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Map names I don't realize

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It has plenty to do with Doom 2. And I do think it was vandalism. And yeah, I do have to hand it to the Doom 2 guys, there is a shotgun at the beginning of a bunch of maps. So I think they are right.

Still, I don't think they were completely oblivious to the whole thing. Wasn't Kurt a mainstream celebrity at that point? And what about the multiple times id is compared to the band in Masters of Doom?

But whatever. It's nothing.

Not again!

chungy said:

and personally I never made any connection to that particular map and the band until this very thread.

Me neither. Well, I'd play the map and be like "heh there's a band with this level's name".

Oh wait, there's a band with every level's name.

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Vordakk said:

Yup, there is a shotty in almost every map. But there's only one map named "Nirvana", a word which has little or nothing to do with the plot of DOOM 2.

I really have no clue how wikis are "supposed" to work, and if putting that speculation up was akin to vandalism, then that's bad. I kinda saw it as harmless though, because the person said it may be an homage, not it was an homage.


Nirvana is similar to the concept of the afterlife in Indian religions. Considering Map21 is the first level in the non-physical world, there you go.

"may be" is just weasel words. That doesn't mean anything. You may be a $1000/movie male pornstar. Or some people say that Doom is awesome. etc etc

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Mr. T said:

Nirvana is similar to the concept of the afterlife in Indian religions.


No. Nirvana in the sutras is never described as a place. It's more of a goal or state of mind in certain Indian religions. The various religions define Nirvana somewhat differently, but all seem to have one thing in common: a sense of overwhelming peace and mental/spiritual freedom.

So again, Nirvana has little or nothing to do with the plot of DOOM 2. The game doesn't ascribe to Indian religious mythos, Doomguy doesn't go around meditating, and since he has 10 more levels to go at Map 21, he's not exactly experiencing peace and spiritual freedom.

Try again.

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Doomguy's not singing incoherently about teen spirit, either, though, and lots of Doom 2 maps take their names from abstract concepts or words that sound cool and vaguely techy or mystical.

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esselfortium said:

lots of Doom 2 maps take their names from abstract concepts or words that sound cool and vaguely techy or mystical.


My take on it is that the band Nirvana brought the word "Nirvana" into the front of people's minds, and so when the time came to name maps in DOOM 2, someone threw that name in the pot. They may not have suggested it to be some sort of musical reference, but still the reason it was in their vocabulary had a lot to do with a certain Seattle grunge band.

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While that's possible, I get the distinct impression that Sandy has always been a pretty well-read guy, especially where mystical and mythological stuff is concerned. It's noteworthy that he made a name for himself designing pen-and-paper RPGs such as Call of Cthulhu before he joined id Software.

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That shotgun can't be a homage to kurt cobain. There isn't even any nirvana music in the game or anything. If there were gonna be homages to anything, they'd probably be to Slayer, Judas Priest, Alice in Chains, or whatever other bands they listened to, but there doesn't appear to be any references to that in any of the maps either. (besides the music of course)

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Vordakk said:

No. Nirvana in the sutras is never described as a place. It's more of a goal or state of mind in certain Indian religions. The various religions define Nirvana somewhat differently, but all seem to have one thing in common: a sense of overwhelming peace and mental/spiritual freedom.

So again, Nirvana has little or nothing to do with the plot of DOOM 2. The game doesn't ascribe to Indian religious mythos, Doomguy doesn't go around meditating, and since he has 10 more levels to go at Map 21, he's not exactly experiencing peace and spiritual freedom.

Try again.


You're focusing too much on specifics and missing the bigger picture. From Map21 onwards, you aren't in the "real" world anymore. Nirvana is an appropriate title. Maybe I should have posted this today so you couldn't copy and paste some stuff off Wikipedia.

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40oz said:

That shotgun can't be a homage to kurt cobain. There isn't even any nirvana music in the game or anything. If there were gonna be homages to anything, they'd probably be to Slayer, Judas Priest, Alice in Chains, or whatever other bands they listened to, but there doesn't appear to be any references to that in any of the maps either. (besides the music of course)

Well, like I said, Kurt had become a mainstream celebrity, so even if you weren't entirely familiar/a fan of their music, you probably knew what was going on. Maybe the id guys thought Nirvana sucked and would find a joke (had they put one in I know they didn't) funny out of spite.

