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MeetyourUnmaker

Doom 3 Meatmoss/growth

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So what is the actual logic behind this? Where did all the bodies and skeletons come from that appear in it later on? Why is it barely encountered in the actual Hell level? Do you think it will appear in Doom 4?

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I hope not, but I'm pretty certain it will. When your imagination runs dry, that's usually what you turn to. The most blatant depiction of communicating the message "something is alive here and you should be scared"

Its more stupid than frightening to me. Especially when used in Doom 2 when you're playing an otherwise clean an inconspicuous techbase, and to make it "scary" the mapper cuts out some floor tiles and puts skin under it, and draws some dreadful jagged sector vomit mountain that's a pain to meander around and completely out of context.

As a player I get the feeling that the mapper really didn't want to stop making techbases but didn't feel it was fair to make the player feel he isn't making any progress. Its just sloppy. Especially when Doom has so many cooler ways of communicating that message, like with marble castles, teleporters, gargoyle faces, torches, candlabras, bloodbaths, wood panels, red rock, hanging bodies, etc.

I like Doom64s depiction of hell, which thankfully, had a much wider use of the color range than red. Depicting post apocalyptic wastelands, and evil fortresses and stuff, without any of that flesh nonsense.

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40oz said:

I hope not, but I'm pretty certain it will. When your imagination runs dry, that's usually what you turn to. The most blatant depiction of communicating the message "something is alive here and you should be scared"

Its more stupid than frightening to me. Especially when used in Doom 2 when you're playing an otherwise clean an inconspicuous techbase, and to make it "scary" the mapper cuts out some floor tiles and puts skin under it, and draws some dreadful jagged sector vomit mountain that's a pain to meander around and completely out of context.

As a player I get the feeling that the mapper really didn't want to stop making techbases but didn't feel it was fair to make the player feel he isn't making any progress. Its just sloppy. Especially when Doom has so many cooler ways of communicating that message, like with marble castles, teleporters, gargoyle faces, torches, candlabras, bloodbaths, wood panels, red rock, hanging bodies, etc.

I like Doom64s depiction of hell, which thankfully, had a much wider use of the color range than red. Depicting post apocalyptic wastelands, and evil fortresses and stuff, without any of that flesh nonsense.


I liked D64's version too but the flesh stuff still existed. It just wasn't used nearly as much.

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40oz said:

Especially when Doom has so many cooler ways of communicating that message, like with marble castles, teleporters, gargoyle faces, torches, candlabras, bloodbaths, wood panels, red rock, hanging bodies, etc.


I literally burst out laughing. Yes, marble castles, candles and corpses are sooo much more original than a biomass. I could see your point until you said this.

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I don't know what the the stuff actually is, or what it's purpose is, but I do remember seeing stitches on one of these flesh tendrils in Doom 3.

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I'm a fan of Adrian Carmacks art, what can I say? Fiery pseudo lovecraftian hell is (to quote myself) cooler and has much more character than slimy blobs of nothing hell.

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There's a fair difference between the meatmoss in Deadspace and the growth in Doom 3, I really wouldn't say they are exactly the same sort of thing, the growth in Doom 3 is kind of like some sort of entrails or intestines wrapping itself around the bases.

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40oz said:

I'm a fan of Adrian Carmacks art, what can I say? Fiery pseudo lovecraftian hell is (to quote myself) cooler and has much more character than slimy blobs of nothing hell.


I have no problem with the stuff you've mentioned (except for castles, I hate that), I just found it funny that you complained how cliche biomass is and then brought up something even more obvious.

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Avoozl said:

There's a fair difference between the meatmoss in Deadspace and the growth in Doom 3, I really wouldn't say they are exactly the same sort of thing, the growth in Doom 3 is kind of like some sort of entrails or intestines wrapping itself around the bases.


If I remember correctly, in Dead Space, the so-called corruption is actually composed of dust (skin flakes etc) and other organic waste reanimated by the necromorph pathogen.

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I always thought that there would be a boss tied to these slime-like growths at some point in the game but it never happened. I guess the meatmoss stuff was just to show that hell was slowly consuming the base. To be honest, Metroid Fusion did the whole "meatmoss takeover" thing much more effectively. Once you find the source of the growth and kill it, areas of the base that were previously infected release and become open to be explored. I felt like in Doom 3 the meatmoss built suspense early into the game as the player wonders what they will eventually encounter, but it goes nowhere and is soon forgotten. Disappointing.

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Touchdown said:

I literally burst out laughing. Yes, marble castles, candles and corpses are sooo much more original than a biomass. I could see your point until you said this.

I think his point isn't that those are more original, it's that the doom engine does a better job of rendering those things.

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Wait, so he criticized the biomass in DOOM 3 but meant DOOM1/2 when talking about castles and stuff? I know he mentioned DOOM II but I thought he was still talking generally, not just about the old DOOM at this point.

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Its probably more personal preference than anything. I really like the contrast if future technology clashing with more arcane medieval stuff like Quake and Doom and Wolf3D does. Its an element largely unexplored, but just about any scifi military shooter involving aliens has parts where they stretch their weird slimy organic filth all over the base, because that communicates the invasion feeling well with an element of disturbing. Doom -- a game that depicts hell on earth/mars is capable of so much more than that. Everyone who has ever mapped for Doom here seems to have a different view on what hell should look like, but its not usually sticky tentacles and growths or whatever, yet its the dominant theme in parts of Doom 3 outside of satanic background laughter and lights flicking off.

Doom is so much more than that so it seems really unimaginative to limit yourself to stuff like that that's usually all scifi alien games have to hang on to.

Say what you will, but I know from experience talking to fans of modern games to be very dismissive about breaking away from the norm, so I'm really not expecting you to change your mind. But if you really think it would make for a lousy game, you're being really closed minded.

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But change my mind about what? I mostly agree with you, like I said I don't mind those elements you've mentioned previously. I just don't feel like the biomass is so much worse than them. I've always seen it as part of the demonic corruption, with spikes and flesh growing out of walls for no 'scientific' reason because it's demonic in nature. The same thing appears in Diablo III where stuff like demonic tumours spreads across the environment.

It's worth noting though that it's only a part of the 'process'. My favourite corruption element in DOOM 3 was how in later levels you've had walls disappear to reveal hellish imagery, defying logic. It's not just biomass, the entire base is being terraformed by Hell, destroying and corrupting reality. Delta Labs level in RoE is a great example of how an extended exposure to hellish influence defiles the human realm.

Besides, the flesh elements are plentiful in the original DOOM games. The only thing I don't like is going too medieval. A castle or a fortress that looks like it could have been built by humans except there's a red sky... not my favourite way of portraying Hell. I feel like some Hell maps are too medieval, and not hellish enough, if that makes sense. But it's hard to describe. I feel like Quake executes medieval elements nicely, without being too 'human' about them.

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In Doom 3, I tend to think the biomass is actually an entity of it's very own. Indifferent towards you as it consumes parts of the base and spreads it's "body" across the environment.

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