ON the newstuff wads..

[princetontiger]

... how do the reviewers know some stuff is from the early 90s? From comments on the wad?

I see some "1994 wads" were uploaded in 2012

[40oz]

Uploaded wads need to be accompanied by a text file. There's a field in the /idgames text file format that says "date." That's how you know what year it's from. In windows, if it doesn't say the date in the text file, ifs you right click on a file and select "properties" you can see when a file was last modified.

[hex11]

Also if the TXT file references BBS numbers, or mentions that you need a fast 486 to play the map, it's probably a 90's PWAD. Ditto if it was made with DEU, EdMap, DCK, and so on...

[MajorRawne]

You can often guess a megawad's age from its appearance and the way it plays. The early wads usually seem to be based on original Doom maps, and/or they feature a horrendous choice of textures, much more noticeably than modern maps. Water and nukage for ceilings, and fire textures for walls, spring to mind.

A lot seem to be base-styled maps which unfortunately use green marble (just like real military bases!) and there are a lot of large, open spaces without much in them - lots of blank walls and empty rooms. I see more invisibility spheres in earlier maps too and a lot more boss monsters.

Of course, the player's perception isn't always 100% reliable, a genuinely crap map that was made yesterday could look much older, but you can sometimes spot "fashions" in mapmaking that have not survived to the current era.

I guess some of the earlier maps were more consistent with Romero's original vision, but you can't just reproduce this for 20 years without growing, evolving and trying new things.

[hex11]

The early wads have one important thing going for them: pure enthusiasm, and creativity unhindered by too much thinking. These days there are far too many expectations of how things are "supposed" to work or look.

[Phml]

Sounds like hipster bullshit to me, especially from someone who claims not to play anything but vanilla wads. You can't compare creativity between modern and old wads with any kind of objectivity if you avoid the vast majority of what is released nowadays.

Likewise, if you asked me I'd say there's much more creativity in new wads than old wads, but that's partly because I don't care for Doom gameplay that isn't about fighting, so obviously my opinion isn't relevant.

[hex11]

So what if I prefer vanilla engine? What does that have to do with the maps themselves?

[Vordakk]

hex11 said:

The early wads have one important thing going for them: pure enthusiasm, and creativity unhindered by too much thinking. These days there are far too many expectations of how things are "supposed" to work or look.

I can agree with this. I think what you are describing is a pitfall that can crop up in any art form though, be it music, movies, comic books, etc. That's why it's sometimes very cool to play pwads by noobs who haven't spent years lurking the forums and reading detail guides. Their levels sometimes have a certain charm to them that makes some "pro" levels seem sterile and "by the numbers".

[Phml]

hex11 said:

So what if I prefer vanilla engine? What does that have to do with the maps themselves?

You can't compare creativity between modern and old wads with any kind of objectivity if you avoid the vast majority of what is released nowadays.

[hex11]

That's just dumb. It's like saying I can't compare games made today for Amiga, Sega Genesis, etc. by retro-coders, because almost every new thing is now made for beefy Windows machine with 3D gfx card.

The fact is: vanilla engine provides a stable framework that is the only valid way to provide a fair comparison. Otherwise you're just changing the rules along the way and giving new maps a distinctive advantage.

[Phml]

Are you trying to shift the goalposts from "new maps are worse than old maps" to "new vanilla maps are worse than old vanilla maps"? You do know this is a forum, not an instant messaging service, right? Anyone can scroll up and see your second post in which you said:

The early wads have one important thing going for them: pure enthusiasm, and creativity unhindered by too much thinking. These days there are far too many expectations of how things are "supposed" to work or look.

With absolutely no mention of that arbitrary restriction you're seemingly trying to imply was assumed from the start.

