baja blast rd. Posted July 14, 2022 A bit of a map presentation theory thread. We're posting our wad, and logically, we want to pick screenshots that get one person to play it before it falls down the void of Wads & Mods forever, and winds up maybe tunneling into the Doom 3 subforum or something. Obviously just throwing out the best- or most interesting-looking shots we can muster works, but there's more to it than that. Speaking of my experience viewing other shots, even really attractive shots sometimes get me to feel, "Wow this is a gorgeous-looking wad, I'll remember it exists," rather than "I want to play this, and soon" (not that the former is necessarily worse for a lot of releases). I've also had many a experience of hesitantly loading up a map and thinking, "This has a lot more 'character' than the pretty shots had me expecting." So I'm doing a bit of musing and speculating on what tends to be enticing for me (what gets me actually wanting to play). Feel free to do the same below or talk about concepts. - Engagement. I've noticed shots that encourage me to imagine actions in the map are more likely to give me an itch to play. That can be gameplay elements like switches, architectural features that you clearly do something "with" or on (like a ramp or bridge you might jump off). This might seem arbitrary, but it makes a lot sense; to bring in a bit of psychology, one technique to get yourself to do a thing IRL is to strongly visualize doing it, so in light of that it's not surprising that imagining something (in this case playing and engaging with the wad you're looking at) makes you want to do it. WH-Wilou posted a screenshot (I wish I could remember where I saw it) that immediately made me want to play something he made, which was partly because of this. It had switches in a shot configured in a way that let me chain together the sequence of events that might occur in my imagination. (Action shots or "quiet action shots" -- not hectic fighting, but imagine something like the player with a weapon and a group of monsters nearby -- might have their benefits for this reason too.) I'm looking at a screenshot right now in W&M and I feel an urge to play the map just to pick up the blue skull key I see glinting in the distance of one of the screenshots. - Intrigue. I love shots that might be focusing on on area, but in the periphery of that area or in the background of the screenshot, you see openings to other areas or hints of them. Intrigue can be as simple as "what is behind this big tower -- it seems like there's something?" Seems like there are also many layers of how intrigue can work. It's not just hiding or teasing. You might reveal something's physical nature, like a custom monster or a big ominous sacred temple that looks like the final fight, but that might leave me with more questions than were answered: how does this gun function, what's going to happen in that area (obviously a birthday party)? Which is good too. - Sexuality. Archvile butts are - Identity. If it's possible to tell from the shots what the map tends to do and focus on, and that is typically a good thing, I think? I don't really mean broad identity like "slaughtermap" or "adventure map" (although that works too), but something a bit more precise than that, down to a specific design "move" a map does, for example "the sort of map where that baron face texture is made to vomit orange juice" or "has a fight with lots of imps in a tight space." Gives you space as a viewer to go "yeah I want to play a map that does that sort of thing" and imagine what else like it it can do. Or if you don't imagine more, at least that one example might be a good draw. This sort of intentionality feels useful; I see a lot of shot sets that are "the maps' pretty vistas" (and I'm sure I've posted some of those myself) when the mapset's real identity isn't that. But leaving out identity seems like a mistake. If our map has a certain vibe and that's why we want people to enjoy it, we probably want to convey that. Naturally, this also means that when architecture, theme, beauty, or something like that is the main point of identity, a varied collage of pretty areas might be exactly what is called for. - On the tension between wanting to show off defining elements and withholding spoilers or gems for the player. If your wad features something cool as a recurring motif, like hand-crafted sector-detail cars, that might be worth considering as a shot. If on the other hand, as part of an experience-making twist, the boss is a sector-detail car, you might want to save that as a spoiler. We've made a map we think is cool, and it might be tempting to post shots of all the best things about it, but holding some of that back is part of cultivating "intrigue." - The interaction between screenshots. Probably a lot of nuance here worth thinking about. Imagine all you get is four screenshots of four different-looking areas. The mind rushes to fill in connections, think about how they might be related, and imagine the worst (i.e. the best). If screenshots are good prompts, our curiosity might be really high. This could be a thread of its own. I have definitely looked at screenshot sets that have made filling in the gaps irresistible, a lot more so than the usual shot. If you've experienced that, can you give an example (and what made you so curious about the gap)? - Other?! Any rule can be