What are your thoughts on infinite height?

[riderr3]

I'm voted Yes. Because without this feature Doom is not Doom, but kind of surrogate like ZDoom.

[Da Werecat]

Surrogates are pretty alright then.

[Benjogami]

It's all up to the designer. If a wad is designed for a specific complevel or source port (and it should be), that's the best way to play it. If the compatibility target is "ZDoom and derived ports," hopefully the author has some suggested compatibility options and MAPINFO is used to enforce whatever it can.

 

 

7 hours ago, Spectre01 said:

Great point. Infinite height can also make some encounters easier when hordes of ground monsters are able to block and nullify a Caco/PE swarm. Map32 of Speed of Doom is more challenging with it off because the flyers don't get stuck on the Hell Knights in the waterways and pressure you with projectiles + Lost Soul spam. In PRBoom+, you just rocket the Hell Knights and the splash kills the stuck flyers. It overall reduces the threat of flying monsters navigating the map and attacking you from a variety of angles.

 

It's not really important what's more difficult or more threatening. If you enjoyed it more with finite height monsters, that's cool, but it presumably wasn't designed for that. It's possible to design for both and test it both ways, which is admirable, but then you have a smaller set of options as your disposal than if you had designed for one of them.

 

[Scotty]

Objectively speaking, infinite height is an archaic game mechanic and it is obviously physically nonsensical. But of course, we are basically all here because of a game that is nearly a quarter of a century old now so i think there has to be a fair level of expectation that it comes with the territory and the same can be said of the other inherent limitations of the Doom engine. If the Doom engine and all the quirks that come with it are that much of a problem then there are a myriad of more modern FPS games out there which don't have these issues, so go play them instead.

 

This said, there is no real excuse (ignorance aside) for lazy mod/wad design that draws attention to these limitations or at the very least does not account for potential problems presented by them.

 

Is infinite height a good game mechanic? No, of course it's not, and there isn't really any strong argument otherwise. But we can potentially deal with it in a tidy enough way to mask the issue and still enjoy the game, which obviously is so incredibly strong in so many other areas that it more than makes up for this problem.

[Woolie Wool]

No, I do not like infinite height actors and while I reluctantly tolerated it for my last few wad playthroughs to reacquaint myself with OG Doom again, I will be glad to return to my source ports where I can dodge underneath lost souls and leap over the heads of spectres. I don't even like autoaim for excessively vertically oriented maps--it feels about right for relatively flat maps like the original three Doom episodes, but map13 of doom2.wad tries my patience with autoaim and anything more vertical than that makes me desperately want mouselook. I do not want to ask Doom to please allow me to shoot upwards, I want to be in control of my character.

[Da Werecat]

4 hours ago, Scotty said:

If the Doom engine and all the quirks that come with it are that much of a problem then there are a myriad of more modern FPS games out there which don't have these issues, so go play them instead.

Not all of them, just this one. And we have surrogates that fix it, so no need for such drastic measures.

 

Really, of all the problems of the vanilla Doom engine, this one feels the most aggravating, while providing the least ways to rationalize why it should be there. At least I can't readily recall any other problems of this caliber. The limited autoaim range comes close. Doom 2 saw a pretty noticeable shift in level design principles, and I think the game mechanics should've reflected that, but apparently id decided to touch as little as possible of what was already there.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

I dislike it and find it extremely gamey whenever it is used. It very rarely makes sense from the player's POV and forcing mappers to correctly place those things if they want to block a path doesn't hurt.

[Woolie Wool]

On 5/18/2017 at 5:07 AM, Gez said:

Infinite height makes perfect sense in maps that are designed for it, such as for examples maps 31 and 32 of Doom II.

You mean maps where you would never notice whether infinite height is on or off because they are entirely flat.

[Gez]

[vita]

Infinite height is good because of the barrel trick in doom2 map 23 (and probably something else).

[40oz]

I understand peoples frustrations with infinitely tall objects, and its entirely justified because, of course, you should have every right to be able to jump over or under objects. It just doesn't make sense not to.

 

That said, ive played the game long enough to never blame the game for these types of things. It's a known condition or side-effect of the game's world. When the issue is glaring, in such a way that cacodemons are climbing walls and swooping down on you, or hordes of monsters in a pit are blocking your mandatory jump-gap, this is as much a level design flaw as automatic weapon switching during a risky situation, or pain elementals that cant fire because of the lost soul limit, or monsters stuck hanging over ledges, etc.

 

As far as casually playing Doom, you can certainly enjoy the game by playing in a source port that corrects these known bugs and gameplay conditions and that's perfectly ok. But I do believe that not being conscious of them and not taking precautions to reduce these conflicts from happening in their maps is irresponsible on the level designers part, especially given how long this game has been around and how many people are here discussing and reviewing maps.

 

I dont know if there's a mission statement for this thread. There's some things that are clueing me in to believe that the OP wants vanilla doomers to get over themselves and move on towards source ports that correct stuff to make Doom's age not so obvious. I'm not sure though.

[Suitepee]

Infinite height sucks. But I'll tolerate it for certain wads. (or Ironmans)