The design of E1M1

[Coopersville]

fraggle said:

I'm reminded of how, for example, Half Life 1 has its "hazard course" stage that you can play through to learn the controls, or how the Portal games teach the player each of the controls and concepts gradually. Doom instead teaches the player invisibly, so you're learning how to do things without even realising.

After seeing Egoraptor's Sequelitis episode on Megaman X, I've put a lot of critical thought into how some of my favourite games were designed, and I don't think you're too far off on your assumptions of how Romero designed his levels.

[Super Jamie]

fraggle said:

Heh, great post. The funny thing is that I never actually really noticed the weird clashing styles in E2 until recently. I guess perhaps I wasn't really paying much attention to the level styles. When you're busy trying to get your way through a level, fighting down hordes of demons and searching around for keys to locked doors, I guess it's easy to miss the fact that a moon base is mysteriously decorated with green marble walls and candelabras.

I agree one doesn't pay too much attention to these things whilst in the heat of shooting monsters, but surely sometime in the last 18 years a few people have -nomonsters/tntem'ed a level and just walked around checking out the scenery? Or is it just me? :P

[DuckReconMajor]

I thought everyone did. I thought the clashing E2 stuff was common knowledge? I could have sworn it was discussed in many previous threads.

[Super Jamie]

It has been, usually under the guise of "I hate Sandy Petersen".

See, I've told you guys all along that Sandy is brilliant. Only recently under several critical analyses does it come to light.

[bimlanders]

I never understood the hate on Sandy. I would still play E2 and E3 over just about any PWAD that you could name.

[darkreaver]

Super Jamie said:

critical analyses

You mean "reading too much into every god damn thing"? If so, yeah.

[gravager]

This reminds me of the Half-Life 2 developer commentaries. they talk about why when and where they did certain things in the levels, introducing elements to the player, showcasing new technologies like some of the visual effects in Episode 2, trying to make gameplay intuitive or encourage a healthy amount of experimentation, watching testers play the game and react to different situations, etc.

there's one part somewhere when you pass a folding chair with empty beer bottles all around and a refilling crate of grenade rounds, all overlooking a bog full of zombies. The dev is saying "the idea here is that someone sat here drinking beer and shooting zombies with the grenade launcher." Ok I'm not sure if they were trying to give the player an important hint there (get grenades and shoot zombies is naturally intuitive) but it was funny.

[Super Jamie]

darkreaver said:

You mean "reading too much into every god damn thing"? If so, yeah.

Sorry if my posting is offensive to you. I will immediately cease posting about Doom on the Doomworld Forums. I apologise.

[Guest]

So in a thread that owes its existence to a critical analysis of Doom, Super Jamie is getting trolled for giving his own critical analysis.

Rough day on the forums, much.

[Gadbury]

darkreaver said:

You mean "reading too much into every god damn thing"? If so, yeah.

Harsh. I've enjoyed this thread, particularly Jamie's thoughts. It's fun to analyse / review. If you don't like it don't get involved.

[darkreaver]

I didn`t mean SuperJamie in particular, I meant almost everyone here at DW. I don`t know if that makes it better or worse haha.
And not for E1M1 only, but Doom/2 in general. I really don`t think they put as much thought into (most of) it as many of you believe they did. The DTWIDD-thread(s) for instance...

But yeah, I should have kept my mouth shut I guess lol =)

Gadbury said:

It's fun to analyse

Sure. I`d call it over-analyzing though.

[Super Jamie]

I disagree.

How much effort do you put into your PWADs? Do you try to make a good gameplay experience to some design goals or do you just randomly whack down some sectors and hope for the best? Keep in mind id were doing this as a job, and were as close to "experienced professionals" as it got in 1993.

Interviews with Sandy have shown he thought long and hard about his levels, so I think we're more on the right track than on it. Look at the use and re-use of space in some of Tim and Theresa's Strife levels, both from a simple mapping perspective and tying in with the underlying story.

There's no way that happened without some serious intentional planning and forethought.

But each to their own. I found long ago that I get more enjoyment out of things when I analyse them, so I love looking more and more at Doom and loving it more and more each time I do.

[Gadbury]

I'm glad the discussion has remained civil :)

There are so many aspects of Doom that were done right (and admirably stand the test of time), I find it very hard to believe that there was much luck involved, but its success and longevity was due to talent and well-considered decisions. However, as I too like to ponder, of course it has crossed my mind; were they lucky? Was Doom some kind of happy accident?

Generally, I think not. The team was exceptionally talented and experienced. Lets not forget that although id Software were in their infancy, and the guys were young, the two Johns - for example - were experienced programmers and had been writing games for many years (in Romero's case for 14 years). Design decisions were being (well) made up until the end of Doom's development. I often wonder 'what if?' to many of the ideas that didn't make it in to the final game (the same for Quake also). However, the cuts were made with good reason; Romero particularly seemed to have clear idea what the game should and shouldn't contain, particularly through iterative development and playtesting ("remove the collectable items / lives, it just slows the game down", "levels can look like this"). Romero clearly lived and breathed this game - his enthusiasm is affective. There was clearly enthusiasm, excitement and synergy in the group (perhaps except Tom Hall, although his contribution cannot be discounted; i.e. he was responsible for elements such as push-walls, teleports and enemies that fly/float), and coupled with the talent, experience, confidence, desire to do new things and very hard work, its no wonder the results were wonderful.

I think people want to figure out why this game was (and is) so magic, thus the eager analytics! To the fans, this game is a rare gem, and games like it come along very rarely.

