Rarely talked about Doom things you like

[philcul]

This is a thread idea I had for some time now that might be superfluous as we already have the "Unpopular Doom Opinions" thread but this one could also be seen as a complementary thing. While the "Unpopular Doom Opinions" thread seems to be mostly about hot takes (or while it might not be its singular purpose it seems to mainly attract those) I'd like to think of this thread as a place where you can talk about things that you like about Doom, about certain wads, enemies, sounds, mods, etc., that might not be necessarily unpopular but probably rather unusual. I don't know if this really warrants a different thread as the difference between an "unusual like" and an "unpopular opinion" might be too marginal and maybe it's just a difference in tone and vibe but... I'll just try it.

 

Something I really like about slaughter/challenge maps/wads is their atmosphere and aesthetics. That so far isn't too unusual, I guess. But for me this is honestly one of their - if not the - main draw and what motivates me to play them. I want to get lost in these strange otherworldly constructs that seem hostile to all life or just indifferent to me being there. I want to walk through gigantic halls, fearing what those lowering walls might release. I want to immerse myself in these places that seem hopeless or just imposing and be at awe. And this pertains not just to the architecture, lighting and colors but also to the fights. The aesthetics / atmosphere and the combat aren't different things for me, in the best case they should feel like two sides of the same coin. Jumping down into that hole in the beginning of "The Furnace" from Sunder and hearing the screams of Spider Master Minds, seeing the hordes of Pinkies running towards me, just really works together with the big scale of the rooms themselves. The qualities "imposing", "hostile" and "life-denying" are not just created by the architecture or the monsters - no, I think these aspects interpenetrate each other, play off each other and work together to create something that can't easily be seperated without destroying what makes that opening into what it is.

And if I die repeatedly in a map like this or in, for example, "Godmachine" from Sunlust, then what keeps me motivated is not mainly that I want to beat this challenge but this feeling of immersion, of the atmosphere of these places. It's almost like dying is part of the aesthetic. These places don't seem inviting, like you shouldn't be here, so isn't it natural that you die here? This isn't a place for the living, death is part of these places. I am fighting demons, I am fighting hell, of course they are not playing fair. 

These are the kinds of feelings and thoughts that sometimes accompany while I play these kinds of maps. But there are of course other kinds of slaugher/challenge maps out there, that feel less atmospheric and more arcadey, like for example Italo Doom, Junkfood and some maps of the Slaughterfes-wads. These are not bad, not at all - but if I die in those many times I am less motivated to try again and again, probably because I feel less immersed. (And don't get me wrong, I also like playing these.)

And yeah, it's the aesthetic and the atmosphere of slaughter maps (constituted not just by their architecture, music, and texture work but also in part by the monster choice, their roaming sounds, their threatening and sometimes overwhelming presence) that I love most about them - and I feel like that is a rather unusual thing to emphasize, as most of the discourse around slaughter maps seems to be centered around them being hard, or what kind of strategies work or do not work, or how impressive it is that someone beat one of them in one go without saves (which definitely is impressive, don't get me wrong!).

 

Do you have things you like about Doom but that seem rather unusual or less talked about? :)

 

English isn't my native language so I hope there aren't too many mistakes.

And also, if someone else can think about a better title, I'm always open to suggestions!

Edited March 29, 2023 by AdNauseam

[StarTanned]

I enjoy watching folks playtest and discover new maps. It's oddly fun watching them try to break the map, getting genuinely surprised or awe-struck, and just plain having fun when they realize they're playing something better than they might have expected. Doom hits a sweet spot for those sorts of moments compared to other games, and it seems like the community is never out of ideas and inspiration. Even after 30 years we're getting highly entertaining maps that feel completely unique, because it's so easy for the author's personality to shine through. And I recently found out how fun it is when people are playing your own map, which takes that to another level :)

[bofu]

I love it when maps use vanilla assets (or assets in the vanilla style), particularly when they use them in novel ways. I feel like anyone can make those fancy texture packs look good (which is, admittedly, a credit to those texture packs), but it takes some real dedication to make vanilla assets look good.

