Doom mapping tenets?

Getsu Fune said:

oh wait, no one seems to give feedback to any of my work.

Where? I'd like to try your stuff.

I put two maps into the Pcorf Community Project 2 if that helps anything. but don't expect anything sublime. both maps are pretty easy to beat.

VGA said:

I was hoping to specify some unopposable "rules" not to stifle a mapper's creativity but just to promote fun and fairness for the players.

Would you oppose any of the points I edited in the first post of the thread? Do you think one of those tenets would make a map duller than it otherwise would be?

Fun and fairness are awesome values to support in gameplay, but no set of rigid predetermined rules will ever handle all imaginable cases in their favor, so calling any such set 'unopposable' is going too far, I think. It's much more flexible for a designer to say, "fun, fair gameplay is good," as a general principle, and go for that by building their maps accordingly. A list of rules like this works best as a set of guidelines to cover common generalized situations, so that you don't need to waste effort considering them over and over every time. Rules work as time savers, or as crutches for people who can't competently make decisions on their own. If you think of any list of mapping tenets as rigid rules to be followed, it's like assuming that everyone is helpless and incapable choosing for themselves.

Fun and fairness are only some of the different values that people play for, in any case. Challenge and novelty are two more. Sometimes different values conflict or compete: a focus on either fairness or challenge can limit the expression of the other in some ways. Where to draw the line can be a matter of judgment / argument for different people. I often have fun facing challenge in some twitchy unfair senses that will only irritate other players. I also get bored in some situations that other people seem to love. Sometimes I can be drawn in by the pure novelty of an idea enough to enjoy the experience at the expense of some fun, even if the same experience is no fun at all for someone else.

There mustn't be any possibility to get stuck, ever. This includes situations when the player has 1% health and there are damaging floors in his way.

I don't mind having to cross a damaging floor with 1% health, if it's a quick (potentially survivable) dip like at the start of E1M5. If I die in a situation like that, I treat it as a death by bad timing, not much different than being forced to take on a bunch of hitscanners at a distance with 1% health and hoping the PRNG will be kind. I'm usually more than happy if I'm given a medikit or radsuit or something before a section of mandatory damaging floor. If I waste it and leave myself stuck, that's my own fault.

The map must be beatable from pistol start. (Because a death results in a pistol start)

This makes sense for typical doom maps, though I can envision a Hexen-style hub breaking this for good effect, with essential items for certain maps only possibly obtained by carrying them over from previous levels.

The player must be able to beat the map without foreknowledge of it. There mustn't be unwarranted deaths.

Cyberdreams is one of my favorite map sets, and I don't think it could reasonably be expected for players to figure out how to win all the puzzle-y levels without dying a few times in the process. Having to replay certain maps to know what to do is part of the fun there.

There must be a possibility to get 100% kills, 100% items and 100% secrets, player shouldn't lose this possibility at any point.

If you can't get all the secrets or items, then that seems like a pointless error (maybe there could be some contrived counterexamples: opposing secrets that exclude one another, forcing you to pick? or counted items used as decor in an obviously unreachable way? Both could be better implemented, I think). I disagree about kills, though. It's almost always good practice to let players max everything, but I've enjoyed some hectic levels where you clearly do not have an effective means of killing all of the opposition, so the map becomes more about surviving long enough to escape. While the game caters nicely to completionist play, I don't think it should be enforced in all levels in every circumstance.

How about a map where it is straightforward to get 100% kills if you carry over 100 rockets and 600 cells from the previous level, but which will tend to play out as pure survival if you're stuck fresh with just 50 bullets? Certainly not everyone's cup of tea, but I think that could be done in a compelling way.

Mithran Denizen said:

Cyberdreams is one of my favorite map sets, and I don't think it could reasonably be expected for players to figure out how to win all the puzzle-y levels without dying a few times in the process. Having to replay certain maps to know what to do is part of the fun there.

I believe that novelty maps like Cyberdreams or Evil Eye, that take an alternative approach to gameplay, are justified. But regular maps that are beatable only if you manage to save enough ammo by managing to kill all imps on the map in 5 pistol shots or avoiding a "hard" route, are not in the same league IMO.

