Mapping Cliches

[Shibainumaster]

Mapping, as any other form of expression, is prone to having it's own tropes and cliches. This forum is going to be a place of free expression of frustration, type out any pet peeve you have with an annoying mapping banality.

 

I'll start first:

1."Knee deep in the Dead" fetishism:

I am sure most of the doomers are familiar with this trope; Religious usage of the tech base theme, next-to-no outdoor or thematically different areas, poor taste (Romero level references used appropriately and unappropriately, E2 references, replication of level layouts from E1), NUKAGE(This will be discussed later). 

2.Key moment:

This is to relation to the weird trope of giving you a key, and then showing you the locked door,which is now useless. Happens usually in maps made by novices.

3.Brown drownage

There is nothing wrong with using brown textures in your map, naturalistic enviroments look good with a splash of brown, a brown,rotting stone compound sitting at the top of a hellish mountain might be also apples to the eye. But overusage, with no difference in shades of a specific color drives the player mad and makes them go into a BROWNHUG,TANROCK5,STONE6,BROWN96 and ASHWALL3\4 induced coma. Take for example "Earth.wad", aye, no joke, really impressive use of the doom tech. But the constant dark ass and crawl-space sized brown (sometimes gray and black) caves induce headache and boredom. It's not up to me to tell you people what to do,but please, spice some of your brown caves with water or greenery,ocassinonaly.

4. NUKAGE

For the longest time this plague was running amongst map creators, thousands upon thousands of WADders succumbing before the green goo's will.....It appears it won't end any time soon!

Community chest 2, Doom ZERO, Like a bunch of TNT maps and many more. Something about this is just so bland about the usual "Toxic plant" aesthetic that makes you not wanna play a map. For some, it works out great, Mucus flow, toxic touch are great examples of the celever usage of the sludge.In most other sutuations it suck dick and becomes a mess of green sludge and sludge stained walls mixed with..whatever else the author felt like putting in the map. I know it sounds like i ramble about nothing, but any one who played atleast 20~+ wads knows about that crap. Every starting level has to either a moutain drowning in sludge, a tech base drowning in sludge or a brick fortress drowning in..you guessed it* sludge. It's bland and boring, i personally prefer lava and blood to this.

[Misty]

29 minutes ago, Shibainumaster said:

BROWNHUG,TANROCK5,STONE6,BROWN96 and ASHWALL3\4

 

29 minutes ago, Shibainumaster said:

NUKAGE

That sounds like interesting texture limitations in my eyes, I'm tempted to do speedmap out of it. 

[Bridgeburner56]

Ironic topic given how cliche this thread is

Edit*
Ok so here's a less facetious answer 
- Tropes exist for a reason. They are good, easy to implement, effective at what they do, people don't want to reinvent the wheel to achieve the same objective etc. Sure it would be nice if every map was completely and utterly unique but that, for obvious reasons, will never ever happen. 

- Tropes create consistent themes as well. This happened right from Doom1 E1M1. If it's good enough for Romero, it's good enough for me.

- People make a lot of techbases because lots of players like playing them. This is coming from someone who does not like techbases (Hell FTW baby). Tech style tectures are also the most common in the stock assets so for new mappers starting out this is the natural jumping off point for their early works. 

- Your key example is a actually the basis of good progression design. Knowing where to go next after accomplishing a major level goal is just sensible, solid mapping. Sure you can mix things up but get ready for the chorus of "I found this key and have no idea where to use it".

To be honest it sounds like you need to play more different maps. Your complaints about nukage are just ... not true. Judging by your comments I'd say its a combination of recency bias (this is whatyou played most recently) and/or ignoring anything after 2004. If you're using one of the origianl iwads as an example of an over used trope I've got some bad news for you bud. That's not a trope, that's a trend setter.

Yes that's right, I called TNT a trend setter.

And finally do you know what this thread will never do? Change what mappers do. The best you can hope for is a collective rolling of eyes as people go on with their day. You are far more likely to affect change by actually engaging with mappers constructively. "Hey mapper person who made the map, I see you've used nukage as the only liquid flat in your wad. Was there a reason for that? Did you think about other textures?" 
And so on and so forth. Bitching on the forums about amorphous issues that actually have zero evidence backing them up will just waste everyone's time.