If your argument is instead "non-vanilla maps aren't tru D00m so don't count", let me just laugh at that. You're saying yourself source ports maps have a distinctive advantage - sounds like standard techporn fetishism equaling number of engine features with creativity, but ignoring that for now, if source ports maps are inherently better (again, a dubious assumption, but I'm just rolling with it), why would you ignore them on that basis in a qualitative comparison?

People in the middle ages were better at moving around because they rode horses better than we do. Nevermind we have cars and planes now.

They were also better at shooting because they handled a bow better than we do. Nevermind we have guns and rifles now.

They were also better at finding food because they were better at hunting than us. Nevermind we have industrialized the whole process now and "only" have half of the world starving rather than 99% back then.

How can you not realise how stupid this sounds?

Your own preferences regarding Doom are entirely irrelevant. This thread is about newstuff wads, and most wads released aren't for vanilla. Therefore, when you say wads today are less creative, you are also talking about those source port wads; yet by your own admission you ignore them because they aren't comparable.

HOW can you not realise how stupid this sounds?

Perhaps EE is right. Neural interfaces already exist and you've been implanted with a virus removing your ability to reason. That's the only possible explanation.

[hex11]

There's nothing arbitrary about comparing apples with apples rather than apples with other fruits. If you do it any other way, you'll come to wrong conclusions. The advanced Doom engines of today have so many features that they give Quake a run for its money, and perhaps are even more capable than it in some ways. You have a lot more room to be creative with them, because the goalposts have been shifted (as you say), and it's possible to create mods that have effectively very little in common with the original 1993 Doom.

With the original engine, you don't have so many wide-open options. You can do things with textures, architecture, pacing, monsters/item placement, and so on. Even DeHackEd only goes so far. Since the toolbox is more limited, you'd think people would use everything under the sun to exploit those few tools, but what happens in practice is many very similar maps get churned out. You have your standard techbase ->corrupted base -> hell progression. You have your computer textures surrounded by blinking lights, and other "typical" texture usages. And all the other stuff that carries over consciously or subconsciously from playing hundreds of Doom PWADs with those things in them. Patterns begin to emerge, and like a virus they replicate themselves in other PWADs.

In the early days, it wasn't quite so bad, because no real patterns were set in place yet. It was basically acceptable to try anything. If you didn't align your textures right, or if used nukage on ceilings, or other strange texture choices, nobody really cared much. Some of it was very cool, 90% was crap (as always), but the enthusiasm and willingness to try anything was very real.

[dew]

hex, you're full of crap. btsx is vanilla compatible and it's laughable saying it's in the same league (or even worse) than the horrible spam spewed in 1994 by enthusiasts who had laughably shallow understanding of doom concepts.

i won't even touch the subject of comparing early noobish vanilla wads with limit breaking maps of today, it's like saying any music in the 1940's was better than today's crap because we have hip-hop (=gzdoom).

it's nonsensical to pretend the early mappers were some sort of geniuses that inspired us. you get an original idea per every 100 shitty by-the-numbers first-time wads where you have to fight barons with shotguns or you get the bfg and a billion cell packs. your nostalgia goggles sicken me.

[hex11]

You're trying too hard to fit whatever I said into some "nostalgia" theory. If you read carefully, I never once said that nothing good ever gets released, or that design was somehow better back in the early days. In fact, I even mentioned that most of it sucked. This concept is not rocket science, and it's even a very common occurence among all art mediums (as vordack pointed out). The main difference between then and now is that people weren't nearly as blinded or swayed by concensus as they are today, by these expectations that are poison to the mind of any creative activity. If you don't understand what I'm talking about, re-read MajorRawne's post, where he mentions specific texture usage. Things considered "bad" or "negative" today didn't have any such connotations back in the days. Once this happens, you start to lose some of your creative freedom, whether you realize it or not, but even if you do it's something you have to work hard to undo. This is what was lost, replaced instead by methodologies, "best practices", etc.

Nobody should be taking what I'm saying "personally", in a negative light towards their projects. And none of this means I don't like to shoot up demon-infested techbases, etc. It's all just observations, to do with as you please - but hopefully not get angry or resentful.

