is using crates a cardinal sin

[ENEMY!!!]

I'm reminded of Old Man Murray's Start to Crate system from back in my childhood.

https://www.doomworld.com/10years/stc/stc.php

https://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/40.html

Personally I rarely have a problem with the use of crates, though I get some amusement from the Start to Crate rating system.

Edited June 7, 2022 by ENEMY!!!

[Solmyr]

No, crates are an integral part of Doom as much techbases are. They are a mapping trope to make an otherwise boring room interesting, what makes crate use in map layout interesting or a boring cliché depends on whether or not you're inspired and how much effort you're going to invest.

[Gez]

For a more serious comment: crates as a mapping trope are only as lazy or cliché or whatever you want to disparage them as any other generic detail element. Like rocks or computers or nondescript machinery or oozing pile of Hellgrowth or random skull pyramid. Sure, we've all seen maps  that had crates plopped down in places where they had no real justification for being, but the same can be said of most anything else you can think of. I mean, it's Doom, home of the Abstract Map. Who cares whether it makes sense that the corridor is blocked off by an inconvenient crate? Or that the office window can be reached by a convenient crate? Would the map be better of if instead of crates it were rocks or computers or nondescript machinery or oozing piles of Hellgrowth or random skull pyramids?

Edited June 7, 2022 by Gez

[Bauul]

16 hours ago, baja blast rd. said:

Expanding on this because it's a fun topic. 

 

I applaud this level of in-depth crate analysis!

 

I agree with the sentiments that crates work because they are essentially an easy way to place a cube in a level in a way that makes canonical sense.  Cubes are great for all sorts of reasons: they provide cover, they provide steps, they break up the room, you can put stuff on them, you can guide the player with them, and they're super quick to make and if they're orthogonal they work well with Doom's locked-Thing-angle gameplay.

 

In a "real world" sense, there are relatively few reasons you would typically find a large, cubic solid mass sat in the middle of a room.  A crate is one of those reasons, and can be applied almost anywhere.  They can be neatly stacked like they're being stored, or they can be haphazardly left in a room somewhere like someone dropped them.  It almost doesn't matter the context: as long as you use appropriate textures, players just accept them.

 

For example, Elementalism's Fire episode is all fiery steampunk maps full of lava and gears.  All the way until the end of the fourth map there isn't a single crate, or really anything resembling a crate.  And then, in a corridor of blood and stone, is a random big crate sat in a corner.  It's there specifically to provide cover from a pair of AVs.  You know how many people have commented it seems weird to suddenly have a crate in a mapset that until that point didn't have a single one?  Precisely zero.

 

Everyone loves crates.

[Obsidian]

1 hour ago, Gez said:

random skull pyramids

 

Agreeing with every other part of your post, but random skull pyramids are fucking tight. That's that good shit right there.

[Pirx]

to crate or not to crate, that is the question... perhaps just stick to a sane number of them.

[VoanHead]

You can do something creative w/ crates like making a fort out of em or something. Like the demons had fun one day and decided to make a massive UAC crate fort

[erkyp3rky]

i mean ive definitely managed to make some fun and interesting encounters with them. the crate heights ive found add a lot of flexibility and provide walls of varying heights whilst making sense. i managed to make an encounter with a mancubus on a huge crate tower at the end of a long hallway. the hallway is littered with crates, and is a mini maze itself. you have several path choices, with the paths with the most cover having lots of ambushes and the paths with no cover having less threat from monsters but more from the mancubus sentry. its a lot of fun and i find the height variation possibilities is a huge strength of crates.

[bofu]

It bugs me when crates are aligned perfectly on a 64x64 grid without any variation and you have huge sections of a perfectly flat wall without any changes in the offset (protip: if you are going to make a linedef of crates of a different color, split it on a seam somewhere and change the Y-offset by 64 every now and then so that it breaks up the monotony).

 

In my maps, I try to have a few crates that are offset from their neighbors by a few map units, rotated slightly, or otherwise changed in appearance.

[IcarusOfDaggers]

If your level is any sort of base with any sort of storage facilty being accessible, then crates can be used fine. Just, try to use more than rectangles, crate textures are amazing at adjusting to almost any shape in any angle

[Pegleg]

On 6/7/2022 at 5:28 PM, Bauul said:

Everyone loves crates.

 

This is the sort of feel-good statement that we can all get behind. Who doesn't like a good crate?

[Somniac]

Crates are life.

[The BMFG]

crate is love crate is life

[Gez]

Any crater should be surrounded by crates, because obviously a crater is something that makes crates. It wouldn't be called crater otherwise.

[NoWits]

On 6/7/2022 at 5:21 AM, Doomkid said:

Oddly, I actually have heard people say they're sick of crates in bygone years, and it always struck me as being unfathomably random. It's like saying "ugh, I'm so tired of the Burning Barrel decoration. FUCK THAT THING!!"

 

I disagree with this statement. There is nothing random about hating on burning barrels. In fact, it's one of the most logical things in Doom to hate on. All it does is sit there, its static, non-interactive ass almost gloating about just how much jack shit it does when shot.

 

Hey, check it out guys! New for Doom 2, it's like the explosive barrels we all know and love, except it's ON FIRE! I can't want to see what kind of chaos I can cause by pumping some lead into one of these bad boys! Imagine my sheer disappointment (and, I'm sure, the collective disappointment of Doomers around the world) when we found out that the answer to that question is: sweet F.A. They just sit there as if your buckshot was play-doh! You can't even knock them over; they don't even hurt you when you get close (you know, like a fire would); their sole purpose for existence is to get in your way.

 

It's like if they introduced the Super Shotgun in Doom 2, only for you to find out that it's a non-functioning antique replica that you can only look at and admire before switching to another weapon. How much of a letdown would that have been? And yet the burning barrel somehow manages to escape the same perfectly justified criticism as something which logic and intuition dictate is very obviously a more powerful upgrade of an existing game object, but in practice contributes nothing beyond being yet another rehash of one of the most uninteresting objects in the game: a static obstacle. I'll say it once more for those in the back: Fuck Burning Barrels.

[Master O]

On 6/6/2022 at 11:18 PM, erkyp3rky said:

hi all! i have been silently editing and making maps for about 2 years or so now, and i wouldnt quite say im good at it or have any finished products. my question today however is regarding the crates cliche. how bad is it to use crates, or even make a crate maze-esque level? is it unbearably annoying? or tolerable dependent on the level design?

 

What's wrong with thinking inside the box?  :D  (http://instantrimshot.com/)

Edited June 24, 2022 by Master O

[Doomkid]

12 minutes ago, Master O said:

What's wrong with thinking inside the box?  :D  (http://instantrimshot.com/)

 

 

 

This is all I can think of as of 2007 or so when I hear "think outside the box" or any variation thereof...