Unpopular Doom Opinions

On 9/11/2022 at 10:31 PM, Lila Feuer said:

I have another complaint to make. Computer maps that don't update anything. I realize mappers can flag linedefs to not update or even appear on the automap at all, but if so then why are you giving me a computer map for? I picked one up in NOVA II's MAP15: Crumbling Necropolis hoping it would assist me for having 4/10 secrets after an hour of play aaaaand there's nothing. Okay, I guess I'll rely on walkthrough or video since the computer map was useless.

The "hide on automap" flag should be used for keeping changes in light level, trigger lines, teleport destination sectors contained within larger sectors, and texture changes from showing on the automap, or to hide multiplayer-only DM arenas in singleplayer maps. Not to hide every last secret and force the player to use a walkthrough or make a terribly confusing level.

i think doom's set of opl patches is better than doom 2's set.

9 hours ago, bofu said:

 

The "hide on automap" flag should be used for keeping changes in light level, trigger lines, teleport destination sectors contained within larger sectors, and texture changes from showing on the automap, or to hide multiplayer-only DM arenas in singleplayer maps. Not to hide every last secret and force the player to use a walkthrough or make a terribly confusing level.

100 000 times this!

Searching for secrets in a 'fair' way is a gentlemen's agreement, not a law of a universe.

I can open map in an editor, I can seek uv-max demos on the internet, or I can decide to ignore the secrets completely! If the mapper wants me to engage with the secret hunting system - it is cool! But it is on them to ecourage me to participate in a 'fair' way!

BTW, the same applies to combat. I absolutely will try cheese or skip the fights, which feel ugly to win "properly"!

I hate it when mappers only hide secrets on the automap, but I admit I sometimes like hiding the entire map to make the player think he's lost somewhere. I think the automap tends to break the immersion in some maps (the atmospheric ones like Misri Halek for instance)

It's funny, I feel like more players forget the map exists or refuse to use it than keep it up the entire time. I like making it actually be useful as a feature, if the player chooses to use it. I'm in favor of putting all secrets on it, making the automap pickup clearly available at some point, and also still having some non secret areas to reward people who explore beyond just tagging the secrets. That way people who are about ready to cheat to find the secrets and finish the map, if that's their MO, have a more graceful option that gives them a much smaller region to explore and keeps their feeling of accomplishment somewhat intact. There's a big difference between using the map a bit to look for clues, and using IDDT/IDCLIP/guides. Give people an off ramp so they don't just drive off the cliff when their patience runs out.

Another option is doing something creative like Grove where it's a complete abstraction but still does its job. That's a map that's designed for the player to wander a bit though, I think way too many mappers go for that kind of feel but fail to pull it off. Even simplicity in the layout and progression isn't a guarantee of a smooth experience though, some players are really impervious to mystery. Like mixing a well-oiled cat and some water. At least with some kind of map you're giving the player one less reason to complain about anything unclear. 

4 hours ago, Roofi said:

I hate it when mappers only hide secrets on the automap, but I admit I sometimes like hiding the entire map to make the player think he's lost somewhere. I think the automap tends to break the immersion in some maps (the atmospheric ones like Misri Halek for instance)

Yeah, I will sometimes hide (very simple) sections of a map on the automap for immersion and not for confusion (does a teleporter briefly take you to part of the level that's another part of the level, but a hellish version of it? if it's easy to navigate, hide it in the automap). These are never areas where there are secrets or branching paths where the player can easily get lost. It's never done to actually obfuscate the progression of the level, because that's just annoying and makes an already underused powerup even more less likely to be used.

"Intended strategies" (i.e. intended by the mapper) aren't really a thing that is helpful to think about or is really that meaningful.

30 minutes ago, baja blast rd. said:

"Intended strategies" (i.e. intended by the mapper) aren't really a thing that is helpful to think about or is really that meaningful. 

If you are the player? Sure!

If you are the map (co-)author or playtester - that stuff is important, albeit not essential.

You kinda-sorta want the map to have a proper* pace. And here a little pitfall may occur: with the "intended strategy" the map plays just right. But this strategy can be too obscure for the first time player of the map. And in that case, the player can miss the intended pace of the map by quite a lot. This may accidentally ruin the whole experience due to broken pacing.

*In this context 'proper' = 'as the author consideres to be right'. From this point of view, both TNT:Evilution and Ancient Aliens have a 'proper' pace.

Yeah I was talking about the perspective of the player. 

