Let's Go Caving

[Maribo]

Titles are hard, it seems I was insufficient in coming up with a decent reference to make for this subject. :(

I've been thinking a lot about caves recently, so I guess this is a thread for cave appreciation. Here are some caves that stick out in my mind.

Speed of Doom Map01 has this small cave that the wad starts in, if you back up a bit you can get a peek at some of the slime-green sky through an opening. It's a really, really simple piece of work that I adore because... I guess it's just cute, but not "doomcute", if that makes sense. I have an unfinished map on this hard drive that takes pretty heavy inspiration from this room's design, except it's got a slime river and turns slaughter-y very quickly.

Spoiler

 

Abandon Map05 takes place entirely inside a massive black-grey-brown-green cave system, populated with all the monsters you can imagine, some greenery, and glowing green stalactites. The sheer scale really starts to get to me, the foreboding feeling of dropping into these massive spaces carved out of rock... and some of them will very shortly be filled to capacity with the usual suspects.

Spoiler

      

 

 

Scythe 2 Map26 - originally, I was going to go with Deus Vult's Torture Chamber caves as a pick for "hell cave" aesthetic, but in all honesty.... DV's caves suck when looked at from the perspective of actually having to trudge through them. They're cool to think about, as a network of tunnels carved out of rock with another horror waiting somewhere 5 stone steps ahead, but they're essentially hallways with beef and bone blocking your way. Scythe 2's hellish caves put the heat (lol) and pressure on the player, everything wants to drive you into a corner and put you out of your misery. They're a much more enticing pick for what it would be like to trudge your way through an actual space of hell. The crispiness of software rendering also does it a lot of favors.

Spoiler

 

Box of a Thousand Demons Map03's cave is being eaten by itself, or what's pooling below it. Copious amounts of lava, oddly symmetrical rock formations, techno/alien-slabs... it becomes a bit of an open-ended clusterfuck when everything wakes up.

Spoiler

 

Sunlust Maps 11-16 - or as I commonly refer to it, the cave episode. It's hard not to put these together after spending so much time with them recently, they have a lot of things that really make me tick. The flow of running through Cave Culture when you know the layout. The chaotic clean-out to prove you are truly "dangeresque". Creeping through Skania's ruin. The whole underground waterway + temple in Troglobite. Strength & Anger's, well.... strength & anger, expressed through stone. And to find lost antiques. It would not be far-fetched to include Map17 in my list as well, but I tend to think of it as a separate kind of thing.

Spoiler

    

 

Share some caves you found cool and/or interesting with me? Let's go spelunking together. :)

[General Rainbow Bacon]

I've got a few!  

 

Let's go all way back to '94 for the first one.  Warning: Vertigo inducing screenshot ahead.  Map e1m9 from Apocalyp.wad or "The Apocalypse Project" has always been a fascination for me.  It was on those shovelware cds full of maps too including Maximum Doom.  The interesting thing is this map wouldn't even run on old machines because of the height variations in this map.  Just look at this:

 

 

Next up.  One from the IWADs.  Who can forget the great cave area in TNT map 28?

 

 

From CChest2 map 28 "No Room" has a lot of caving to do in it.  From the long lava-filled hall here:

 

To the long staircasing with platforming deep underground ending in a huge lava lake, this one has some really great cave  

scenes.

 

 

Combat shock map 02 ends in room in a huge cave that quickly fills up with monsters.  If it's the first time you're seeing something like it, it's quite

awesome.

 

 

There are A LOT more.  But I'll let other people play too.  Cheers!

 

 

 

 

 

[Arrowhead]

I love caves too, I wish I could actually go caving some time...

 

I don't know if I should be posting my own stuff, but here is a picture of a cave from my most recent deathmatch project:

 

[spineapple tea]

Eviternity's MAP02 came to mind, although this may be more of a cavern than a cave (or are those synonyms?).

[Womp the Cat]

This is a fun thread!

 

Gotta give props to the Slough of Despair e3m2: is it the first cave map in doom? maybe you don't consider these caves at all XD.

 

 

And then Speed of Doom Map 02 Mysterious Cove (may as well be called Mysterious Cave)

This was the first cave+base map i had seen that made me really want to attempt something similar. Something about the subterranean "forgotten base" thing really rings with me. The use of the textures is near perfect, the scene from the slime falls of the quiet windowed building (pictured below) is top tier world building. Darkwave0000 is a master of the cave.

