Doom mapping tenets?

[jmickle66666666]

Maes said:

*Looks at thread title*

Well, let's put it this way: I don't like football, but I do not post in threads about football just to say that I don't like it.

*reads the OP*

Are there any rules that should never be broken in Doom mapping? Is there a discussion about this?

my answer: no

[Maes]

Well, at least you made it clear that you do have an opinion on the matter. Then again, you made it really hard to distinguish from contempt for the thread's subject itself (I'm no netiquette master, but while the former is OK to express, the latter is -usually- not).

[Da Werecat]

It appears to me that some people are uncomfortable with the word "rules". Can we at least agree that there are certain things that would be considered mauvais ton in most cases?

[Aaron Blain]

Well, "tenet" doesn't have quite the same connotation as "rule".

Myself, I was thinking about all the unquestioned assumptions that mappers seem to follow quite consistently. I think that's a more constructive way to look at it.

I think doomers are generally the sort of people who dislike "following the rules", man.

[Maes]

So let's get wild with the crates and the toilets ;-) Oh and crates with toilets. And of course crate toilets.



I remember there was a map that took place on a giant toilet bowl, so why not a map which takes place inside or atop a giant crate? It won't be a map with crates anymore, the entire map will be the crates ;-)

[VGA]

When I made the thread I was thinking about commonly accepted mapper/player conventions. Not strict rules.

The goal is playability, fairness and fun.

[Maes]

VGA said:

The goal is playability, fairness and fun.

Sounds like a noble plan on paper, but there will always be someone mantaining that these goals are strictly subjective, and what makes someone ragequit will simply be considered as a welcome challenge by someone else. After all, nobody is forcing you to play a game, so you have to take it "as is", right?

Especially debating "fairness" in videogames is a major can of worms to open. Some think that the game designer should protect the player from things such as unwinnable situations, handicapping controls, avoid setting beginners' traps etc. while others will maintain that these are essential elements of any game, which add "depth", and it's up to the player not to fall prey to them.

[Arctangent]

Honestly, unwinnability is a pretty terrible way to add depth in general. It's something to be approached with extreme caution, because you can easily make what caused the game to become unwinnable to feel extremely arbitrary to the player. One example that comes to mind was one of those old adventure games, where there's a pretty mundane object in one of the first rooms that disappears after either some time or after the player progresses past a certain point. Cut to the end, and it's revealed that it was necessary to advance. So if the player didn't realize the object was important ( which, again, it was a pretty mundane one ) or thought they could come back to it later, they now have to redo the entire game. That's not depth, that's just being an asshole to the player.

Some good examples of a game becoming unwinnable are in Strife, if the player attacks their allies in the base, and Morrowind, which is caused by much of the same. It's pretty obvious that such actions could end up with dire consequences, and Morrowind even gives you a message telling you that, hey, you screwed up, you might not want to save. Granted, Morrowind isn't a true example, because it takes truly insane methods of making the game actually unwinnable ( such as dropping the plot-important weapons into a place where you can't retrieve them, which is actually pretty difficult to do ), but unless the player knows what they're doing they can easily screw themselves out of progress with the main plot.

I suppose in examples like The Elder Scrolls games or Saint's Row, unwinnability isn't that bad because it doesn't actually lock you out from most of the content, although I'd still avoid making arbitrary actions cause unwinnability.

The other two are far better for adding depth, although the usage of them should still be appropriate to their game. MOBAs rely heavily on using crowd control on other players to remove their ability to control their characters, but something that actually swapped the keys of their character's abilities would really not fit there. Additionally, control manipulation is far more appropriate in something like a horror game than a super hero game, since the former tries to make the player feel as vulnerable as possible while the latter does exactly the opposite.

[Maes]

Then someone pulls out the "whiner", "noob" or "scrub" trump card and cuts you short, no matter how correct you may be from a logical standpoint. Unfortunately.

And we've not even debated multiplayer games.... ;-)

[NoXion]

Speaking as someone who plays maps but has never built one, I would agree that inescapable pits that don't kill you are a total drag. If I fall in one I won't ragequit or reload my game, but I will noclip my way out of there and then resume playing as normal. That sort of thing is not usually enough to make me stop playing but I will definitely think less of the mapper if it happens, because being forced to use things like noclip or god mode takes me out of the game somewhat.

