[NNC]

I think the best Doom stuff you can have are No Rest for the Living and Sigil. And the respective authors other works. Neither Doom 1 and Doom 2 has great level design. There are some good ones, especially from Romero (I love E4M6 for example, despite it's mean puzzles), but the average mean didn't age well. However the assets are amazing, palette, textures, sprites are all spot on, gameplay is pitch perfect, monsters all have their own roles (I think Barons are the worst enemies in the game), the game only need polished, good looking maps. And it happened with NRFTL and later with Sigil and the other Romero maps. Fingers crossed for Sigil 2, I expect it to be very very good.

[Aristotle Gumball]

Doom 1's level design is much more rooted in recognizable locations. Agreed about the assets though. Personally not a huge fan of Sigil, but I don't care to argue about it. I think Quake was pretty much what I wanted out of Doom 2.

[Ninety-Six]

Thrice Cursed, on 31 July 2022 - 01:23 PM, said:

Doom 1's level design is much more rooted in recognizable locations.

no

[jkas789]

Quote

Doom 1's level design is much more rooted in recognizable locations.

[Aristotle Gumball]

Attempting to be less acerbic: I meant that things look like what they're supposed to. You're on a moon base, then when you're in hell, that's when shit gets a lil weird. In Doom 2 you're meant to be on earth, but nothing looks like it could be on earth. Most of the maps are just ridiculously game-y, like they designed them with interesting gameplay in mind (which is fine) but not making them look like actual locations. I'm just personally not a fan.

[Ninety-Six]

Thrice Cursed, on 01 August 2022 - 12:16 AM, said:

Attempting to be less acerbic: I meant that things look like what they're supposed to. You're on a moon base, then when you're in hell, that's when shit gets a lil weird.

no

Hangar has no hangar
Nuclear Plant has no nuclear plant and in fact resembles a Computer Station.
Computer Station has barely any computers and far more nukage than Nuclear Plant or Toxin Refinery.
Command Control? Where's the control? Any of the system admin? Literally anything you would expect to see in a command center?
I don't see a single laboratory in Phobos Lab, do you?
Central Processing? Of what?

Oh yeah, Phobos Anomaly! The highest tech setpiece and climax of episode 1, where the whole problem started, it's- literally a straight brick hallway with a pentragram arena, and then a pathetic upraised platform as your anomaly. Okay.

How about Deimos Anomaly? You literally don't get even that much. You're on the other side, so where is the other side of the gateway?


You're really gonna tell me that a level like Military Base, which is just a bunch of random-ass brown rooms with lifting walls in a cross formation and an explicable cage in the center, or Tower of Babel that literally has no Tower at all in it, and all the random elevators, sweeping and needlessly long corridors, the maze-like design, the literal mazes in Command Control and Nuclear Plant

are all "based on recognizable locations," meanwhile Doom 2 has Waste Tunnels that have tunnels with waste in them, Downtown which looks like a bunch of city buildings, Suburbs which have houses literally based on the layout of Sandy's own actual house, a Courtyard with a courtyard as the actual centerpiece to a level, the Citadel which is literally a citadel

those are not based on recognizable locations. Somehow. What in the actual hell are you talking about.

Doom 2 barely tries to resemble anything I'll admit, but it tries more than Doom 1, which is to say, more than literally nothing. Should we bring TNT into this? Let's bring TNT into this. TNT tries much harder to look like recognizable places within the Doom engine. You have an actual Central Processing facility filled with a bunch of administrative cubicles, Open Season with a functioning power generator, Steel Works which are steel works, Shipping and Respawning which is an actual shipping and receiving station (complete with trucks and conveyor belts!), an actual place for ships to land and take off in Hanger (with blast shields on the windows), Prison that has a prison, Nukage Processing that has massive vats of nukage, Administration Center with a lot of office rooms... hell, even the Hell levels try to create things, like the River Styx.


The one and only thing Doom 1 has that resembles anything is Containment Area, which isn't worth anything because that's literally just a bunch of boxes and that is all you need to sell a storage facility.

[Aristotle Gumball]

It's not about levels that look like exact representations of what they're meant to be, it's that they do a good enough of a job to translate the look and atmosphere of a moon base. Doom 2 on the other hand is an MC Escher drawing done with crayons. Which is fine. It's just that Doom 1's level design has a better sense of place. But I'll leave you to your rants bro. I don't really have time for this.

[Ninety-Six]

Thrice Cursed, on 31 July 2022 - 01:23 PM, said:

Doom 1's level design is much more rooted in recognizable locations.

