Doom map analysis

[Sonikkumania]

Okey first off, I thought about making a thread about Doom, especially Doom 2, level design and what do you see them resemble in real life.

 

Let me throw you an example: in MAP16 Suburbs, the neighboring structure to your spawn has that room full of Imps. I always thought it's meant to be a garage.

 

But I was thinking that if you want to write a mini essee regarding particular level design, that's fine too. But I hope you get the point. Doom levels might surpass the border of surrealism so would be nice to hear your view on the levels.

[Sonikkumania]

Doom, E2M2. Why is it called Containment Area? Is the Demonic influence some sort of a virus that spread there and UAC was trying to contain it by any means?

 

And E2M7, Spawning Vats. Was this the ground zero of the demonic invasion? Funny how prior it there's maps like Halls or Command Center, but Vats is more humanlike.

[Shepardus]

46 minutes ago, Sonikkumania said:

Let me throw you an example: in MAP16 Suburbs, the neighboring structure to your spawn has that room full of Imps. I always thought it's meant to be a garage.

There is in fact a real life reference for that building in MAP16:

 

[Sonikkumania]

@Shepardus that's awesome. I wonder if someone with enough money actually designed a house after a Doom level too.

[Lucius Wooding]

I mostly agree Doom maps tend towards surrealism. One exception was watching Bloody Steel's map 4; that one genuinely gave me the impression it could be a real place for the most part. 

[UnclePhil]

The maps of classic Doom and Doom 2 I always found to be pretty abstract. As a kid, somehow even Wolfenstein 3D and Blake Stone managed to give more of an impression of depicting places that would actually be built for some purpose.

 

The E1M1 Hangar that players of D1 generally spawned in for the first time, had what is presumably a landing pad. And the Toxin Refinery had toxic liquid in it. But for the most part they was little effort to depict environments that resembled real facilities for which the level name might be appropriate. Doom 2 had some exceptions; I understand Suburbs was an attempt by a mapper to build an area similar to his own property, and Downtown is a clear attempt to make an Earth city environment. But a lot of the levels are even more unapologetically abstract and even built around gameplay gimmicks.

 

TNT and Plutonia definitely had a lot more levels where effort was made to build structure(s) that made sense from a practical or setting perspective. I like that shit on the Doom engine even though real-world style environments are the bread and butter of most shooters now... or at least the ones not set in space.

[Maximum Matt]

On 10/25/2022 at 10:54 PM, Sonikkumania said:

E2M7, Spawning Vats. Was this the ground zero of the demonic invasion? Funny how prior it there's maps like Halls or Command Center, but Vats is more humanlike.

Yeah, is the 'spawning vats' themselves supposed to be the UAC cylinders in that corridor in the north-west, before the inverted cross room? Is that what is 'spawning' or creating all the monsters that have taken over Deimos and Phobos?? This was also alluded to in the Doom novel.  

This level has a strange sense of story-telling to it, what with it's combo of techbase and hellish.  It was also one of the first levels made, it was originally going to be level one back in the beta versions, it even has a distinct element shared with another level (the damaging string of blue floor lights, just like in E2M2, another very early level). Sorry, this level is quite fascinating to me.  

On 10/25/2022 at 11:55 PM, Sonikkumania said:

I wonder if someone with enough money actually designed a house after a Doom level too.

Yeah I would totally make my place E1M1 if I was an Elon

[EPICALLL]

Just one thing:

Why is TNT MAP17 called processing area?
There's no machinery, or anything else industrial.
As a matter of fact, I would almost say the building resembles a lab more than a factory.
Furthermore, who puts pits of toxic liquid that you could just FALL into in a factory?
You'd just be asking for a lawsuit.

[XLightningStormL]

1 hour ago, EPICALLL said:

Just one thing:

Why is TNT MAP17 called processing area?
There's no machinery, or anything else industrial.
As a matter of fact, I would almost say the building resembles a lab more than a factory.
Furthermore, who puts pits of toxic liquid that you could just FALL into in a factory?
You'd just be asking for a lawsuit.

Generally speaking Processing is either referring to Industrial Processing (as you mentioned) or the other kind of processing, the processing of persons, goods, etc that are imported and exported.