Completely separately, though, what you are referring to in that second paragraph doesn't really sound like 'strategy' to me though; it just sounds like you're referring to the really broad shape of what the map wants the player to do. Something more like 'constraints' / 'goals'.

Kind of how Valiant map19 (Popes of Roam) you need to flee from the cybs while setting all the monsters loose and doing all the stuff, but that's not really a 'strategy'. That's your goal. Or in Sunlust map29's circle fight you need to "kill imps and HKs that warp in while staying in front of the moving barrier" but god help you if that's what you think the 'strategy' is and you think the rest is just 'execution'.

I do think intended goals (or whatever the proper term is) are helpful to know, and often for the map to communicate (not always), but that's often pretty different from strategy. 

I meant 'strategy' as the approach that I should be trying to execute.

Famous Doom demi-god Decino occasionally fumbles with that, like with -fast Plutonia 2 map 03. For some reason, he tunnel-visioned into going to the right from the staring platform, while dropping to the left also works, and is less demanding, IMHO.

Of course, -fast Plutonia 2 is a bad example for discussing "intended strats" - it has no intended strategies at all!

But the same logic applies to real "intended strats". The player can tunnel vision into a bad approach, and get burned for it again and again. This may (or may not!) be against the mapper's intention. Thus, in some situations, it is productive to talk about intednded strategies.

Yeah I see what you mean now. It's a difference in terminology. I think of "strategy" as often quite specific.  For how specific it can get, check out this post. And "goals" as that broader way of looking at it. 

What I've found is that focusing on intended strategies is actually way more likely to tunnel vision people the other way -- out of shockingly easy approaches. (That also aren't "cheeses.') 

This is because no mapper is going to "intend" for their (major) fights to have solutions that are way below the wad's difficulty paygrade. But that happens all the time.

Generally speaking, pit 30-40 people who play hardcore wads regularly at a wad and their combined problem-solving is just going to decimate whatever set of approaches the mapper thought were the best approaches for everything. You can see this happen with basically every hard wad that has received a lot of playing. Fights (even simple ones) are systems that are way too complex for someone to know everything, and several or more people with slightly different perspectives and critical distance (and don't have the burden of assumptions the mapper might have been making) can figure out a lot more than what the mapper realized possible. 

(For this reason I think the hard fight as "test" concept is pretty inaccurate and the hard fight as "puzzle" one is more accurate but still not quite right. Harder fights are more like open-ended research problems where people can come up with better approaches forever. It's been ~ a decade and people are still coming up with better approaches for stuff in SWTW and No Chance for example.) 

i like the idea of bobby prince having ambience music in doom too, it fit doom well. 

I do think with regard to Doom maps/levels, it probably would vary if you are a speed runner versus at atmospheric focused player.  

I tend to take levels slow and prefer semi-realism.  I think this is why urban levels in Doom 2 were so appealing to me.  They had great atmosphere and felt like a futuristic, apocalyptic, urban setting.  (Especially back in 1990s when I first played them).

stars.mid is overrated

I think it's a banger but it's more overused than overrated.

2 hours ago, stewboy said:

stars.mid is overrated

whenever i hear it, it brings to mind those 3hr long Decino blind runs-HOLY SHIT IS THAT ACTUALLY STUART RYNN?

4 hours ago, stewboy said:

stars.mid is overrated

weird.mid is underrated.

Also the midi used in SoD map 32 would better fit in a pirate-themed level than an egyptian one.

The assault rifle from 1000 lines 3 community project is 100 times more fun and just over all better than the standard chaingun. Wish we got that instead originally. Just a confession I have after playing that wad.

Not sure if this counts or not but

They should have let Sandy Petersen make fewer levels for Doom 2 and let American McGee make more.

If it weren't for Sandy, megawads today would have around 12 maps.

On 9/15/2022 at 8:39 AM, stewboy said:

stars.mid is overrated

It isn’t as well-calibrated compared to your (IMO) best works like “The Greater Good” “Birdsong”, “Imaginarium”, “Polar Expedition”, “Restless Restless” , “Para Bellum” and “Symphony of the Soul”, but it still holds its own.

5 hours ago, Doctor_Spengler said:

Not sure if this counts or not but

They should have let Sandy Petersen make fewer levels for Doom 2 and let American McGee make more.

I am going to repeat myself from earlier in this thread:

Sandy Petersen did nothing wrong!

Also I agree with this because McGee was definitely the best mapper in Doom 2 and Petersen was probably stretched a little thin

1 hour ago, TheHambourgeois said:

I am going to repeat myself from earlier in this thread:

Sandy Petersen did nothing wrong!