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Mr. T said:

You're focusing too much on specifics and missing the bigger picture.


The "bigger picture" being that you don't know what you're talking about? No I didn't miss that at all, T. Nirvana isn't a place as I said before(please try to pay attention), it's a superior state of consciousness. Devotees who reach nirvana are still in the "real" world. So no, it's still NOT an appropriate title by your logic.

Try, try again.

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There's always the chance the id crew may have named the map based on their AD&D campaign, or something. According to the Manual of the Planes (1987, TSR Inc.) it is indeed an actual place (one of the "outer planes" of existence).

Relevant pages from the 1st edition MotP (beware, first one is 2.5 MB!):
http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/3366/motp85.png
http://img864.imageshack.us/img864/5299/motp86.png
http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/3918/motp87.png

The Doom map doesn't seem anything like that though.

Also, what's up with House of Pain? That was a popular band at the time too ("Jump Around" was a hit in 1992). Could be someone at their office kept playing that, and it found its way into the game?

Edit: This is a diagram from the 1st edition Players Handbook that shows the relationship between the planes. Top half is inner planes, bottom half is outer planes. Anyone who's familiar with any version of D&D will know that the the outer planes are ordered based on the inhabitant's alignment.
Again, betware (1.2 MB file!):
http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/2954/ph122.png

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Vordakk said:

Try, try again.


E3M8: Dis is not a place either.

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hex11 said:

Also, what's up with House of Pain? That was a popular band at the time too ("Jump Around" was a hit in 1992). Could be someone at their office kept playing that, and it found its way into the game?


Absolutely, it had to be that, I mean, what else but a pack of trashy whiggers could have motivated ID to settle for that name? not that "House of Pain" was ever used anywhere else.

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40oz said:

E3M8: Dis is not a place either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dis_(Divine_Comedy)

In Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy, the City of Dis (in Italian, la città ch'ha nome Dite, "the city whose name is Dis") encompasses the sixth through the ninth circles of Hell. The most serious sins are punished here, in lower Hell. Dis is extremely hot, and contains areas more closely resembling the common modern conception of Hell than the upper levels.

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hex11 said:

Also, what's up with House of Pain? That was a popular band at the time too ("Jump Around" was a hit in 1992). Could be someone at their office kept playing that, and it found its way into the game?

"House of Pain" comes from an H.G. Wells novel about the horrors of vivisection, and again, I wouldn't be surprised if Sandy took it from there or another literary source.

A lot of his ideas that contributed to Quake were based on the writing of H.P. Lovecraft, and it's silly to assume he didn't read other authors, so why not?

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There is one clear-cut homage to a band in Doom, and it's Nine Inch Nails in E4M1. It's not a level name.

People who look for ambiguous coincidence will always be able to find them. It's not very helpful to list every one because it's not really relevant, just statistical noise.

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Yeah but you have to admit some are pretty convincing.

Like how does Sandy Petersen know so much about Hell? I wrestled with this for weeks until suddenly it all became clear to me.

MORMON

MORE MEN

SAUSAGEFEST

GAY

SATAN


Totally unambiguous.

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esselfortium said:

"House of Pain" comes from an H.G. Wells novel about the horrors of vivisection, and again, I wouldn't be surprised if Sandy took it from there or another literary source.

A lot of his ideas that contributed to Quake were based on the writing of H.P. Lovecraft, and it's silly to assume he didn't read other authors, so why not?

How naive.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0773264/ ;)

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Okay my example wasn't that great (I was only aware of the definition of Dis being the ruler), but what about Dead Simple?

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Dead Simple is a pun and a description of the map; to finish you just have to kill everything.

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40oz said:

Okay my example wasn't that great (I was only aware of the definition of Dis being the ruler), but what about Dead Simple?

While they seemed to more or less stick with plausible location names for the original Doom's maps, Doom 2 branched out from that a bunch to name maps after concepts or just stuff that sounded cool. Dead Simple, Tricks and Traps, Gotcha!, and so on...

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esselfortium said:

While they seemed to more or less stick with plausible location names for the original Doom's maps, Doom 2 branched out from that a bunch to name maps after concepts or just stuff that sounded cool. Dead Simple, Tricks and Traps, Gotcha!, and so on...


Barrels o' Fun!

