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PikaCommando

Ways that official levels could be better?

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Vorknkx said:

Mostly because of the bare stone walls all over the place. And the layout is somewhat confusing to me, though I'm not sure why.

At any rate, I rarely enjoy my visits to this level. Downtown and Industrial Zone give me a lot more fun.

I understand. When I was a bit younger I didn't like the level either for looking bland. It took me a while to see the level as "not bland" because of the architecture.

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Doom 2's city levels should have ripped a page out of Duke3ds level design bible imo... either do a city level or don't, don't do what doom 2 did.

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nxGangrel said:

When I was a bit younger I didn't like the level either for looking bland.


You have a point - my level tastes have also changed somewhat over time.

The Abandoned Mines, for example, used to be one of my least favorite levels, but nowadays I have a newfound appreciation for it. Same goes for Tenements.

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Job said:

Gonna take the cheap shot at Hand Slough of Despair. Seemingly pointless design and terrible 70s cop chase scene music. Only real upside to the level is it gives the false impression of non-linearity. Oh, and that it has an exit.

Hear hear!

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Doom 1 is perfect besides some levels in Episode 2.

Doom 2 on the other hand...gonna need a lot of work.

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Tompig said:

Doom 2's city levels should have ripped a page out of Duke3ds level design bible imo... either do a city level or don't, don't do what doom 2 did.

Yes, they should have learned how to make city maps from a game on the more-suited BUILD engine released two years later than what they were working on with their less-capable (but far more robust) Doom engine.

In other words, Doom II's city maps were pretty much the first in the field of making city environments in a FPS; of course they're going to feel crude and shitty today, considering that most of what makes a city map believable by later standards simply isn't possible to do with the limitations of Doom's engine.

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Didn't they intentionally make levels abstract and unbelievable as a design choice? I have to imagine they could have done more to make it look like a city if they really wanted to.

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BaronOfStuff said:

Yes, they should have learned how to make city maps from a game on the more-suited BUILD engine released two years later than what they were working on with their less-capable (but far more robust) Doom engine.

In other words, Doom II's city maps were pretty much the first in the field of making city environments in a FPS; of course they're going to feel crude and shitty today, considering that most of what makes a city map believable by later standards simply isn't possible to do with the limitations of Doom's engine.


Not according to Vette and Terminator they weren't, I think even one Robocop game pre dated Doom 2 and had a 3D city map.

From what I remember Vette and Terminator had the best 3d city maps of the time that I've seen...of course simple and plain but much less sickly than what we got in Doom 2...but there is also the engine to consider and how they differed for each game. Terminator was an open ended 3D FPS and Vette was an open ended racing game with a variety of cameras angles, first person included.

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The only levels I really didn't like in Doom2 was Refueling Base (Map10). It's the only map still based on a Tom Hall design. But it's just not measuring up to the other maps in my opinion. As well as Monster Condo. It's just boring IMO.

A lot of people hate on Nirvana, and while I don't like it, it's rather forgettable and goes by mostly unnoticed to me.

I quite like most of the maps, but a few of my favorites are The Chasm, The Pit, O of Destruction, and The living end.

Back in the day, like mid nineties. I used to love playing DM on Maps like Downtown and Industrial Zone.

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Avoozl said:

Episode 2's maps were far greater than the majority of Episode 3 maps.

I don't remember which map it was exactly, but that one in E3 with all the teleporters... ugh. I hate that map.

A lot the mazelike maps could have been cut, honestly. Exploring is fine, but I always felt like some maps were easy to get lost in. At least if you play on Nightmare, monsters respawn so that it's not as boring.

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Shane said:

I don't remember which map it was exactly, but that one in E3 with all the teleporters... ugh. I hate that map.

I felt Limbo was an excellent map from Episode 3.

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Unless he actually meant Unholy Cathedral with its teleporters around the main courtyard.

IMO, Limbo is OK, Unholy Cathedral sucks.