Also I agree with this because McGee was definitely the best mapper in Doom 2 and Petersen was probably stretched a little thin

I went back to review Doom 2 levels, I tend to be hot or cold with Petersen.  He actually made some of my favorite levels in the game but also made a couple of my least favorites.  American McGee also made some good levels (he made a lot of the early levels for example).

Apparently according to Sandy Petersen, American McGee was NOT treated well by ID Software during Quake development and basically was forced out of ID.  

Interestingly, the building with the library book case in Level 16 is based off of a house Sandy Petersen lived in.  

I would love to see a Doom 2 remake that had actual levels based on real world locations and cities.  That would be pretty awesome.  (Perhaps tweaked some for future reference).  

That being said, I have also played some great WADs by just general Doom WAD creators.  I would say there are probably WADs out there with far better levels than the original game.  

OPL is a mediocre soundfont and it doesn't feel old-schoold to play with it since even the original game allowed better soundfonts.

Exemple :

10 minutes ago, Roofi said:

OPL is a mediocre soundfont and it doesn't feel old-schoold to play with it since even the original game allowed better soundfonts.

at high risk of pedantry, i apologize:
unless you're referring to an .sf2 of opl3 samples, yamaha's opl series of synthesizer chips is not a soundfont, but a synth in itself - not unlike the MOS 6581 SID in the commodore 64. dmx's sets of 2-operator patches (the programmed instrument sounds) targeting opl2 (2 operators/voice in mono vs. opl3's 4op/voice in stereo) are generally just not great sounding but in a strangely endearing way. i am a weirdo who likes it when the sine waves go boiiiing. system shock and terra nova: sfc immediately come to mind as games that genuinely sound better with opl3 due to some patches being designed to the (easiest to achieve, in my experience) strengths of that synthesis method, deep bass and cold abrasion. the midi metal tracks in doom definitely sound goofier under opl, but i find it endearing and fun. might it sound out of place? sure. but demons are also out of place of phobos, deimos and earth and those tend to take priority. like a computer, a synthesizer is only as capable as its programmer.
 

another unpopular opinon related to frequency modulation synthesis and its potential application in doom while my brain's still there, i do not see this mentioned much at all:

one of the best features of the eternity engine is the incredibly varied set of opl patch banks from a wide assortment of dos programs, with the option to set it as if you had 8 sound blaster 16s in your system! (or 8 ymf262s on one card).

i'm heavily biased in favor of opl because i've recieved at least 100 headaches as a direct result of a few of yamaha's fm synths and their unintuitive and slow interfaces that make you edit as little information as possible at a time. i always want to be hearing what other people have programmed with that method of synthesis, even if it sounds unpleasant in a negative way (fm synths can definitely sound unpleasant in a very good way to my ears too, at least.)

from my observation, it seems more people use and prefer general midi + any given GM soundfont over any sort of fm synth emulation when playing doom. i'm currently not even using opl emulation at the most present moments.

I really really like using FIREBLU as a teleporter / portal texture.

It just feels right - never understood the FIREBLU hate - it's actually a fairly versatile texture if used correctly.

1 hour ago, Arrowhead said:

I really really like using FIREBLU as a teleporter / portal texture.

 

It just feels right - never understood the FIREBLU hate - it's actually a fairly versatile texture if used correctly.

FIREBLU also makes for great stained-glass windows in Cathedral-type levels.  Heck, I even like it being used for weird abstract Hell levels.  The map I'm currently working on even has an attempt at making an E3M6-style FIREBLU building that looks trippy and surreal without being a total eyesore.

1 hour ago, Arrowhead said:

I really really like using FIREBLU as a teleporter / portal texture.

 

So do I, it's so good at that if you're just using vanilla textures.

3 minutes ago, Alfwin said:

FIREBLU also makes for great stained-glass windows in Cathedral-type levels.  Heck, I even like it being used for weird abstract Hell levels.  The map I'm currently working on even has an attempt at making an E3M6-style FIREBLU building that looks trippy and surreal without being a total eyesore.

Ooh, the stained-glass idea is smart.

Just remembered another thing I've used it for: It's also useful for transitioning from COMPBLU to FIRELAV/MAG/WAL in 'hell-corrupted' techbase levels.   :D

1 minute ago, Codename_Delta said:

So do I, it's so good at that if you're just using vanilla textures.

Yeah, good point - it probably is your best bet in vanilla.

Do any WADs use fireblu as a skybox?