How to better talk about Doom map visuals?

[Catpho]

I've noticed for a long time that my vocabulary and reference points for a map's looks isn't as robust / good as my equivalents for how a map feels or plays. I'm not saying that I'm exactly good at describing gameplay either, but for some reason words for praise or grievances on that matter come easier. For example, I can come up with "turrets", "space restrictions", "fodder", and so on, but I have little equivalents when it comes to visuals. This is despite the importance of looks to a level; few new map posts are complete without screenshots, and I don't know if I would love my favorite wads if they were all evenly-lit startan boxes (this can theoretically be done well, like anything, but the fact this is barely seen should say something about looks).

 

So yeah, I hope that makes sense. If it doesn't, feel free to prod at me until it does.

[kalensar]

Doom mapping is like painting a canvas. It can be abstract or realistic and be perfectly awesome in either extreme. The lingedy can then be just as abstract or spartan as wanted.

I think the art critiquing with Doom in general is that we are looking at semi-3D paintings  that are not as easy to define as Van Gogh, Davinci or Bob Ross. It's more like judging architecture rather than a portrait, and in judging architecture we mostly have to trust that the buildings are functional to use, and then just enjoy whatever artsy nuances and gargoyles get added to the walls and facades.

[NeedHealth]

I think it helps to think in contrasts and aspects. From the chosen point of view you would probably need 50/50 to look "good" but what this is comes with experience I would say.

Edited July 13, 2023 by NeedHealth

[Dreamskull]

Visual aesthetic follows after geometry so you can use that as a base to describe things. Think of shapes, what it contains, then its connection. It morphs from that into the experience you have inside the map. Think about how much space is afforded to move around in, especially after things are killed. Thats a key element. Its often archtypical, but people are always pushing the envelope to give you something you havent quite seen. Take note if thats the case. Grand (Tall, long, open) vs Dungeon Crawl. (Box to Box) Crowded or sprawling, linear vs interconnectivity. Thats a good start for a rough, next comes setting. Strong contrast into traditional archetype theme is welcome here, of which there are many. (Techbase, Hell, Temple, Outdoors, ect) Most of it just has to do with believeability and how it stacks up against things that are similar. There is an ideal here found in selling the setting. Be sure not to sell them short on it. If you dont like that, is it full-blown experimental? The experimental is always interesting because its treading newer ground.

 

Color seems to be the main thing AFTER geometry and spacing. Its very difficult to do right and probably the most boring part of making maps. Lighting should be employed to help things stand out. You'll need practice to perfect this.

 

I also like to think that every main room ought to have a decent screenshot-worthy something-or-other, but thats just setpeice design. Yes I suppose it can be very difficult to describe things visually, but its about the goods.

Edited July 16, 2023 by Dreamskull

[Adrian Favilla]

Well, I like to divide the visuals in Doom into three main categories: sterile, complex, and harmonious. Sterile would be something like the computer textures like COMPSPAN or the silver textures and spaceship maps, and complex would be something like natural textures, demon stuff, and hell maps. One tip that I got from an architecture video that I watched a long time ago, whose name sadly escapes me, talked about chaos and order and their aesthetic value. We, in general, don't like things that are too chaotic, like a poor third-world ghetto, but we also don't like things that have too much order, like a repetitive sound or a repetitive row of the same exact thing. The solution that he gave was to combine the two, and in his example, he used a row of the same style of houses, and in each one of them, he changed the color of the houses and the ceiling design creating a synthesis between the two that improved the happiness and productivity of the neighborhood, which I would call harmonious design.

