What you think the map design will be like?

[quakke]

So what kinda expectations do people have regarding the level design in this? I mean it's easy to just remove regenerating health, ads, auto holstered sprint and weaponlimit, but it takes thought to make good non-linear map. We haven't seen non-linear map from mainstream devs in really long time, atleast not in fps games and this is one area that scares me because everything that has been revealed about this, was said that "it's linear" and as we know, doom wasn't linear. Progression of course was because it was "you have to go there to get this to get this to get that.." but it had the freedom when you go there and usually "how you go there".

So the million euro/dollar question is: Is this gonna be linear, like the "map" on the right side of the picture?

[HorrorMovieRei]

I think(and hope) they wont drop the ball on that. Although I doubt the maps will be as big and complex as the old Doom games, atleast it wont be a big CoD styled corridor.
Or maybe it's gonna be something like Serious Sam/Painkiller, because that's what modern devs think oldschool shooters were like. I actually love those games, but if they made the new Doom like that, it would be a bit disapointing, because clever and well designed maps are one of the main things that make Doom the Doom we know and love.

On a side note, I hope there's a secret Wolfenstein tno easter egg map. Just for shits and giggles

[Jaxxoon R]

I hope the maps morph and change like in the classic games. So that walls, ceilings and floors drop away and shift in surreal and neat ways.

[Koko Ricky]

id just can't ignore this aspect. They've gotten too many other things right, judging from the reveal and the new teaser. I feel like they're pretty aware of the community and the fact that we enjoy exploration. That was always one of the draws of Doom.

[doom_is_great]

HorrorMovieGuy said:

Or maybe it's gonna be something like Serious Sam/Painkiller, because that's what modern devs think oldschool shooters were like.

That would be very disappointing. I hope that Id of all people would know that pure "arena" type battles are good when used sparingly, but when used too much, they become repetitive and boring. Doom was not just a bunch of arena battles linked together.

[NoirSuede]

I don't mind as much if the designs of the levels themselves are linear (although i would be sad), but it would be ass-backwards if Id still used the E(number)M(number) level progression. I mean RAGE proved that Id can make hubs (they're not spectacular, but they work), and it's time for DOOM to ditch the level-by-level format and make all of the levels interconnect to each other, kinda like how Bloodborne did it :

[Amph]

Jaxxoon R said:

I hope the maps morph and change like in the classic games. So that walls, ceilings and floors drop away and shift in surreal and neat ways.

there are two kind of exploration, open and closed ones, i prefer the latter to be honest

i'm not exactly a fan of rage exploration , or far cry 4 exploration

i like more labyrinthic exploration

[40oz]

If the protagonist is fast, there is more inclination to make non linear exploratory level designs. One of the reasons 1994 wads are tolerable to me is that even when the level is confusing, it doesn't take long explore every corner and exhaust all available outlets. I couldn't imagine having to do endure that with the slow moving tank soldiers in modern shooters.

I'm sure in testing they'll recognize that real quick.

[Touchdown]

I don't expect DOOM4 to break away from completely linear levels with bits of exploration here and there. Honestly, if you're hoping for more, you're up for a disappointment.

It's funny, because there are still games with an 'oldschool' level design: Deus Ex, Dishonored, BioShock. But for some reason nobody wants to apply that design to purely run&gun shooters.

[scifista42]

I honestly don't expect Doom 4 to have better level design than average community-made Doom1/2 mapset. I wish to be proven wrong, though.

[ChickenOrBeef]

Touchdown said:

It's funny, because there are still games with an 'oldschool' level design: Deus Ex, Dishonored, BioShock. But for some reason nobody wants to apply that design to purely run&gun shooters.

That's because there aren't really any run & gun shooters. The exception being some smaller, indie games.

[Jaxxoon R]

What if they hit up a Hexen-style HUB system?

[EternalWolf]

I always thought Metroid Prime had map design similar to DOOM.

[Touchdown]

ChickenOrBeef said:

That's because there aren't really any run & gun shooters. The exception being some smaller, indie games.

Sorry, that was a failed description on my part. What I meant was that DX/Dishonored aren't shooters. DX is more of an RPG, Dishonored is a stealth game with RPGish stuff. BioShock is a little bit more of a shooter but it's still full of Shock2 remnants. Those games have an open-ended / exploration-based level design. But there aren't any 'standard' shooters that do, for some reason.

[Arctangent]

That's probably because the only shooters that would really benefit from side branches are the Halo games, and I'm not even sure of the recent ones still have the overshield or invisibility powerups in single-player.

Seriously, there's really no reason to add exploration to most modern shooters; the guns aren't really different enough to incentivize looking for them, and they don't have anything else to look for. Sure, some do have tokens to grab to unlock bonus content, but that sort of thing works better as an easter egg hunt, which most devs seem to realize and use it as such i.e. not giving the tokens their own branches, just placing them where you can find them if you look around rooms carefully or do things in a certain order .

[Shadow Hog]

Ideally: it'd be like some of the more recent Quake fan levels, like those by sock, with a lot open areas and high emphasis on verticality. Each level would by-and-large be self-contained, without too much concern for how each level logically flows into one another (barring maybe having the entrance for one level look like the exit of the previous - although even in that case, it'd be painfully obvious when you're coming up on the level exit).

Realistically: it'll probably be similar to Half-Life; linear, but with enough room to explore in each area that most people aren't going to be terribly troubled by that. It's just how FPS design is done these days, for better or worse.

[NoirSuede]

Arctangent said:

That's probably because the only shooters that would really benefit from side branches are the Halo games, and I'm not even sure of the recent ones still have the overshield or invisibility powerups in single-player.

