Why Do Harder Doom Wads (Especially Slaughter Wads) Tend To Look Cooler

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

The only correlation I can think of besides scope is the fact that people making slaughter maps are more likely to be DOOM veterans, therefore they have more experience mapping as well as playing, either as a result of their longtime exposure to DOOM or their passion for it. A "for masters of DOOM, by masters of DOOM" kind of situation.

 

With that being said, it's all in your head. The most-detailed slaughter maps might have an edge over the most-detailed "traditional" maps, but I see little correlation between slaughter and detail.

Edited January 31, 2022 by TheMagicMushroomMan

[BaileyTW]

I think the hard maps people want to play also tend to be made by talented mapper with some shared inspiration. Someone who has gain an eye for good combat in a map has probably done so by playing for a while and I imagine you might pick up aesthetics along the way as well.

Edited January 31, 2022 by BaileyTW

[Optimus]

I see the extreme architectures of Sunder or Sunlust (I played Sunlust and cheated a lot, didn't play Sunder), they have a certain style, they are pretty solid in their colors/textures, and some interesting high detailed abstract architectures, and of course huge, but it's not my thing. I appreciate how solid they are, but they are like solid arenas where every place looks the same and is not memorable compared to some old WADs. But that's just me, I prefer old adventurous maps, where the colors/textures/themes change sometimes from room to room, they have areas you discover that in my mind are very memorable compared to modern WADs. Or for vastness I prefer some maps in Eternal Doom (the megawad, not the commercial game), but it's true some of these vast maps are pretty empty and would do well with more slaughter.

[LordEntr0py]

This is key to my approach to mapping: make stuff that looks cool but doesn't punish the player for it.

I've had reviews from people saying their heart fell as soon as they saw the architecture because they knew they were about to get their ass handed to them, then enjoyed a relatively pleasant ride which was more at their skill level, so it seems to be working...

 

[Sectorslayer]

2 hours ago, Kute said:

 

If the girl of your dreams sleeps with the entire football team, chess club, and rowing squad, she's probably not the girl of your dreams

Pretty weird example. This idea of a

“dream girl” is quite patriarchal. If a man had accumulated such a record of intercourse he is widely considered successful. For women it’s stigma. 

 

3 hours ago, Kute said:

Noone wants to spend alot of time on a big glorious mapset and then have players march through it unopposed.

Absolutely. It’s about gameplay in the end. Either the map is a challenge or it’s just a display of architecture. Everything in between seems a matter of difficulty levels. 

[Cruduxy Pegg]

If they are trying to balance the map then it will take a lot more tests to get the difficulty right for a hard map, Indirectly forcing the mapper to spend more time replaying the map over and over unless they have testers. And perfection is impossible, so the difficulty tuning tests quickly turn into I CAN IMPROVE THIS SEGMENT over and over and over until the mapper goes insane and disapp.. I mean they decide they've tested enough and release the map.

 

That or they just wanted to make giant pretty maps. Smaller maps restrict what you can create to make a good looking scene. Unless your idea of a beautiful arena is a sewer full of lava.

[LordEntr0py]

4 hours ago, Kute said:

Noone wants to spend alot of time on a big glorious mapset and then have players march through it unopposed.

You know, I'm probably a bit of an anomalous result here, but I genuinely love making the epic architecture and don't feel the need to keep the player in place for too long.
 

I guess I don't make them *easy* as such but there's generally always a strategy for cheesing the harder parts if you look for it. I figure that way your play style dictates the difficulty.

Edited January 31, 2022 by LordEntr0py

[Major Arlene]

50 minutes ago, LordEntr0py said:

You know, I'm probably a bit of an anomalous result here, but I genuinely love making the epic architecture and don't feel the need to keep the player in place for too long.
 

I guess I don't make them *easy* as such but there's generally always a strategy for cheesing the harder parts if you look for it. I figure that way your play style dictates the difficulty.

I love being able to just sit and look at architecture built, personally, both just for fun and to give myself ideas for my own maps.

[NuMetalManiak]

WADs that have stunning visuals but more mild gameplay:

 

Lost Civilization

Hellcore 2.0

Crumpets

Eviternity (barring a couple of levels)

Hellbound (barring a few levels near the end)

Epic 2 (except MAP26 and MAP29 which have slaughterlike gameplay)

Ozonia (;D)

Edited January 31, 2022 by NuMetalManiak

[Deadwing]

Atmospheric Extinction too, the levels are gorgerous

[RDETalus]

3 hours ago, NuMetalManiak said:

WADs that have stunning visuals but more mild gameplay:

Dimension of the Boomed as well. The lighting work is on a level of quality that only a handful of mappers ever attempt.

