Doom 2 level design is very gimmicky

[Amiga Angel]

It would be interesting to see if people could make 32 doom or doom 2 maps that looks and plays better than the levels in the IWAD...

 

CHALLENGE for all the DOOM and DOOM 2 IWAD map haters:

 

select either doom or doom 2 as the game you want to improve ...

 

Each level has to follow the same premise as the original maps

 

Only vanilla limits are allowed (must run in the old timey dos doom exe and chocolate doom and any other doom port)

 

Only map editors and other tools released before 1995 are allowed (you may code your own map editor or tool for ms-dos if you want if you only use compilers and other tools that were invented or created before 1995... however if you do then you gain an additional advantage because you have knowledge today that iD didn't have back then.. for example.. you know what a good map editor should be capable of)

 

Only default doom or doom 2 textures and resources are allowed (no custom sprites, textures, sounds etc)

 

dehacked is not allowed

 

You have to work within the same time limits as the original team at iD (Someone should look up how much time they had or used)

 

Ideally you would also need to use a 80386 or a 80486 computer and also forget everything you know about game design but that isnt really possible...

 

so if you complete the above challenge for any and all maps in doom or doom 2 that you think were sloppy etc... then you would still have had advantages that the team didn't have back then.... namely... internet access.. more FPS / Doom knowledge and much better technology.

 

I HAD a 80386 and a 80486 ... those were not powerfull computers ... your microwave is most likely more powerfull...

 

Also... We as mappers can take years making a single map if we want to... the iD team did this for a living and had hard deadlines to meet.

 

--

 

yes IWAD maps have issues, misaligned textures etc... but if they had more time then they could have made the maps even better .. if they had better tools ... they could have made the maps even better ... if ... and so on ...

 

but what they did given what they had to work with is actually a bit of a miracle...

 

also if it weren't for iD software... we obviously wouldn't have had doom or doom 2 to still enjoy 28+ years later and that alone means that the original IWADs are entitled to massive amounts of respect in my view.

 

iD invented the FPS genre.. don't ever forget that.

Edited March 4, 2023 by Amiga Angel

[darmok]

6 hours ago, Amiga Angel said:

It would be interesting to see if people could make 32 doom or doom 2 maps that looks and plays better than the levels in the IWAD...

 

a bunch of nonsense

 

Oh right the old "you can't review a movie until you've made your own" argument. And I'm totally sure you've never given your opinion about *anything* before you made one yourself right? Right? A movie? A game? A smartphone? A car? Have you made all of those yourself?

 

By that logic your positive comments don't mean anything either until you've made your own WAD. In fact forget the WAD you need to write your own game engine from scratch. Only then will your opinion begin to have any validity. Until then please stay quiet because you have no right to any opinion on any game. Got it?

[Gez]

Again, I think that Doom II's "gimmicky" feeling is largely a question of presentation.

 

Doom 1 "took itself seriously" with the intermission map and level names like "Hangar" or "Central Processing" even if it was mightily unclear how the place was a hangar at all, or processing anything. But hey, you had the game telling you this was a place, so you were primed to accept it as a place.

 

Doom II does this a lot less. There are still some maps that are actively attempting to be a place -- e.g. "Refueling Base" tells you it is a refueling base, so you're gonna accept that those nukage tanks are fuel tanks, but on the other hand it also has plenty of metatextual level titles that just tell you "this is a video game level you need to puzzle out", like "Dead Simple" or "Barrels o' Fun".

 

What is Barrels o' Fun like? There's a big hall full of explosive barrels, then a sinkhole opening the sky to a cavern complex, then a mini techbase portion at the end where you find the exit. Imagine if it had been called something like "Yucca Mountain Facility" instead. Suddenly, instead of being a gimmicky level about surviving chain reactions of barrel explosion, it becomes a Deep Lore narrative level about the demons invading radioactive waste storage facilities in their general project to fuck up the Earth. Wow, astounding! And the level hasn't even been changed!

 

Also, honestly, some of the gimmick accusations are laughable. The map is called Suburb, and you say it's gimmicky because it features a suburban house? Wow.

[GarrettChan]

30 minutes ago, darmok said:

 

Oh right the old "you can't review a movie until you've made your own" argument. And I'm totally sure you've never given your opinion about *anything* before you made one yourself right? Right? A movie? A game? A smartphone? A car? Have you made all of those yourself?

 

By that logic your positive comments don't mean anything either until you've made your own WAD. In fact forget the WAD you need to write your own game engine from scratch. Only then will your opinion begin to have any validity. Until then please stay quiet because you have no right to any opinion on any game. Got it?

 

So you review a movie by saying you can shoot better movie than it? I surely don't.

 

Yeah yeah yeah, i'm still waiting for op's vest map in the world.

[Amiga Angel]

1 hour ago, darmok said:

 

Oh right the old "you can't review a movie until you've made your own" argument. And I'm totally sure you've never given your opinion about *anything* before you made one yourself right? Right? A movie? A game? A smartphone? A car? Have you made all of those yourself?

 

By that logic your positive comments don't mean anything either until you've made your own WAD. In fact forget the WAD you need to write your own game engine from scratch. Only then will your opinion begin to have any validity. Until then please stay quiet because you have no right to any opinion on any game. Got it?

 

Its not what I am saying at all (I have made WADs and my own hobby games but thats beside the point)

 

any doom player and doom mapper has the right to voice their opinion both as mappers and players, but that doesnt change the fact that our options for making epic doom maps have never been more optimal than they are right now... and that just wasnt the case in the early 90s

 

my posts in this thread boils down to these 2 points:

 

point 1:

 

any seasoned doom mapper can make maps that are on par or better than the IWAD levels ... but only because we have access to tools, hardware and knowledge that they could only dream of back in the early 90s

 

point 2:

 

any doom mapper that thinks they could have done better than the iD team back in the early 90s... if it were them... that had to do the levels under the restrictions that the iD team had back then... wouldn't have been able to - but with my challenge I give those mappers a chance to prove me wrong by making maps that are better under similar restrictions (not completely as some things just are easier now than back then, but mostly the same restrictions) to simulate how the reality was for iD back in the early 90s.

 

Guys like Sandy Peterson... he basically had to do 2/3's of the maps in doom 2 in a very short time...

 

Its like expecting Thomas Edison to invent and build the first transistor based supercomputer and have it be on par with the latest and greatest that we have today.

 

I have voiced opinions on movies, games, phones, cars etc ... yes ...

and most of the time without having anything but a users perspective on the whole thing

 

but if I look at an old nokia phone then I dont get mad at nokia because it cant run android or ios apps...

If I look at an old game then I dont get mad that they couldnt match modern games in all regards...

If I look at an old car then I dont get mad that it doesnt have an incredible economic engine...

 

and so on..

Edited March 4, 2023 by Amiga Angel

[darmok]

2 hours ago, Amiga Angel said:

 

Its not what I am saying at all (I have made WADs and my own hobby games but thats beside the point)

 

 

We don't need to turn this into a discussion about what we are allowed to critique. Doom 2 was not given away for free. Whatever pressures it was made under are irrelevant. I paid the same full price that I did for every other game at the time so it is perfectly valid to compare it to its contemporaries.

 

I said up front that I know I am looking at this thru a modern lens. That's why I asked what others thought at the time of release. But instead of getting an answer to that question I am just getting endlessly attacked because of one comment or because some are feeling personally insulted that I dared say anything bad about their favorite game.

 

Anyway plenty of people agree with me and plenty don't. There is nothing else to say here.

[Obsidian]

Closed by request.