broken, of course. Some screenshot sets have defined the whole "intrigue" idea, bombarding you with examples of everything like a collage, yet have been enticing too. Just writing this has articulated some ideas I thought of only vaguely in the past, and I already spot some screenshot sets of mine I'd do a bit better now. (Although I should have known that when someone took a better shot set of my own wad than I did. :)) Also screenshots are not always that important. A good brief description can be just as good. Sometimes the particularity of that description will attract the audience. If your name is Paul Skillsaw, you can probably post a glamour closeup of a bare wall and get people to download something. So this might be more useful if we anticipate averaging around single-digit playthroughs, with a likelihood of zero! I also don't consider this to be about bait as much as it's about "revealing to a high level of resolution what your wad is really about." If you are disappointed and wanted a Clickbait Guide to Getting People to Play Your Wad, then the spoiler below is for you. Spoiler Anyway, if posting faraway keys becomes the meta, blame me. 27 Share this post Link to post
Solmyr Posted July 15, 2022 (edited) Interesting read. 5 hours ago, baja blast rd. said: - Sexuality. Archvile butts are surprisingly meaty for dried up husks that barely have more meat than Revenants, you see... Getting my mind outta the gutter, i guess screenshots boils down to marketing ploys just like title screens, "presentation" demos from mappacks/megawads, and textual summaries, they are meant to catch potential players' attention. How successful those are in that task its up to debate. Personally i think screenshots fulfill their task of getting attention as long as someone comments something based on it regardless of tone, could be positive, negative, funny, insightful, etc. On forums or other places with a like/dislike system it see it leans heavily on the number of likes they get, as they are tokens which means "this is good" or in the case of dislikes "this is bad", such number should obviously be on a postive ratio but also high enough to see that it got attention but if the likes are too high there might be "social inertia" in the works; people liking the screenshots not because of their inherent value but, because they got a big positive number it's popular so it must be good, then follow suit and like it too, paying little attention to it to see if you actually like it. Screenshot Purpouses: Primary: Get people's attention, showcase your work's features. Secondary: Get people to play (or show interest in) your wad/pk.3/gameplay mod/whatever, get people to asociate your mapping/modding traits and quirks as they evolve over time, build up brand recognition when your work resonates with a large playerbase. I got sidetracked, but i believe screenshots are enticing as long as they fulfill the primary purpouses. What Makes Them Enticing: Eye Candy: We all love spectacle in one way or another and the more good looking a screenshot is, the more enticing it gets. Doomcute: Who doesn't like heavily detailed sector toilets, blinds and window textures, flat rugs and sprite furniture? Less is More: Letting in just enough for people to wonder and get hooked, a keycard/power up in a far away platform, some custom textures, some colormap fuckery, fog, a room with some colored lighting, a custom monster, weapon, custom sky, etc. Brand Recognition: Naturally people are drawn towards prollific mappers/modders because their work resonates with them, so that makes an already high quality screenshot even more enticing. Technical Display: This is partially linked to "Eye Candy"; some of the most enticing screenshots often are those that stray far away from Doom's aesthetics, be it grand detailed adventure style maps with a heavy use of OTEX textures, or something that doesn't even resemble Doom anymore and looks like something from a more advanced engine. Other: Screenshots don't have to be about getting people to get hooked on your work, they could be just a display of skill, something interesting to look at, something funny, or an example of design to discuss mapping/modding tropes. 1 Share this post Link to post
Endless Posted July 15, 2022 Another simple point I'd add is composition, and it pretty much is the same as regular composition theory in photography. I've noticed that, unconsciously, most of my screenshots follow the Rule of thirds. From wikipedia: The guideline proposes that an image should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts by two equally spaced horizontal lines and two equally spaced vertical lines, and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or their intersections. WADs have a landscape-quality to it, and that's how I tend to treat them, as worlds to explore. Whenever I take screenshots, I try to take them to showcase the world that I'm currently experiences, and the beauty and mystique behind it. Whenever I see a screenshot that shows me, not just a new WAD, but a new world to explore, that's when it really catches my attention. Another point to take into account is the general quality of the screenshots, i.e.: the settings used, the resolution, aspect ratio, FOV, sampling, screen size or more advanced features if using ports such as GZDoom. Personally, my favorite source port to take screenshots on is Doom Retro. For me, it captures that feeling of ''old but gold'' quite perfectly, and the pixelated graphics plus the dithering lighting add a magic essence to it, like a portal into 1993. Here's one of my favorite pics I've taken to illustrate that: 15 Share this post Link to post
