Vanilla visuals ≠ Bad visuals.

[Shibainumaster]

I noticed this pattern in a lot of vanilla WAD's lately,the creators seem to think that making the visual chops of their maps bad or unappealing,somehow makes their maps closer in spirit to the maps of the original IWAD's.  This can be seen in: Syringe.wad,Some parts of "Earthless:prelude", Doom 2 the way ID did,Arrival.wad,Doom ZERO (fun),Vile flesh. Basically half the modern vanilla stuff on DW and all the barf from modern mappers that Bethesda accepted for their doom port. Through the years we had the "Chord" series,"Alien Vendetta",etc. with amazing visuals. But somehow at one point popular mappers degraded to making 1999-esque level design and texturing. The cobat might be cool,but the visuals are almost always ripped straight from a "Master Levels" map.

Some examples:

 

Absent texture borders,flats not matching wiith the wall or platform textures,liquids on the cieling and vice-versa. This can honestly ruin the experience and take away the sense of place maps with good visuals and gameplay have.Can anyone else share their opinions on that? I bet that this can be an interseting discussion.

Edited July 3, 2022 by Shibainumaster

[Csonicgo]

The only thing unappealing in these photos is that unscaled status bar.

 

 

[Mikolah]

Yeah, what is this? A status bar for ants?

[Fletcher`]

ok

[Edward850]

6 minutes ago, Csonicgo said:

The only thing unappealing in these photos is that unscaled status bar.

 

 

The use of vertical look is the thing that sticks out to me. Aren't these supposed to be vanilla wads? This can show detail normally invisible to the fixed camera pitch.

 

And frankly some of these shots seem nitpicky and hyperfocused. I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to be looking at here, for example.

https://static.doomworld.com/monthly_2022_07/Screenshot_Doom_20220703_135951.png.8b345b68fe0464f69a313848e5516555.png

The only thing in frame seems to be Zdoom's out of place decals.

 

And this is just straight up joke-review-shot.jpg.

Edited July 3, 2022 by Edward850

[Thelokk]

Look, yet another spelling mistakes-filled rage pulpit, with no actual point behind it except for ad hominem attacks. Wonderful. 

 

Protip: no good conversation will ever come out of calling the hard work of people more experienced than you 'barf'. We already went over this in the Doom Zero thread, if I recall correctly. 

Edited July 3, 2022 by Thelokk

[Misty]

I don't know, it seems fine for me - all those imperfections show that it's done by human mind rather than computer. If you want change the tide - you should set example that people will follow later on in upcoming years. 

[Kinsie]

Not really certain what I should be looking at here, what WADs these came from, or why I should feel anything resembling the kind of outrage the OP thinks I should.

[CittyKat112]

There's only a few screens that I would consider 'ugly', but nothing crucial. But there's one thing that I think is the ugliest thing I noticed in all of these screenshots... And it's goddamn mouselook! Also, can you pls learn how to use spoilers so I wouldn't have to scroll all the way down to see the replies? Thank you.

[Obsidian]

1. For the love of all things holy, please use spoilers.

 

2. There is no strictly correct way to do map visuals and what appeals to one person won't necessarily appeal to another. You're allowed to not be keen on this kind of visual style, there's nothing wrong with that, but your opinion is only one of many and holds no more weight than anyone else's: don't go thinking that that your idea of what constitutes good visual design is the definitive standard that everyone else has to hold themselves to.

[Yugiboy85]

Aside from maybe a few of these screenshots that i do kinda agree, you are looking way too much into it. Most of the "problems" you mentioned are kinda non issues because most people wont notice them in the heat of gameplay. Especially the "flats not matching their textures" one. 
 

Edited July 3, 2022 by Yugiboy85

[Shepardus]

Remind me again how you got from "I don't like the way this looks" to "the creators intentionally made this look bad because they think bad visuals are the IWAD spirit"?