[dew]

except you are wrong. half of the map authors here won't subscribe to consensus and they will fight you over their personal quirks. you don't have to believe me, but i've had, for example, matt tropiano, waverider, rottking and most notably natural_tvventy repeatedly throw out my attempts at "mainsteamizing" their maps into something less weird. they wanted their maps to feel exotic and personalized, even if it meant hurting optimized gameplay i was advocating. saying people subscribe to boring consensus just because there's more quality control and pre-release feedback is stupid.

and regarding texture alignment... uhhhh. i guess i skipped that part of your argument, because my opening line to every mapper i help with playtesting is "i won't be able to help you with textures and visual stuff, because i don't really care about it much." yet i don't see how attention to visuals damages inventiveness. being enthusiastic means nothing if the end product PLAYS terrible, especially if there's no learning curve in following projects.

btw, i don't think you're following TGH's /idgames crusade. he records highly optimized demos for all demos in the doom directory in alphabetical order. this means he spends a lot of time on every map. i have to say, it's both a bit funny and worrying how he gets progressively more frustrated and bitter with every following demopack. i'm afraid he will snap one day and start killing off all the 1994 map authors.

[MTrop]

I think that part of the expectations of today come from the fact that we have better tools for development in the Doom Engine, including iterations of the Doom Engine that remove the flaws of previous/other versions. I would have given one of my feet for something like Doom Builder back when I was using DeeP (the DOS version) and WadAuthor. Although, if you aren't limited by your medium, you are opening yourself up to a world of hurt if you can't set personal limits, nor create an experience that doesn't seem to be "thrown together" from different sources.

I also think that, like any other discipline, mapping is "art," but not in the "painting or sculpture" sense. That point of view has merit up until the intention with the creation is to have other people play or use it. Once it is intended to be interactive, you have to be receptive to input from the people using it. You aren't making statues or living art or paintings - you are creating an extended universe of playable fiction designed to entertain, and if you aren't entertaining, you aren't succeeding. The only criticism that should ever be rejected is what doesn't help you reach your goal. For example, if you wanted to create a map that only involved imps, you would accept input about effective imp placement and ammunition/health distribution, but reject ideas concerning adding other monsters, since that isn't the goal. Granted, I'm not sure if many would play such a map, but there will be a few who are open to such things if they are executed effectively.

dew, could you cite examples where I rejected your suggestions? I want to say if there were any I rejected, it would be ones where it only helped speedrunning and not flow (even though the two are certainly related), or made difficulty too high or made things too frustrating to play.

This is genuine interest, by the way - not an attack. I'm just kinda having an OCD moment like "WHAT? DID I MISS SOMETHING?!" and scouring my E-mails and PMs for something that I may have ignored. :)

I think it would also help to define what you mean by "mainstreaming," or what you think the "mainstream" is in this case, because to a group of people talking about - let's face it - an eighteen-soon-to-be-nineteen-year-old game, there is going to be heavy splintering in a community made up of people that are driven by what they like most about it.

[dew]

what i mean is that you stood your ground over some design choices - for example i pushed for some loopholes and shortcuts in your prcp submissions, which you largely refused. plutonia is full of those and nowadays speedrunning tricks are usually designed, but you didn't want big chunks of your maps skipped. and i am fine with that, i don't expect mappers to fully comply with my suggestions, well, unless i'm reporting nasty bugs. :)

i used you and the others as examples of mappers who will defend their original design ideas throughout the whole betatesting process, explaining your intentions with them even if someone questions them. it took like 10 people to convince NT to tone down the difficulty of platforming in his btsx contribution - so when someone tells me everything contemporary orbits tightly around some golden standard, i have to disagree. i see a lot of personal touch in the maps. that is not diminished by the fact that people don't select texture combinations by rolling their butts over the keyboard nowadays.