Majin Posted July 15, 2022 (edited) 7 hours ago, baja blast rd. said: - Intrigue. I love shots that might be focusing on on area, but in the periphery of that area or in the background of the screenshot, you see openings to other areas or hints of them. Intrigue can be as simple as "what is behind this big tower -- it seems like there's something?" Seems like there are also many layers of how intrigue can work. It's not just hiding or teasing. You might reveal something's physical nature, like a custom monster or a big ominous sacred temple that looks like the final fight, but that might leave me with more questions than were answered: how does this gun function, what's going to happen in that area (obviously a birthday party)? Which is good too. mystery does breed obsession, i'd like to add the less-is-more principle to this too. human brains are geared to be hyper sensitive to negativity, so i think showing too much of your level can actually kill interest--not necessarily because the element of a mystery is absent, but also because people will perceive flaws & will become averse to playing it. let's say my level is 80% good & 20% bad & i take a screenshot for every 10%, i'm left with 8 good & 2 bad screenshots. despite being only a fraction of the total preview, people will focus on the 2 bad screenshots subconsciously & will imagine themselves playing in that badly designed space or navigating that dull looking area; killing any desire to touch that map at all. it may not make sense on a logical level but that's how we pick up on things. i'd say the best previews are a single image that encapsulates the world that's within your map, 2-3 are just as fine--especially if it's a complex & large map, but anything beyond that can cause an over-load on the viewer's eyes & that can push them away 3 Share this post Link to post
Murdoch Posted July 15, 2022 Pretty screenshot make brain go "oooo". That's pretty much it for me. 4 Share this post Link to post
ImproversGaming Posted July 15, 2022 @baja blast rd., lots of good feedback here already. My feeling is that screenshots are snapshots that present a limited view of the overall map. It would be sensible to acquire a range of snapshots that aim to look at the map in quite different ways / from many different perspectives - don't try and capture everything in every shot and have a specific focus for each. It is the combination of them that builds a clearer overall picture. I think it would also be good if they highlighted the aspects of the map that make it somewhat more unique or that the mapper wants to showcase (there is a balance between what you would like to show potential players versus what you think they might wish to see). So in summary what makes screenshots enticing to me is to see a clearer vision for what the map/WAD is - how well have the screenshots convinced me that the risk of wasting my time loading the map/WAD is sufficiently low (like a good movie trailer)? @Endless I think that is Base Ganymede E1M8 - I loved that map, such a nice change of pace and level mechanic. As Ganymede is a satellite of Jupiter I was absolutely shocked the first time I saw Jupiter in the sky - it was jaw dropping! Spoiler 3 Share this post Link to post
bofu Posted July 15, 2022 I actually find myself somewhat turned off by screenshots that heavily focus on visuals without a glimpse of the gameplay, but I'm probably a bit of an outlier. I also don't like homogeneity in screenshots. If your screenshots don't have variety, how can I be assured that your level will? I get a little tired of "moody OTEX aesthetic." 6 Share this post Link to post
galileo31dos01 Posted July 15, 2022 I like it when screenshots show the body of some particular area or part of it (doesn't need to be a key/main place in the map), as well as a glimpse of something else in another area further away, whether it's a self-contained possible fight or a shiny chainsaw brought by the gods at the top of a mountain in the horizon, if it entices me to think there's more going on than meets the eye, then I will feel the need to find out and that's enough for me to add to the list. Of course you don't want to spoil too much, nor you want to screenshot every single detail (break the rules if you want to!), but a good picture for me leaves something for the imagination. Lots of shots in the "post your screenshots" thread achieve this, whether they're by mappers I've known before or not. This thought process is key when I take shots of my own content, but also from other authors. It applies to a single level or multiple maps in a wad, though in the latter case I'm also going to consider other factors like map count, themes, authors, etc. If it gets harder to pick maps out of a huge selection, I may resort to a full album, like in my review for Modest Mapping where I felt that showing a glimpse from at least one map from every author involved was fair and inclusive (also miniatures naturally eat very little space, so the more reason to go for it). I have said this before: I'm bad at excluding. Another other hard part is finding the right angle, generally shots look