Doom 1 or 2?

[Jodwin]

Captain Red said:

However, if you want an example of a modern game design element would improve Doom: Better use of narrative!
I don't mean a story, or babbling NPCs or audio dairies, but things like having the maps lead into each other rather then just stop and start or having a map that's called "power plant" have bits that maybe resemble a power plant, or maybe give the impression that the maps are more then just a set of rooms with monsters and traps.

I actually agree - to an extent. Doom's maps do lack a certain amount of sense of place. Pretty much the only things you can deduce from the maps is that rooms with computer textures are computer areas and that E2M2 has a warehouse in it. But you can't, for example, see a place that would feel like a toxin refinery or a hangar in the whole game. Maybe if E1M3 was pretty much the only map with toxic waste in it it could stand out, but as is it doesn't really have anything special to make it feel like a plant for refining toxic waste.

Of course, things like that are limited by the set of textures available, vanilla Doom limits, effort required for detailing with the original mapping tools and so forth, so I don't really blame Doom for not having perfect sense of place.

Plus I'd make an exception for the hell maps: IMO those can be as abstract as desired, since, well, it's Hell.

[Maes]

Jodwin said:

I actually agree - to an extent. Doom's maps do lack a certain amount of sense of place.

This was taken to the extreme with Doom II, as we all know. It really takes a lot of effort to imagine any of its levels resembling what they are supposed to be, and some choices of textures and buildings (e.g. all-wood buildings) resemble more theatric sets or the interior of a pirate ship, than any even passably real place. It didn't help that most such levels simply looked like large outdoors fenced sites full of scattered boxes.

TNT had a few touches of "realism" (or rather, attempts at exquisite detail, like that truck tire texture.....) while Plutonia took the Doom II style to the extreme.

[esselfortium]

I thought episode 1's internal universe was pretty well-defined. It doesn't make sense if you really think about it and try to identify what everything is, no, but to me it was built in ways that felt like they could be something. Plus, the way Romero's levels were laid out and interconnected, as well as his relatively consistent outdoor scenes, has always given them a very strong sense of place for me.

It's also amusing to know that the Doom storyline in (I think) the manual actually refers to the UAC's Phobos and Deimos bases as "toxic waste facilities", seemingly acknowledging their most apparent purpose in a tongue-and-cheek manner.

I thought the sense of place was somewhat intermittent in the rest of Doom, though, as well as in Doom II. For me, some maps really had it, like Romero's "Gotcha!" and Petersen's "The Chasm" (whose atmosphere is thick enough to stand out even through the map's other shortcomings), but it was very much a mixed bag.

[Captain Red]

Jodwin said:

Plus I'd make an exception for the hell maps: IMO those can be as abstract as desired, since, well, it's Hell.

If anything, having more grounded non Hell levels would make the player appreciate the abstract craziness of the Hell levels all more.

[Phobus]

I think there's merit in what Captain Red is saying. I don't think there's a lot of merit in the overzealous defence of Doom's level design that he's facing though.

Aside from the good point about better use of narrative and the attached idea that theme and atmosphere could have been handled better (The Suburbs has always stood out to me as the perfect example of a map that really does have nothing to do with the name) I'd say the modern method of highlighting parts of progression that aren't hidden makes a lot of sense. Particularly as a lot of mappers in this community already do it (an example being switches which are lit up to mak them stand out from the rest of the room). It's quite easy in Doom (et al) to miss an important switch even when you've gone through the room it's in, thus requiring some backtracking when you come up to the barrier you were meant to have lowered. Obviously this varies more by mapper.

I think the key point here is that it is worth remembering that Doom isn't perfect - a lot of the communities greatest hits do tend to be better these days and some of that inspiration does come from modern games. It'd be childish to say that the games industry has done nothing worthwhile or inspirational since the release of Final Doom.

[DeathevokatioN]

I can only speak for my own taste here, I liked Doom 2's abstract level design. I loved how the maps and layouts were dedicated towards gameplay, and I always justified Doom 2's abstract level design to myself by the lines in Doom 2's text that says "the demons have brought their own reality with them", and it works every time. ;) Doom 2's level design does set a good mood and does offer a sense of escapism for me. I play games to escape reality, not to indulge in reality.