[volleyvalley]

I really like Doom I's Episode 3: "Inferno." What I really like about that episode, is that it is more of an abstract kind of hell, and that makes for really interesting rooms and architecture. E3M3: Pandemonium is a prime example of that; scrolling gut textures, water and lava on the ceilings, poisonous water and out of place textures makes it look like a warped version of what it once was. 

 

[Geniraul]

1 hour ago, AdNauseam said:

And also, if someone else can think about a better title, I'm always open to suggestions! 

 

I think this thread can benefit from having a more precise title, such as "Rare Doom features you like", "Underrated things about Doom" or something like that. I was  confused at some extent, when I first saw the title "Unusual Doom Likes", as I was questioning whether it was a proposal for some more like buttons on DW or something.

 

1 hour ago, AdNauseam said:

Do you have things you like about Doom but that seem rather unusual or less talked about? :)

 

Sure! I like traveling around surrealistic maps that feel like an adventure and bring a lot of positive in. I know I have already mentioned it x times on DW, but I like exploring and playing unique maps, not necessarily unknown, but which definitely could deserve some more attention.

 

These can be levels consisting of many unusual and creatively-made sections connected between each other in a clever way, other games' map conversions and WAD conversions in other games, the fact that you can make a wonderful TC thanks to Doom's source ports' engines and the total conversions themselves.

 

I also like to play the original IWADs with the keyboard only, because I think it brings some challenge to the game and feels interesting to play this special way.

 

Searching for the right tactics and ways on slaughter maps is another fun thing to do, I think, as it teaches to think strategically. Same goes for finding new paths on regular levels, varying between them and analyzing which option is better under what circumstances.

 

Discovering new routes in speedrunning is another very productive activity, but personally I am not skilled enough to put this ability into practice, yet :D However, I like watching other people doing that C:

 

And of course, the connections between Doom games, Doom and Quake games (Doom and Wolfenstein 3D as well), the things they have in common. This is in no small measure about the culture, at the end of the day :) And about the idTech engine series ;) All those things can be great topics for further discussions, in my opinion.

[philcul]

34 minutes ago, Geniraul said:

 

I think this thread can benefit from having a more precise title, such as "Rare Doom features you like", "Underrated things about Doom" or something like that. I was  confused at some extent, when I first saw the title "Unusual Doom Likes", as I was questioning whether it was a proposal for some more like buttons on DW or something.

 

Thanks for the feedback! I changed the title a little. It should be more precise now and a bit more obvious now!

[IncompA]

The intermission screen.

Kills: 100%

Items: 100%

Secrets: 100%

 

ahhhhhh...

Edited March 29, 2023 by EliDoesStuff
added more h

[Doomy__Doom]

I like the existance of voodoo closet concept. Sure, scripting is more potent, practical, efficient etc, but after a day's work of dealing with exactly that it's a lot more fun to switch gears and engage with the weird world of green marines hanging out in the void.

[Captain POLAND]

Opportunities where you can snipe enemies from across the map.

 

 

[Guff dotD]

I like it when mappers use Dehacked in ways to expand the immersion of their maps.

 

One great example would be the ravens in REKKR, which fly away upon spotting the player.

 

IMO more mappers should do small details like this; it adds an extra bit of charm.

[DNSKILL5]

I like that the chaingun can be tap-fired quickly to have more accuracy without losing much of the speed of rapid fire. This is especially useful in deathmatch as it’ll put people down faster than holding down fire. 

[bofu]

7 minutes ago, Guff dotD said:

I like it when mappers use Dehacked in ways to expand the immersion of their maps.

 

One great example would be the ravens in REKKR, which fly away upon spotting the player.

 

IMO more mappers should do small details like this; it adds an extra bit of charm.

 

I used DEHACKED to add a playable pipe organ. The possibilities are really endless, and that's before you even get into MBF21 shenanigans.

[Sena]

It might not be a core part of the game, but I do always appreciate it when WADs have a credits/"thanks for playing" map at the end. 

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

I love complevels.

That's kinda nebulous but what other game out there has anything like complevels? The game changes behaviour to standardized preset in a simple command or click of a button.