 

[Not Jabba]

This is a good topic, and something I think about a lot. A lot of discourse about games was developed in a time when people's mantra was "gameplay is everything" (but like, they meant specific types of gameplay), and then people developed a lot of concrete, evocative vocabulary to discuss it, and then the fact that all that vocabulary exists kind of continues the cycle where it's the focal point of discourse. I'd love to have more of that vocabulary for "everything else" (aesthetics, narrative, atmosphere, emotional tone, whatever), but I've never figured out if concrete terminology is actually the most useful approach. My writing tends to be directed more at non-"gameplay" elements, not only because I love them but because I want to build people's appreciation of them and show how they can be analyzed in interesting ways. But generally, I'm trying to capture vibes -- how the story feels, how the scale feels or the aesthetics of the setting feel. It seems like if you tried to capture these in concrete terms -- "Here the mapper uses parallel bi-fluxated towers offset by trilinear crenelation and deep-set light strips in alternating white and purple" -- it doesn't necessarily sound as good as it looks. A screenshot could describe that effect better than words can, maybe. Words are better for describing how the image makes you feel. But maybe there are terms to be coined for that sort of thing.

 

A couple terms I've come up with, but they're for in-game narrative rather than aesthetics:

Mapset anatomy - The narrative arc created by how maps are ordered within a mapset

Inhabitance - The idea of placing monsters as though they live in the maps, rather than how abstract combat needs would dictate. Can be thought of as a thing-placement equivalent of material texturing.

 

 

And some terms that we do have for aesthetics and architecture:

-Doomcute

-Lighting contrast

-Color contrast

-Scale

-Mise-en-scene

-Viewpoint

-Layering

-"Verticality"

-Honestly, any terminology that exists for visual art in general. I'm not sure how to make some of them Doom-specific or game-specific, or how necessary it is to do that.

Edited July 15, 2023 by Not Jabba

[baja blast rd.]

I also do a ton of writing about aesthetic/visuals stuff. I keep that almost entirely private, for reasons that'll read like a list of salt about how engagement with criticism tends to be poor and creates little motivation (a lot of people only are ever fixated on what gets 'mentioned', like the only thing that matters is mentioning anything -- and then never engage actively with criticism) so I won't go on much more. :P But I can chat privately with some people.

 

One big thing to do is to break up "detail" into its components. Often beginners will use "high detail" as a synonym for "pretty" -- which sounds especially odd when they're talking about something with good clean, minimalist design. 

 

It's possible for a map to be designed with "high fidelity" (which roughly means it depicts its basic features at a high level of complexity -- think a cliff face that is in all ways a basic cliff face, but broken up into lots and lots of rocks) while having low "representational detail," and vice versa. As an example of the vice versa, I was thinking about Dystopia 3 map02 recently: there's this tipped-over car from a broken overpass, but then if you look around, the rocky scene is depicted as bare walls, which calls to mind art styles where what's "in focus" is rendered with a lot more detail than the background, but also shows a difference between fidelity and detail, because the scene is pretty damn lo-fi yet there's more narrative detail in this area than in a lot more more modern maps that choose to emphasize other types of design. The car is pretty sophisticated but if it were a simple blocky car, it would drive that home even more.

 

There are some maps with relatively simple texturing/architecture that have a lot of lighting detail, like a lot of Alm. There's maps that do a lot of their heavy lifting with texturing that has a lot of features baked-in, and those where the author breaks up and subdivides walls very actively.

 

I could keep going there, and examples could fill a whole book, but the point is it's pretty valuable to sit down and think about where exactly a set's aesthetic appeal is coming from -- what it chooses to prioritize and focus on in its design and what it doesn't. Answer the question: "Exactly how is this map trying to appeal to the player?"

 

Lullaby vs. Infraworld: Coma Moonlight might be a good case study since they certain things similarly but also differently. Lullaby takes the color-highlight tradition associated with early-mid-'10s Ribbiks (and works a bit earlier and a bit later) and really plays with it. You'll notice all of this hypnotic movement in Lullaby, stars falling, bubbles hovering up and down, etc. -- which you can think of as the "light strips scrolling downward in Sunlust" but manifesting in more specific ways. There's actually a fake-out in the beginning where it looks like it's going to be a story-oriented wad but the story framing is really minimal/bare. 