Edited July 3, 2022 by Shepardus

[PsychEyeball]

I genuinely can't tell what's supposed to be the problem with any of these screenshots. Except for the status bar that is. 

[Shibainumaster]

7 hours ago, Thelokk said:

Look, yet another spelling mistakes-filled rage pulpit, with no actual point behind it except for ad hominem attacks. Wonderful. 

 

Protip: no good conversation will ever come out of calling the hard work of people more experienced than you 'barf'. We already went over this in the Doom Zero thread, if I recall correctly. 

That thread happened,but it's not relevant to this one at all.

 

6 hours ago, Shepardus said:

Remind me again how you got from "I don't like the way this looks" to "the creators intentionally made this look bad because they think bad visuals are the IWAD spirit"?

They literally say shit like that in interviews:

"SLAYERS CLUB: What was your main inspiration for Syringe?

TARNSMAN: Syringe originally started out as a different project that fell to the wayside and was resurrected by Xaser to be completed as a smaller project. It was originally envisioned as a sequel-in-name-only to No End in Sight following the same design of making IWAD style maps without conforming to the same rigidity as the Doom The Way id Did projects."

 

 

7 hours ago, Misty said:

I don't know, it seems fine for me - all those imperfections show that it's done by human mind rather than computer. If you want change the tide - you should set example that people will follow later on in upcoming years. 

Barely an excuse,humans are capable of impressive things,and designing a Doom level is one of the least labour intensive of them. if they love doom so much,why not put effort into you'r ""Passion project""? The WAD's that i mentioned have famous authors behind them,who have cacowards to prove that,yet they couldn't bother to make somehting on the same level or higher quailty than their previous work. Them lazily pushing out low-effort WAD's and those being mindlessly praised is a sad display you know.

[Edward850]

19 minutes ago, PsychEyeball said:

I genuinely can't tell what's supposed to be the problem with any of these screenshots. Except for the status bar that is. 

Additionally, the demand for bidi detail can actually have a negative impact, mappers tend to avoid this for logistical reasons:

• Additional sector details eat into your visplane limit, which is a Hindenburg limit in vanilla.
• Transitioning sectors without changing the height exposes a limitation in the seg divider, causing unnecessary cutting of sprites.
• If you are mapping to vanilla textures, sometimes the texture you need doesn't exist, and forcing to map around this criteria can either limit your design, or worse make the communication to the player inconsistent or missing completely.
• Contrast is important, so it's reasonable to expect that some textures are used simply to make sure you can fucking see something. This relates to the previous point.

Edited July 3, 2022 by Edward850

[Obsidian]

Quote

designing a Doom level is one of the least labour intensive of them

 

I dunno, I spent about three years on a map and that shit took some effort to get out the door, I tell you what. But hey, what do I know?

 

[Shibainumaster]

 

Just now, Edward850 said:

Additionally, the demand for bidi detail can actually have a negative impact, mappers tend to avoid this for logistical reasons:

• Additional sector details eat into your visplane limit, which is a hard limit in vanilla.
• Transitioning sectors without changing the height exposes a limitation in the seg divider, causing unnecessary cutting of sprites.
• If you are mapping to vanilla textures, sometimes the texture you need doesn't exist, and forcing to map around this criteria can either limit your design, or worse make the communication to the player inconsistent or missing completely.
• Contrast is important, so it's reasonable to expect that some textures are used simply to make sure you can fucking see something. This relates to the previous point.

If we exclude D2TWID,most of the screenshots are of projects with custom textures,and sometimes custom flats,so it's just lazyness. And i didn't ask for rich detailing,there are a lot of maps with simple detailing and handsome visuals. I'am not the most dedicated fan of granural detail,but atleast control the color coordination and texturing.

[Redneckerz]

Are you seriously screenshotting things with vertical look on and taking shots of close up stuff that always looks pixelated?

 

4 minutes ago, Shibainumaster said:

They literally say shit like that in interviews:

How does that correlate with what Shepardus is saying?