[LadyMistDragon]

Thanks for playing maps like in DBPs or PUSSs

 

Maps whose primary purpose isn't merely to kick players' teeth in (I don't necessarily mean difficult here)

non-slaughter maps that use amazing abstract architecture and/or convincing Doomcute (I remember the last thread about "realism in Doom" and....I think that really depends on the mapper).

Edited March 29, 2023 by LadyMistDragon

[Maribo]

I love Tyson gameplay and I love applying it to maps that are not strictly designed around Tyson gameplay. I love having to think outside the box and pick apart a map in a way that severely restricts the safe(-er) strategies and weapons at my disposal. I love getting into a rhythm and landing punch after punch on a pack of imps, or the repeatable motion you can use on single Hell Knights and Barons. I love doing the left->right->left or left->right->right dodge pattern while remaining directly in a Mancubus' face and punching him to death after. I love beating monsters to death while they're busy focused on another monster that I baited to fight them 10 seconds ago. I love having to dodge and weave my way through assorted monsters, ducking in and out for punches and keeping my eye out for loose projectiles. I love bullying Pain Elementals into a corner/wall and popping them, only for all 3 of their skull children to disintegrate from having their spawn location blocked. I love ducking between the 2nd and 3rd Cyberdemon rocket salvo to land punches.

[Individualised]

All the fluff stuff that no one else seems to care about. Intermission screens/maps, story screens, picture screens, episodes, level names, music choices etc. For me, these make the game or WAD feel complete and all connected together. People say that story is not important in classic Doom but I think it is. When I first played the Doom trilogy all those years ago, reaching the end of an episode or to a story screen always felt like a milestone and it was exciting. It's a shame they started turning that stuff down beginning with Doom 2.

Edited March 29, 2023 by Individualised

[indigotyrian]

36 minutes ago, Individualised said:

All the fluff stuff that no one else seems to care about. Intermission screens/maps, story screens, picture screens, episodes, level names, music choices etc. For me, these make the game or WAD feel complete and all connected together. People say that story is not important in classic Doom but I think it is. When I first played the Doom trilogy all those years ago, reaching the end of an episode or to a story screen always felt like a milestone and it was exciting. It's a shame they started turning that stuff down beginning with Doom 2.

 

I love these too. The Carmack quote about "story in a porno" gets thrown around a lot but I don't think id really believed it. They focused on more minimal storytelling with an economy of words and instead relying on the game itself to express things.

[Individualised]

5 minutes ago, segfault said:

 

I love these too. The Carmack quote about "story in a porno" gets thrown around a lot but I don't think id really believed it. They focused on more minimal storytelling with an economy of words and instead relying on the game itself to express things.

Exactly. That's what I love about the story telling in Doom and other 90s FPS games compared to modern titles. It feels like the perfect balance between storytelling and gameplay.

[xScavengerWolfx]

I think for me that gets rarely talk about is how well community wads / mega wads we're done using old wad editors of the late 90's / early 00's. I mean today we have slade 3, Ultimate Doom Builder ect ect ect, but back in the good old days of early dooming there we're wad editors like [insert wad editor here] and all that.

 

Now i grew up in the era of doom but i never played OG Doom and Doom 2 until like late 2014 early 2015 before Doom 4 or Doom 2016 came out so i'm going off by videos and stuff i read about wad editors and such.

 

The point i'm making is i like the early community bases wads / megawads of the late 90's early 00's.

 

10 hours ago, AdNauseam said:

if someone else can think about a better title, I'm always open to suggestions!

The only one i can think of is "What are some rare things about doom no one talks about (anymore)"

[Bucket]

I like vanilla cooperative servers.

[IncompA]

1 minute ago, Bucket said:

I like vanilla cooperative servers.

FINALLY, SOMEONE SAID IT

[Mr. Alexander]

I'm a big fan of DeHacked weapon and monster mods integrated into level packs, such as Antares put into Struggle and Antaresian Reliquary - even if it's a little silly to go "This multiple Cacoward winner is so underrated!" - or such as you'd find in Doomkid's community projects, among many, many others. It forces you to rethink your reflexes a bit and change your tactics in interesting ways, but also in ways that the mappers actually accounted for, which is a big shortcoming in weapon/monster mods when you play them in random PWADs. This isn't DeHacked, but that's a big reason Paradise works as well as it does.