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Vordakk said:

No I didn't miss that at all, T. Nirvana isn't a place as I said before(please try to pay attention), it's a superior state of consciousness.

This is exactly what he meant by "focusing too much on specifics". We all know that the vast majority of what went into Doom and Doom 2 was "Rule of Cool" (I'll spare you all the tvtropes link) and nothing else. They loved their D&D, Lovecraft, heavy metal and horror films. If Peterson (do we know if he even named the map?) called a map "Nirvana" it's because it sounded cool and (possibly) spiritual to him. I severely doubt they went delving into Hindi culture to get a very meaningful name.


Saying all of that, this is another of those threads which seems a lot like people overthinking things to me. Do the map names really have to mean anything at all?

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I don't really mind the names of most of the maps in all the Doom games, though I had to admit E2M6 and E2M7 stuck out from most of the tech themed names of the E2 maps, then again, we're talking about Deimos, a moon that was being under Hell's influence in the game. A lot of the names like E3's maps, and the Hell section of Doom 2, they sound other-worldly, so I don't complain much. I must agree that some of the names of the TNT maps sounded out of place. MAP06 "Open Season", MAP10 "Redemption", MAP15 "Dead Zone", and MAP22 "Habitat". The first two have been already discussed, but Dead Zone sounded weird for a techbase map, same can be said for Habitat, being a sewer map. While most of the maps take place in Jupiter's moon Io (except for the secret maps), the last few maps must take place in Hell (MAP25: Baron's Den, MAP26: Ballistyx, MAP27: Mount Pain, MAP28: Heck, MAP29: River Styx, and MAP30: Last Call - fitting name for a final map). Plutonia also had strange names, MAP08: Realm, MAP12: Speed, MAP14: Genesis, MAP16: The Omen, MAP18: Neurosphere, MAP22: Impossible Mission (was it supposed to be Mission Impossible?), and MAP27: Anti-Christ.

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My least favorite map name was "Human BBQ". I mean, at least spell out the word "barbecue", guys. Plus, it always struck me as a bit silly compared to what I felt were better names in DOOM 1 and 2.

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The name "The Temple of Darkness" is slightly dull/banal in my opinion. These trite, abstract words don't describe the charm of this unordinary map, which starts in a frightening, truly Doomish lava ocean with burning sky, and continues in some other amazing, surreal locations. Half of Plutonia levels could be called "Temple of Darkness/Death/Hate/Fear/Evil/etc" with the same effect :-)

I prefer original (and yet fitting) names like Caughtyard or Neurosphere. Some examples from other wads (on some of my many favorite levels): Last Look at Eden, Post Mortem, Afterlife, Fire and Ice, High-Tech Grave, A Question of Time, Skinny Puppy, Metal Meltdown, Dis 2000, To Be or Not To Be...

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esselfortium said:

"House of Pain" comes from an H.G. Wells novel about the horrors of vivisection, and again, I wouldn't be surprised if Sandy took it from there or another literary source.

A lot of his ideas that contributed to Quake were based on the writing of H.P. Lovecraft, and it's silly to assume he didn't read other authors, so why not?


Interesting - seems most likely.

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Well, for what it's worth, here are my two cents:

Ones I don't get:
E3M6: Mt. Erebus
Erebus is supposed to be a god of darkness, but this map seems to be the center of the opening of a volcano (that's what I imagined it was), making it very bright.

MAP27: Monster Condo
Yeah, kind of self-explanatory. It has a library and a pool (the nukage one near the start), so it could be a living place of some kind).

Ones I think I get:
E3M7: Limbo
It's called "Gate to Limbo" in the intro screen. I believe Limbo is the portal between life and afterlife, and Limbo could lead to Heaven or Hell depending on how you lead your life. I always imagined E3M7 being Hell's side of the portal.

MAP21: Nirvana
A lot of DOOM II's levels have seemingly random names, so I guess this one was picked as a tribute to the band.

TNT MAP22: Habitat
Lots of green open spaces, and some running water. It might've kept Earth animals for entertainment, or demons for study.

Plutonia MAP09: Realm
The first room kinda looks like the entrance to a castle. In keeping with Plutonia's nature-ish theme, I always thought the Doomguy just stumbled upon some random old castle in the forest.

Plutonia MAP22: Impossible Mission
A play on the old 60s spy TV show, "Mission: Impossible".

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