds nothing to the levels. It is also almost completely unplayable as a deathmatch set due to getting caught on walls and trouble moving efficiently on the floors' 200 billion height changes.

[AD_79]

Forgive me for breaking the "one trait per decade" format here, but I want to go a bit more in-depth on this topic and how I see things. In my mind, Doom mapping has always been about pushing limits and exploring the unknown, in one way or another.

 

In the 90s, it feels like a lot of the focus was placed on making what the mappers thought was cool that they could make, with the limits being the OG Doom engine and the sort of things possible in editors at the time. There's a truly adventurous spirit seen in a lot of maps from that era, especially with a lot of the mapping oddities, progression quirks, etc that would arise from it. Sure, mazes and corridors were highly prevalent in places, but it feels like mappers wanted to explore this new territory as much as they could and simply make cool and interesting things doing so. 

 

Moving over to the 2000s, I honestly can't say much about it as I'm not too familiar with this era, but the limits on detailing were certainly being pushed, perhaps at the expense of some of the quirkiness and explorative qualities prevalent in the previous decade. Mapping here feels a bit more... safe at times from what I know, in terms of gameplay and progression?

 

Mappers in the 2010s in contrast are pushing limits of all sorts. Incredibly well-designed and polished mapping never seen before this decade. Massive maps nearly breaking every vanilla limit known to man yet still being able to run in the original engine. Boom maps showing off immense creativity and style, and constantly evolving known gameplay ideas and mapping standards. New palettes displaying wild and wonderful colour schemes. GZDoom pushing capabilities further beyond what was possible, allowing for monumental projects like Elementalism to exist. Gameplay mods that change up the Doom experience and sometimes turn it into an entirely different game. I love it and I'm excited to see where things continue going.

 

In short: The 90s were about simply exploring their newfound unknown territory. The 2000s... I'm still not entirely sure to be honest, perhaps taking what is known and polishing it, sanding some of the rough edges off and bringing a more sophisticated style forward. The 2010s are about relentlessly pushing further and further beyond what we have previously accomplished, never sitting still.

[MTrop]

90's: Dimensions of Time

00's: Community Chest 3

10's: Coffee Break Episode 1

[baja blast rd.]

25 minutes ago, AD_79 said:

Moving over to the 2000s, I honestly can't say much about it as I'm not too familiar with this era, but the limits on detailing were certainly being pushed, perhaps at the expense of some of the quirkiness and explorative qualities prevalent in the previous decade. Mapping here feels a bit more... safe at times from what I know, in terms of gameplay and progression?

 

'00s (this is just from my experience, which isn't by any means exhaustive) seemed to have an ethos of (a) exploring the removed limits and their greater capacity for detailing; (b) emulating, or more often just pointing towards, the capabilities of more advanced engines; (c) pseudo-realism, or a pseudo-realistic presentation of fantastic settings locales; (d) gameplay design tends to be opportunistic, more about populating established spaces -- rather than designing areas first around gameplay.  

 

So the 'bad' ends up being the stereotypical map with (a) lots of rote inset detailing and (b) stuff like those step fake slopes in (c) squat rooms that don't really amount to a good layout (d) monster composition that isn't really suited to the spaces they inhabit.  

 

But there was still a lot of stuff I'd term as '90s-plus (since an era being so unidimensional is basically impossible): people still working in that oldschool tradition, just more polished. The distinction between 'polished mappers' and 'amateur mappers' existed more strongly too, as evidenced in sets like the Community Chests. (If there was a CC5 today, and it had standards for entry, rather than first-come first-serve, I'd expect the quality to have a much higher floor than in previous iterations.) 

 

On top of all of that, there were mappers like Erik Alm, Huy Pham, Espi, Death-Destiny (retroactively quite important with the way the 'challenge' scene has gone), and so on, doing their thing and laying the groundwork for future generations. Mappers-as-auteurs such as them are responsible for a huge chunk of modern tropes, and the scene would be irrevocably different without them. BTSX isn't BTSX without Espi, and without BTSX the way it is ... many people wouldn't even be born. 

