What happens when you exit a map?

[drygnfyre]

In the "Visit to id Software" video from November 1993, E1M1 had a slightly different exit room, with a second exit door (that didn't open) on the other side of the room. The idea was the switch being triggered was some kind of air lock, allowing the player to safely leave the Hangar and enter the Nuclear Plant. This little bit of decoration was removed from the final release.

 

Got me thinking. From a story perspective, how does exiting a map work? Most maps don't even have the exit switch around the perimeter, but rather deep within the map. Does the player somehow get teleported from one map to another? That would make sense when the actual exit is indeed a teleporting pad, or those empty pits seen in Episode 4 and Doom 2. But then you've got maps like E1M3 where an exit switch is just in the middle of the map, in a standard room.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

They make more sense if you look at them as the alpha for check points in newer games. Most of them are supposed to represent transitioning to a new area regardless, even if it makes little logical sense and the majority of them are teleports or random doors that somehow lead to distant facilities.

[Hellbent]

4 hours ago, drygnfyre said:

Most maps don't even have the exit switch around the perimeter, but rather deep within the map. 

Really? I can't even think of one Doom map with the exit in the center.

[ChicagoTrash]

I imagine that there's a little tram car or something. It's probably just a teleport though.

[drygnfyre]

4 hours ago, Hellbent said:

Really? I can't even think of one Doom map with the exit in the center.

E1M3 secret exit

 

[Dark Pulse]

4 hours ago, Hellbent said:

Really? I can't even think of one Doom map with the exit in the center.

MAP07: Dead Simple.

 

Your Doom cred is officially in question.

[CyberDreams]

10 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

MAP07: Dead Simple.

 

Your Doom cred is officially in question.

Haha! Who can forget that map? ;)

 

Also Map29: The Living End, the one with the weird "man figure" outline. At least that's what it looks like to me.

 

Anyway's yeah. I'd probably just imagine either a teleporter or just that the door actually leads straight to the next area. TBH, i actually never gave much thought about it until now.

 

[Kira]

Doomguy is just making sure to shut off the lights before he exits the facility, from the entry, and travels to the next one. "Exit" signs are just made up by his obsessive mind.

 

But maybe these rooms are like elevators of sort for the most part.

[Gez]

25 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

MAP07: Dead Simple.

That's not a Doom map; it's a Doom II map.

 

The original plan, back when Tom Hall was still at id, was to have vaguely plausible geography so the exits and entrances would be on the edges. They dropped that idea and went for more abstract exits in Doom II and in the bonus episode for The Ultimate Doom.

 

And then mappers invented "death exits" and that makes the whole thing even more abstract.

[printz]

Well, the airlock motif (and the physically connected Phobos bases) is exactly what ended up in Doom 3!

 

Interesting how all the Phobos/Deimos bases are distant from each other, instead of forming a continuous complex. Does Doomguy put on his astronaut suit and leap to the next base on exiting?

[Dark Pulse]

15 minutes ago, Gez said:

That's not a Doom map; it's a Doom II map.

 

The original plan, back when Tom Hall was still at id, was to have vaguely plausible geography so the exits and entrances would be on the edges. They dropped that idea and went for more abstract exits in Doom II and in the bonus episode for The Ultimate Doom.

 

And then mappers invented "death exits" and that makes the whole thing even more abstract.

The move to abstraction was already in full force in Doom though, and it's thanks to one Sandy Petersen.

• E2M6: Halls of the Damned. The false exit is where you'd assume the normal exit would be - at one of the tail ends of the map. The real exit is actually near the start, and while not exactly in the middle of the map perfectly, in vertical terms it is at the middle, and not that far from the actual center as a result. You could try to argue this is "at the edge of the level" too, but it doesn't quite hold up IMO, precisely because you're going practically back to the beginning to get out.
• E2M8: Tower of Babel. By definition, you're ending the map more or less in the center of it, and not exiting off an edge of the map. How does Doomguy get to Hell? By rappelling off an edge according to the story; okay, but what edge since all the walls are dozens of feet tall? We actually don't know - and there's literally no teleporter, no doorway, nothing. E1 at least had you teleporting to Deimos in the dark. :)
• E3M4: Unholy Cathedral. Probably the weirdest-placed exit in the game. You don't even have to really do the demon ambush thing in a room further up the hall. It's just... sorta there. Definitely not at an edge though.

You can definitely argue that all those maps were under the Tom Hall paradigm, sure, but people do overestimate just how much of Tom Hall's work went into the final product, in a way. E1 was mostly Romero after all (aside from E1M4 and E1M8), and while Tom Hall did a lot of what became E2, it's a bit disingenious to say that how he did things had huge say on how Romero or (especially) Petersen styled their maps.

 

I'd say the shift in Ultimate Doom and Doom II was more a result of them realizing that yeah, they don't need to follow real-world stuff so rigidly, but also them getting a better handle on DoomEd and whatnot, and that having an exit in an "illogical" place wasn't something that seemed to bother players.

[Gez]

E2M8 and E3M8 do not have actual exits: you're there to kill the boss. Once the boss is dead, well, you leave by the way you came in the first place. In all these maps there's the assumption that outside of the levels you're basically free to roam, that's what the world map kinda shows on the intermission.