 

[NiGHTMARE]

30 minutes ago, Womp the Cat said:

This is a fun thread!

 

Gotta give props to the Slough of Despair e3m2: is it the first cave map in doom? maybe you don't consider these caves at all XD.

 

 

I think E2M9 probably qualifies as a cave map, since the first room is around half the map :)

 

No screenshots as I'm on a tablet, but Chord 3 by Malcolm Sailor is mostly hellish caves, with some wooden areas mixed in. If you compare some of it and Chord G's architecture with Scythe 2's hell levels they're an obvious influence (see the metal supports in Maribo's screenshot for example).

 

They only make up a portion of their respective levels, but MAP01 of both The Darkening E2 and Suspended In Dusk start with nice looking cave areas, leading up to a techbase. I always wonder if the SID map's caves were inspired by DE2's - if so it's less obvious than Chord/Scythe 2.

Edited October 8, 2022 by NiGHTMARE

[pcorf]

The second Vulcana map I made has an array of hell caves and lots of lava. For Community Chest 4.

 

 

[baja blast rd.]

Okay here's a sick one from Confinement Community Project map02, The Scar, a map by @Dreadopp.

 

The true majesty of The Scar's rocky wilderness kind of sneaks up on you at first. In the opening chamber, it's sort of hinted at with the unusually ornate rocky chunks in the ceiling and around the main "lab," but the colors do kind of blend into each other, so unless you're staring at the automap (which has not been cleaned), so you might easily overlook it. 

 

 

There's some light combat, you press some switches, open up the entrance to the second chamber and then, holy shit dear God what the fuck this area is huge. It's  a vast cavern that stretches on seemingly forever in both directions, making similar spaces in Resurgence and Speed of Doom look tiny, and it's richly detailed too. The irony is that it's in a "Confinement" project, with this map using a 2048x2048 limitation, so you can't get out there. It's pure scenery. And what a scene it is. 

 

 

 

 

 

Some of the colors blending in -- a bold, risky move -- now feels a bit more like a feature than a bug, because the net effect is that what looks like a single rocky slab when in your peripheral vision or out of focus gains more depth the more you look at it. And there's a lot of looking to be done there. The yawning caverns that fade into black ooze with mystery, like there's so many adventures that could be had behind them, like there's a big Community Chest 4 map or two (it does have that vibe) off in the void somewhere, right behind it on the other side. This is a lot of love and attention into something that you never play with. This whole region really captures mapping for the love of it. Because it's in a 53-monster map that goes by in a flash in a relatively low-key community project (I'm sure most people have not heard of it), and yet there's as much design effort poured into this wilderness scene as in maybe a few medium-sized maps. Nothing about this is out of obligation. It's a pure gift.

 

[yakfak]

love Extremal E1M6 and Whitemare MAP08, will try to find screenshots!

Spoiler

(i thought i assembled a pretty fun cave bit in sminky2.wad but it's a completely obtuse and unfair map only a few people seem to have tackled!)

 

edit: whitemare 08 has 20 secrets, aiieeeee.

Edited October 8, 2022 by yakfak

[Thelokk]

5 hours ago, Spineapple tea said:

this may be more of a cavern than a cave (or are those synonyms?).

 

'Cave' is any opening in the ground. 'Cavern' is a natural cave that is subject to the formation of stalactites and stalagmites. Caverns are basically a type of cave   

Edited October 8, 2022 by Thelokk

[spineapple tea]

Just now, Thelokk said:

 

'Cave' is any opening in the ground. 'Cavern' is a natural cave that is subject to the formation of stalactites and stalagmites. Caverns are basically a tyoe of cave   

Huh, the more you know. I was thinking that being able to see the sky and later in the map leaving the area entirely was more cavern-like, not knowing the exact definition.

[Thelokk]

5 minutes ago, Spineapple tea said:

Huh, the more you know. I was thinking that being able to see the sky and later in the map leaving the area entirely was more cavern-like, not knowing the exact definition.

 

Think of it like this: there are mining caves, but no mining caverns.

 

To me a map cave that really stuck is Sunder map02, 'The Burrow'. Just the right amount of abstract that to me is Doom's hallmark.

Which makes me notice, by the way, how little Sunder has engaged with natural environments so far. Time for a cave map, I say.

