can a purely exploratory map work?

[raymoohawk]

do yall think that it is possible to make a vanilla or boom compatible mapset in such a way that despite not including any monsters, would none the less still be compelling to play? megawads like the excelent Going Down have demonstrated that it is possible to tell a sort of silent story trough level design and progression alone (and a bit off text), but could a mapset that actually excludes monsters and focuses solely on puzzling together a story trough exploration and secret finding alone be able to carry an entire megawad? does anyone want to share their thoughts on this?

[Linguica]

Yes, it would work. Are you a bad enough dude to do it?

[drygnfyre]

I think it would work. Though rather than no monsters, I'd have very few. Nothing too difficult, maybe a small horde here or there.

[Angry Saint]

Maybe not a whole 32 level megawad, but for one single level, well designed, it may be a good idea and something different from the usual.

[wildweasel]

I've always had thoughts of using Doom - more likely, ZDoom or GZDoom - to make a sort of Myst-like world to roam and explore and mess around with. The only real problem is that I don't really have a direction to go in, and wind up losing interest.

[scifista42]

I would probably find it boring if there was no combat whatsoever. A good game needs a challenge, and my favorite challenge in Doom is testing the player's spacial-time awareness and aiming skills. Fighting enemies could be substituted by well-telegraphed puzzles, timed challenges or movement precision challenges, but these would have to be designed and implemented exceptionally well to keep me interested, and there's still a chance that they wouldn't. Jumpmaze and ZPortal didn't (although I've beaten the whole first level of ZPortal and liked it at first, I ended up annoyed). I like good puzzles, but first-person-perspective games rarely get them right.

[HorrorMovieRei]

There is something close to that: Phocas Island. It has few monsters and the focus is mainly on solving puzzles. I personally liked it, so yeah, I think it could work.

[40oz]

In vanilla or limit removing, I'd imagine you'll be racking your brain to come up with puzzles that are engaging enough for the player to want to solve, but not so difficult that they need godlike intuition to figure it out. In my experience playing Doom, a map with no monsters is suspicious. The longer you con the player into being alert for monsters that aren't even on the map will build suspense and anticipation. This works pretty well for maps like MAP16: Mr X from Scythe 2, or E3M1 of no end in sight, where you don't encounter any monsters until the very end of the map.

In my experience running through any maps with no monsters, I'm usually pretty impatient with things like slow moving floors, doors or lifts, which have you waiting while doing nothing for them to do the things that they do. There's a boom map called crea_one.wad and there's a part in the map where there's a shovel on a table make out of sectors that use floor lower to lowest floor (change texture) linedef actions to make it disappear when you press use on it, and it makes it possible to activate some instantly lowering cave walls to give the illusion that you grabbed the shovel and used it to dig out of there. I'd imagine you'd have to create puzzles that are that graphically clever and fun to justify having no monsters, and still yet that map had plenty monsters and one could make the argument that having things to kill in such a map would still make it better.

Doom's real selling points are its exciting gun combat and deadly monsters, so to answer your question, I'm going to have to say no, especially if you're intending to create a wad that has more than one map of it. A megawad especially is A LOT of maps.

[fraggle]

First level of Alien Doom?

[Maes]

Some of the AlienDoom TC's levels could be considered exactly that.

[Obsidian]

PabloD's map in Panophobia is pretty much exactly what you're looking for: no monsters, lovely visuals and plenty of exploration. I've never been able to manage such a feat myself, but I do give it a shot on occasion.

[Captain Red]

One could make the act of actually moving from place to place interesting. I've seen mod makes code things like mantling climbing with some success.

[Gez]

The last level of Sunlust has a long intro sequence which is purely exploratory. It works pretty well. Of course, it being Sunlust, it's mostly a way to build up tension and you do get hordes of monsters soon after, but man that combat-less intro is great.

[Koko Ricky]

It's certainly common to change up the familiar tropes we associate with Doom, but I'm not sure how much fun I'd have not shooting stuff. I would at least give it a try. As mentioned, a single map would be a good way to execute this. An entire mapset would have to be very clever and interesting in order to work.

