Things that bother you about Doom

[TwinBeast]

Just about finished Map08 with some good moves, barely took any damage... at the last door with the lowering platforms and slime, ran the platforms, hit the exit door, open it, sudden bump backwards into the slime! Waah!

Fortunately I had a save at the threshold...

Anyway, inescapeable slimepits no good.

[Magicana]

E4M7

This is a pretty interesting level I find, but what really bothers me is how much of the level is utterly pointless.

Only the red key is essential for completing the level, and it is located in a general access area. There are yellow and blue keys that are optional, but provide no benefit that isn't offset with more enemies (Such as Barons of Hell).

Seems like a pretty big oversight that could have been fixed by just moving the red key.

[TwinBeast]

Icon of Sin... after 10 attempts and barely got 1 rocket in... It's not that bad usually. But still that's just very bad design.

And rocket launcher safety thingy... 2 times in a row I shot a rocket at a charging lost soul in close proximity because of it. If there had been no safety thingy, the rockets would have hit the pain elemental.

[lil'devil]

It really bothers me that there're no hanging ceiling lamps in Doom. Wolf3D had them, so why not have them in Doom?

I also think that Doom lacks human-made decorations. There're so many demon-made decorations and various corpse decorations, but the only human made ones are lamps and barrels. It would've been much better if they had added various lab equipment and engineering stuff as decorations.

Another thing that bothers me is bad weapons/monsters progression in Doom 2, i mean on UV every weapon and monster is introduced by map 11, which means that for the rest 2/3 of the game you won't encounter anything new. It makes the game much more boring. Doom 3, for example, didn't have that mistake, as you keep encountering new monsters and stuff until about 80% into the game.

[Bauul]

lil'devil said:

I also think that Doom lacks human-made decorations. There're so many demon-made decorations and various corpse decorations, but the only human made ones are lamps and barrels. It would've been much better if they had added various lab equipment and engineering stuff as decorations.

In the early asset pack that Romero uploaded a few months back there were even sprites for a rolling office chair, but it never made it into the final game. I guess they ended up shying away from anything too grounded in the real world. Doom is pretty abstract after all.

[Magnusblitz]

I wonder if it relates to the sprites not having rotations. Everything is either a circular item of some sort (light pillars, techno pillars, marble pillars, barrels etc.) or something ground level that spins around (like a corpse). The trees that aren't circular tend to look kinda funny spinning around so I think they purposely shied away from stuff like that and stayed with stuff that looked good from one direction.

[printz]

lil'devil said:

It really bothers me that there're no hanging ceiling lamps in Doom. Wolf3D had them, so why not have them in Doom?

I guess you're supposed to use ceiling flats instead.

Something else which bothers me in vanilla Doom is the serious lack of use for the ceiling details. You can't hide monsters into the ceiling detail and they'll never fly up there (unless maybe engaged in some complicated and unpredictable lost soul duel), unless the detail is connected to a side passage. Detail in the middle of the ceiling is purely decorative.

[Da Werecat]

Magnusblitz said:

I wonder if it relates to the sprites not having rotations.

The office chair had rotations.

OTOH, they don't look very good with objects that are supposed to be static.

Magnusblitz said:

The trees that aren't circular tend to look kinda funny spinning around so I think they purposely shied away from stuff like that and stayed with stuff that looked good from one direction.

Well, there are trees in Doom. One of them is very big and asymmetrical even.

[Maes]

Da Werecat said:

The office chair had rotations.

Consider how scarce RAM was back then, any way to cut back on required rotations' sprites was good. Including depicting only symmetrical objects.

And TBQH, including non-rotating tables and chairs as well as hanging lamps a-la Wolf3D would just make the game look like Blake Stone, and have this "already done before" look to it.

[printz]

Da Werecat said:

Well, there are trees in Doom. One of them is very big and asymmetrical even.

And it looks silly. It really contributed to the silly look of Episode 3, for me.

[TwinBeast]

The flying monsters may even have some difficulties getting around some ceiling obstacles. If the monster is at the same level as its target, but there's a ceiling obstacle in the way.. it will get stuck trying to lower, and raise/stay at the target's Z level, and it won't turn around to try some other route.

[Memfis]

I've encountered plenty of wads replacing the plasma shooting sound with something more quiet but I've never seen the same done with the revenant wake up sound. Perhaps I will be the first.