"Attention to realism" has become just another reason (along with gameplay shortcomings, and their sterile as fuck level design) why I stopped buying modern fps shooters a long time ago. Realism makes a game feel less like a game and more like a simulator IMO, atleast to the scale that modern shooters have it nailed to. I remember slowly getting more and more burnt out off playing fps's from an industry that was getting more formulaic and kept producing more of the same until the time I came across Doom again, it was such a breath of fresh air to play through a diverse set of levels that weren't restrained by realism, left details up to the imagination and maps that feel like their own puzzle, that are non linear and were crafted towards fast paced off the wall gameplay.

I don't really see anything childish in being happy with the way a game is, ofcourse from a point of view that favors realism and modern aesthetics Doom won't be percieved as perfect, but then again I struggle to even find a reason to play new fps games so there will always be two sides to the same sword. Seeing how modern fps games are all learning from eachother now and how almost each one is about as un thought provoking as the next and offers a bland experience I can safely say Doom 2 doesn't need to learn anything from what gets passed for a "solid shooter" where you get dragged by your nose through a 4 hour campaign to get any more appreciation from my side. :)

[hex11]

Narrative in games is nothing new. In fact, Doom was originally slated to have lots of that but compromises were made and they went a simpler, more abstract route. It is not at all "modern" in any sense, unless you consider Strife or Ultima Underworld to be modern.

I also happen to like some level of narrative, and it's one of the reasons I prefer Doom E1-3 over later releases. It gave me enough sense of place and progression via the map names, intermission screens, and end of episode texts. They could have gone further, but then that might also have negative consequences. The more details are present, the less is left to the imagination, and the less fantastical it feels. Doom has always felt very dreamlike to me, esp. when played the original way (in its 320x200 pixelated glory). Ditto with Heretic and Hexen.

But sometimes narrative just gets in the way, and you just want to play a game for its own sake. I really enjoyed some of the Doom II "gimmicky" maps like Barrels 'o Fun, The Crusher, and The Chasm. It's just you against the demons and yes, even the map itself. This needs no more backstory than Space Invaders or some other classic arcade game. You just warp to a level of your choice and start blasting away...

I'm not sure what the deal is with wanting switches highlighted though. I mean, they're in plain sight! Sometimes they're in a maze (E1M6), and sometimes what they do is deliberately confusing (E3M4), but that's all part of the game. Some PWADs made the mistake of placing critical switches in unmarked secret areas (no clues, have to hump walls to find them), but that tend to be due to the mapper's inexperience.

[Phobus]

My point was more that there are examples of level design done right, even in the otherwise awful level design the majority of games display to do, and making sure that you notice the switches when you find them is an example.

Personally I love abstract maps - the ones that are clearly just there for gameplay... but when there is a "story" of sorts being presented and areas are named after locations, it helps the Willing Suspension of Disbelief if there's at least some hint of the map being what it says. The Suburbs could have given each building a simple garden, or put in some "streets" linking the buildings together, for example - it doesn't have to be a carbon-copy of your standard leafy surburbia (as the gameplay would suck then), but a few touches to make you think "yep, this is that place" probably would've made a minor improvement to the atmosphere and sense of place.

[DeathevokatioN]

I can see where your coming from Phobus, and actually I just realized I'm a hyprocrite because I'm currently playing Darkening E2 for the second time in a row and enjoying the atmosphere immensely. So yeah there's a good example, that said I still enjoy Doom 2 for what it is and I still love The Suburbs and have always envisioned it as part of what it is named after as well as part of a nightmare. That red brick house full of corpses pretty much emphasizes this for me, it's not called Hell on Earth for nothing. :P

[esselfortium]

I've wondered how much different the reception might have been to Doom II's often-complained-about city episode if they had been textured more like a demonized version of Duke Nukem 3D's city maps: keep the totally abstract structures, but replace the totally abstract texturing and give them more of a self-contained theme like Knee-Deep in the Dead had, rather than just mixing UAC-base, gothic hell, and brown brick together. I think the maps themselves are fine, but visually they have a tendency to almost go out of their way to kill suspension of disbelief. More resources specific to the earth-city levels would have gone a long way towards setting a more believable scene.