Unforeseeable insta-death traps are dick moves as well. I should be able to see the threat coming and react accordingly, even if I only have just a split-second to do so. I should at least in theory be able to play through a map to completion (i.e. hit the end switch) without having to die even once.

I also hate it when maps railroad the player into specific tactics or playing styles in order to beat them.

This is probably more a personal preference of mine rather than something all mappers should try adhering to, but I also intensely dislike maps that have a low ratio of weapons and ammunition to monsters; if I wanted to play a game where I'm forced to desperately go over areas with a fine toothed comb in order to procure sufficient ammunition and health items, I'd play Resident Evil, not Doom.

[hex11]

NoXion said:

Unforeseeable insta-death traps are dick moves as well. I should be able to see the threat coming and react accordingly, even if I only have just a split-second to do so. I should at least in theory be able to play through a map to completion (i.e. hit the end switch) without having to die even once.

In practice though you're going to die a lot. Nobody is 100% alert all the time, even if in theory you coulda/shoulda/would've avoided that devious trap...

Do you expect to win arcade shoot'em up games or 8-bit platformers on your first shot? A lot of them are based around learning the layout of the levels, the enemy pattern, and boss weaknesses. It's expected you're going to lose a number of lives to progress.

Anyway here's probably the most fair game ever made. It actually adapts to player's skill. If you're kicking ass, it gets harder. If you're floundering, it gets easier.
http://hol.abime.net/2754

[Da Werecat]

hex11 said:

Nobody is 100% alert all the time, even if in theory you coulda/shoulda/would've avoided that devious trap...

"In theory" is better than when you can't predict it at all.

[scifista42]

hex11 said:

In practice though you're going to die a lot. Nobody is 100% alert all the time, even if in theory you coulda/shoulda/would've avoided that devious trap...

I've said something similar before, but I enjoy playing a Doom map the most when I feel that I wouldn't die if I was 100% alert all the time. Then I can take deaths as punishments for my own failure. Not as a planned feature of the map's design. This is my justification for claiming that unforeseeable insta-death traps are bad.

[TheOrganGrinder]

hex11 said:
Do you expect to win arcade shoot'em up games or 8-bit platformers on your first shot? A lot of them are based around learning the layout of the levels, the enemy pattern, and boss weaknesses. It's expected you're going to lose a number of lives to progress.

Just to pick up on this... I'm not sure I agree with this comparison, because a lot of old-school shooter/platformer games of this type don't offer the player a health bar; they're very much cast in the "one touch and you're dead" model. Killer traps, in this model of game, are depleting a resource (lives) that the player is trying to conserve and stockpile. But the Doom player has one 'life' (and thus effectively infinite lives), and a killer trap in Doom doesn't deplete a player's resources; whether it kills a player one time or a dozen times makes no difference to the player's status and ability to continue when they're finally able to get past it. Health loss and (to a lesser extent) ammo consumption map more closely to the old-school model of how lives are lost as the player figures out how to progress.

[hex11]

Da Werecat said:

"In theory" is better than when you can't predict it at all.

In theory you should expect traps everywhere, at all times, and monster closets opening up on every corner of every room. You should carefully navigate every part of the level, just like you're in some real-life military squad securing an area.

In practice, that's very tedious, so you let your guard down because it doesn't happen constantly, and then finally shit happens.

[Da Werecat]

And the point is?

[hex11]

The point is that theory and practice are not the same.

[Da Werecat]

Okay. So?

[hex11]

So it's pointless to care about "in theory" because that's not what actually happens when playing Doom. The player is more likely to run around shooting wildly and carelessly than acting like his real life is on the line. So he's going to set off some traps and run into ambushes, and that's all part of the game. After he reloads the game or restarts the level from scratch, then he'll know what not to do, and where to be careful.

[scifista42]

Da Werecat said:

Okay. So?

The point is clear to me: Hex11 is oriented on practice. He doesn't mind reloading a game in order to win, it doesn't spoil his comfort. All that matters for him is experiencing maximum fun the game offers, and it doesn't matter what it takes or what the form is. It's a completely understandable and valid point of view, IMO. The point of view of a non-pampered gamer.

[Da Werecat]

hex11 said:

So it's pointless to care about "in theory" because that's not what actually happens when playing Doom.