Often I wondered how the community would receive a map based on "jinx", aka a map where imperceptible player actions (like crossing from one door rather than the other, or touching an unmarked "bad" pixel somewhere) trigger actions like revealing or hiding ammo caches, releasing harder monsters etc. and, worst of all, affecting areas far away from the player, so that no immediate cause & effect feedback is given. This may result in 10 people each encountering completely different difficulties, if implemented right, while there's only one "good" path, known only to the map's author. How well would something like that go down?

Mithran Denizen said:

Fun and fairness are awesome values to support in gameplay, but no set of rigid predetermined rules will ever handle all imaginable cases in their favor, so calling any such set 'unopposable' is going too far, I think. It's much more flexible for a designer to say, "fun, fair gameplay is good," as a general principle, and go for that by building their maps accordingly. A list of rules like this works best as a set of guidelines to cover common generalized situations, so that you don't need to waste effort considering them over and over every time.

This, I agree!

Rules work as time savers, or as crutches for people who can't competently make decisions on their own. If you think of any list of mapping tenets as rigid rules to be followed, it's like assuming that everyone is helpless and incapable choosing for themselves.

This, however, is a little mean and unfair to say. The people who invented the rules knew their job, and the people who followed the rules knew that it's for generally and visibly good reasons. Denying it seems close to an absolute nihilism.

Fun and fairness are only some of the different values that people play for, in any case. Challenge and novelty are two more. Sometimes different values conflict or compete: a focus on either fairness or challenge can limit the expression of the other in some ways. Where to draw the line can be a matter of judgment / argument for different people.

Again, I agree.

There mustn't be any possibility to get stuck, ever. This includes situations when the player has 1% health and there are damaging floors in his way.

I don't mind having to cross a damaging floor with 1% health, if it's a quick (potentially survivable) dip like at the start of E1M5. If I die in a situation like that, I treat it as a death by bad timing, not much different than being forced to take on a bunch of hitscanners at a distance with 1% health and hoping the PRNG will be kind. I'm usually more than happy if I'm given a medikit or radsuit or something before a section of mandatory damaging floor. If I waste it and leave myself stuck, that's my own fault.

Valid point, but when I've written up this "rule", of course that I've meant damaging floors broad-enough so that damage was unavoidable. I simply meant unavoidable damage when the player might be low on health.

*Doubts about the rest of rules*

I basically agree, as I said, all rules can be opposed - on the other hand, living in complete chaos without any certainties would be terrible, and these "rules" seem the closest to the good way if there was any.

Never test your maps in brutal doom or in any gameplay mod.

A lot of these 'tenets' are lame and encourage predictable level design:

* Always finding keys after encountering the locked doors: why? There's no rule of causality here; you find whichever comes first.
* Levels shouldn't close down forever behind you: why? Some things are irreversible, including events in Doom maps.
* Blue liquid should never be harmful; green, red and brown can. In real life you can't tell if a liquid is safe to walk in, just by looking at it
* No inescapable death traps: well, sometimes stupidity should be punish. Just don't fall in that bottomless rewardless pit.
* No trollish death traps (such as sudden crushers): well it's actually more humorous when a dickish mapper decides to just randomly end your game when you're near the end. Imagine the emotion and anger you'll feel.
* When you start, there should be no monsters facing you: I like when a map is so brutal that monsters ambush me from the very start.

Marnetmar said:

14 - Hubspokes are bad and you should feel bad for using them.

What is a "hubspoke"?

Do a google image search for hubspoke.

Anyway I am satisfied with the list in the first post and the discussion that was provoked.

printz said:

A lot of these 'tenets' are lame and encourage predictable level design:

* Blue liquid should never be harmful; green, red and brown can. In real life you can't tell if a liquid is safe to walk in, just by looking at it

In real life, you can't walk over liquid surfaces! And even if you could, the liquid surfaces wouldn't hurt you through your space boots.