Seriously, there's really no reason to add exploration to most modern shooters; the guns aren't really different enough to incentivize looking for them, and they don't have anything else to look for. Sure, some do have tokens to grab to unlock bonus content, but that sort of thing works better as an easter egg hunt, which most devs seem to realize and use it as such i.e. not giving the tokens their own branches, just placing them where you can find them if you look around rooms carefully or do things in a certain order .

If you have even played a Halo game you will notice VERY quickly that Halo is pretty much a slower Doom.

EternalWolf said:

I always thought Metroid Prime had map design similar to DOOM.

Well the one big difference between Metroid Prime and Doom is that in Metroid Prime you can visit levels you've finished before to grab stuff that you couldn't get before.

[doom_is_great]

NoirSuede said:

Well the one big difference between Metroid Prime and Doom is that in Metroid Prime you can visit levels you've finished before to grab stuff that you couldn't get before.

That would be a pretty cool feature in the new Doom. What would be even cooler is that when you return to a certain level, it would be repopulated with some more monsters and also have become more hellish with more corpses, pentagrams, and flesh decorating the level and maybe even changing some of the structure and architecture of the level. That would be awesome.

[Captain Toenail]

I imagine it will look like this. Some areas of choice, but more or less a linear string of larger scripted areas. Similar to new Wolfenstein I guess, but with less sneaking.

Spoiler

[NoirSuede]

Captain Toenail said:

I imagine it will look like this. Some areas of choice, but more or less a linear string of larger scripted areas. Similar to new Wolfenstein I guess, but with less sneaking.

Spoiler

Well the new Wolfenstein was made by Machine Games who can't really design a non-linear level (the linearity is worse in Riddick though), while Doom 4 is made by Id, so anything can happen at this point.

[Deleted_Account]

I'm hoping for lots of exploration.

[Jaxxoon R]

They will follow the example of Slough of Despair, and every map will be shaped like a thing.

Map 02, for example, shall be a kitty.

[snapshot]

All i'm expecting of the design is a Space ship with some enemies,and/or Some haunted Palaces or castles .
Because Of today's technics,updates and graphic features FPS Is getting lower and lower, although companies are trying to get the Highest FPS by designing new sufficient Graphic cards , We might get a crappy level design that is only about Cutscenes and infinite drama (Like COD ? Yuck ! ) and High quality, That's a bad thing . However we might get good FPS in PC a little bit, Not sure if the FPS will be the same in consoles #GamePortingLogic , Let us Just hope the game will be Fun and levels will be well designed whatever it takes (Doesn't matter if they remove the cutscenes or if they even separated level parts "Like Half-Life 2" )

[Deleted_Account]

Jaxxoon R said:

They will follow the example of Slough of Despair, and every map will be shaped like a thing.

Map 02, for example, shall be a kitty.

I wonder what textures could be used?

[scwiba]

EternalWolf said:

I always thought Metroid Prime had map design similar to DOOM.

I don't really agree about the similarity, but I'd be ecstatic to see Prime-type level design in the new Doom. And I suppose it's not too farfetched, with Metroidvania-inspired design in recent AAA games like Tomb Raider.

[EternalWolf]

I just always felt like I was playing a modern doom, with the weapons acting in Prime acting as keys in DOOM(which they essentially are, with added functionality). Then I look at the maps and there are multiple exits and entrances to each room, some locked some not. Thats closer to DOOM than any other FPS released since then IMO, even though it likely wasnt meant to be at all.

When playing and exploring a Metroid game, 2d or 3d, you kinda look at is backtracking, a giant puzzle, but thats really a glorified DOOM with exit levels. If you take the original intermission screens and look at each area, then place keys for one area into another and allow backtracking instead of all the keys in one level, thats the same design as Prime.

[illYay1337]

[/b]

I love using this image as an example of how boring map design is nowadays.

The one thing I am worried about is them messing up level design. I keep seeing all these games that are supposed to be throwbacks to the classics like Shadow Warrior, Rise of the Triad, etc... But they all get the level design wrong. Sometimes they have secrets, but it's just some random little secret door on a wall somewhere off to the side along the linear path. It's never anything truly creative like the secret level entrance in E1M3. There's really nothing to explore since you always know to just go forward. You'd never stumble upon a secret while exploring. You just force yourself to scan the world for random out of ordinary things because you know it's supposed to be somewhere on this linear path you're on. And sometimes you don't have the freedom of just going back to an area you've been before since the "story" says you shouldn't be able to go back to somewhere for some random reason.

One thing I like about Doom is it's the perfect balance of exploring and secrets and puzzle solving without being too open. Like I don't want a large far cry or GTA or assassins creed style world. But I also don't want completely linear corridors like CoD, Halo, Wolfenstein TNO (YES, Wolf, even your levels aren't great), etc...

When they design multiplayer levels for games, there are all these different paths to take to get somewhere. All they really have to do is take the ideas behind making a good CoD or Quake multiplayer map and make a single player map around it instead of making it all linear.

And I'm not a fan of endless arena massacre style gameplay either. It's only fun if done sparingly, just like Teleport traps, etc...

If the whole game revolves around nothing but mindless shooting like Painkiller or Serious Sam I tend to get pretty bored. They lock the doors behind you so you're stuck in the arena, and then beat an area, and go to the next. No exploring or anything. Usually they let you go back to areas you've been for whatever reason, maybe to pick up ammo you didn't need earlier or something. If they're going to have tons of shooting do it like Go2It. It's a nonlinear map with insane amounts of monsters and tons of action, but still completely free.


Metroid prime for some reason reminded me of a different DooM clone called Eradicator. Not sure why. http://store.steampowered.com/app/329640/