 

Infraworld: Coma Moonlight by contrast is a lot more focused on "spatial realism." Unlike Lullaby which is made of these postcard-like scenes that are connected by teleporters, Infraworld: Coma Moonlight is this solid column of temple wrapped in rock that you can ascend vertically. I:CM's aesthetics and whole make-up feels inspired by the generations of shooter games that would come after Doom, with the author mentioning Quake, but there also seems to be games like Unreal (?). Where Lullaby wows you with its immediate prettiness, I:CM has a more understated look at first, but imo can get even prettier! It also uses a color highlight but it's this more subdued, glowing purple. Even the combat in it has an aesthetic focus, like the ending refuses an intense climax and stays calm and relaxing. I:CM is slightly more of a narrative map. Lullaby's progression is essentially a Doomy finding keys to open the exit, but in I:CM you power on (enchant?!) these beams that let you float higher into the complex, and then find "runes" needed to leave. It's not, like, Going Down or something, but in its broad strokes decisions it has you playing into more of a story. Where Lullaby directly hands you gorgeous views, I:CM's more about letting you find them, or find what you personally love. My favorite parts of I:CM other than the bulb-shaped floating structures near the end were actually the edges of the map, which have features like these wood planks floating off the sides of the main tower, partly because I'm a sucker for good 'material realism' and I loved the way the shapes of these traced the contours of the wood planks.

 

Both maps use quietness and gorgeous views to soothe the player. They are both kinda like mood pieces. Lullaby's more a stunning enigma that throws questions at you very loudly from the outset, Infaworld: Coma Moonlight's identity is more like this mystery that lets you slowly untangle it and figure it out. I find Lullaby oddly unsettling at times, like when you look we're near a window and stars are falling, falling in your peripheral vision, while you're standing in silence, no one around. It's disconcerting because stuff "shouldn't" be moving that way -- found it tapped into some primal fear at a low level? Infraworld: Coma Moonlight is pure vibe and peacefulness though. It's boring at times but that improves it. I wish I could make a map like this one day myself, but I'll settle for just thing-placing an existing one. :) 

 

That whole last paragraph is subjective!  A lot of the time you can just share how something makes you feel. Technically that is what all aesthetics are going for anyway, creating a feeling, so your subjective response to it is kind of a critique of it. :P  If I find, let's say, Eviternity map15 breathtaking, I think about why. Why exactly is it doing that for me? Why do the tall structures and the odd, oblique angles do that? It doesn't matter if the terminology isn't standardized at first. Brief digression: Eviternity m15 makes me think of maps that modern design has shied away from because the architecture is massive and the shapes are all weird and irregular, a combo that doesn't lend itself to easy detailing -- and it seems like people favor designs that can be detailed more easily? But pure shape- and scale-play would be unfortunate to lose out on.  I was thinking about Invasion 2 map03 recently and how the mountains are ridiculously tall and long in a way that's impossible to detail in vanilla, but the scale is striking, and I'm glad the author wasn't preoccupied with whether it could be detailed. Among modern authors, Benjogami does that a bunch too.

 

The title mentions "visuals" but I think of "aesthetics" as a broader category, and there are wads out there that are very, very compelling aesthetically but not pretty or impressive visually. The most common ways to achieve that tend to be atmosphere/immersion, and narrative/story. 
 

So anyway, my two main takeaways: 1) Try to identify exactly what facets of design the map focuses on, and doesn't focus on, how it's trying to create an experience. That often is a good starting point for a deeper look at something, giving you some good questions, and some answers right away. 2) Your purely subjective responses are fine, and even welcome. 