[Captain Red]

I often wish that there was a way some of our more artistically gifted mappers could use doom and doom 2 maps as a sort of gray box templates and dress up the maps with new textures, a few extra details, some tweaks to the monster and item placement and possibly even new props here and there to make the maps flow together better and actually resemble the locations they are named after and release the results without the shitstorm that would almost certainly follow.

[Vordakk]

I can definitely see how people could look at a map like Suburbs and say that it's hard to suspend disbelief due to it being a bit TOO abstract. For me, I always chalked it up to DOOM having taken place in the distant future. Who knows, in 2615 suburbs might well look the way they do in that level, devoid of plant life and consisting of oddly constructed buildings with no rooms over top of other rooms. :)

[DeathevokatioN]

Captain Red said:

I often wish that there was a way some of our more artistically gifted mappers could use doom and doom 2 maps as a sort of gray box templates and dress up the maps with new textures, a few extra details, some tweaks to the monster and item placement and possibly even new props here and there to make the maps flow together better and actually resemble the locations they are named after and release the results without the shitstorm that would almost certainly follow.

I honestly can't see any good coming out of such a retarded idea and would be disappointed to see something that breached Doom 2's copyright just to give an "f you" to it's design. If you want to play Doom but with a more professional approach with attention to pseudo realism, cool! Go play RTC. I'll even give you the link too. http://doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=12747 Alright then, back to your "Everything Else" forum now.

[Mithran Denizen]

DeathevokatioN said:

I honestly can't see any good coming out of such a retarded idea and would be disappointed to see something that breached Doom 2's copyright just to give an "f you" to it's design.

Except that the Doom EULA grants permission to distribute modified iwad maps, under the condition that they still require the base game to run.

Anyway, why is it so hard to accept the notion that some of us don't see all of Doom 2's maps as divine flawlessness handed down from the heavens? If you think everything about the game is already perfect then that's fine by me, but what's with the hostility? It's not like you'd be forced to play such modified maps, so why do you need to bitch about the idea?

While I still consider Doom and Doom 2 to be my favorite shooters of all time, and I recognize much greatness in Doom 2's level design, there are certain aspects in the game that I think could have been massively improved with a little bit more attention; the D2 city textures, and their general usage, rank high on that list. I for one would love to see how MAP12-MAP20 would look with the same basic layouts, but a little more internal consistency and slightly less mish-mash texturing. Perhaps even a few little touches here and there to suggest that the areas are (or once were, assuming that the demons "brought their reality with them") believable places. That doesn't mean that I want to scrap the abstract surreality of the maps or that I want them to embrace "realism", and it doesn't mean that I want to insult Doom 2's design, either.

[Captain Red]

Christ, Doom really is a fucking sacred cow to some of you isn't it?
You do realize you telling me to go away becasue I don't like your favorite game properly right?

What I'm suggested isn't unheard of: Morrowind's Vivic for example has been redesigned to closer resemble it's concept sketches by a few mod makers.

And didn't KDiZD use the shareware maps as a base for their maps? I didn't particularly care for the mod, but it does seem to indicate that there's a little wiggle room.

[Vesperas_]

This really comes down to imagination. I believe people who have relatively weak imaginations need forced narrative, carrot-on-a-stick gameplay and situations, environments and often even enemies they can relate to. Your typical modern first-person shooter is attempting to appeal to your average person, so these are largely a given.

Games with faceless main characters are immersive in the extent that the player character is you but in situations that are story-driven, it often does not work since you do not really have choices and the pacing of the game feels forced. This worked well in Bioshock because it used this fact as a major plot-twist, but in most other games, it doesn't. For example, how many people actually completed the main story-line in Oblivion immediately because it felt imperative and there was pressure to do so? I doubt very many people do. In games with a faceless main character, there is nothing to really develop or create a character arc for.

Doom works well because the environments appeal to people's imagination and the environments are usually immersive. You begin to feel alone in these lifeless environments and your choices are your own to make, as limited by the level design.

When Doom 3 added all of the characters, PDA's, mission objectives and whatever... it largely didn't matter. The original Doom managed to create essentially the same feeling and convey the exact same sense of desperation and impending doom without anything but suggestions as to where you were level-wise and two or three paragraphs of text every few levels. Then, in terms of actual gameplay, they're still the same... run around levels, hit some switches and kill monsters. While I like Doom 3, I think the original Doom had better gameplay, mostly because it didn't try to be realistic and ironically, Doom 64 still creeps me out far more than Doom 3 does.