 

1 minute ago, Shibainumaster said:

Barely an excuse,humans are capable of impressive things,and designing a Doom level is one of the least labour intensive of them.

Spoiler

My man, you aren't Kate Bush, dying up that hill.

 

I mean i sorta get what you try to say because operating an actual plane is a lot more labour intensive than well, designing a Doom map, but the way you put this forward is... terri-bad. People work for months/years on end getting a mapset out. You saying that isn't labour intensive is offensive at best, and downright naive at worst.

 

1 minute ago, Shibainumaster said:

The WAD's that i mentioned have famous authors behind them,who have cacowards to prove that,yet they couldn't bother to make somehting on the same level or higher quailty than their previous work.

Alright, lets reverse it around - can you make a map that adheres to your own standards?

 

I expect nothing less but a Cacoward from you since you are trashing cacoward winners here.

1 minute ago, Shibainumaster said:

Them lazily pushing out low-effort WAD's and those being mindlessly praised is a sad display you know.

The only thing that's lazy is these shitty gotcha! threads where people feign they have something interesting to say, but it ends up being a trollwad.

 

Or in this case, a troll thread. If i wanted to read hilarious bad takes, i read the newspaper.

[Shibainumaster]

2 minutes ago, Obsidian said:

 

I dunno, I spent about three years on a map and that shit took some effort to get out the door, I tell you what. But hey, what do I know?

 

Neither can i understand how that is a hard task. You can take breaks from doom maps and you'r life doesn't depend on them. 

[rzh]

Bad visuals are underrrated, perfect looking maps are bland and boring.

[antares031]

All I can say is that you intentionally made those screenshots look bad, by using modern source port, vertical mouselook, micro status bar, and a crosshair in the middle. Please be fair next time.

[The Doommer]

4 minutes ago, Shibainumaster said:

You can take breaks from doom maps and you'r life doesn't depend on them. 

How is that any relevant to them being difficult/easy tasks?

 

4 minutes ago, Shibainumaster said:

Neither can i understand how that is a hard task.

3 hours on one map using already existing sprites/textures is not exactly a short time

 

This is a doom game we're talking about that has a lot of simple concepts in map design, and yet it still takes a lot to work on

Edited July 3, 2022 by The Doommer

[Shibainumaster]

6 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

Are you seriously screenshotting things with vertical look on and taking shots of close up stuff that always looks pixelated?

The pixels are not the problem,it's the way the authors of these maps use them is.

How does that correlate with what Shepardus is saying?

Read into it,again.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

My man, you aren't Kate Bush, dying up that hill.

 

I mean i sorta get what you try to say because operating an actual plane is a lot more labour intensive than well, designing a Doom map, but the way you put this forward is... terri-bad. People work for months/years on end getting a mapset out. You saying that isn't labour intensive is offensive at best, and downright naive at worst.

I myself worked on one of my WAD's for three years,the hardships of that pale in comparison to the things i do IRL.

 

Alright, lets reverse it around - can you make a map that adheres to your own standards?

yes.

 

I expect nothing less but a Cacoward from you since you are trashing cacoward winners here.

The only thing that's lazy is these shitty gotcha! threads where people feign they have something interesting to say, but it ends up being a trollwad.

Or in this case, a troll thread. If i wanted to read hilarious bad takes, i read the newspaper.

What i said ihas nothing to do with trolling,and hey,maybe i'll get a cacoward,looking at my maps it doesn't seem like a distant dream at all!

 

 

6 hours ago, The Doommer said:

How is that any relevant to them being difficult/easy tasks?

 

3 hours on one map with existing stuff is not exactly a short time

 

This is a doom game we're talking about that has a lot of simple concepts in map design, and yet it still takes a lot to work on

1. You won't los anything but time while working ona doom map.

2.Practise in doom mapping is kind of easy,if you're not stupid.

[Liberation]