[Geniraul]

As a non-native English speaker, I usually don't shine with the application of a rich vocabulary too brightly C: Instead I rather use more adjectives and tend to diversify my sentences with more details in order to make the expression of my thoughts more complete. However, there are a lot of things to talk about when it comes to the visuals and aesthetics of the map, some of which @Not Jabba has already mentioned. I think this is common for a lot of idTech engine series' games to please the player's eye and/or heart with such things, for instance:

 

• lighting
• color palette
• architecture and geometry
• texturing, textural contrast
• theme/style
• gimmicks
• scale; proportions
• references
• similarities with other maps
• distribution of items; propagation of light
• conversion, remake
• realism; realistic feeling
• connectivity of elements and locations, smoothness
• in-game and hypothetical purposes of concrete objects
• how well the map fits its story
• overall atmosphere, coloring
• associations
• originality
• wit
• Vanilla feeling
• modernity
• Doomcute
• detailedness
• recognizable features of a particular author's work in mapping
• spookiness and fascination of labyrinths
• new conceptions
• functionality of some of the visuals (landmarks, indications)
• skybox

 

If there is something special about a particular map, I usually try to mention it and do a review. For example, I see that the blue and red colors next to the CTF bases in Fast as Hell Flags by Arrowhead and Endless serve as indicators, so I say:

 

7 hours ago, Geniraul said:

As for the palette, the classical blue and red colors help to identify appropriate teams' territories.

 

Other times I may also notice some similarities between two maps that can look totally different at first sight and not even be associated with each other:

 

On 2/6/2023 at 5:00 PM, Geniraul said:

For me a great sample of this is the map 03: 2 Useless Keys by @DynamiteKaitorn of the Doom II 15 speedmaps megawad The 12 Days of Doommas compiled by @BluePineapple72. <...> Because of the fact that the map represents a maze with the walls slightly higher than the player, it reminds me of a Quake 3 level, basically made for the DeFRaG mod, STONEMAZE by Pan-(G). <...> What I also find funny is the fact that both these maps were made as labyrinths, where Stonemaze would set a goal to test the player's speedrunning skills, while 2 Useless Keys would concentrate on being created fast itself. In my opinion, both levels' palettes are almost ideally suitable for Christmas.

 

It is not uncommon to stumble across a conversion or a remake of a certain level either, so the mentioning of it should fill the comments/review with more knowledge and decorate it a bit more:

 

On 1/6/2023 at 6:10 AM, Geniraul said:

When it comes to Doom maps that have been adapted to other games' engines, I tend to think about E1M2 remake (2007) from the Q3 Ultimate Doom map pack by an unknown author. Even considering that the light could have been done in a little bit more complete way, this map is quite an exact recreation of the original Knee-Deep in the Dead's map 2. As far as I could notice, every single Nuclear Plant's secret was transferred to this Quake III version.

 

There might also be certain recognizable features of a particular author's work in mapping from time to time, so in my opinion, it's usually a significant advantage if you do describe how exactly they are reflected in the level. This comment is about a (yes, I know, I talk about Quake 3 a lot :D But that is because I often comment on Q3 maps, and I think thanks to the fact that the game is built on an engine from the idTech series and that it's made by id Software Q3 reviews can be somewhat helpful for reviewing Classic Doom levels as well) Quake 3 custom map called SEDISTIC by the author Sedric:

 

Quote

One more excellent map by Sedric! And you can literally feel that it's by Sedric: it's open-space with a picturesque skybox, the landscape is quite unique and differs a lot in its parts, the level keeps harmonizing in two colors that go really well together. It truly feels like some kind of a pre-build of COLDWARCTF for me (which is one of my favorite CTF maps), because it really resembles it. The environment design, architecture and color palette on this map create together an impression of finding yourself in some huge space and makes you want to return on this level again and again without ever getting tired of that. I'm not sure I agree with the review on the fact that the full-brightness of this map is a problem. I think the degree of lightning alongside the beauty of this level make it feel just alright, I definitely wouldn't call this map over-bright. I'm bookmarking this one, this is such a great map and another piece of art by Sedric!

 

I apologize for multiquoting myself there, it was to provide some examples :) Hopefully, this post will be useful.