 

 

 

[Egg Boy]

Legacy of Heroes, map03, appropriately titled "Buried Village."

[galileo31dos01]

My first thought was the watery cave in The Killing Pits by @Stupid Bunny, and kudos to my memory since it's no doubt one of my favorites out there.

 

 

This is the view when you enter from the rightmost wing:

 

 

and this could be your view from the other end after the incoming invasion:

 

 

Well, technically you invaded their territory, but isn't that the marine's job anyways.. besides, did you notice the radiation suit in the first pic? well good eye, that's because the water here is boiling and hurts! -- I'm all for creative ways to make water damaging, be it through the environment and/or according to a specific theme, like north pole maps, or in this case hinted by the fireblu borders. Also fighting cacodemons in this scenario makes huge sense: perhaps this water is actually their blood, or maybe they claimed this cave and turned it into their own spa. The fact you're handed a plasma rifle for this area is simply more blue, and who doesn't love more blue.

[Maribo]

15 hours ago, General Rainbow Bacon said:

From CChest2 map 28 "No Room" has a lot of caving to do in it.  From the long lava-filled hall here:

I quite like this one.... it looks like it goes on forever.

 

12 hours ago, Womp the Cat said:

And then Speed of Doom Map 02 Mysterious Cove (may as well be called Mysterious Cave)

This was the first cave+base map i had seen that made me really want to attempt something similar. Something about the subterranean "forgotten base" thing really rings with me. The use of the textures is near perfect, the scene from the slime falls of the quiet windowed building (pictured below) is top tier world building. Darkwave0000 is a master of the cave.

Ditto for subterranean forgotten base aesthetic, I love things like that. When I was racking my brains for examples for this thread, I actually checked darkwave32 because I remembered a strong cavernous feel in that map, but I felt like it was a real edge case.... that map *feels* very cavernous, despite actually being a base, but it felt a bit wrong to throw it in with the rest because it is definitely predominately textured up with tech and man-made structural stuff.

 

8 hours ago, baja blast rd. said:

-snip-

This is like a dobu gabu maru amount of detail for an unreachable area, except with cave aesthetic. Makes me wonder if I'm forgetting a dobu map that would apply to this post. I adore this, thanks for showing.

 

8 hours ago, Thelokk said:

To me a map cave that really stuck is Sunder map02, 'The Burrow'. Just the right amount of abstract that to me is Doom's hallmark.

Which makes me notice, by the way, how little Sunder has engaged with natural environments so far. Time for a cave map, I say.

This one slipped my mind, but I agree... I remember seeing this map for the first time and that gaping maw still comes to mind at random times. Wonderful pick.

 

2 minutes ago, galileo31dos01 said:

-snip-

That greenery and fireblu usage.... gorgeous.

 

Here's another couple of really obvious ones that slipped my mind as well:

The duality between Dimensions Map01 and Legion of the Balls of Steel is wonderful. Searing hot rock and its haunting, cooled down aftermath.

Spoiler

    

 

[Danlex]

Halloween is getting close, so I wanted to mention a cave area that I really like from a well known horror wad.

 

Happy Time Circus II: The It Pit

Spoiler

After spending 2 or 3 hours going through the town and visiting a lot of hellish/void areas, you finally enter the "It Pit", which starts with a very short cave section that introduces a new enemy: the Bouncing Clown, a giant unkillable monster that blocks your path and doesn't stop moving until you trigger it's pain state.

Unfortunately, the hanging decorations (which are meant to be cotton candy, something I didn't know until today) look kind of ugly with the software rendering, but I love the gameplay concept of this part, and the ambient sounds add a lot to the atmosphere.

[El Juancho]

I haven't played many wads but the cave I remember the most is in alien vendetta map11, I'm a big fan of this map. The first time you enter the caves it can be extremely confusing but after replaying the level it becomes intuitive and you can better appreciate the level design :)

 

[head_cannon]

Alien Vendetta MAP11 is a good example of how caves can play differently than the rest of the level, indulging in cramped & disorienting environments in order to shake things up for overall pacing purposes. I don't care for the monotexturing, but it consistently plays like a space that's chaotic and natural, resisting your attempts to traverse it, and that antagonism gives it a whole different texture than the marble fortress above. I especially appreciate that one section where it uses the "deep water" illusion to make it seem like you had to lie prone to squeeze through the streambed & get the blue armor prize.