There is a phenomenon known as matrixing which causes the human mind to create familiar things out of complex shapes and light. Despite levels in the original Doom not looking much like what the level name reflected they were supposed to be, most people are readily able to be immersed anyway because it was close enough and their imagination took over. It is extremely interesting how Doom manages to create such vastly different environments from one level to the next than your average modern FPS can despite probably having well over one-hundred times as many textures.

[Megamur]

Captain Red said:

Christ, Doom really is a fucking sacred cow to some of you isn't it?

It honestly, truly is.

[DeathevokatioN]

Alright, I'll try be less hostile in this response, Captain Red. ;)

Captain Red said:

Christ, Doom really is a fucking sacred cow to some of you isn't it?
You do realize you telling me to go away becasue I don't like your favorite game properly right?

I'm just sayin... instead of butchering the original levels and cluttering them up to "modern standards", and taking away what made them stand out from new games, why don't you play a user made levelset that was built to the same design qualities and aesthetics that modern games have. The same qualities that you are asking for. What makes Doom 2 so special that you'd want to modify it to your standards when there are already a ton of user made mapsets that probably are? Is it because it's an official ID release?

Actually, I read your post more thoroughly, Mithran... I have nothing to say there.

KDiZD deserved the reaction it got.

[Xeros612]

Sig-ma said:

This really comes down to imagination. I believe people who have relatively weak imaginations need forced narrative, carrot-on-a-stick gameplay and situations, environments and often even enemies they can relate to.

So anyone who doesn't like doom's levels sometimes being too abstract to even remotely resemble what the map name suggests they are just don't have a strong enough imagination. Sorry, my bullshit meter's going off.

[Vordakk]

Xeros612 said:

So anyone who doesn't like doom's levels sometimes being too abstract to even remotely resemble what the map name suggests they are just don't have a strong enough imagination. Sorry, my bullshit meter's going off.

No, that's not what he said. The two sentences you quoted make no reference to people who don't like DOOM's levels "sometimes being too abstract to even remotely resemble what the map name suggests they are". You're putting words in Sig-ma's mouth, dude.

Captain Red said:

Christ, Doom really is a fucking sacred cow to some of you isn't it?

Well, you are on the forum of a website that calls itself Doomworld.

[Infernal Grape]

heh i like quake I levels, they are bizzare.
But what about Doom..personally, i have always loved tnt\plutonia a bit more then originals

[Vesperas_]

Xeros612 said:

So anyone who doesn't like doom's levels sometimes being too abstract to even remotely resemble what the map name suggests they are just don't have a strong enough imagination. Sorry, my bullshit meter's going off.

What Vordakk said. :)

I am not arguing many levels (especially in Doom 2) weren't a little out-there but on the other hand, what should a level named "Gotcha!" look like? What about "The Focus?" "The Living End?"

What I said relates more to narrative and story. When you look at Fallout for example, it is a lot more immersive when you wander out, explore and do whatever (at least for me). There is obviously a bunch of dialog and context for doing missions but because you play yourself (a faceless character), it is impossible for the developer to really motivate every player to put the same amount of emphasis on different tasks or create priorities. Role-playing games work the way they do because they give you choices (or the illusion of choice) and let you do whatever you want within the environments provided. While Doom is not technically a role-playing game, it essentially has the same building blocks for one, however rudimentary and it is fairly easy to become immersed if you have a decent imagination.

When it comes to the level design of Doom itself, sure... it probably is antiquated in some ways but it still holds its own. There are amazing levels and there are shit levels. What will leave a more lasting impression on your average player: Toxin Refinery (E1M3) from Doom or Infiltration (Interval 03 - Escalation) of F.E.A.R. (an arguably realistic game)? Even stripping away the bias of most of us being Doom fans, I'm sure the average person will still say Toxin Refinery. Does it really matter at that point that Toxin Refinery doesn't look like much of a refinery?

If you want to make the argument that the exploration aspect of Doom, complete with its switch and key hunting is what is antiquated, then what does that say about a game such as Doom 3, a relatively modern game? I believe that is the argument being made. Is the expectation such that every level is expected to be a linear corridor broken up with cut-scenes or scripted explosions?

