Vanilla or detailed map architecture?

[Budoka]

Much like others here, I'm more concerned with the level having an individual sense of aesthetic vision than with what the volume of detailing happens to be. Starting from counterexamples, things like having a nearly featureless void of entirely basic shapes and around two or three textures total, or an incoherent garbled mess of shapes and colors, or a literal cloning of the Id members's aesthetic styles (however well-copied or not) are things that I would consider to be signs of a lack of creative vision, and will contribute to me finding the visuals of a level either too unmemorable or just off-putting. Well, sometimes that second one is completely intentional (TimeOfDeath), but even then that doesn't mean I'll like it better.

 

All of that is why I'm very biased in favor of custom texture packs, which can do wonders when competently wielded (BTSX, Ancient Aliens, Eviternity...). Although they're not always necessary, see for example Going Down, which exudes personality from every pore while being made almost entirely of stock assets.

[aRottenKomquat]

I find details distracting when over-done. I prefer maps that play well and are detailed enough to not be distracting in their dullness. All the details in hyper-detailed maps can be overwhelming at first, but eventually those details get filtered out as irrelevant by my brain, at which point they are just wasted effort that don't really contribute much to my experience. My map designs tend to come from that approach. Detailed enough to not look dull and boring, but not so overdetailed that you miss all of it while trying to survive.

 

Of course it's the exact opposite if I'm watching someone play rather than play myself. Then, I notice all the details, and sometimes the action gets filtered out instead.

[Xaser]

Sort of a slant fit for the topic, but one of the interesting things here as a mapper is that the amount of effort it takes to produce something of a certain "fidelity" isn't necessarily proportional to how complex the feature set is.

 

The big obvious example would be BTSX, since even though it's vanilla exe it's hard as hell to achieve The Look(tm) since you gotta keep limits in mind and lean very heavily on texturing for detail. Its entire map design style is a big counterpoint to the idea that "more detail = more lines", in a way.

 

Meanwhile, on the opposite end of the scale, you'd think that a UDMF GZDoom map would be harder to build than a Boom/MBF21 one, but having access to stuff like dynamic lights suddenly makes it so you don't have to carve up things into a zillion little sectors any more. There's certainly something to be said about advanced port features making it easier to achieve a "classic feel" if you use the tools right... even though we're all tempted to go whole hog with features when we get 'em. :P

 

[scalliano]

@XaserI concur. Mapping without limits is WAY easier, although there's always the temptation to go crazy. And I'm still stuck in Hexen format cos I'm a boomer.

 

As for vanilla vs advanced, I really think it depends on what the author is aiming for - BTSX has great texturework which does about 75% of the heavy lifting for the aesthetic, but I can't imagine that same textureset being used in a huge, sprawling GZDoom sectorfest and looking anywhere near as coherent.

[esselfortium]

18 minutes ago, scalliano said:

I can't imagine that same textureset being used in a huge, sprawling GZDoom sectorfest and looking anywhere near as coherent.

Hmm, I don't think that's necessarily true. I used some of the early BTSX textures in SpaceDM9 before they were released in BTSX (and still others from E1 and E2 were used in additional SpaceDM9 maps that were never finished), and they worked alright there. I don't think they're all that functionally different from something like OTEX.

[Graf Zahl]

36 minutes ago, scalliano said:

@XaserI concur. Mapping without limits is WAY easier, although there's always the temptation to go crazy. And I'm still stuck in Hexen format cos I'm a boomer.

 

As for vanilla vs advanced, I really think it depends on what the author is aiming for - BTSX has great texturework which does about 75% of the heavy lifting for the aesthetic, but I can't imagine that same textureset being used in a huge, sprawling GZDoom sectorfest and looking anywhere near as coherent.

 

That would all depend on what you are shooting for and the mapping skills. Yes, just like the original textures they are probably not the best for something hyper-realistic, but just as a counterpoint, check out Warphouse. That's a high detail ZDoom map that almost exclusively uses original textures. So if you do it right, even with such rather generic textures you can do interesting stuff.

 

[scalliano]

I'm certainly not saying it can't be done, but on a personal level I've found the textureset that I'm using on any given map tending to dictate how the geometry ends up taking shape. It's probably why my Hell maps are much mor freeform than my tech maps. I once tried mapping with the UAC Ultra textures and found that my detailing was completely different from how I would normally detail with the vanilla set, and I never really noticed it happening. I never finished the map in question -  there are probably still a few screenshots kicking around here, though.

[esselfortium]

A majority of the textures in BTSX's resource are the same kinds of basic functional panel/bar patterns that you'd find in other popular Doom resource wads, though. The way I texture a map still follows basically the same techniques whether I'm working on BTSX or something else (unless I'm only using stock IWAD resources, which of course are much more restrictive).

[IncompA]

Who says vanilla-style maps can't have detail?

Take a good, long peek at Misri Halek.

[Grassy chunks]

2 minutes ago, EliDoesStuff said:

Who says vanilla-style maps can't have detail?

Take a good, long peek at Misri Halek.

Yeah,and he did it using DETH too, in 2001 using probably a windows 98 pc (which likely had less than 1gb of ram) . I can't even imagine the processing power needed by his computer to handle a map with more than 14k+ linedefs. Also that map alone has more linedefs & sidedefs than the holy hell Slaughtermap has.

 

I bet if any of the Id guys saw it back then, they would've probably hired Mutator to work there...