[esselfortium]

Memfis said:

I've encountered plenty of wads replacing the plasma shooting sound with something more quiet but I've never seen the same done with the revenant wake up sound. Perhaps I will be the first.

I recommend swapping the plasma shooting sound with the revenant wakeup sound, for the best of both worlds

[LittleInferno]

esselfortium said:

I recommend swapping the plasma shooting sound with the revenant wakeup sound, for the best of both worlds

This should work, my friendo.

http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=00793274494277054744

aahh

[Quagsire]

It bothers me that no one's bothered making a Gears of War mod for Doom yet.

[scifista42]

Memfis said:

I've encountered plenty of wads replacing the plasma shooting sound with something more quiet but I've never seen the same done with the revenant wake up sound. Perhaps I will be the first.

I once wanted to do the same thing, but I didn't find any good-enough replacement sounds.

[Memfis]

Imo could just literally reduce the volume in Audacity or whatever, no need to search for something new.

[scifista42]

I felt bothered by the kind of the sound (that is, discorded screaming), though, not just its volume.

[40oz]

Memfis said:

Imo could just literally reduce the volume in Audacity or whatever, no need to search for something new.

I wish perkristian had engineered some sort of a similar replacement. To me it sounds like the sound is amplified too high to retain its original integrity completely. But it sounds something like a supercharged and possibly sped up pistol sound + that phasing whine. I'm not sure where that whining sound comes from but id imagine its not too difficult to reproduce. I could be wrong though, my ear isn't as trained as it could be and my audio engineering experience is minimal.

What I dont like is how the projectile contact sound is the same as general fireballs which is long and takes priority over the firing sound when the plasma gun is used up close. I think I poasted something about this before :/

Edit: Oops didn't realize you were talking about mr. spookybones

[LittleInferno]

Some WADs I noticed use a plasma sound so quiet that you need to put your speakers in a megaphone to hear. I like the ear-breaking original.

[Tracer]

^I also prefer the original plasma sound in all of it's obnoxiously loud goodness. I thought I was alone in that.

[Toybasher]

Infinitely tall actors. Need to jump across that platform? Pinkies down there like 20 feet below you can not only somehow bite you if you stand at the ledge, [you can't melee them back] but they can also stop you in your tracks if you try running to the other platform.

[Cacockcansukmycok]

something odd in the archvile is that You can't resurrect it with
a soul weapon when he collapse Perhaps because he is the only
one who can and Can't be RECREATED.

and other one when you walk Fast on the lava in the Psx doom version you can't
be hurted while in the Original PC version you Do get damage by 10% no matter what you can Does.

[Maes]

I never understood why those blue FLAT22 sectors in E2M2 hurt you (and quite a lot). What are they supposed to be? Some sort of super-hot cooling surfaces? Nuclear-powered giant microchip wafers? Nuclear pool reactors?

[Blastfrog]

Maes said:

I never understood why those blue FLAT22 sectors in E2M2 hurt you (and quite a lot). What are they supposed to be? Some sort of super-hot cooling surfaces? Nuclear-powered giant microchip wafers? Nuclear pool reactors?

I forget where Tom said this, but I recall him saying that originally there were meant to be blue projectiles shooting down that hall that you were meant to dodge.

[Memfis]

I've always seen them as these round things on top:

[Maes]

To me the looked like pools of some sort...maybe showers? So Doomguy is getting attacked by some extreme jock itch and athlete's foot left there by his former comrades?

[lil'devil]

It always bothered me that monsters don't get hurt by damaging floors.. It's ok that demons don't get hurt by lava, because they're hellspawn after all, but then why zombies don't get hurt by lava? They're still humans, just possessed. And why do no monsters get hurt by the toxic slime? I mean they're made of flesh, c'mon, even doomguy, who's in armor, gets hurt by it.

[Maes]

lil'devil said:

It's ok that demons don't get hurt by lava, because they're hellspawn after all, but then why zombies don't get hurt by lava?

Obviously, their new employers hand them asbestos uniforms and boots, that don't expire from hard use unlike Doomguy's. No OSHA compliance, but hey, they are already dead, they can't get fibrosis or asbestosis (and even if they did, think that Hell would care?)

[Quagsire]

Let's just imagine it as a super hot cooling system. Nuclear powered maybe.