 

Another way that cave sections can break up the pacing is by playing up darkness: it achieves the same goal of taking a step back from the standard "Player vs Monsters" conflict to instead feel more like "Player vs Environment." One example of this is RottKing's MAP22 of Back To Saturn X Episode 2. The whole level takes place underground, and while most of the scenery is indoor dungeon environments, there are moments where you head beyond the safety of the well-lit wood & stone structures and plumb the lightless depths of an inhospitable cave system that was not designed for creatures such as you. Everything's flooded and overgrown - you can almost smell the dank, mildewy conditions.

 

Speaking of darkness, I have to compliment the stygian caverns of Sigil and how they used the small scale of the levels to seem claustrophobic and oppressive. The red range of Doom's palette is never at its best in the dingy, dismal range of values which best show off the software renderer. So my favorite hell caves lean into this restriction, going for maximum contrast between bright red and deep black. Sigil's sixth level uses brightly-glowing runes as landmarks to navigate by in order to make the omnipresent gloom which enshrouds these caverns more bearable.

 

To bring things full circle, I'm going to post another hell-cave screenshot: this one of Alien Vendetta MAP29's infamous Revenant curve. I like the way this high-contrast setup makes it look like the lava channel is the only source of light in these abyssal depths: the scene ends up being beautiful despite the brutality.

[smeghammer]

heh well as others have self-plugged, I guess I will as well... A while back I made a map called 'The Gate', which was a big underground cavern with some interconnecting long caves:

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also,

Spoiler

I realised on taking these screenshots I need to bugger about with the lighting - you'll notice some look a bit over-exposed as I (badly) upped the image brightness and contrast so you can see WTF is going on...

 

[General Roasterock]

Cool thread idea! Cavern geometry is a simple idea that is pretty hard to effectively execute on. Many of these examples are solid.

 

Epic 2 didn't have a ton of strict caves, but the ones that it did have were very much maxed out in terms of their usefulness. My notable examples are Map 21, Map 27 (the one that was pretty clearly inspired by AV Map 29), and Map 30. All of these are incredibly simple in execution, but the texture suite makes them feel incredibly natural. I especially love 30's, and it's crazy how adding one wooden support beam can put so much character into what is otherwise an empty space. Of course, something as simple as a midtexture vine or a torch with sector lighting does that too, very frequently found in this set.

 

Spoiler

 

[yxhr111]

This topic is very interesting. Every time I hit this kind of large-scale cave map, I will deeply feel my own insignificance

DBP03，MAP02

 

Edited October 15, 2022 by yxhr111

[Tango]

I will forever sing the praises of Lutz' cave work in Hellscape:

 

 

 

 

 

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

I love large underground spaces in games. Especially when there are some buildings or ruins there. It's instantly uncanny, and unsettling. Doom renders caves really well, imo. And the first one I thought of was Jade Earth. That has some hauntingly enormous caverns. 

Edited October 15, 2022 by Sneezy McGlassFace
Formatting

[Maribo]

On 10/8/2022 at 2:24 PM, Maribo said:

Ditto for subterranean forgotten base aesthetic, I love things like that. When I was racking my brains for examples for this thread, I actually checked darkwave32 because I remembered a strong cavernous feel in that map, but I felt like it was a real edge case.... that map *feels* very cavernous, despite actually being a base, but it felt a bit wrong to throw it in with the rest because it is definitely predominately textured up with tech and man-made structural stuff.

I've been replaying it over the weekend, so here's an instance of tech-molded-into-cavern that I think fits really well with the other stuff I've posted.

Stardate 20X6 Map02 - Caverns overflowing with thick purple liquid, with tech spires holding the ceiling up. Always makes me feel like I'm so deep underground that I'll never see the light of day again, until I reach that final room and get a peek at the sky.

Spoiler

   

 

 

@Tango Your own cave work isn't bad, you know. :)
I was replaying Mayan Mishap the other night and Map31's relatively simple cave contours go really well with the waterfalls. Cute map.

Spoiler

  

 

[Gothic]

Do mines count as caves?

Toxin Refinery from KDiZD. I forgot this was supposed to be a remake of E1M3 midway, this cave is a confusing trip.

Edited November 14, 2022 by Gothic