As a side note, one game developer that was amazingly lucky - and often confesses to this - is Peter Molyneux. How he got his break is incredible. Also, key features of his groundbreaking Populous were a result of experimentation and his lacking programming skills i.e. raising / lowering of the land was manually controlled as he couldn't figure out how to automate it. Once the workaround was playtested, he found that it was actually an enjoyable and strategic mechanic. For those that are interested, here is Peter Molyneux's post-mortem on Populous - very interesting: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014627/Classic-Game-Postmortem

[Jan]

bimlanders said:

I never understood the hate on Sandy. I would still play E2 and E3 over just about any PWAD that you could name.

This is a personal opinion, but to me the thing about Sandy's maps is: they are fun and often clever, but they feel like I'm trying to beat a game while Romero's maps feel like I'm trying to survive in a world that's been overrun by demons.

[david_a]

I think I actually played Doom 2 first.


MAP01 shares some elements with E1M1:
- showcasing height variations/lighting right away. The walls riddled with gunfire make it obvious that a hard battle has already been fought. Once you get a glimpse of that dramatic sky it's pretty clear that humanity is well on it's way to losing.
- a U-shaped layout
- outdoor areas that can be explored
- tricky secrets. The initial chainsaw secret is pretty mean when you think about it - most new players would never, ever think about turning around before jumping off that platform.

I think it's a harder map though, which I guess is fitting for a sequel. You run into some 'close encounters' almost right away.

[qoncept]

MAP01 doesn't seem to have had near the thought put in to it that E1M1 did. Or maybe they just failed miserably. MAP01 seems more like a proof of concept than a well made level.

[DeathevokatioN]

janvknn said:

This is a personal opinion, but to me the thing about Sandy's maps is: they are fun and often clever, but they feel like I'm trying to beat a game while Romero's maps feel like I'm trying to survive in a world that's been overrun by demons.

I agree with you on Romero's levels, but I think maps like "Monster Condo", "The Chasm" and "Spirit World" have the same definitive "Doomed" feeling of Romero's levels.

[david_a]

qoncept said:

MAP01 doesn't seem to have had near the thought put in to it that E1M1 did. Or maybe they just failed miserably. MAP01 seems more like a proof of concept than a well made level.

Yeah, I'm not sure he even tried to make another intro level in the style of E1M1. I think an obvious improvement would be to make it a bit more interconnected - make a window or someting to link the starting room visually to the big room at the end, and link the two outdoor areas.

EDIT: Sandy designed MAP01?! I always thought it was Romero.

[Gadbury]

I also thought (assumed, more like) Doom II's first map Entryway was a Romero design.

[Face23785]

david_a said, in regards to MAP01:


...The walls riddled with gunfire make it obvious that a hard battle has already been fought...

I NEVER noticed that. God I suck.

[40oz]

What I like about Doom 2 is that by the time Doom 2 came out, everyone had already played Doom 1 (or at least the shareware of it) So even though the design of MAP01 wasn't as carefully planned out as the design of E1M1 was, it wasn't necessary to put the player through another tutorial again. MAP01 is considerably harder than E1M1 is (albeit a different kind of hard) Essentially the players who bought Doom 2 were getting what they wanted... More Doom.

[NiTROACTiVE]

E1M1 was one of the best levels I ever played in any game. It was really creative and I thought it was fun to play in the level.

[T-Rex]

DeathevokatioN said:

I agree with you on Romero's levels, but I think maps like "Monster Condo", "The Chasm" and "Spirit World" have the same definitive "Doomed" feeling of Romero's levels.

Speaking of Sandy's maps, I think they get a lot of hate, because most of them, excluding the Tom Hall maps Sandy worked on, were bland and unimpressive to look at compared to Romero's maps, as his maps were colourful and vivid. To be fair, Sandy's maps are hit or miss. While some are mediocre to garbage, like Doom 2's Map21: Nirvana for example, others like Map27: Monster Condo showed Sandy's more creative side and that he has potential to rival Romero in map designing.

On a side note, in relation to the topic, I never thought of E1M1 showcasing all the effects and possibilities of mapmaking. I just see it as a warm-up level to get you into the gameplay, and when it comes to multiplayer, serves as a prime example of a deathmatch map. I think Romero intended it not to be just for single-player but also DM since it's short, has multiple routes to take, and a couple of large areas for you to run around freely.

[verstandlich]

The first thing I remember seeing in DooM was that corpse in the center of the very first room and thinking... "woah, this is going to be brutal"

[Xaser]

Hmm, going back to the earlier topic of MAP01 vs. E1M1, I'm actually of the opinion that Sandy studied E1M1 very carefully before making it. Not only are there the similarities David mentioned (I'd also like to add that the northern room seems analagous to E1M1's computer room, albeit not as iconic), but try comparing it to any of Sandy's other works and you'll notice a slight dissimilarity of style. MAP01 feels a lot "tighter" in the design aspect, if that makes any sense.

The fact that it's actually fooled people into thinking it's a Romero creation is pseudo-proof, IMO. :P

[printz]

Conversely, I was fooled for half of my life that MAP20 is by Petersen, due to how wide open and under-detailed it is.

[Maes]

qoncept said:

MAP01 doesn't seem to have had near the thought put in to it that E1M1 did. Or maybe they just failed miserably. MAP01 seems more like a proof of concept than a well made level.

I think DWANGO5 MAP01 proves just the opposite: it is a quite blatant ripoff of Doom 2 MAP01, yet with subtle modifications, it actually became a legendary DM map, so the original must have had something good about it.

I guess a whole new thread could be made about what makes it so great, but I'll pass. I'll only briefly mention that it has EVERY weapon (and a use for it), that you can't hide in any place for too long and be immune from every possible approach, so it discourages camping/gunshipping and forces player to go out and sort it out face-to-face.