What you can get away with when youre a good mapper

[40oz]

The titlepic of ksutra.wad features an explicitly sexual scene, yet it is regarded pretty respectfully as a good classic megawad.

Deus vult 2 also has rape joke/meme Easter eggs in some of the maps

What other outlandish or obscene things have good mappers done that tend to be swept under the rug or overlooked in peoples reviews that otherwise a newer or amateur mapper wouldn't be easily forgiven for?

[Technician]

40oz said:

The titlepic of ksutra.wad features an explicitly sexual scene, yet it is regarded pretty respectfully as a good classic megawad.

Deus vult 2 also has rape joke/meme Easter eggs in some of the maps

What other outlandish or obscene things have good mappers done that tend to be swept under the rug or overlooked in peoples reviews that otherwise a newer or amateur mapper wouldn't be easily forgiven for?

Forgiven? Is the Doom community becoming a Marry sue-like hug-box where we have a hive-mind morality?

Of course, I guess it does depend on the community, as in only the ZDoom forums made a stink about Mark's nigger notation.

[Memfis]

I love the ksutra humor and had a good laugh reading the comments on /idgames. ("I find it interesting that a gay couple can make a megawad so good, I now don't have anything against gays." - anonymous)

On the other hand, I never "forgave" Deus Vult for all these lame portraits and internet-related jokes: that stuff is as uncool as it gets and it strongly damages the atmosphere of the levels.

This probably has something to do with the fact that Method and Gusta always seemed like fun and lighthearted guys to me, while Doom Marine isn't particularly loveable due to his unpleasant superior attitude.

[Technician]

Memfis said:

while Doom Marine isn't particularly loveable due to his unpleasant superior attitude.

When you make over a hundred-million in Bitcoin, you're bound to make a few enemies.

[jmickle66666666]

i didn't know about the deus vult stuff, that's pretty shitty.

ksutra's humour doesn't really harm anyone, so there's nothing to forgive.

celebrating the anniversary of columbine is also pretty fucking awful.

however, you can make a decision to separate the maps from things the author has done/other distasteful things that are associated. Sometimes it's a lot harder than others (sgt mark for example I just can't even begin to support)

I guess it comes down to your personal opinion of the wad quality/distastefulness ratio. Going with the tide of the community also happens a lot. If a lot of people are outraged or overlook something, its very easy to just do the same.

[Phml]

To be fair, these wads were released a decade ago. The gaming community has changed in the last few years, to put it diplomatically.

[Linguica]

Well this thread isn't quite what I expected it to be about...

TBQH I don't think I would make do-it.wad today.

[glenzinho]

In regards to BTSX and the inclusion of the sprite set from Doom 2; I have read that it needs to be included due to the extensive palette work. Normally when someone releases wads with iwad assets it causes a quick reaction from the community that usually leads to the offending assets being removed or the wad's links being removed. I haven't seen much objection to BTSX, and in fact I personally don't object either but am curious to the justification of their inclusion.

[Aaron Blain]

There was a very good zdoom mod called "The Inquisitor" which nobody played because it contained some very unfortunate images of sexual violence in an easter egg.

[esselfortium]

glenzinho said:

In regards to BTSX and the inclusion of the sprite set from Doom 2; I have read that it needs to be included due to the extensive palette work. Normally when someone releases wads with iwad assets it causes a quick reaction from the community that usually leads to the offending assets being removed or the wad's links being removed. I haven't seen much objection to BTSX, and in fact I personally don't object either but am curious to the justification of their inclusion.

I was actually surprised that I didn't need to explain that when BTSX E1 first came out.

Long story short, BTSX's palette is substantially different from Doom's. A lot of redundant colors were replaced in order to correct the absent dark reds and squeeze in two additional color ramps (15 shades of lavender, plus 11 shades of maroon to improve colormap fading of desaturated reds). There was no real way to accomplish this change without needing to remap any affected graphics, which accounted for a large portion of the sprites and some other assorted graphics.

Because BTSX is a vanilla-compatible project, this meant needing to include the entire set of sprites. Requiring the use of a tool like DEUSF (emulated by the -merge parameter in Chocolate Doom) to merge in the missing IWAD lumps on the user's end would have also been untenable: due to the number of lumps in the BTSX wads, this would have put vanilla users at risk of this dangerous hard-crash bug. (Fun fact: This bug was first discovered by Csonicgo when testing a development build of BTSX E1! It's amazing that we're still discovering new ways to break the game.)

[TMD]

Make a light-ish hearted reference about Columbine when releasing a sequel to one of their definitive works.