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scifista42 said:

Unless he actually meant Unholy Cathedral with its teleporters around the main courtyard.

IMO, Limbo is OK, Unholy Cathedral sucks.

I'm pretty sure that's it. It's been years so I forgot the level name. I'll load it up later and let you know.

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Doom E3 is largely poo. People forgetting this and hating on E4 need to get over their pretenious idea that doom's narrative saves it's shittier maps.

I have no love for the wolf3d maps. It was cute once but I never replay them because they are ass.

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Doom 2 city maps, they just didn't try. They like, coulda made little road sign textures and used the dark flats as roads and the light flats as the stripes and got a bit creative in order to make level designs that were both fun and looked like what they were supposed to be. The Tenements looks more like a prison than an apartment, The Factory is by no means a factory for anything other than boredom. The only maps that I could get are Industrial Zone as a construction site, Inmost Dens as some kind ruins of underground old Seattle kind of place that
got exposed by demonic craziness, and Suburbs as a... well... suburb with its few buildings that can be seen as semi-reasonable housing with a little imagination.

I'd go as far as to say that the Earth setting only allowed them to get lazier with design, as they could make a giant empty box with a couple of giant ugly window-textured rectangles with a single room each and call it gameplay.

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Marcaek said:

Doom E3 is...

For a moment, I was seriously convinced that Doom E3 referred to the new Doom from this year's E3. You know, mind associations work this way. Abbreviations can get dangerous. Sorry for off topic.

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Levels that should be replaced..

Doom:
E1M6, E2M5, E2M9, E3M2, E3M5, E3M6 and E3M9.

Doom 2:
MAP08, MAP19, MAP21 and MAP24.

Levels that could have improvements on them..

Doom:
E1M4, E1M5, E1M7, E2M1, E2M2, E2M3, E2M6, E3M1, E3M4 and E3M7.

Doom 2:
MAP02, MAP04, MAP07, MAP11, MAP12, MAP15, MAP17, MAP20, MAP22,
MAP25, MAP27, MAP29 and MAP30.

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I kind of like Slough of Despair though.

(replays it)

Hell no fuck that level, good luck pistol-starting that mess.

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If you want to know what 90s id themselves thought on the subject, take a look at the gameplay changes in the Jaguar version that weren't directly tied to console limitations.

Lots of widened areas for smoother navigation all throughout. E1M4 in particular had an additional back hallway added to the maze and the non-repeatable "lifts" were turned into proper repeatable lifts.

The texture work was a hell of a lot cleaner too. Steps using actual step textures rather than reusing wall textures, nukage borders added where they were weirdly missing (E1M1 courtyard pit), alignment was much cleaner, and so on. PC Doom was pretty sloppy in that regard.

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Some of the upper areas of e3m3 where you are close to the sky ceiling and all the walls are the same texture and it's nearly all 64 wide and it's nearly all 90 degree angles.

I've got a soft spot for e3m2 though, and I much prefer e3m9 to e1m9. I'm not sure whether I prefer e2m9 to e1m9 but it's close.

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Quarantine was released the same year as doom 2 and had VASTLY superior city levels despite more limited tech... no excuse for doom 2s 'big black block buildings of death'

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Tompig said:

Quarantine was released the same year as doom 2 and had VASTLY superior city levels despite more limited tech... no excuse for doom 2s 'big black block buildings of death'

What I've played and seen of Quarantine has just been endless homogenous square city blocks, which don't make for very interesting combat or exploration in Doom. The artistic direction is more realistic than Doom's cities, sure, but the level design is pretty much a complete non-event.

