A new GothicDM?

[NoWaves]

Would anyone be interested in making/playing another Gothic DM wad? I'm really in love with the style (when the overdetailing isn't getting in the way). Or maybe a gothic themed single player wad? Thoughts?

[Marcaek]

I'm sick to death of Gothic stuff and the old GothicDM layouts are cramped and generally uninspired. If you were to do something gothic I'd suggest at least doing it with 3d floors and advanced features.

[Doomkid]

The first Gothic was not uninspired, that's insanity Marc, some part of you must know that. In the era of Dwangos and Brits, Gothic dared to try something new

There have been loads of Gothic inspired wads since, though. Some are great, some are meh. The Onslaught wads are great and fans of Gothic tend to enjoy EXEC as well.

I was working on a wad last year heavily inspired by exec/gothic that may get finished at some distant time in some distant land: http://www.doomshack.org/~doomkid/stor/kid2beta.wad

Also worth noting, a good chunk of SP wads seem to loosely follow the Gothic theme.

[Combinebobnt]

ok nice idea now make it

[Turbo Saber]

Doomkid said:

The first Gothic was not uninspired, that's insanity Marc, some part of you must know that. In the era of Dwangos and Brits, Gothic dared to try something new

I think I'm going to have to agree with Marcaek. Over half the maps are just tiny symmetrical arenas (MAP23 is one of the most uninspired layouts ever) and the rest are heavy on cramped hallways with tons of stuff to get stuck on and a lot of them have dead ends. Also it's most certainly uninspired compared to a lot of newer stuff.

[scifista42]

DRL 3.33 said:

Also it's most certainly uninspired compared to a lot of newer stuff.

Everything is uninspired compared to a lot of newer stuff. A natural result of the facts that it's only possible to be inspired by the past, and that the past can't be changed. The word uninspired shouldn't be used this way.

[Marcaek]

some part of you must know that.

Yes, deep down the repressed rational part of me must agree with you. I'm usually polite when dealing with you Doomkid, but you can take this sanctimony and shove it.

Anyway, the Gothic series starts out passable if you like 4 player DM tops, then the rest of the series is worthless. Onsl3 is decent but it isn't a GothicX series WAD. If you want to make a DM WAD you need to do something interesting that hasn't been done before because DM mapsets are a dime a dozen and it's hard enough getting anyone to play what's out there. The market is saturated, so to speak, and you need to bring something different to the table in order to compete.

[Tarnsman]

Marcaek said:

you need to bring something different to the table in order to compete.

Alright guys. Mount Pain DM pack. Who's with me?

[40oz]

Marcaek said:

Yes, deep down the repressed rational part of me must agree with you. I'm usually polite when dealing with you Doomkid, but you can take this sanctimony and shove it.

What in the fuck?

[Memfis]

GothicSP please. Yes, there are a bunch of single player wads using the texture pack, but the aprroach to architecture and stuff in them is completely different.

[Doomkid]

lol it makes no sense to call something that was paving new ground at the time "uninspired". You might not like Elvis Presley's music but I think it would be dumb as hell to call it "uninspired" just because its plain or simple by modern standards

Also what 40 said, no need to be a dick

[Fonze]

Marcaek said:

Yes, deep down the repressed rational part of me must agree with you. I'm usually polite when dealing with you Doomkid, but you can take this sanctimony and shove it.

Doomkid said:

Also what 40 said, no need to be a dick

Ladies, ladies; I love both of you, but this was just funny.

Please handle all disputes in a DM through mindless, excessive violence; there's no need for words here.

[Tarnsman]

Doomkid said:

lol it makes no sense to call something that was paving new ground at the time "uninspired".

He called the layouts uninspired not the visuals. There is a difference.

[nxGangrel]

Fonze said:

Ladies, ladies; I love both of you, but this was just funny.

Please handle all disputes in a DM through mindless, excessive violence; there's no need for words here.

Took it right outta my mouth.

Settle this like (neckbearded) men, instead of cat fighting 14 year old girls on social media.

[Marcaek]

If someone was going to make a singleplayer Gothic style thing I'd like to see something akin to Crucified Dreams, which actually does have a couple of very singleplayer-ish maps (which are garbage for DM, great for LMS though!)

[Doomkid]

Tarnsman said:

He called the layouts uninspired not the visuals. There is a difference.

I'm well aware, not exactly new to this mapping thing! I'd argue that most GothicDM layouts are quite creative, but to each their own. Of course there's a handful of not-amazing stuff, just like in any megawad.

Regardless, what Memfis and Marc said above are both things I agree with, it would be cool to see a 'direct' GothicSP that felt like Adelusion's work and CruDream is pretty terrible in DM but could make for beautiful SP turf.

[NoWaves]

Didn't think this would start any arguments, whoo boy.
I think the layouts are garbage yeah, but the style was always what defined the Gothic series more, so if i were to try anything, it would be in Gothic styling, with more competent level design, and as Marceak said "3d floors and advanced features"
The vibe I'm getting is do a single-player wad with compentent level design.
I might even mess with some DECORATE items, or maybe some ACS. Make it a benchmark kind of like gothic99 was, but this time, a lot more playable and interesting

[Marcaek]

Novel singleplayer projects? Hell yeah.

[Breezeep]

I personally think the Gothic textures, especially the ones found in Crucified Dreams are pretty damn cool, and I would love to see a full fledged singleplayer project in the style of Crucified Dreams.

[Mordeth]

Some of the Gothic crew joined the Mordeth project afterwards, aiming to make a Gothic single-player episode. Apart from a few level scraps that never panned out.

[Decay]

If you can combine impressive architecture and detailing with -good- layouts, you should just go for the project instead of asking, honestly. The trick would be to deliver a set of maps that, while drawing on similar themes, would not be mostly the same and bore people after a few games.

Probably the best way to go about it would be to find a variety of texture sets and draw upon similar visual style (structures and architecture) while delivering different themes, almost in an episodic fashion.

Alternatively, take the gothic themes and styles, make a good map or two, and contribute them to an on-going project or start a project that isn't SOLELY dedicated to 1 style. Making a new "GothicDM" would carry a lot of baggage and probably isn't worth trying to carry the same moniker as famous DM wads.

[Argent Agent]

Decay said:

Alternatively, take the gothic themes and styles, make a good map or two, and contribute them to an on-going project or start a project that isn't SOLELY dedicated to 1 style. Making a new "GothicDM" would carry a lot of baggage and probably isn't worth trying to carry the same moniker as famous DM wads.

This is probably the best option for any Gothic-themed map nowadays since the theme is done to death, and as other people have stated in the thread, a map with this theme would need a selling point that makes it different from all of the other maps of the same theme out there and makes people want to play it more. 3d Floors are definitely a way to do it and is one of the features I put in my Gothic-themed map for DBAB. I think the addition of new textures, such as the ones that appeared in GOTHMASH, are a nice addition to a texture set which was becoming stagnant and offers new ideas on themes and texturing.

As for the brand "GothicDM", I rarely see anyone playing Deathmatch in this wad in the multiplayer community and just as rarely hear anything good about it (though a few of the maps are not bad in 2v2 Team Deathmatch - by the way how is this in the Top 100 WADs of all time?). There is much better content out there to play with the same theme that capitalizes on playable layouts as opposed to whatever GothicDM had going on in many of its maps. For the sake of getting people to look past the brand of a pack, if one were to make a Gothic-themed DM mapset it would be better to choose a different name, especially if it has nothing in common with the other mapsets in existence.