[Marcaek]

do we need to keep bringing that up

[Torturephile]

Memfis said:

On the other hand, I never "forgave" Deus Vult for all these lame portraits and internet-related jokes: that stuff is as uncool as it gets and it strongly damages the atmosphere of the levels.

I'm in for some mood whiplash every now and then. I laughed when I saw King Dedede and others in an otherwise serious wad. I spent a while trying to look for all of those.

[VGA]

Technician said:

When you make over a hundred-million in Bitcoin, you're bound to make a few enemies.

What are you referring to if I may ask?

[Du Mhan Yhu]

NeoDoom had some tits.

[Cupboard]

- Linear level progression
- Remixing IWAD maps
- Copious and questionably overdone amounts of detailing
- Copy + pasting structures and architecture
- Hilariously inappropriate map titles

[baja blast rd.]

Spider Masterminds with 32x32 hitboxes that fly, spam rockets, and are faster than Arch-viles.

[Remiel]

Murder.

[scifista42]

Speedmapping and limitation projects.
Excessive file size of your work.
Making insanely difficult and unfair maps.
Copyright infringement to some extent.

[dew]

Macblain said:

There was a very good zdoom mod called "The Inquisitor" which nobody played because it contained some very unfortunate images of sexual violence in an easter egg.

This one goes deeper than just titillation with a sidedish of torture. The depiction is rather distasteful, but the Temple of the Lizardmen saga does the same and people managed to go with the power fantasy of saving caged and tortured scantily-clad women without throwing a tantrum. Actually, given Shadowman's grimdark srs bsns take on Hexen, The Inquisitor could've probably gotten away with far more if it was woven into the setting appropriately. He got some tongue lashing because it was just clumsily tacked on into what everyone thought was a hyuk-hyuk wink-wink easter egg.

And then shit hit the fan when he explained that it actually (and literally, mind you) expressed his feelings towards Pussy Riot, the Russian girl punk band riling against Putin, the Orthodox Church and their shady support of each other. At the time they were jailed and facing a trial for invading a church and performing a rude sacrilegious protest song there, which later led to pretty harsh sentences for "hurting people's religious feelings". The western world mostly saw it as a political witch hunt to squash Putin's critics.

Tl;dr you can't get away with a highly controversial political message. Unless you count this.

[mouldy]

There isn't really a rule saying good artists can't also be dicks, and occasionally they are. Which is why I usually make an effort to avoid the artist on a personal level. The artist doesn't interest me so much, because the higher your opinion of their work, the more disappointing it is to see the ordinary person behind it with all their ordinary human failings.

And while some people are inherently unlikeable, some of those people do manage to change over time (anyone in their 30s will cringe at what they were like as a teenager), so not sure threads like this which keep past grievances alive are such a great idea.

[VGamingJunkie]

It could also be that, if the work is high quality and entertaining enough, that people are more willing to overlook that because they're distracted by it being such a good map/mod. With lesser quality ones, there's nothing to distract them so these poisonous aspects stick out like a sore thumb.

[joe-ilya]

I don't know, because I'm not a good mapper.

[j4rio]

Memfis said:

This probably has something to do with the fact that Method and Gusta always seemed like fun and lighthearted guys to me, while Doom Marine isn't particularly loveable due to his unpleasant superior attitude.

Not that it matters a whole lot anymore, since he has most likely succumbed to ebola by now.

[Aaron Blain]

dew said:

This one goes deeper than just titillation with a sidedish of torture.

I agree, I think if he had let it slide it would have been accepted as just one more manifestation of the prevailing gamer/manboy culture of thoughtlessly violent misogyny.

Also, as a member of the Russian mod community, I don't think he had the 'cred' to get more than a quick dismissal from the community. A more established mapper might have gotten more consideration.

I don't think there's any excusing this sort of thing, but I also enjoy the works of Lovecraft and R.E. Howard, at least the ones that are more than a thinly-veiled expression of fear and hatred toward other races.

Inquisitor is a good mod. I didn't play the sequel, but only because I detest filling up RPG meters like a patient packrat, and because it runs a bit slow on my computer.

[Hoodie]

I never thought it mattered what you put in the wad as long as it was fun to play...do people who play doom get offended?

Hmm...

Like, only someone who really likes doom would play wads yeah? And all of these people probably wouldn't really care if there's violent sex in an already cartoony violent game yeah?

I don't know...

[NuMetalManiak]

not sure if this counts but I remember fighting lost souls underwater in Super Sonic Doom.