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I agree with Jaxxoon R on Doom II and it's city levels - they needed more appropriately themed textures and perhaps some more sprites as well. Even the crudely oversized stuff that people made in the 90s with cratetop roads and the like were more convincing. I also think more variety in lighting within a given scene would've helped Doom II to no end, as I have an overarching memory of it all being quite dull and flat. Still, there were limitations to take into account, so maybe that is for a good reason. I think the abstract hell levels are broadly Ok, and stuff like The Chasm and Barrels o' Fun work from a challenge perspective, but I think I would've tried to have at least one large central set piece with a hub layout around it (sort of like The Courtyard) in hell in place of Nirvana, but later in the running.

As for the original Doom? E2M9 would be a different map that wasn't two rooms of infighting and a key-based speed bump. By all means keep the infighting gimmick, but don't have it involve filtering two homogenous crowds through a door. I'd also want to change Unholy Cathedral significantly as it is by far my most disliked map in the original game. E4 could do with a change in map order to have a proper difficulty curve, rather than two maps of pain followed by some E2/E3 style difficulty... Also, in light of modern source ports, fix that bloody staircase of secret sectors!

Aside from not liking Hunted, The Sewers or MAP30, I don't think there's much wrong with Plutonia. I've seen it said that the first three maps are a bit brown and off-putting, but considering maps like Ghost Town, that late one with the canals and camo-textured bunkers and even Odyssey of Noises, brown is kind of prominent when things aren't all red and gray like in NME.

Now Evolution I struggle with, as it fascinated me with its realistic locations and stuff like offices and trucks when I was young, but now I don't think much of it at all. I just have memories of long corridors and hitscanners with the odd good view or gimmick... Even maps that I thought were amazing at the time, like Mount Pain, what with its spider webs and flaming mountain of souls, are predominantly lengthy corridors. A significant redesign for noodle-layout maps and a fix in MAP31 would be required IMO - a more interesting theme for MAP32, as well, after the Egyptian ruins of Pharaoh!

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BaronOfStuff said:

Yes, they should have learned how to make city maps from a game on the more-suited BUILD engine released two years later than what they were working on with their less-capable (but far more robust) Doom engine.

In other words, Doom II's city maps were pretty much the first in the field of making city environments in a FPS; of course they're going to feel crude and shitty today, considering that most of what makes a city map believable by later standards simply isn't possible to do with the limitations of Doom's engine.


If I do remember, John Carmack didn't like the Build Engine or Duke3D at all for some weird reason, though I could be wrong since I've heard It from another source.

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Carmack helped Ken improve the Build engine, I don't see why he would hate it.

Also E4 could've been a lot harder than it is.

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I don't know what's up with all the Citadel hate; it's always been one of my favorites. Anyways, in general, I think that some Doom maps could have been larger, while others could be a little less confusing (E2M5 feels like a door maze and E2M7 is just a bunch of hallways). Some maps in Doom II could have had more optional areas and been less linear, but I'm fine with it for the most part (except Nirvana, which just feels like a filler map to me).

For Final Doom, Plutonia is fine and I have no problems with it at all. TNT, despite being my favorite IWAD of the four, does have some dodgy maps hidden in there. This is the WAD I feel is the least consistent in terms of overall quality - some maps are just awesome, and some just aren't. Simple as that.

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Surreily said:

I don't know what's up with all the Citadel hate; it's always been one of my favorites. Anyways, in general, I think that some Doom maps could have been larger, while others could be a little less confusing (E2M5 feels like a door maze and E2M7 is just a bunch of hallways). Some maps in Doom II could have had more optional areas and been less linear, but I'm fine with it for the most part (except Nirvana, which just feels like a filler map to me).

For Final Doom, Plutonia is fine and I have no problems with it at all. TNT, despite being my favorite IWAD of the four, does have some dodgy maps hidden in there. This is the WAD I feel is the least consistent in terms of overall quality - some maps are just awesome, and some just aren't. Simple as that.


I think my favorite Maps has always been The Pit and Tricks and Traps, they have the best tracks In the game pretty much.

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IIRC Carmack said that build was held together with "ducktape and bubblegum". Not that he necessarily "hated it", and I don't know if he's ever commented on Duke 3D itself.

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