In Doom, it's all just a game mechanic called the damaging floor, and its type (colour) is important for clarity of damage. Predictability is a good thing here, because unpredictability would be highly annoying.

printz said:

* No trollish death traps (such as sudden crushers): well it's actually more humorous when a dickish mapper decides to just randomly end your game when you're near the end. Imagine the emotion and anger you'll feel.

Yeah, I can imagine it. I'd want to physically harm the mapper, but since I can't, I can only punish him by not playing any maps from him anymore and forever.

Maes said:

Often I wondered how the community would receive a map based on "jinx", aka a map where imperceptible player actions (like crossing from one door rather than the other, or touching an unmarked "bad" pixel somewhere) trigger actions like revealing or hiding ammo caches, releasing harder monsters etc. and, worst of all, affecting areas far away from the player, so that no immediate cause & effect feedback is given. This may result in 10 people each encountering completely different difficulties, if implemented right, while there's only one "good" path, known only to the map's author. How well would something like that go down?

When I first met ZDoom several years ago, I made a level along those lines, mostly as an exercise in learning the capabilities of its scripting system. There was only one basic linear progression through the map, but monsters would be swapped, different ammo would appear, safe areas would be replaced with map hazards, doorways would become windows, etc, based upon randomly placed shootable / walkover triggers that you'd never know were there. It was kind of amusing, but I don't think the concept would really add that much replayability unless taken to crazy extremes. Besides, with the amount of work it took to add and playtest all the triggers, I could've made another map. Could be cool to see the same idea undertaken with playability (as opposed to experimentation) in mind.

scifista42
This, however, is a little mean and unfair to say. The people who invented the rules knew their job, and the people who followed the rules knew that it's for generally and visibly good reasons. Denying it seems close to an absolute nihilism.

No nihilism is intended--it just makes more sense to me for creative values of this sort to be applied based on careful consideration and merited discussion, rather than in a legalistic way. I see it as more respectful of individuality to assume that level designers generally know what they're doing without adhering to external rules. If there is a clear demonstration of incompetence, or some feature of a map hinders a player's experience, then it's up to the player to argue / communicate the problem, and it's up to the mapper to take the info into consideration.

This works especially well in a (nearly) no-stakes context like level design: it's not like an ignorant Doom mapper can cause actual harm to others when they put something ill-considered in their wad. Certainly not in the way an ignorant driver, or gun owner, or chef, can cause harm to others, if they aren't given a system of rules to safeguard against poor decision making.

I basically agree, as I said, all rules can be opposed - on the other hand, living in complete chaos without any certainties would be terrible, and these "rules" seem the closest to the good way if there was any.

I too think the tenets expressed in this thread are largely solid. I'd argue in favor of most of them in most situations. If you're looking for a set of guidelines, you could do much worse. In any case, I don't take any real issue with the list in the OP as it stands. Steering the focus away from a set of "unbreakable rules" nullifies my objections.

I do think there's a middle ground between "life is chaos," and "life requires certainties." The statement, "gameplay sucks when you're fighting upper-tier monsters with just a pistol," doesn't need to be a 100% certainty to be usefully applied as a general principle. But for the most part, it shouldn't need to be stated as a general principle, either, so long as the person with the map editor is actually thinking about the experience they're trying to create.

Pillars and ledges with monsters on top should block the monsters from being able to fall off onto a part of the map where the player can no longer kill them.

Ammo and health should be placed so that the player can dodge them easily (to save for later). Also, multiple powerups shouldn't be stacked on the same coordinate (an exceptions can be made for near-infinite ammo stacks in slaughter maps requiring near-infinite ammo).

Monsters should not instantly pop out of the floor.

Fredrik said:

Pillars and ledges with monsters on top should block the monsters from being able to fall off onto a part of the map where the player can no longer kill them.

Ammo and health should be placed so that the player can dodge them easily (to save for later). Also, multiple powerups shouldn't be stacked on the same coordinate (an exceptions can be made for near-infinite ammo stacks in slaughter maps requiring near-infinite ammo).

Monsters should not instantly pop out of the floor.

1. Totally yes.
2. Better yes.
3. No. Aside from looking unnatural (and not even for everybody), there's nothing wrong with them, they allow efficiency in sudden ambushes and that's a good thing.