Thrice Cursed, on 01 August 2022 - 02:13 AM, said:

it's that they do a good enough of a job to translate the look and atmosphere of a moon base.

You've been to a moonbase????

[ReaperAA]

I have to agree with Ninety-Six that Doom 1's levels aren't more real life area based than those of Doom 2. The only reason they seem like that is mainly because Doom 1 has more gradual thematic changes and are more grounded than the more experimental/gameplay focused maps of Doom. If anything, TNT has the most realistic areas of all the official Doom iwads by a good margin.


If you guys are looking for wads with a bit more realistic settings, then I would suggest wads like A.L.T, Heartland, Lost Civilization, Going Down, Hellbound.

[Ninety-Six]

ReaperAA, on 01 August 2022 - 03:01 AM, said:

I have to agree with Ninety-Six that Doom 1's levels aren't more real life area based than those of Doom 2. The only reason they seem like that is mainly because Doom 1 has more gradual thematic changes and are more grounded than the more experimental/gameplay focused maps of Doom.

Not that Doom 1 had an absence of those. Especially near the end of Inferno.

Honestly one of the reasons I really don't care for episode 2 is strictly because of how meaningless the half-techbase half-hell theme was. The fact that the rooms don't look like anything means the corruption is literally just a texture change. It doesn't look like anything was corrupted strictly because we can't recognize any of the tech parts. Let's say all the hell textures and all the tech textures changed places in E2. It would be pretty much identical. It's not like Hell had any particularly unique geometry outside of maybe more freeform river curves. I always thought the clashing textures was just kind of ugly since where tech ends and Hell starts is pretty arbitrary.


One thing I noticed a few years ago was that episode 2 is basically episode 1 in reverse. Even the map descends in roughly the same order. You start with the Anomaly, Containment Area is new, Refinery has been swapped for Central Processing (and thus remains level 3), eventually reach Deimos Lab which is in the exact same place as the Phobos Lab was (and the order is mirrored, going from level 5 to level 4), the Command Center is Command Control, and then it gets even more corrupted until it's not recognizable.

I think the effect would have been stronger if they ran with that, if engine limitations wouldn't let the map geometry change much between the styles. Imagine if Deimos Anomaly was a bloody, corrupted version of Phobos Anomaly. You could recognize parts of it. And then Computer Station and Central Processing, until near the end of the episode when nothing is familiar anymore.

[Aristotle Gumball]

You guys literally have autism. I'm sorry

[Fox]

Radar, on 31 July 2022 - 10:55 AM, said:

Hot-take but Doom 1993 is the same formulaic repetitive pop song. The first episode is the best one, it just gets worse after that.

The Ultimate Doom was released after Doom II

[Ninety-Six]

aight

[Aristotle Gumball]

Ninety-Six, on 01 August 2022 - 05:37 AM, said:

I haev pictur

aight

[Ninety-Six]

Ninety-Six, on 07 February 2022 - 04:08 PM, said:

After some fiddling, I've found that different soundfonts (based on built-in) break on certain songs, while others don't. Microsoft GS doesn't break on the title of Auger;Zenith, but it does if I use timidity (I don't have timidity but it works anyway?), but in the case of Memento Mori II, it's the opposite for MAP02, but then both blow up on MAP03.

I looked further into this because I keep finding more songs that just don't sound right, and I think I'm on to something.

I am now fairly convinced that for whatever reason, any source port based on GZDoom's current sound system inherits this problem from it. It's just throttling the amount of channels it will play from a midi.


I'm pretty sure this is related to the removal of FMod. I just gave ZZDoom a spin, released just last December, which has FMod. And wouldn't you know it, the midis play correctly once again.

If someone could send this towards graf or drfrag that would be appreciated.

[jkas789]

@Thrice Cursed & @Ninety Six:

Tbh IMO not a single Doom 1 and Doom 2 level look as what they are supposed to be. In that regard, I think that both Build Engine games and Doom mappers easily surpass the level design of Doom 1& 2.

I think that a good example of this is Doom 2 Re-Build-T, which does a phenomenal job of turning the Doom 2 levels into something that a normal human can recognize as "inspired by real life".

[Ninety-Six]

jkas789, on 01 August 2022 - 11:18 AM, said:

Tbh IMO not a single Doom 1 and Doom 2 level look as what they are supposed to be.