 

E2M6 is definitely an outlier. It also presents an absurd entrance, too: you can't really imagine coming in the level from outside by there since just behind the entrance door there's a corridor.

[silentzorah]

Isn't it obvious?  Exit rooms are elevators.  ;)

[printz]

1 hour ago, Dark Pulse said:

• E2M6: Halls of the Damned. The false exit is where you'd assume the normal exit would be - at one of the tail ends of the map. The real exit is actually near the start, and while not exactly in the middle of the map perfectly, in vertical terms it is at the middle, and not that far from the actual center as a result. You could try to argue this is "at the edge of the level" too, but it doesn't quite hold up IMO, precisely because you're going practically back to the beginning to get out.
• E2M8: Tower of Babel. By definition, you're ending the map more or less in the center of it, and not exiting off an edge of the map. How does Doomguy get to Hell? By rappelling off an edge according to the story; okay, but what edge since all the walls are dozens of feet tall? We actually don't know - and there's literally no teleporter, no doorway, nothing. E1 at least had you teleporting to Deimos in the dark. :)
• E3M4: Unholy Cathedral. Probably the weirdest-placed exit in the game. You don't even have to really do the demon ambush thing in a room further up the hall. It's just... sorta there. Definitely not at an edge though.

E2M6's exit is still at the east edge of the map, it's not anywhere inside, and it doesn't matter that you're going back to the beginning, that's just the level progression implied by the keys, it's got nothing to do with geography. The exit is at an edge of the map.

 

E3M5 is in hell and has a teleport exit, thus these realistic rules do not hold there.

 

E2M8's story ending suggests that Doomguy finds an edge over which he rappels down. This is not portrayed on the intermission map, but is shown on the epilogue picture. Overall the way he goes down is overly simplified, as if Deimos were a cliff above the hell we know, or a very tiny (eroded) floating rock (like we see in Doom 3's background skies). Obviously this couldn't be represented in the Doom engine, they had to surround everything with walls.

 

E3M8 clearly says a portal opens for you to go home to Earth. A "hidden doorway" opens for you, and you emerge from it into the green fields of Earth. So it means that somewhere in the arena, a wall opens up with such a portal into the green field you see at the epilogue drawing.

[unerxai]

9:27

[drygnfyre]

5 hours ago, UNERXAi said:

9:27

Given what he says at the very beginning about making the middle of the game "less interesting," I feel that explains a lot about Episode 4's odd downward bell curve of difficulty. (Granted, he didn't design a lot of those maps). Make those first maps visually appealing to the player, or telegraph that the episode (in this case) isn't going to be easy.

[DoomerNL]

When you exit a map you get the score screen lol jk :)

[DoomKid423]

On 4/22/2019 at 9:35 PM, Kira said:

Doomguy is just making sure to shut off the lights before he exits the facility, from the entry, and travels to the next one. "Exit" signs are just made up by his obsessive mind.

 

But maybe these rooms are like elevators of sort for the most part.

These probably could be elevators. For all we know, each level takes place on the second or first floor of the building/map. The ground floor or basement are probably storage facilities of that building. So, he takes the elevator down to go to the next building/map. This could also explain why there is no tower in the map e2m8 tower of Babel. It could be a possibility that doomguy took the elevator up to the very top of the tower to fight the cyberdemon. Or more likely, a long trek to top of the tower using stairs.

[NaZa]

On 4/22/2019 at 5:58 PM, CyberDreams said:

A lso Map29: The Living End, the one with the weird "man figure" outline. At least that's what it looks like to me.

 

Never in my life will I be able to unsee that... NE corner...

[Dark Pulse]

6 hours ago, NaZa said:

 

Never in my life will I be able to unsee that... NE corner...

What weird nipples he has.

[Maximum Matt]

On ‎4‎/‎22‎/‎2019 at 4:25 PM, drygnfyre said:

E1M1 had a slightly different exit room, with a second exit door (that didn't open) on the other side of the room.

I always thought that was kinda weird, the final room with simply a switch and no decorative door, I mean most levels have the classic 'entry door' for decoration, so it's strange they'd remove the exit door like that.  Teleporter exits make more sense in this instance.  

As for map29 and other 'fall into the sky' type exits, the concept of them always would trip me out - were we in a structure in the sky (like E2M8)? Is this some sort of interdimensional rift, related to how the Deimos bases were 'corrupted'? Is it another kind of teleporter?

Certain maps in Maximum Doom would have a long corridor that turns a corner, and the exit is a walkover linedef just before you get there, implying progression to the next level.  This sense would be reinforced if the next level started with an identical corridor.  This type of thing would've been awesome to see in the OG levels, in my opinion, and is a wonder why it never happened.  

But apart from that, a simple, well designed exit room should be small, neat, have the 'exit' sign hanging from the ceiling, a couple of pickups (ideally 2 health and armor bonuses each in the corners), a good ol' fashioned switch, and the obligatory imp. 

[DooM_RO]

On 4/23/2019 at 3:56 AM, drygnfyre said:

Given what he says at the very beginning about making the middle of the game "less interesting," I feel that explains a lot about Episode 4's odd downward bell curve of difficulty. (Granted, he didn't design a lot of those maps). Make those first maps visually appealing to the player, or telegraph that the episode (in this case) isn't going to be easy.

 

A bit offtopic perhaps but that's exactly what happened in Doom 2016 too.