Looks like you're only seeing two extremes. "The player is very likely to die somewhere, so does it matter how and how many times?"

There's a difference between "I fucked up, I'll do better next time" and "The mapper is fuck, I'm outta here". The former is what the player is likely to think after dying in a trap that could've been survived with enough attention paid. The latter is what the player is likely to think after dying and realizing that there's no way he could've prevented it.

[NoXion]

hex11 said:

In practice though you're going to die a lot. Nobody is 100% alert all the time, even if in theory you coulda/shoulda/would've avoided that devious trap...

Well, it depends. If I grab a key card and three of the room's walls drop down each with a horde of monsters behind them, then I have a range of options ranging between fighting them all right there, and fleeing like a yellow coward, depending on my current health and ammunition status.

But if I'm trapped in a deadly situation I can't fight or dodge my way out of, how is that fair? Especially if I've already had to butcher my way through a tough crowd to get there.

Do you expect to win arcade shoot'em up games or 8-bit platformers on your first shot? A lot of them are based around learning the layout of the levels, the enemy pattern, and boss weaknesses. It's expected you're going to lose a number of lives to progress.

I'm not sure that's a good comparison. I find platform/shoot'em up enemies to be a lot more predictable than Doom monsters, for although they're far from master tacticians, their movements dynamically emerge from events in the game rather than following a path more or less dictated by the level designer (compare the movements of a lowly Zombieman with that of say, a Techbot from the first Duke Nukem game, or an enemy ship from Tyrian). The terrain is also significantly different; environmental hazards in Doom are fewer and further in between, or are at least no more than a secondary threat. Being killed by a lava pit or a crusher feels like a much cheaper death than being nobbled by a horde of demons, because at least with them you can take some of them down with you. You can't do that to a wall or a pool of toxic slime.

[hex11]

It's just an analogy, so of course it breaks down if you try to examine it in detail. Just like typical car/computer analogies aren't perfect, etc. It's only the broad idea that's important: beating a hard game or level takes some foreknowledge, and you only acquire that by actually trying, dying, and trying again.

For me, being surrounded by demons and unable to find cover, or being crushed by a trap is all the same. I still have to start over. But now I know something new about the level. Maybe it "feels" better to you to take down some demons on your way, but that's just an illusion and you don't even get points for it. Maybe it "feels" better to you to be crushed by a trap that had some kind of indicator, but the result is the same in the end. But you will avoid that trap the next time.

Talking about extremes, the entire Plutonia IWAD is one big troll of a megawad. It's designed explicitely to fuck you over at every turn, and yet nobody complains about it much. They grumble about the asshole chaingunners but still try to slog their way through, on UV no less, because it's viewed as some kind of rite of passage for the community. Ditto with other "hard" wads that are popular these days. But one little measly trap in a random level, and that's it, it's game over for you.

It would be one thing if an entire level is filled with instant death traps, like a troll wad designed just to fuck with you. Maybe you avoid one or two traps, but there are five dozen more waiting for you... Okay that's just a bullshit map. In general traps are used to spice up a level, or to add to the atmosphere. But that doesn't work if every trap has a giant neon sign in front of it that says "BEWARE OF THE TRAP". And yeah, you can put more subtle signs, but then someone will bitch because it was "too subtle" and he couldn't be expected to know to avoid it. You can't design a level to accommodate everyone's level of awareness and perception, so it's better to not worry about it. Or maybe you'll accept the death gracefully because there was an obscure sign, but that too is just an illusion, as everything becomes so obvious in retrospect (hindsight is 20/20, as they say). In practice, the subtle indicator is only good to remind you that there's a trap there the next time you play. On your first run, you were going to die anyway.

[Memfis]

hex11 said:

It's only the broad idea that's important: beating a hard game or level takes some foreknowledge, and you only acquire that by actually trying, dying, and trying again.

That's the "arcade" way of doing things. Among the Doom community the more popular idea is "beating a hard level takes some skill". Maps are typically expected to be "fair" in the sense that the player should be able to get out of every dangerous situation if he is smart and skilled enough, even if he is playing the map for the first time and doesn't know what's coming. Almost all maps in Plutonia, Speed of Doom and other well-designed hard wads are exactly of that type. This is proven by many demos of players beating these maps on the first\second try without any foreknowledge. Dying 5234985723 times "even though you did nothing wrong" just to learn the level isn't a popular gamestyle here and usually people will yell at you if you enforce it in your maps. :)

[hex11]

But how many people are actually skilled enough to beat such hard wads on their very first attempt, and without any information about it? No reading of other players' exploits, no watching demos, not even just looking at "wadwhat" output to see which monsters and how much ammo/health is in the map.