Oh, I know. My main point was that Doom 2 did just ever so slightly more in that regard than Doom 1 did. Frankly it's ridiculous to say that Doom's level design ever cared about a sense of place at all, much less say the first one somehow had more of that than the sequel which actually tried a tiny bit. Especially since one of the reasons Tom Hall quit was specifically because he couldn't add a sense of place to the levels, between the technical limitations of the time, and Carmack and Romero wanting a fast-paced action game. To which, in their opinion, would be opposite to making anything recognizable.

We can debate whether they were right or not, but that doesn't change the fact that every level was deliberately abstract for the sake of unintrusive scenery to keep the action going. The grip was loosened slightly in Doom 2, which is how we had superficial facades that resembled recognizable locations. But past their surface qualities, it was the usual abstract deliberate nonsense underneath. Not to say they all don't have atmosphere, but there's nothing recognizable in Doom 1, and barely nothing in Doom 2. That was my point.


To be perfectly clear here, I'm not slamming id for their design choice. It worked well for what Doom was set out to accomplish. I might prefer the more wider and more open level design of Doom 2 because of how it enables bigger, funner fights, but I don't dislike Doom 1. I also don't really care if someone prefers D1 to D2. "I wish Doom 2 looked more like Earth" or "I wish Doom 2 didn't even bother trying to look like something", these are fair critiques. However, stating an outright farce that Doom 1 did the one thing that Doom 2 actually did is ridiculous, hilarious and aggrevating all at the same time.

It's like saying Half-Life is better than Duke 3D because Half-Life did believable city locations.

[Avenger]

I found Sigil to be average. I know many grovel to Romero like he`s a messiah and in terms of FPS legends he`s actually deserving of the title unlike the pedestal many coattail riding youtube celebrities are placed upon but the huge reliance on monster closets and artificially increasing certain maps difficulty through cheap shit tactics like placing a group of ranged attack enemies directly behind doors on a tight platform grew a little tedious at times. A positive of Sigil was in a lot of cases the unique level design though. Hopefully it was just a warmup for the sequal based on Doom 2.

[Aristotle Gumball]

I like Romero a lot and value his contributions, and I'll probably still check out Sigil 2, but holy shit even your favorite bands start releasing mediocre albums eventually. No one stays on top of their game forever. Especially as people age and their brain slowly withers away. Part of Romero's genius was also being surrounded by other geniuses. No man is an island.

[Morpheus Kitami]

The Watchtower, on 31 July 2022 - 11:37 AM, said:

I think the best Doom stuff you can have are No Rest for the Living and Sigil. And the respective authors other works. Neither Doom 1 and Doom 2 has great level design. There are some good ones, especially from Romero (I love E4M6 for example, despite it's mean puzzles), but the average mean didn't age well. However the assets are amazing, palette, textures, sprites are all spot on, gameplay is pitch perfect, monsters all have their own roles (I think Barons are the worst enemies in the game), the game only need polished, good looking maps. And it happened with NRFTL and later with Sigil and the other Romero maps. Fingers crossed for Sigil 2, I expect it to be very very good.

Ignoring all the talk of Doom's levels (I find it somewhat difficult to talk about that aspect in a game I've played to death) I agree about the Barons. In all my recent playthroughs they've always felt deceptively difficult to kill. Which makes a lot of sense when they were bosses, but not so much when they were regular enemies.

Avenger, on 01 August 2022 - 02:02 PM, said:

I found Sigil to be average. I know many grovel to Romero like he`s a messiah and in terms of FPS legends he`s actually deserving of the title unlike the pedestal many coattail riding youtube celebrities are placed upon but the huge reliance on monster closets and artificially increasing certain maps difficulty through cheap shit tactics like placing a group of ranged attack enemies directly behind doors on a tight platform grew a little tedious at times. A positive of Sigil was in a lot of cases the unique level design though. Hopefully it was just a warmup for the sequal based on Doom 2.

I attribute people's praising of him because he's simply the one of the few of the old guard who's still doing FPS titles. The rest of the Id boys have moved on from the genre; No one who made Duke is really involved in anything other than a producer role these days; Uh...who else would people recognize? Valve is rolling around in money. I guess the guys at Budgie are still doing things, but that's not exactly something we're excited to be talking about these days, is it? Raven are producing endless Call of Duty mappacks. So people praise the shit out of him, forgetting that he was responsible for one of the worst bombs in gaming history.

[Mike Norvak]

Woow so this is how the Doom community looks like? Awesome!

