How did id create such good maps if they had nothing to copy?

[Da Werecat]

15 minutes ago, Grazza said:

truly creative thought

Surprised to hear it even exists.

[Pegleg]

27 minutes ago, ETTiNGRiNDER said:

Didn't someone from id cite Ultima Underworld as an influence at some point?

That was certainly the origin for the "O' of Death" easter egg in the automap for Circle of Destruction in Doom 2.

[Pegleg]

On 11/18/2017 at 11:32 AM, Soundblock said:

If Romero has Aztec ancestors, I'm blaming his genetic memory of building Ziggurats. ;-)

The ziggarut was an ancient Mesopotamian structure. It looked rather similar to an Aztec pyramid, though, so I have no issue with the basic idea of where you were going.

[Koko Ricky]

I didn't realize how many maps Peterson worked on. When he misses the bullseye, he sometimes lands near the edge, but other times misses the dart board completely. Episode 3 in particular has a lot of issues in terms of consistency and quality. I think it was more than anything about getting s bit too ambitious and lacking the foresight that we see in today's professional maps.

[kb1]

On 11/17/2017 at 8:51 AM, everennui said:

I can see why trolls, troll some times. You can't say anything on the Internet without people losing their mind. What a thrill.

Doom to me has suffered from the, Goldeneye Effect^TM. At the time, there was nothing better, and because of this, it was the ultimate experience. Almost 25 years later, the levels don't hold up. They're better than I can do, but they're not better than any of the wads on the, "Doomworld Community Top WADs of All Time" list.

You guys wanna flip what I say and turn it into your own platform to circlejerk each other and I'm just sitting here with an opinion. Doom is great. The levels in the first few years of its life were not very good.

Doom 2 was better from a gameplay perspective, but aesthetically I feel like they went backwards - in general - from Doom, The First. Again, it feels rushed. Considering it wasn't a priority to John Carmack at the time, and he was working on the next big thing... I think there's probably some truth in my claim, but I don't know for sure.

I'm not even saying that any of them aren't talented. I'm saying that they were new to the art, and it showed. My whole little diatribe about Doom's levels mentioned Sandy Peterson once, and it was after saying something like, "All of them were bad, but John Romero's weren't as bad." I'm not personally attacking anyone. I respect all of them as programmers and game designers, but I (capital I) don't play Doom for Doom, I play Doom for FreeDoom. I play it for the pwads. 

The levels hold up fine. I can play them, almost exactly as I did 24 years ago. They were great then, so, of course they still are. They didn't change - you changed.

 

Does each new pizza have to be cheesier?

Is Led Zeppelin IV not as badass as it ever was?

Does your junk have to continue to grow to stay a man?

 

Needing to constantly have more and more to be satisfied looks a lot like addiction.

 

I play pwads too, and I play the iwads, and I enjoy all of them for what they are, without having pick apart the original stuff. They took what they had, and did their very best, and that is what shows to me. It's actually kinda rude to say otherwise, but, yeah, each to his own, I guess.

[VGamingJunkie]

I think Doom 2's levels are somewhat hit and miss. There are clearly some where they just wanted to show off the fact that they can make bigger areas but, in my opinion, some like the O of Destruction and Abandoned Mines have some fairly good design.

[94's the best style]

Honestly, I feel that a big part of Doom 2's problem is the fact that all of the 30 maps (plus 2) are put into one lump. That is guaranteed to exhaust all but most determined players, especially as there is no major gameplay shifts like episode unique weapons and items. I mean, who has played trough all four episodes of Doom 1 in one sitting?

[hardcore_gamer]

54 minutes ago, 94's the best style said:

 I mean, who has played trough all four episodes of Doom 1 in one sitting?

 

I have have. More than once in fact.

[Optimus]

Wait, I was at page 1, then skipped at 4, then I thought at first I accidentally clicked that button for next thread instead of next page.

