He's prob my fav doom mapper right now 

Episode 4 was definitely weird and hellish, but I think the actual design that was so great in the previous 3 episodes was missing. The first map for E5 was really promising for the rest of the episode though.

BTW I'm just running through on godmode. Fuck you. 

 

feels like a requirement... seriously the start of one of the episodes has you up against like 3 cyberdemons and a spidermastermind and you only have a pistol... like wtf. 

get on my level scrubbadub!!


...but serioysly you just evade and rely on infighting to slowly wear them down, its a cool idea! 

I thought that level was a cool idea too.

The first E5 level was good, not so sure about the rest so far... 

It's interesting how design for high-level play makes you realize what's actually possible in the game. When you stop thinking of the cyberdemon as a boss that can only be used in a boss context and just treat it like an extra-large enemy, well, sure, why the hell not have three of them?

The start of that level, with the cyberdemons in the room with you which teleport out as soon as you wake them, was a great way to forewarn the player know they were going to be out there. 

for this type of play. I am envious of anyone who can do this shit. 

Watched Daz play through this entire thing. It's essentially a bullet hell shmup in first person.

Very relevant: http://vectorpoem.com/news/?p=74 

That is a great article 

Every time it's posted somewhere I end up reading it all again. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FpigqfcvlM 

yeah but the one I posted isn't intolerably fucking obnoxious 

Yeah, obvious, but good points, and clearly what is either missing or very mediocrely replicated in modern FPS. 

Not really all that obvious in some spots. I liked the point about the locations being so abstract, either as a choice or as a limitation of the tech, that it freed the level designers to focus on tactical situations rather than visual fidelity.

Call the level a "military base". Doesn't really mean anything. Just design it so it's fun to kill monsters in.

These days you have limitations as you can't just blow out a wall or add a column without the design/story team coming down on you for ruining the aesthetic of the airplane hangar or whatever.

They had a lot of freedom to do whatever was best for player movement and gunplay. Would love to get some of that back. 

http://s.quickmeme.com/img/67/67724749e771d8fb4eb43c2b73b697f9f38e3d8b03cc0ccd4f10c29ff7da6511.jpg

The key point is that 'fun' is now simply a feature of games development, just like any other - nice artwork, story, theme, multiplayer, multi-platform support etc.

Back then fun wasn't a feature, but the whole reason for making the thing. 

Well, be fair, Doom isn't covered in demons and hellfire because they DIDN'T want to make that art. :) 

Also multiplayer was a key feature of both Doom and Quake ... 

True.

I suppose I mean that games dev has evolved to a state where it can comfortably crawl up its own arse.

Sometimes though a game gets the balance of elements right though, leading all the pretenders to wonder what the magic formula is.

An easy example is mobile and Clash of Clones.

The original idea was probably just "Let's make a multiplayer tower defence game!" 

These days you have limitations as you can't just blow out a wall or add a column without the design/story team coming down on you for ruining the aesthetic of the airplane hangar or whatever.

And that's why everything is crates. Generic shape putty!

They're equally appropriate anywhere because they're equally inappropriate anywhere. If there's bad guys, bad guys need supplies, and supplies come in boxes. Boom, I've just explained crates into 100% of game environments. 

Yeah that was one of the points that was pretty obvious to a seasoned Quake fan. It's still a very good point though. 

My god... 

Didn't even look at the articles yet just loved the comment, lol.

Some day when I get time I am going to catch up on Doom releases, hopefully in coop. The gameplay is so fun, even arguably unsurpassed for what it is. THY FLESH CONSUMED was such a great episode; it's so infuriating that Romero was able to design its epic second map in only 6 hours (midnight-dawn); I still remember reading him pointing out in PC Gamer in 1996 that due to 3d and increasing detail map design was now going to take longer and longer and require more work, ie diminishing returns. 

courtesy of Chris Crawford, 1994:
http://www.erasmatazz.com/library/the-journal-of-computer/jcgd-volume-7/design-analysis-doom.html

My other complaint is with the tricky timing puzzles. In one example of this, you lower a secret door by walking past a point in a corridor and then you have just a few seconds to run to the door and jump through it before it closes. I am sure that with the appropriate input device this is not too difficult. However, I was using a mouse, and despite my best efforts, I found it almost impossible to get through that damn door. I had to make perhaps ten attempts before I was successful. I suspect that the designers did this with a joystick and found it none too difficult.

heee! 

An expansion on Warren's point about representation:
http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2013/12/20-years-of-doom.html


I'm surprised I can't find anyone write about Doom's specific design decisions any more in-depth than LeBreton, though. I want someone who understands this game way more than me to pick apart every monster.

Example: the Arch-Vile's two attacks are perfectly chosen for the tension they create with their overlap - the resurrect means you really really need to focus on it badly, but the blast attack means you really really need to stay out of sight. It makes fighting one an event because you flip back and forth between two opposite states of ohshitohshitohshit. This kind of thing is surely common knowledge to Doom players, but it's written in hundreds of megawads and personal experiences, not in text.

This one comes close:
http://blog.danbo.vg/post/50094276897/the-most-misunderstood-game-of-all-time
(and I'd adore it for no other reason than it opens by calling John Carmack "id's last shred of credibility.") He nicely puts something that's just as true about Quake, which I've always had difficulty articulating: that the player in an FPS like this is fighting the level designer, and even if the enemies are dumb, their arrangement within local architecture and the overall arc of a level is where the intelligence is manifested.

Also, apparently the best Doom level ever is in fact E4M2. Need to scrounge up a copy of TFC again.