How to make a good hell map?

[Bridgeburner56]

Did someone say HELL

Key to dynamic hell maps that stand out is: go abstract
Everyone has seen fire and brimstone, flesh etc maps, they're in the original doom games. Expand your horizons and bend the trope. Hell is all sorts of things but it is unequivocally unknowable and alien and horrible. Incomprehensible. What fills those criteria? Let your imagination run wild. I've made hell maps inspired by motorway overpasses and made hell maps inspired by 6th century cathedrals and made hell maps out of brutalist circus arenas. Nothing is out of bounds for inspiration. Bend it to your will.

Have your eyes been opened

*Marauder shuffles away*

Also all the pentagrams.

Also join the Hellforge. Where great hell maps are born https://discord.gg/hellforge

[magicsofa]

18 hours ago, Pompeji said:

Hell is a place shitty people go when they die in order to get tortured for eternity.

You know, reading this sentence made me realize that I never thought about the reasons for the souls being in hell within the Doom universe. I feel like the game is pretty neutral as far as whether anyone deserves to be there - although the demons have residency, many of them are just corrupted humans that tried a teleporter (none of us will make that mistake in real life, amirite?) And I guess I always thought of the tortured bodies as other soldiers who dared fight the hordes.

Anyway, as someone else said, suffering is a big theme. But it doesn't have to be restricted to the player/humans. I always felt that the texture with the maimed baron was one of the most effective in deepening the horror aspect. It shows that the demons themselves are stuck in eternal torment. For this reason I encourage you to also put monsters in compromising situations, such as being stuck in cages, placed in obviously bad spots where a stronger baddie is ready to wipe them out, or under crushers which allow you to mercifully put them out of their misery in bulk.

[Pompeji]

2 hours ago, magicsofa said:

You know, reading this sentence made me realize that I never thought about the reasons for the souls being in hell within the Doom universe. I feel like the game is pretty neutral as far as whether anyone deserves to be there - although the demons have residency, many of them are just corrupted humans that tried a teleporter (none of us will make that mistake in real life, amirite?) And I guess I always thought of the tortured bodies as other soldiers who dared fight the hordes.

Anyway, as someone else said, suffering is a big theme. But it doesn't have to be restricted to the player/humans. I always felt that the texture with the maimed baron was one of the most effective in deepening the horror aspect. It shows that the demons themselves are stuck in eternal torment. For this reason I encourage you to also put monsters in compromising situations, such as being stuck in cages, placed in obviously bad spots where a stronger baddie is ready to wipe them out, or under crushers which allow you to mercifully put them out of their misery in bulk.

 

I made a post about the map giving a sneak peak and in the story I do mention demons are born from the bodies and souls of the Tortured, humans who have gone to hell and been captured. This torture inflicted upon them is so great that it separates the soul from the body, creating lost souls and adding their flesh to the flesh recycling area. Lost souls are then given bodies and reborn as humanoid enemies like revenants, imps, mancubi, etc.

[Pirx]

3 hours ago, Bridgeburner56 said:

Key to dynamic hell maps that stand out is: go abstract
Everyone has seen fire and brimstone, flesh etc maps, they're in the original doom games. Expand your horizons and bend the trope. Hell is all sorts of things but it is unequivocally unknowable and alien and horrible. Incomprehensible. What fills those criteria? Let your imagination run wild. I've made hell maps inspired by motorway overpasses and made hell maps inspired by 6th century cathedrals and made hell maps out of brutalist circus arenas. Nothing is out of bounds for inspiration. Bend it to your will.

 

this. if lava, marble and brimstone is the classic hell, then abstract was always my image of "upper hell" where demonic influence bends reality, creating warped images, surreal landscapes, void maps and the like.

 

[Somniac]

Depends how you want to approach it I guess. Inferno's Hell setting is far more "traditional" compared to Doom II's abstraction of Hell and reality merging into one-another beginning at MAP20, and they both work just fine. Then you've got the Hell approaches of say, Plutonia (the sort of cavernous subterranean thing IIRC), or AV, or any other megaWAD that takes the traditional Doom Hell aesthetic and either refines it or goes all out crazy with it and presents a totally new environment (Void, NullSpace etc could all come under that umbrella). I'm currently working on a Hell map that is sort of Inferno in a Doom II setting. Regardless, there's plenty of stock textures that can work perfectly, whether its the green marble, ash floors, the bad acid trip of FIREBLU, wood, flesh and metal etc. 

[Mr.Rocket]

Here's a video of a hell themed map, Map29 for NDCP2 which me and Dutch Devil worked on some years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hes4YfX_9I

Should give an idea of the route we took with it.

 

Edited February 26, 2021 by Mr.Rocket

[Pompeji]

19 minutes ago, Mr.Rocket said:

Here's a video of a hell themed map, Map29 for NDCP2 which me and Dutch Devil worked on some years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hes4YfX_9I

Should give an idea of the route we took with it.

 

 

Thank you! I'll watch for inspiration!