 

Anyway, I think classic maps still hold up today (or maybe it's nostalgia?). Of course modern maps are going to be better, but I do compare the maps the original team made vs MyFirstMap.WAD. Lot's of 1994 user maps at the time where awful compared, and ID could have easilly gone ugly rooms with unalligned textures and all that, but they had done a pretty great job considering they had nothing to compare with. Romero's map could still hold up as oldschool well designed map today, even Sandy's map are okayish/nice if you don't hold high standards compared to modern maps, definitely all much better than the typical 1994 maps produced early later on.

 

We could see similar Doom clones at the time, at least the not successful ones, the level design wasn't on par. Of course some of these games maybe had an engine similar to wolfenstein or slightly more. Also, maybe I'll get hate for that, but in later years I tried to play the much acclaimed Marathon through Aleph One port, because mac guys were so obsessed over it and even said it's better than Doom, but I found the levels so much boring, bland texturing and too confusing. Maybe the game had some other good ideas like AI computer panels and who knows what else (some portal effects), but while they had the engine with potential to do some really good stuff, yet the level design seemed so much ugly and confusing to me for some reason.

 

So, yeah, I don't know how Doom ended up so polished in level design (for the time), I guess they designed the levels, played them, went back, in an iterative way as Romero once said, they really put a lot of effort how it feels and how it looks and plays. Also, the wanted to showcase the engine at the time, so they had to make at least the first levels stand out, there were also Romero's rules I read somewhere, lot's of thought went into instead of let's stretch some lines and throw some random mazelike boring levels.

[Da Werecat]

The first Marathon game was pretty bland in regards to level design. It had some great moments, but overall it had a bit too many bland mazes. The sequel was a huge improvement, IMO.

 

And Infinity had some great visuals, but it was also very confusing - both in progression and its plot. A bit of an acquired taste overall.

 

[hardcore_gamer]

2 minutes ago, Da Werecat said:

The first Marathon game was pretty bland in regards to level design. It had some great moments, but overall it had a bit too many bland mazes. The sequel was a huge improvement, IMO.

 

And Infinity was pretty great from aesthetic standpoint, but it was also very confusing - both in progression and its plot. A bit of an acquired taste overall.

 

The Marathon games look pretty boring to me. Like lame copies of Doom.

 

To be frank, I think the inability of almost every Doom clone to copy the magic of Doom just goes to show that there is so much more to making a good game than just copying what appear at first glance to be the biggest features of the original. Doom and marathon LOOK like they are the same games at first glance, and yet it's nowhere near as good. Doom wasn't as good as it is only because of it's gameplay mechanics, but also because of masterful visual and audio design. The game has a soul, where as the Doom clones did not and merely copied the game mechanics.

[Da Werecat]

I wouldn't even call them that similar. They're paced differently, and while Marathon has more interesting quirks like reloading and deep water, Doom excels in its simplicity. Both series provide reasons to check them out. The "soul" of Marathon mostly lies in its plot, but it's a quality experience nevertheless.

[MrGlide]

On 11/17/2017 at 11:37 AM, hardcore_gamer said:

Refueling base is terrible, which might not be too shocking considering that it's basically a rejected Doom 1 map. Barrel's of fun is also very bad.

That makes sense, Those levels can be really rough when the user sucks at The game.

[hardcore_gamer]

Just now, MrGlide said:

That makes sense, Those levels can be really rough when the user sucks at The game.

 

No, they are just bad maps. They look and play like ass.      

[MrGlide]

Barrels of Fun is one of my favorite maps in Doom 2, plays great and is quite interesting. I think it's a good map.

[june gloom]

Hating on Marathon is a good way to not be friends with me, but that's not a problem for hardcore_gamer as it is.