Fredrik said:

Pillars and ledges with monsters on top should block the monsters from being able to fall off onto a part of the map where the player can no longer kill them.

Assuming that monsters can fall off ledges, which normally doesn't happen in vanilla.

Fredrik said:

Ammo and health should be placed so that the player can dodge them easily (to save for later).

Depends....some maps derive part of their challenge from forcing the player into a "use it or lose it" mentality for powerups, meaning that if you are even at 99% health, you will be forced to waste a 25% medikit, and the only way around it is to play flawlessly. Not that I agree with it.

A variation would be forcing the player to pick up a "bad" weapon at an inappropriate time (e.g. a chainsaw or a berserk pack) right at the moment where an angry mob of high-tier monsters teleports VERY closely to the player, and those seconds required to change weapons are enough to cause some damage.

Fredrik said:

Monsters should not instantly pop out of the floor.

What's wrong with that? Other than potentially getting stuck with other things.

Mithran Denizen said:

it's not like an ignorant Doom mapper can cause actual harm to others when they put something ill-considered in their wad. Certainly not in the way an ignorant driver, or gun owner, or chef, can cause harm to others, if they aren't given a system of rules to safeguard against poor decision making.

Good point. Designing and playing games like Doom is all about fun without a risk of harm (unless we're talking about insanely extreme cases of "games" and "gamers", which we're not). So out of principle, there are no rules as importants and legally unbreakable as safeguards are. Breaking any gaming rules for the sake of creative experimentation is fully allowed and encouraged. The "good design principles" don't exist to forbid creative experimentation, they exist to point at the right direction, "right" only according to previous experience of many people and/or a few knowledgeable ones - and that's how the "rules" should be viewed. :)

Maes said:

Assuming that monsters can fall off ledges, which normally doesn't happen in vanilla.

It does happen when you hit them with rockets. Arch-Viles are the most common offenders.

What's wrong with that? Other than potentially getting stuck with other things.

It's not terribly wrong from the gameplay point of view, but it looks cheap every time.

It can be put to good use to prevent too early infighting or monsters clustering in corners. But it generally strikes me as a lazy solution for a problem that generally can be solved with more creative map design.

When it's used for practically every monster (Speed of Doom), you sort of learn to accept that universe's physics working that way after a few maps, though...

Fredrik said:

It does happen when you hit them with rockets. Arch-Viles are the most common offenders.

In vanilla Doom? ZDoom even has a compatibility setting to specifically override their "stuck up" behavior and allow them to fall off ledges.

Captain Toenail said:

Your megawad map must feature at least one toilet or item of over-sized furniture constructed from sectors, it is known.

I did that in December.

But for tenets, player must not get stuck, which includes hallways that have a so low ceiling that you can go up but not down (and vice versa)

Also, 4 player starts are a must to play with friends.

VGA said:

Do a google image search for hubspoke.

So? What I get is some tree graphs. You mean that maps shaped like them are wrong? I don't remember being affected by such maps…

Marnetmar said:

14 - Hubspokes are bad and you should feel bad for using them.[/B]

printz said:
[B]So? What I get is some tree graphs. You mean that maps shaped like them are wrong? I don't remember being affected by such maps…

I've never yet understood why exactly they're supposed to be bad, either. Is it just another example of design that simply feels cheap for the experienced people? Or is there another reason? Or are we just talking about very complex, overdone hubspokes that spoil intuitiveness?

If I understand correctly from the images that came up, my guess would be because that type of design would involve backtracking by the single path you went in from each time you complete a branch as opposed to a more interconnected design.

What if the spokes were designed in such a way that they doubled back on themselves, organically leading the player back to the hub room or somewhere nearby? Or setting up new traps/skirmishes to make the backtracking less redundant? Teleporters, even?

I fail to see anything inherently wrong with backtracking. As long as it's not traversing the entire breadth of a level with no resistance.

Also, everyone so far has overlooked the single most important aspect of Doom mapping:

CRATES.

scalliano said:

CRATES.