[FireFish]

I have recently (since today) been playing on Back to saturn X, and by doing so i think Esselfortium might be able to create a pure exploration based map.

[Lutz]

I think it definitely could. Much of the beginning of Half-Life 2 is mostly exploration, though that game takes full advantage of 3D geometry and clever physics puzzles, both of which are lacking in vanilla. Personally, I'm happy to get lost in an empty world for a while, as long as that world is fun to look at (and there is some semblance of why I am wandering...)

[TwinBeast]

I like all those little puzzles in Deus Ex on how to bypass the security systems: cameras, laser sensor beams...

You could at least do the laser beams with some texture, and when player cross them, something bad happens. No idea how to allow player disable them to cross over safely...

[Captain Toenail]

Could be cool. I would take notes from the first two Tomb Raider games to create puzzles, traps and intriguing locations. Would need to ramp up the ambiance with environmental sounds and provide nice visuals to keep it interesting.

Instead of weapons you could have flares, a compass, chalk to draw on walls using decals etc. maybe a grappling hook for movement?

[Da Werecat]

You need at least 100 revenants to make an okay map.

[jmickle66666666]

first level of stardate 20xx, the intermission maps in btsx e1 and e2, also try playing sunder without monsters (the best way to play it), all really good examples of maps without monsters still being really good.

[scifista42]

jmickle66666666 said:

first level of stardate 20xx

I'm pretty sure that it's the first map of "Swim with the Whales" what you have in mind.

[j4rio]

nope

[Demon of the Well]

I believe this particular concept can work, but probably only in the context of a multi-level set, where it's fairly safe to assume that there will be combat at some point, as a silent intro, a quiet intermezzo/interlude, or perhaps even a pensive outro. As a standalone level, well....I suspect there are probably other games much better suited to that than Doom, but I'm usually happy to be proven wrong.

Incidentally, the concept's certainly not unheard of, but most of the truly monsterless maps I can think of are quite short and almost entirely scenic (as opposed to truly exploratory), ala the hub maps from the two public BTSX betas. Other, larger maps which are more truly exploratory in nature and with minimal/no combat do exist, but they are exceedingly rare. Seems like the Russian community has experimented with this more than anyone else, with the two most obvious maps springing to mind being 'Doxylamine Moon' from Sacrament (map 02), which has a very minimal/non-threatening monster presence, and the penultimate map (damned if I can remember its name) from Hell Ground, by Eternal, which is truly monsterless and entirely puzzle-focused.

[june gloom]

There was a level of Hellcore 2.0 that was sorta like this, very empty for a big part of the map. (And then the monsters blew the place up, but still.)

[SYS]

I would get the feeling that I'm playing a deathmatch by myself. I like the happy medium where a map can incorporate both elements.

It feels more like a question of, "how can we use the Doom engine to create pretentious hipster indie games?"

I do like the way sectors can be manipulated and how the next area can be a trigger and a linedef away. For my approach to mapping has changed to where I create the map first and then place monsters. In a sense it does feel like an exploratory map until I populate with monsters.

Wouldn't playing Deus Vult with -nomonsters or any map for that matter create the same effect, without mapping anything specific to that purpose?

[ducon]

The first map of Lutz’ Inferno is purely exploratory. Oh, a lonely lost soul.

[kmxexii]

there will be an audience for a purely exploratory mapset. it may not be big, but it is out there.

just because the doom engine may not be the best medium for a purely exploratory series of maps does not mean that it is not worth doing at all. fuck all that. make the map you would like to play.

[VGamingJunkie]

Monsters aren't necessarily needed, you could have things like damaging floors and crusher ceilings that still present an element of danger without it having to have direct combat in it. Another possibility to have could be monsters that you outright can't kill and have to use puzzle solving to beat instead, Cyberdreams even centered its levels around that.

[raymoohawk]

WildWeasel said:

The only real problem is that I don't really have a direction to go in

yep ive had that problem too, im really intrigued by the idea of a wad like this, but am unsure of what the underlying narrative would be

[Marcaek]

It can work, but people who want a Doom map will hate it.

I'd like to see it if someone has the nuts to pull it off.