[Phobus]

Sig-ma said:

I am not arguing many levels (especially in Doom 2) weren't a little out-there but on the other hand, what should a level named "Gotcha!" look like? What about "The Focus?" "The Living End?"

See, I'd exempt levels like that from the scrutiny I put The Suburbs under simply because the names don't implicate much in the way of an environment (Although MAP29 being a kind of abyssal hell certainly is a good use of the name).

[DeathevokatioN]

To me suburbs represented actual suburbs through it's layout, and besides this is at the point where earth is slowly decaying into a bastion of hell so ofcourse shit is going to start looking surreal. :)

I don't intend to sound disrespectful but this is starting to become like the religion thread going on where everyone points to the weakest level of a mapset to try discredit the whole mapset. You still have to take into account Romero's masterpieces, Map11, Map29, Sandy's "Spirit World", and his "Monster Condo", as well as the first few levels by American Mcgee that were excellently designed and had compact layouts.

[edited due to bad grammer]

[Encryptic]

Phobus said:

See, I'd exempt levels like that from the scrutiny I put The Suburbs under simply because the names don't implicate much in the way of an environment (Although MAP29 being a kind of abyssal hell certainly is a good use of the name).

Clearly you've never lived in a suburb and known the soul-crushing terror of uniform blandness in the perfectly detailed tract home communities with names like "Oak Villas" and "Silverbrook Park"*. This, my friend...is truly...Hell On Earth.



*renamed to Erebus Villas and Bloodspring Park after a change in management recently. We apologize for any confusion to our residents.

[40oz]

I'm with Deathevokation. You start in a house, theres a house next door, then there are plains and mountains of ash and caves, and some desolate hell instilled buildings dotted around the outside. Some structures that can't be explained realistically were probably added for gameplay factors. Imagine how lame the start of the level would be if the mancubus, the revenants, and archviles in thouse outside caves could already see you as soon as you left the first building. You wouldn't even need to look for the yellow key and probably wouldn't even bother to look for the super shotgun in the house next door at the start of the level if you knew all that unexplored area was around you. Some walls and big boulders of ash hide some health and ammo items and stuff. I know they look like pillars of ash but some parts of the map showed the sky being much lower at some points, i don't believe those ash pillars were supposed to look as tall as they are.

[Encryptic]

40oz said:

I'm with Deathevokation. You start in a house, theres a house next door, then there are plains and mountains of ash and caves, and some desolate hell instilled buildings dotted around the outside. Some structures that can't be explained realistically were probably added for gameplay factors. Imagine how lame the start of the level would be if the mancubus, the revenants, and archviles in thouse outside caves could already see you as soon as you left the first building. You wouldn't even need to look for the yellow key and probably wouldn't even bother to look for the super shotgun in the house next door at the start of the level if you knew all that unexplored area was around you. Some walls and big boulders of ash hide some health and ammo items and stuff. I know they look like pillars of ash but some parts of the map showed the sky being much lower at some points, i don't believe those ash pillars were supposed to look as tall as they are.

Ironically, those buildings still fail to hide you completely. It took me the longest time to figure out why I kept getting attacked by a cacodemon after I came out of that building that has the revenant guarding the staircase.

There's a cacodemon in one of those caves that has line of sight to the staircase so as soon as you hit the stairs, it sees you and starts heading over there. I just happened to figure it out one time when I looked in that direction and saw the cacodemon activate and start moving from the cave.

[Vesperas_]

DeathevokatioN said:

To me suburbs represented actual suburbs through it's layout, and besides this is at the point where earth is slowly decaying into a bastion of hell so ofcourse shit is going to start looking surreal. :)

I liked the building with the bodies stacked floor to ceiling immediately behind every door you open, personally. I'm glad id Software felt the need to explain why there were no people around.

[valkiriforce]

Doom II's level design is perfection.

[DeathevokatioN]

Sig-ma said:

I liked the building with the bodies stacked floor to ceiling immediately behind every door you open, personally. I'm glad id Software felt the need to explain why there were no people around.

Yeah, that was one of the scenes that stuck with me ever since I was a kid. Doom 2's level design gave me nightmares when I was young. :)