the best at around 45 degrees more or less or 90 in some cases imo, you may have noticed this in my contributions for ARSE last year (was it last year omg...), or if I were to choose only one area of the map, which one is exquisitely attractive to me because it tells things that I want others to figure out, and then tell me their experience. A recent example would be this shot, the RL points out something that may be obvious, but what the hell is that bloody structure in the distance, or what is the reason behind the gib decorations on the ground... maybe it's me overthinking as usual while no else will give a shit about the details, but I like to keep some things to myself :p Your comment about a blue skull in the distance reminded me of one of my shots for goopw, I actually now think it's one of my best shots, it says a lot of things and probably sets the expectation that your objective is that shiny thing far away, but you can't tell how things unfold until you open up the map, that's the ✨magic✨. In short words, playing with intrigue is my favorite part of taking/looking at shots. P.S. I usually prefer shots with no monsters in sight, no "in the heat of the action", unless the monster(s) make or complement the identity in the way the shot in the OP does, or say the shot is from a cramped room with webs and you can see the glowing eyes of an arachnotron in the dark, that sort of stuff can be fun in its own way too. 5 Share this post Link to post
TheMagicMushroomMan Posted July 16, 2022 (edited) I judge most screenshots by how much effort it appears that the mapper made when taking them. If it looks like they just randomly hit the print screen key while running around, that's a turn-off, and low-effort screenshots usually go hand in hand with low effort posts, which goes hand in hand with low effort maps. I don't really care about composition, especially if it's just a single map by someone who isn't named Skillsaw. It's not an album cover or a pack-in poster that comes with the map. It's not part of the product. So I only expect a decent amount of effort. On the same topic, most mappers aren't going to consider their screenshots to be as important as a musician would consider their album art. They probably aren't going to think too hard about it, so I don't bother thinking too hard about it. A really nice screenshot might give the impression that the mapper is more artistically inclined than most, but then you might play the wad and realize that everything not shown in the screenshots looks like dogshit, or that the areas shown in the screenshots look like dogshit when they're not shown at a specific angle. Edited July 16, 2022 by TheMagicMushroomMan 4 Share this post Link to post
Kyka Posted July 16, 2022 On 7/15/2022 at 1:41 PM, Endless said: Here's one of my favorite pics I've taken to illustrate that: What wad is this from? Thank you. 0 Share this post Link to post
Endless Posted July 16, 2022 1 hour ago, Kyka said: What wad is this from? Thank you. Base Ganymide, E1M8 2 Share this post Link to post
bofu Posted July 18, 2022 On 7/15/2022 at 8:39 PM, TheMagicMushroomMan said: I judge most screenshots by how much effort it appears that the mapper made when taking them. If it looks like they just randomly hit the print screen key while running around, that's a turn-off, and low-effort screenshots usually go hand in hand with low effort posts, which goes hand in hand with low effort maps. I don't really care about composition, especially if it's just a single map by someone who isn't named Skillsaw. It's not an album cover or a pack-in poster that comes with the map. It's not part of the product. So I only expect a decent amount of effort. On the same topic, most mappers aren't going to consider their screenshots to be as important as a musician would consider their album art. They probably aren't going to think too hard about it, so I don't bother thinking too hard about it. A really nice screenshot might give the impression that the mapper is more artistically inclined than most, but then you might play the wad and realize that everything not shown in the screenshots looks like dogshit, or that the areas shown in the screenshots look like dogshit when they're not shown at a specific angle. I have this problem where I try to take screenshots like they did for the packaging for the original games (though I do hide the HUD/status bar). They told us absolutely nothing about level geometry because it was usually the player shooting at a couple of enemies in a hallway. I try to change things up a bit by having the screenshots taken during different setpieces, but I wonder if part of the reason my stuff doesn't get played much is because of that. 0 Share this post Link to post
Firedust Posted July 20, 2022 This is obviously all my opinion, BUT If the screenshots scream 'boring' gameplay to me, then no matter how detailed or realistic they look, I won't bother playing the wad. Mapmakers can decorate flat square rooms as much as they like, but it just won't look exciting to me - same as seeing a flat room that just spawns in several waves of teleport ambushes and that's it. On the other hand, seeing lots of height variation and/or unorthodox/non-linear map shapes gets an insta "I'll play this for sure!" from me. I don't mind maps having little detail as long as they are fun and memorable to navigate. 2 Share this post Link to post