Without that information, you have to find it all out first-hand, the hard way. And doing it like that tends to drain your health a lot faster. It doesn't really take much, just losing focus for a tiny bit and you've got a rocket in your back or shotgun in your face, or you're surrounded by demons in a bad spot. But after playing the map once or twice, you know the general layout, and the encounters. It's a lot more manageable then. It's a lot more realistic to hope to beat it then.

[scifista42]

hex11 said:

In general traps are used to spice up a level, or to add to the atmosphere. But that doesn't work if every trap has a giant neon sign in front of it that says "BEWARE OF THE TRAP". And yeah, you can put more subtle signs, but then someone will bitch because it was "too subtle" and he couldn't be expected to know to avoid it. You can't design a level to accommodate everyone's level of awareness and perception,

You can do this: Introduce each type of a trap in a way that the player will comprehend its threat. Then as he keeps encountering the same type of this trap later, he will be already aware that he needs to pay attention. And so, signs of threat can become more and more subtle up to non-existent as he progresses. Many, many games of various genres follow this model.

[Da Werecat]

hex11 said:

But that doesn't work if every trap has a giant neon sign in front of it that says "BEWARE OF THE TRAP". And yeah, you can put more subtle signs, but then someone will bitch because it was "too subtle" and he couldn't be expected to know to avoid it.

Again with the extremes.

Yes, someone will bitch. Someone will always bitch. But if there's an adequate clue, these people can be ignored.

You can't design a level to accommodate everyone's level of awareness and perception, so it's better to not worry about it.

When you see another "Chooz ur feit!!!" message in an amateur level for Hexen or Quake, it's not hard to predict what's going to happen: most likely 3 or more identical switches or passages, one of which won't kill you. It's actually very nice of the mapper to put a warning there: at least you can save your game before guessing your way through the "puzzle". Still, it breaks the immersion without adding anything to the gameplay, and (adding insult to injury) it makes the character look like he's surviving by pure luck, not because he's smart and capable.

If someone's way of not worrying about everyone's level of awareness and perception is to make the traps impossible to survive in a fun way (PROTIP: savescumming is not fun), they should probably work on their game design skills. It's their job to find a balance between obvious and unfair.

[VGA]

Just finished Vesperas from the Master Levels. Finding the first key was bullshit, that's what I mean about unfun stuff in maps.

A required key is in a pretty hard to get secret ... tsk tsk tsk.

[hex11]

Da Werecat said:

(PROTIP: savescumming is not fun)

Ah but you don't need to do that in Doom levels, because unlike Rogue the level remains the same every time you play it, and the game doesn't even delete your save files. If you die in Rogue, then you get to start a brand new game that's totally different from the one you just played, and without any guarantee of fairness. It's quite possible for the RNG to create a game where you're bound to die of starvation long before reaching dungeon level 20 (but the amulet can be located much deeper...) So no matter what steps you take, you can't win that particular game, no matter how many times you try (disregarding for a moment that attempting to do so more than once is cheating). Doom doesn't have that "problem", so you can save freely and try again with your new-found knowledge.



So yeah, save your game if you think something iffy is about the happen and you don't feel like restarting the level from scratch.

As for the game design "job" thing, I think that's going too far. It's fine to expect professional designers to cater to a lowest common multiple type crowd, but us hobbyists should feel free to explore any and every direction possible, without any kind of "safe" zones, or constraints, or expectations. The only things I don't like is game-breaking stuff, like hard crashes of the engine, or getting stuck in situations where you don't die but remain stuck forever.

[Maes]

So, the "best" Doom players should be sought not among speedrunners, which use foreknowledge and optimization to the extreme, but to the best Survival-style players? I suppose that if anyone learns to play carefully, broken with a 1000 experiences, being mindful of traps all the time, having great foresight and "guessing" the mapper's intentions by "gut feeling" etc. then it must be them, even if that means trading completion speed (taking it easy) for greater survival chances.