 

Cool is subjective anyways. I strongly prefer adventure maps that use visual storytelling. The big slaughter maps have large scale architecture, but they don't cut it for me because all I really see is a just fancy soulless arena. What am I looking at? Where does this go? What is this room's purpose? These questions all have the same answers: it's just an arena. I really don't like that.

 

5 hours ago, sectrslayr said:

If a man had accumulated such a record of intercourse he is widely considered successful

People say this often, but I don't think it's actually true. Certainly women are judged harsher than men, but still, I think it's a minority of men that feel that other men sleeping around a ton is considered "successful."

Edited January 31, 2022 by RDETalus

[dyshoria]

it might be that they want it to look appealing. If you've just got a box with alot of enemies it will seem like something i did but thats beside the point. Most people want it to make their wads look good so that its not just a box with enemies

[Major Arlene]

1 hour ago, RDETalus said:

People say this often, but I don't think it's actually true. Certainly women are judged harsher than men, but still, I think it's a minority of men that feel that other men sleeping around a ton is considered "successful."

please stop derailing this topic and drop this subject. thanks.

[MFG38]

8 hours ago, Kute said:

If the girl of your dreams sleeps with the entire football team, chess club, and rowing squad, she's probably not the girl of your dreams

 

Talk about an odd and unrelated tangent.

[Gez]

2 hours ago, RDETalus said:

Dimension of the Boomed as well. The lighting work is on a level of quality that only a handful of mappers ever attempt.

Speaking of Urthar's stuff, Way 2 Many Dead Guys had pretty cool large-scale architecture in my recollection.

 

Brigandine by Viggles is another map with very nice vista. Exl's Verdant Citadel is worth a mention. Ed's Putrefier is full of Quake-inspired industrial decay. And Elend's Hurt should definitely not be skipped.

 

[RDETalus]

17 minutes ago, Gez said:

Brigandine by Viggles is another map with very nice vista. Exl's Verdant Citadel is worth a mention. Ed's Putrefier is full of Quake-inspired industrial decay.

 

Yeah definitely, these maps are in my top 20. I haven't played the other two you mentioned though.

Edited January 31, 2022 by RDETalus

[Syn]

16 hours ago, Doomkid said:

128-unit-high rooms textured in STARTAN3 (the objectively coolest way to design and texture maps)?

Now Doomkid knows what's up

[PixelPerfectDW]

19 hours ago, T-Rex said:

 

You might want to check out Alien Vendetta. It's got a good number of Eternal Doom styled adventure maps and combines that with Plutonia's knockabout gameplay.

I prefer Toxic Touch over Misri Halek, although I cherish both of them.

[LadyMistDragon]

Honestly....it's probably a combination of the jaw-dropping power of Sunder in 2009 spawning largely even more successful imitators and the idea that massive maps should inevitably have much of the difficulty to match is a natural outgrowth of that.

 

Also, empty space sucks and various wads released over the years have made empty space distinctly uncool, so maps featuring such a strong visual component must have at least one or two huge fights.

[Benjogami]

It's pretty sad to cite the old "shitty lock, master key" analogy the year of our lord 2022. It's a very circular argument. Learn to think critically.

 

Gorgeous difficult maps are made for fucking, doesn't really matter if it's you or the map that's topping. Either way, it's really hot.

[Bri]

I think there's probably a natural evolution of authors who are inspired by others which makes them want to make great-looking maps. I don't make huge slaughter wads, but speaking for myself, I was inspired to start mapping for Doom 2 after playing many fun and visually amazing wads. I don't think I'll ever reach the level of the authors that inspired me, but I enjoy making maps and strive to make them play and look as best I can.

[DynamiteKaitorn]

100 Revenants in a grey box is way blander to fight than 100 revenants in a holy cathedral with each individual arch using slopes and lots of tapestry all over the place.

[ChopBlock223]

On 1/31/2022 at 1:10 AM, Shepardus said:

Also, in addition to what @Dunn (& Dunn) shared, Insane_Gazebo states in Sunder's text file:

 

It's kinda funny that he says that when Deus Vult II came out like the year before that, and is an utterly gorgeous abbatoir.