[reaction]

10 hours ago, volleyvalley said:

I really like Doom I's Episode 3: "Inferno."

I also really enjoy the warped reailty aesthetic. You should check out The Lost Episode if you haven't already.

[idbeholdME]

- Fast Monsters was one of the best things that's happened to Doom. To a point where I find normal speed somewhat boring to play these days. But if I were to guess, I feel like the vast majority of players play normal speed.

 

- Automap. I feel like it really doesn't get enough credit. Doom still has one of the best and easily navigatable maps I've seen to date. Once you know what the line colors mean, you're golden (talking about the vanilla color scheme of course). You can even mark multiple spots on it, which is a feature I've barely ever seen in other games. Whenever I encounter a shitty map in a game, I think back to how good the Doom one is. Honestly, the game could probably be played entirely through the automap with double IDDT enabled and sounds.

Edited March 30, 2023 by idbeholdME

[Lucius Wooding]

The Doom automap has the huge advantage of being completely 2D. It's a lot harder to make the map readable if there are multiple floors that stack collision as in modern games. That, and the relatively simple sector based architecture in vanilla maps lends itself to a map display that draws directly from the linedefs. If you try to make a map in a modern fps, you'd have to either draw it yourself or exclude a lot of the detail in order to make it look decent. Having every pebble and minor detail show up as lines on the automap would get out of hand fast if the game wasn't so low poly. So in large part the fact that the map format is so simple is why it's easy to read, as well as easy to implement in such an elegant and automated way.

[Residue]

I've always been keen on noticing a mapper's ability to mash up differently themed textures (particularly pertaining to vanilla) & still having them all work together nicely. Tech base textures and & Hell textures can often times look jarring and thematically inconsistent if put next to one another, but there are ways to make that less so. I make sure to compliment the creator on appealing texturework whenever they can accomplish something like that.

Edited March 31, 2023 by Residue

[Midnight_00]

In a nutshell, everything in Individualised's post. A few specific examples:

 

Most of the level names for episode 1 are very appropriate and make the places feel lived in. They leave a lot of room to imagine what the inaccessible areas and the exteriors might look like. Same for parts of episode 2.

 

I like how the setting deteriorates completely over episode 2, which is indicated by the change in the level naming conventions by the end. Halls of the Damned is definitely where the shift is most noticeable. Playing the game for the first time, the replacement of the key cards by the newly introduced skull keys is very noticeable in that level (though Fortress of Mystery introduces them prematurely). I also like how Spawning Vats lets up slightly and has a music track that can feel both ominous and hopeful depending on the situation (Waltz of the Demons).

 

The order the levels are placed in would be another thing I'd mention in general, particularly in Episode 2 and 3.

 

For Doom 2, I like how Shawn's Got the Shotgun is used throughout the game. The three levels it's used for make sense, even The Citadel, since the map name itself makes it feel like the climax of the Earth levels (not sure if the level itself does or not though...), and of course The Living End is essentially the final actual level, so it works very well there.

[yakfak]

i like dead ends and the ability to guess wrong; all the places in MAP06, MAP13, MAP24 where you just have to turn around, the MAP19 fortress which lets you exclude yrself from the place really easily, or that soulsphere secret in MAP12 that you can try and get too early and get ripped to pieces by those four imps

 

I like MAP15's secret exit cos it doesn't really make that much sense. you have to screw about and fall off stuff to unlock it and on its initial discovery you don't really know why it's open. good!

 

in a more pro, more user-friendly map set that'd all be set into a circuit where just pressing on would eventually let you see everything, grab everything, open everything; i like mazes over ringroads and Doom 2's classic for them

[Individualised]

1 hour ago, Midnight_00 said:

For Doom 2, I like how Shawn's Got the Shotgun is used throughout the game. The three levels it's used for make sense, even The Citadel, since the map name itself makes it feel like the climax of the Earth levels (not sure if the level itself does or not though...), and of course The Living End is essentially the final actual level, so it works very well there.

It's the boss music, except only 1 or 2 of the levels it is used on can be considered actual bosses.

Edited March 31, 2023 by Individualised