Wasn't there an old metric for analyzing maps... "start to crate" time or something to that effect?

hex11 said:
Wasn't there an old metric for analyzing maps... "start to crate" time or something to that effect?

Indeed.

hex11 said:

Wasn't there an old metric for analyzing maps... "start to crate" time or something to that effect?

"The world's first completely unbiased review methodology of computer games", yes. :)

The original idea came from here: http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/39.html

Doomworld's 10 years of Doom "Start to Crate" measurements: http://www.doomworld.com/10years/stc/stc.php

Doomworld's 20 years of Doom "Start to Crate" measurements: http://www.doomworld.com/20years/lifetime.php (scroll down, see on the right)

scalliano said:

I fail to see anything inherently wrong with backtracking. As long as it's not traversing the entire breadth of a level with no resistance.

Me either, but then I'm a Hexen fan. It's something people love to bitch about, either way.

Hexen has the advantage of periodically spawning waves of enemies in vacant sections of the map to keep things interesting, and the better-designed Hexen levels seem like they try to use the hub system and interconnectedness of levels to reduce rather than extend backtracking - there's often a way right from where you are to where you need to go next, to the point that the significant exceptions (Wastelands, Silent Refectory) stand out.

scifista42 said:

In real life, you can't walk over liquid surfaces! And even if you could, the liquid surfaces wouldn't hurt you through your space boots.

Yes, you can if the pool is shallow or dense. And it can leak through your boots if you're not wearing a special suit.

Predictability is a good thing here, because unpredictability would be highly annoying.

Except that you're fighting through a hostile environment which won't agree with your rules and expectations.

Yeah, I can imagine it. I'd want to physically harm the mapper, but since I can't, I can only punish him by not playing any maps from him anymore and forever.

That's valid, unless he's doing it with style.

printz said:

That's valid, unless he's doing it with style.

Not "with style", but maybe yes if he's providing something other, satisfactory enough during his map to balance the frustration out, AND if I expect it beforehand and get reconciled with the fact that I won't ever see the exit map stats, or only if I'm lucky. Then still, only maybe. Either way, I dislike such design a lot, and definitely don't find it funny in standard maps. I wish Jimmy and his followers stopped doing multi-archvile exit traps just as a sign of their image. :)

As usual I've broken most of these rules in my maps.

It seems there is one basic commandment from which all other rules will stem, which is "try not to annoy players". Various players will get annoyed by various things, but in gameplay terms players don't like having their options limited: ie getting stuck, being unable to progress, missing stuff, having no margin for error, having to rely on luck, not knowing what to do, having nothing to fight, repetitive or predictable action and general lack of variety.

Design is a bit more subjective, but for a threshold of immersion I'd recommend treating textures as real materials, light areas according to light sources, and a minimum iwad level of architectural complexity.

Some that I'd like to throw into the mix...

• Any tenet of level design can be discarded, any rule broken, to achieve a particular effect.
  
• Try to preserve compatibility with the least advanced source port necessary to handle the effects you're trying to create. Don't backpedal from using complicated effects that require advanced ports, but try to make those effects an integral part of your level. The gameplay you create should justify your choice of source port to the player.
  
• Level design is a form of visual language. Try to think about what you're telling the player: the information you're giving them, the rules you're setting out, the behaviours you want to encourage or discourage. When you contradict yourself or break your own rules, do so sparingly, and do it for a reason.
  
• Optional content should generally provide more resources than it consumes. If the player beats an encounter, survives a trap, or finishes exploring an area, and is left feeling that they'd be better off hitting F9, turning around, and ignoring that part of the level, you probably messed up.
  
• Choices should exist, and should be informed and meaningful. An informed choice is one which tells the player something (not everything!) about the options they're deciding between: for example, a T-junction might show the left passage leading to a wide-open outdoor area, while the right passage leads into the first of a series of dark and claustrophobic tunnels. A meaningful choice is one which affects gameplay: for example, separate routes through a level may provide the player with different weapons and items, and subject them to monsters in different combinations and configurations. Doom 2 MAP10 is really good at this.
  
• The player should be able to quickly figure out the effects of most objects they interact with, through observation or inference.