[Deadwing]

Yep, Nukage sucks, that's why we need more damaging water

[leodoom85]

3 minutes ago, Deadwing said:

Yep, Nukage sucks, that's why we need more damaging water

Nukage is just green colored water.

Water damaging surfaces can be explained by adding, who knows, electricity...

 

Besides, we've seen harmless nukage floor in slaughter maps, colored/paletted maps and many more.

[thiccyosh]

19 minutes ago, Deadwing said:

Yep, Nukage sucks, that's why we need more damaging water

Even better: damaging mud.

[Nine Inch Heels]

3 hours ago, Shibainumaster said:

This forum is going to be a place of free expression of frustration, type out any pet peeve you have with an annoying mapping banality.

Not interested in dignifying this any more than is absolutely necessary, so I'll drop a few things and ignore you forever going forward...

 

You go ahead and make a map that you think does not employ any tropes and publish it, then wait and see how many people will be able to identify tropes in this indubitably trope-free map of yours... Good luck with that one...

 

Next up: I don't give a shit about your pet peeves or whatever it is that annoys the crap straight out of you, and your unsubstantiated opinion is unlikely to sway anybody else...

 

Last but not least: If you want to create bash-threads, head on over to 4chan or whichever other cesspool might greet your invaluable insights with a modicum of applause...

 

Addendum: "post your opinions about doom (whether controversial or not)" exists for a reason... Neither you, nor your opinion are so fucking special that a separate thread was required...

Edited November 23, 2021 by Nine Inch Heels

[nicolas monti]

I acknowledge I have a strong inclination for the use of the acid flat. Not always because of gameplay purposes, sometimes it is, but because how its color fits with the other textures and the sense of depth it gives to the areas. I don't usually get the techbase pleasure without a dark winding acid river flowing in between the areas.

[Bridgeburner56]

48 minutes ago, Deadwing said:

Yep, Nukage sucks, that's why we need more damaging water

Easy there Satan

[Jacek Bourne]

15 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Addendum: "post your opinions about doom (whether controversial or not)" exists for a reason... Neither you, nor your opinion are so fucking special that a separate thread was required...

By the way. That thread was locked not too long ago however another thread has sort of taken it’s place to some extent.

 

 

[Neanderdave]

I think he's got some good points in there, but he could stand to be a little less aggressive about it. Making key hunts is not always the best idea, but placing a key directly in front of a locked door isn't really good use of one either. Massive nukage rooms with nothing else breaking it up or otherwise varying the floor or textures can be a bit bland. 

 

Of course, this can and has been done well in such mapsets as Eviternity and Doom Zero.

 

And techbase is unironically great fite meh

[Jaccident]

I just like the funky green colour, sorry, I guess?

[Major Arlene]

4 hours ago, Shibainumaster said:

i personally prefer lava and blood to this.

 

4 hours ago, Shibainumaster said:

It's bland and boring

Congratulations for having a personal preference, doesn't mean everyone has to capitulate to that for your entertainment. If you don't want to play maps with nukage in them, guess what? There's thousands upon thousands of WADs with lava and blood! You literally could not be more spoiled for choice in a modding community if you tried.

[Csucskos]

Haha, I see everyone bashing the OP but actually this thread has become what he intended it for. A place to vent your frustration.

 

On another note, I think with a limited tool set as in Doom it is just unavoidable to make similar things. For example nukage is meant to be a toxic liquid, it is used as one in the original games and it also looks like it. So I feel like this thinking is backwards, since there are thousands of wads out there if you are looking for a certain usage of textures you are destined to find a ton of similar maps. And as it had been said before, clichés exist for a reason, they help the player ease up and know what to expect. It's the language of mapping.

[leodoom85]

2 minutes ago, Csucskos said:

Haha, I see everyone bashing the OP but actually this thread has become what he intended it for. A place to vent your frustration.

Then let's go back to that "post your controversial doom opinions" thread and continue from there because here's just a room that needs to be cleaned. 

Over and out.

[Stupid Bunny]

You know what I hate is maps that have both monsters, and, if that isn’t original enough, weapons to kill them with too! Ugh and then they put in ammo and health like EVERY. TIME. 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄 Like come on people can we have something NEW for once

[Xaser]

The worst mapping-related cliche is this type of bitchfest thread. Stop making these and Enjoy the Damn Game, people.

[baja blast rd.]

listen to Xaser please