[Tango]

can't claim to be an expert in any of the eras since I've never spent that much time exploring what the community outputs, but my memory of the 2000s is definitely characterized by lots of rectangles, "safe" and/or generally uninteresting gameplay, and borders on everything. something like Ultimate Simplicity is therefore pretty representative of what I think of when I think of that era. this is not necessarily to downplay the quality of Ultimate Simplicity or anything else like it, but releases in the last few years have really shown me how much more fun and beautiful the game can be than what I thought was possible a decade ago

[tib_]

90s: oversized furniture
00s: oversized computer panels

10s: oversized fights

[Pegleg]

8 hours ago, Linguica said:

1990s: Can't Have Detail

2000s: Needs More Detail

2010s: Needs Less Detail

 

8 hours ago, Myst.Haruko said:

90's: Yay, mazes and corridors!
00's: Maybe we should use less of them?
10's:Do not dare use any mazes and corridors, it's unacceptable. 

 

5 hours ago, Roofi said:

90 : Cool vanilla tricks !

00 : More detailed maps

10 : Lot of GZdoom stuff which make Doom a totally different game.

 

4 hours ago, leodoom85 said:

90's: Startan ftw

00's: Startan is ok

10's: No way in hell I'll put startan!!!

 

So, if everything is ultimately cyclical, perhaps the 20's will be looked back on as:

 

Detailed 3D Startan mazes ... woo!

[leodoom85]

8 minutes ago, Pegleg said:

So, if everything is ultimately cyclical, perhaps the 20's will be looked back on as:

 

Detailed 3D Startan mazes ... woo!

You forgot portals and maze models with the latest PBR technology

[Memfis]

90's: doors are hidden

00's: doors are visible

10's: doors are nonexistent

[pcorf]

90's Trying to avoid Visplane overflows!, Master levels, TNT, Plutonia, Memento Mori, etc

00's The freedom = From Boom to Zdoom! First Doom Odyssey.

10's Mega Projects!

20's Second Doom Odyssey?

 

90's, 00's and 10's = pcorf!

Edited October 6, 2018 by pcorf

[NuMetalManiak]

90's - Maximum Doom levels

00's - Community projects from many forums that were alive back then

10's - Art

 

13 hours ago, rdwpa said:

(If there was a CC5 today, and it had standards for entry, rather than first-come first-serve, I'd expect the quality to have a much higher floor than in previous iterations.) 

Whoever does MAP17 better do Andy Leaver's style very well then since I know he's retired from mapping.

 

OMG 3000th post

[baja blast rd.]

10 hours ago, Pegleg said:

So, if everything is ultimately cyclical, perhaps the 20's will be looked back on as

 

On that note, I suspect we are already living in what the '20s will be remembered for: a 'professional-grade' approach to project conception and management being more common, and the resultant high-polish mapsets.

 

Valiant, Sunlust, and Ancient Aliens, just to name a few, are modern classics of the later-half of this decade, and we have a lot of very polished episode-length sets and megawads out this year or slated for the next couple. Lots of them have at least as many new assets as a partial conversion would, and a few are even completely new games. The sheer frequency of stuff at this level of professionalism has certainly been on an uptick in '18, and I'd expect that to define the coming decade. 

 

This does hinge on the efforts of the limited number of people willing to put the effort, but there is no reason to believe it will die down -- particularly with what is still in the pipeline. Unless Linguica kills Doomworld. 

 

In the slaughter scene, Ancalagon will get into mapping and make New Gothic Movement 3. TimeofDeath will emerge and say 'haha, I'm really Mechadon's alt' (they both have said they get motion sickness while watching demos!) and win all of the Cacowards. Death_Destiny, Insane_Gazebo, and Huy Pham will all come back with crazy good stuff (and Huy Pham with a novel delivered via wad text file, and an animated series in a secret).

 

Edited October 6, 2018 by rdwpa