[IcarusOfDaggers]

8 minutes ago, XLightningStormL said:

Generally speaking Processing is either referring to Industrial Processing (as you mentioned) or the other kind of processing, the processing of persons, goods, etc that are imported and exported.

 

1 hour ago, EPICALLL said:

Just one thing:

Why is TNT MAP17 called processing area?
There's no machinery, or anything else industrial.
As a matter of fact, I would almost say the building resembles a lab more than a factory.
Furthermore, who puts pits of toxic liquid that you could just FALL into in a factory?
You'd just be asking for a lawsuit.

In scientific world proccessing means cutting, prepping and observing the subjects under a microscope

[Nightmare2989]

On 10/25/2022 at 2:35 PM, Shepardus said:

There is in fact a real life reference for that building in MAP16:

 

I love sandy the guy was ahead of is time he gets a lot of stick for is levels but be underrated 

[E1M10]

On 10/25/2022 at 9:54 PM, Sonikkumania said:

Doom, E2M2. Why is it called Containment Area? Is the Demonic influence some sort of a virus that spread there and UAC was trying to contain it by any means?

 

And E2M7, Spawning Vats. Was this the ground zero of the demonic invasion? Funny how prior it there's maps like Halls or Command Center, but Vats is more humanlike.

 

The caged imps at the start of E1M9, and the caged baron somewhere in E3, had me wondering if this was supposed to imply the scientists had captured / were studying demons prior to the invasion? There’s no mention of that in the original readme, although it could have been a story idea that was scrapped at the last minute?

 

As an aside, anyone else feel there are some similarities between things mentioned in the Doom Bible and Half-Life?

[Sonikkumania]

5 minutes ago, E1M10 said:

the caged baron somewhere in E3

I think they're just being punished for failing to kill Doomguy.

[magicsofa]

On 10/25/2022 at 12:52 PM, UnclePhil said:

As a kid, somehow even Wolfenstein 3D and Blake Stone managed to give more of an impression of depicting places that would actually be built for some purpose.

 

Well, those games did have more "earthly" sprite decorations for one thing. Tables, chairs, food, and so on. Doom just has (dead) trees, some lamps, and barrels... everything else is either gore or otherwise Hell related. Also the levels, even in Wolf3d, feature some thought as to the use of an area. Wolf levels often a mess hall that was clearly separate from the prison cells. Blake took it even further by having the scientists milling about, and having even more themes for the levels/areas. You'd see a security area with lots of guards, then deeper was the research area full of scientists, with some mutants in cages. Off-the-path storage areas might have only robots in them.

 

Doom rarely incorporated this type of conceptual design in its levels, which to be fair might be in part due to the more advanced levels being created. Wolf3d and Blake maps are just tile-based, with a lot of the thematic scenery being sprite decorations (and enemy placement). Doom requires actually drawing geometry, so it's natural that they would kinda get lost in that aspect of it with all these new options opened up. A lot of stuff that was planned to be included got cut (like chairs, lol) because the focus was mainly on keeping the action flowing, rather than making realistic offices.

[Maximum Matt]

3 hours ago, E1M10 said:

As an aside, anyone else feel there are some similarities between things mentioned in the Doom Bible and Half-Life?

Well, yeah, both were about the dangers of messing with teleportation technology... so was Quake for that matter...

[E1M10]

Yeah. The “story” section, starting with character’s humdrum life on the base, then an experiment on an alien anomaly gone wrong, horrible flash of light and energy, monster invasion, scared scientists, etc. 

 

Also some gameplay stuff, like bullet hole decals, footsteps. Drawing of a guy in a biohazard suit. Semi-realistic areas, some areas with no / few monsters. Interactive stuff like flipping switches to gain access to other levels you’d have to come back to later.

 

The writer(s) had a great vision that was sadly cut due to tech limitations at the time.

[Polri]

While most iwad Romero levels are abstract places with random names assigned to them ("tenements", "industrial zone", "phobos lab"...), "the abandoned mines" actually feels like a mine with narrow passages, elevators that bring you to lower levels and off course the yellow key area (and the mancubus secret) where the mines connect with the rocky area above them in a quasi-realistic way.