 

That being said, while Marathon and Doom have similar level design principles, they have different approaches and different goals. Doom levels tend to be purely abstract, a series of interconnected rooms with clever monster placement, and the goal is only ever one thing: get from point A to point B by collecting Card C to open Door D while killing monsters E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, and Z on the way. It's pure, it's fast, it's violent. It sacrifices grace and art for the visceral joy that comes with charging into a room guns blazing and mowing everything down. It rarely if ever makes any sort of attempt to create realistic spaces; Tom Hall's maps stick out like sore thumbs precisely because of this (the huge "dormitory" in Refueling Base, a rejected Doom 1 map, is pure Tom, as is the crate maze in Containment Area.)

 

In contrast, in Marathon you often have concrete goals you must achieve. The standard "kill everybody and get to the exit" does make an appearance, but more often you're tasked with something along the lines of throwing a switch, or retrieving a certain item (sometimes it's a new weapon, sometimes it's a control chip you have to install elsewhere on the level) or exploring the majority of an area. In this regard it's a lot like the original Half-Life, which IMO is something of a spiritual successor despite being vastly different in progression. In other words, each level is less intended to be a maze of traps and monsters you must traverse and more a place that you have a purpose for being at. These levels might often be designed rather abstractly, particularly in the first game (let's not talk about the staircase in "Colony Ship For Sale, Cheap") but there are often elements that feel like they might have some real-world counterpart to help give a sense of place.

 

This clear sense of each level having a purpose ties strongly into Marathon's focus on story. Each level has terminals scattered throughout the map; reading the text on these terminals not only gives you guidance on what you're supposed to be doing, but also expand the backstory. Marathon 1's terminals for example consist of mostly Leela and later Durandal giving you orders; but as you explore, you'll come across more abstract terminals that either give you some of the history behind the Marathon colony ship you're on or some insight on Durandal's descent into rampancy and what his motives are. Some are just plain strange and people have puzzled over them for 20 years as to what they might mean.

 

Werecat is definitely correct in that Marathon 1's levels are a bit bland and abstract. Ironically enough, they're also the ones most closely resembling Doom 1 in atmosphere. It's definitely down to the story. Marathon 2's story is much more straightforward despite its level design being much tighter.

[40oz]

On 11/19/2017 at 2:24 PM, hardcore_gamer said:

Everybody talks about "gameplay vs visuals" but this is fucking retarded. 99% of Doom wads have very similar gameplay and layouts. Interesting visual design is the only thing that can make your level stand out next to the 50 billion other generic levels. If it wasn't for gameplay mods I would probably have stopped playing Doom at this point.

Alright, this has got to be hyperbole. Let's get it out of the way first that I'm not convinced a single person has ever played everything there is, nor should anyone have to. I've played Doom for many thousands of hours over the course of 16 years and I think I've only touched about 60% of the existing content. That said, the most charitable thing I can say is that out of that portion of stuff I've played, (which includes only stuff I'm interested in, which is stuff that doesn't deviate too far from Doom's original gameplay anyway,) I'd argue that only like 30% of it is stuff that has very similar gameplay and layouts. I'm almost always impressed in some way or another with how much the community has deviated away from the source material in every wad I play.

 

I respect your argument that most of the retro arena shooters coming out today that use pixelated graphics and blocky models are pretty ugly. I see that too. The retro shooter phenomenon is still in its infancy, and I'd agree that most people who are trying to do it are not doing it right. Many of these games are advertised to be like Doom or Quake but hardcore Doom and Quake fans know that Doom and Quake can't be replaced by these lousy games. I think you're a little misguided in misplacing the blame from game designers inspired by Doom and Quake and placing it on the original Doom and Quake. Most people who have played these retro style shooters know there's something missing that isn't quite understood yet.

[Ichor]

This is the second time I've had to split a derail on this thread (by the same person even). I'd rather not have to do it a third time.

[neubejiita]

On 11/17/2017 at 1:30 AM, _bruce_ said:

It's a mix of talent, interest, experience and first and foremost: being a workhorse.

Especially Sandy had a bulldozer mentality that Romero lacked but made up for in some other areas where Sandy was worse(e.g.: visuals and some positive craziness).

Doom II MAP24...