 

On 1/31/2022 at 2:50 AM, ApprihensivSoul said:

I've always wondered what Eternal Doom would play like with Plutonia combat

The fighting would be more fun, but some of Eternal Doom's progression is the kind of cryptic nonsense you'd expect for some kind of well hidden easter egg, yet the most obtuse bullshit it pulls is often required to just beat that level. The last couple of levels in particular are guilty of this.

 

Of course, not all of Eternal Doom is like that, and it has some very nice levels early on, full of atmosphere, and with mostly sane progression, so grafting some Plutonia onto the best parts of Eternal Doom is fundamentally sound.

[Maes]

I'd say scale plays a role too. Lots of monsters also need lots of space, and thus plenty of opportunity to show off with large, memorable structures of every kind. Even copy + paste detail will get a flying pass if the map is large enough.

[xdarkmasterx]

I imagine that experienced mappers have been playing the game for a long time, and have a very high bar for what counts as a decent challenge.

Edited February 1, 2022 by xdarkmasterx

[ApprihensivSoul]

2 hours ago, ChopBlock223 said:

 

Of course, not all of Eternal Doom is like that, and it has some very nice levels early on, full of atmosphere, and with mostly sane progression, so grafting some Plutonia onto the best parts of Eternal Doom is fundamentally sound.

That's the thing, I love the obtuse stuff. Those are the levels I would want the combat in. I totally think they probably went for a harder and harder sell as the mod went on, but there's only so much improvement you could do to the telegraphing before ruining the wad.
That's waaaaay off topic though, once you get into progression, and to loop it back, most slaughtermaps, including Sunder, have a form of progression that I find... a little bland, without enough, heh, obtuse labyrinthine sprawls. But even with simplistic progression, alot of the more modern slaughtermaps still do better than they used to when it comes to pacing the combat itself.

[Pirx]

On 1/31/2022 at 12:23 AM, PixelPerfectDW said:

Sunlust, Sunder, Abandon, Death In Excess, everything by Ribbiks; why do the ultra-hard doom wads and slaughter wads tend to look the coolest?

 

 

everything by ribbiks, and half of sunlust is by him - he happens to have a sense for striking visuals and prefer hard difficulty, so  that's a lot of influence he had on the mapping scene. same for gazebo.

 

then there's again the player's tendency to remember great looking settings, and particularly hard fights, better than average maps. not every hard map looks great, and not all great looking maps are hard, but combined they have a lasting effect.

 

and then, slaughtermaps just lend themselves to monumental architecture, as you have to put all those monsters somewhere. sure, you can just fill a huge cathedral with 3000 imps and people would still called it a slaughtermap, but one with less interesting gameplay.

[ChopBlock223]

On 1/31/2022 at 12:47 PM, Major Arlene said:

I love being able to just sit and look at architecture built, personally, both just for fun and to give myself ideas for my own maps.

Same. I never really played Deathmatch, but at times I've booted up Crucified Dreams in singleplayer, just to walk through all those grand gothic halls, for admiration as well as inspiration.

 

Some day I must make a set of levels with those kinds of visuals.

 

 

[Yasha]

Sunlust isn't a slaughterwad except for a few maps at the end and I'd say the best looking map (Emerald Spire) isn't very slaughter. Also, HMP and HNTR aren't THAT difficult--definitely challenging, but Ribbiks is consistent in his belief that UV should be for super players and the lower two are for us mere mortals.

 

Anyway, when it comes to Sunder and Abandon, both those wads are focused on extremely massive sweeping architecture--they NEED to be slaughter just to not being boring running between massive structures and fields. You couldn't make a Sunder-style map with 100-500 enemies. Huge grandiose architecture looks impressive, and demands high monster count.

[Kinetic]

This was already sorta said earlier, but I think another part of it is precedent. Older hard wads that looked beautiful like Sunder and some maps in Speed of Doom for example, have sort of stood as exemplary maps of beautiful maps with hard gameplay. They established a style of maps: hard gameplay with striking and memorable visuals. And you'll see hard wads use a lot of the same textures as well, as hard map mapmakers look to others' hard maps for inspiration. I know whenever I make hard maps I use a lot of tropes of hard maps in the visuals and combat.