[Avenger]

Morpheus Kitami, on 01 August 2022 - 05:06 PM, said:

Ignoring all the talk of Doom's levels (I find it somewhat difficult to talk about that aspect in a game I've played to death) I agree about the Barons. In all my recent playthroughs they've always felt deceptively difficult to kill. Which makes a lot of sense when they were bosses, but not so much when they were regular enemies.


I attribute people's praising of him because he's simply the one of the few of the old guard who's still doing FPS titles. The rest of the Id boys have moved on from the genre; No one who made Duke is really involved in anything other than a producer role these days; Uh...who else would people recognize? Valve is rolling around in money. I guess the guys at Budgie are still doing things, but that's not exactly something we're excited to be talking about these days, is it? Raven are producing endless Call of Duty mappacks. So people praise the shit out of him, forgetting that he was responsible for one of the worst bombs in gaming history.

Yup not everything everyone does all of the time is literal gold. I like Romero for the most part (minus his libtard political posts) and the fact he`s still around and kicking desrves merit. So does the fact Sigil used all vanilla assets but if you remove his name from Sigil and put it up against the other top megawads released in the past decade without bias it`s on the second shelf, not the top one.

I`m assuming that you`re referencing Daikatana. With the fan developed patch from a few years ago the games actually not bad. From what I can remember of my last play through at the time all the bugs were fixed and the sidekick AI greatly improved so that they weren`t constantly getting stuck or left behind preventing you from continuing. Hype is a bitch though that upon release bit Ion Storm in the ass. Deus Ex saved the company from being a total disaster.

[jkas789]

Yeah I was not a fan of Sigil myself, but then again I personally hate slaughter maps and monster closets so...

[The Battlelord]

[NightFright]

Just four words: Voxel Doom is out!
https://www.moddb.co...dons/voxel-doom

Videos:
https://www.doomworl...um/post/2533661

So far only (Ultimate) Doom is supported, but Doom II will follow.

[The Battlelord]

The amount of work to voxelize each animated sprite(monsters) must be something just CRAZY!



EDIT: just noticed the video in my previous post is down, they had to reupload it for some reason, here the new link just in case:

[FistMarine]

Haven't posted in this topic since a while and before I will talk about the recent wads I've been playing (as well as talking about some finished ones), here are some interesting news happening as of lately, some related to the QuakeCon 2022 event that started recently:

1) DOOM 64 is FREE for a week on Epic Games Store!
Grab it here: https://store.epicga...en-US/p/doom-64

2) The Unity ports for DOOM and DOOM 2 are now available on GOG!
https://twitter.com/...903276094656513

3) Various id software titles on Steam have been changed, highlights include renaming Ultimate Doom to Doom (1993) and the expansions for Doom 2, Doom 3, Quake 2 and Quake 3 are now bundled with the main game instead of available separately. This also makes the expansions free for existing owners.
https://steamcommuni...400926531461244

4) Quake remaster received a new update yesterday, which adds Capture the Flag game mode (the first time it's available officially for first Quake game).
https://steamcommuni...750462906016220

5) Various new addons for Doom unity port and Quake remaster have been released, with Revolution! for Doom and Rubicon 2 for Quake being the most recent ones added yesterday.
Here is the full list of addons for each game:

Doom unity port

Quote

TNT: Evilution
The Plutonia Experiment
No Rest For The Living
SIGIL
Double Impact
No End In Sight
Deathless
BTSX Episode 1
BTSX Episode 2
REKKR
Doom Zero
Syringe
Earthless: Prelude
Arrival
Anomaly Report
Revolution!

Quake remaster

Quote

Quake 64
Honey
Underdark Overbright & Copper
Terra
The Punishment Due
Rubicon 2

[NightFright]

Bethesda's handling of the classic Doom and Quake games has significantly improved in the last few years, with the releases of Doom Unity and Quake Kex/Re-Release being important revivals.

This simplification of the product lineup is overdue and more than welcome, even though unfortunately I barely profit from this since I have bought almost all of the affected products separately by now.

[jkas789]

They really have done a bang up job. It's embarrassing for Gearbox actually. DN3D 20th Anniv was so fucked over.

[Ninety-Six]

NightFright, on 19 August 2022 - 07:26 AM, said:

This simplification of the product lineup is overdue and more than welcome, even though unfortunately I barely profit from this since I have bought almost all of the affected products separately by now.

Same, but at least new players have an easier time getting into 'em.

jkas789, on 21 August 2022 - 08:25 AM, said:

They really have done a bang up job. It's embarrassing for Gearbox actually. DN3D 20th Anniv was so fucked over.

With every new mod or update for the id rereleases, my anger towards WT burns a little hotter.