Stupid things in maps that bother you
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For me it's having to use shotgun or chaingun or lower, to kill mid-tier enemies, unless I get a better weapon later or if I can use the surroundings to kill them, or if it's used for gameplay purposes such as MAP14 in Pandora.
It bothers me when explorational maps make radiation suits rationing tight, but don't put a whole bunch of them at the end of the map so I can explore the rest of the map leisurely.
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Has to be platforming sections that are way too small or those little tiny stairs that you need to climb up and end up falling off half the time. It just breaks the pacing
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- Can't get 100% secrets (sector bleed-over, unfinished areas, etc.)
- Secret is empty because the items inside have specific skill flags set
- Inescapable damaging floor pits, unless it's used for a puzzle/restart mechanic or in a careful way.
Agree with @Gibbon on platforming sections as well.
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Since im actually able to voice a negative opinion here, guess ill vent some frustrations of mapping tropes as well as wadcrafting that tick me off.
- Pop-up monsters is a big one. It entirely breaks any immersion the map had that im in some world, and reminds me im just in a game map made to challenge me, the player. This is similar reasoning behind why I dislike slaughter maps
- 300% not available at the end of the map. In the age of much better editors, theres little excuse for broken secrets and items, as well as stuck monsters, or monsters made to be unkillable via ammo starvation or mapping tricks. The latter can be solved with crushers at a critical point, like Plutonia's Twilight, or various maps in Ancient Aliens.
- Not having an internal DEHACKED lump in the last decade. Internal lumps are unobtrusive and extremely easy to write, even in plain text format in SLADE. There is NO excuse not to have one in there to define the level names in today's port world. And dont even give me the 'I only mod for Chocolate Doom' shit, the lump will be used by other ports, very few are only going to adhere to your recommended port if its a vanilla one.
- By that same logic, not using the other xINFO lumps when needed. Im sick to the back teeth of people adding in a Map 33/ExM10 etc, then not giving advanced ports any way to access it outside of outdated methods like command lines or console commands. We live in the future damn it! I keep having to write patches that define a new episode called 'Bonus Map' that you select on the menu to load up these maps, and I have to write the patch in several xINFO languages, because im considerate and acknowledge there are many ports people use.
- The recent years have had a pushback against 'Ultra-Violence' with actual wad sabotage and ridiculous passive aggression against 20+ year old mapping norms. If you pull this rude stunt, I simply wont play your works again. Im sorry, but artistic types plotting to actively screw with UV maxers, in public, it offends me.
- Putting 'no jump/crouch' shit in your wads in an attempt to control the player. Developing a mapset with classic oriented movement is fine, and even preferred, but the moment it leaves your hands and enters the wild, you DO NOT have the right to control HOW I play by hijacking my settings. All you need to do is say in the text file 'please do not jump or crouch, it was not designed with these in mind'. Dont automatically assume the player is going to break rules and persecute them early ffs.
- Making all secrets hidden on the automap, especially if also adding an automap item to the map. Deathless was very guilty of this and it made me so mad. I can blame the speedmapping for that I guess, but still!
*Messy automaps. It is not hard to test this with IDBEHOLDA and see what lines don't show up and how messy the map looks. I annoyed one mapper by reporting automap bugs while I was still a playtester, so some hate the map in general, but that doesnt change my opinion. A messy automap reflects your work ethic to me.
Im sure theres more, but this stuff has been under my skin for the last few years, and now its vented.
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@Devalaous said in Stupid things in maps that bother you:
Since im actually able to voice a negative opinion here, guess ill vent some frustrations of mapping tropes as well as wadcrafting that tick me off.
- Pop-up monsters is a big one. It entirely breaks any immersion the map had that im in some world, and reminds me im just in a game map made to challenge me, the player. This is similar reasoning behind why I dislike slaughter maps
- 300% not available at the end of the map. In the age of much better editors, theres little excuse for broken secrets and items, as well as stuck monsters, or monsters made to be unkillable via ammo starvation or mapping tricks. The latter can be solved with crushers at a critical point, like Plutonia's Twilight, or various maps in Ancient Aliens.
- Not having an internal DEHACKED lump in the last decade. Internal lumps are unobtrusive and extremely easy to write, even in plain text format in SLADE. There is NO excuse not to have one in there to define the level names in today's port world. And dont even give me the 'I only mod for Chocolate Doom' shit, the lump will be used by other ports, very few are only going to adhere to your recommended port if its a vanilla one.
- By that same logic, not using the other xINFO lumps when needed. Im sick to the back teeth of people adding in a Map 33/ExM10 etc, then not giving advanced ports any way to access it outside of outdated methods like command lines or console commands. We live in the future damn it! I keep having to write patches that define a new episode called 'Bonus Map' that you select on the menu to load up these maps, and I have to write the patch in several xINFO languages, because im considerate and acknowledge there are many ports people use.
- The recent years have had a pushback against 'Ultra-Violence' with actual wad sabotage and ridiculous passive aggression against 20+ year old mapping norms. If you pull this rude stunt, I simply wont play your works again. Im sorry, but artistic types plotting to actively screw with UV maxers, in public, it offends me.
- Putting 'no jump/crouch' shit in your wads in an attempt to control the player. Developing a mapset with classic oriented movement is fine, and even preferred, but the moment it leaves your hands and enters the wild, you DO NOT have the right to control HOW I play by hijacking my settings. All you need to do is say in the text file 'please do not jump or crouch, it was not designed with these in mind'. Dont automatically assume the player is going to break rules and persecute them early ffs.
- Making all secrets hidden on the automap, especially if also adding an automap item to the map. Deathless was very guilty of this and it made me so mad. I can blame the speedmapping for that I guess, but still!
*Messy automaps. It is not hard to test this with IDBEHOLDA and see what lines don't show up and how messy the map looks. I annoyed one mapper by reporting automap bugs while I was still a playtester, so some hate the map in general, but that doesnt change my opinion. A messy automap reflects your work ethic to me.
Im sure theres more, but this stuff has been under my skin for the last few years, and now its vented.
Very agreeable gripes and I was going to comment on crouch/jump disabling too first thing.
I want to lump in pop-up monsters with something like barrels placed in a seemingly scripted way to effortlessly kill low-level monsters. Thing placement can be immersion breaking sometimes if uniform to a fault.
Oh and another stupid thing in maps that bother me is when I run off a stairwell and hit my head on the next ceiling on the jump down!
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Wait what's the pushback against UV? Do they put an inaccessible monster on UV only or is it something even weirder?
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@Cuppykeks What about barrels that kill enemies before the player sees them explode?
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That should add to the atmosphere then if you're creating corpses or making the map feel more dynamic and lively! If a map suddenly lines up a bunch of barrels in a single room to get easy kills without any real effort on the player's part when the map designer suddenly remembers barrels exist and they're never used again afterwards is what I find odd!
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You love your barrels don't you @Cuppykeks ? What with your pillars with barrel clusters so neatly placed on them.
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@kvsari Yes I do and there can always be more wacky barrel hijinks
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@Cuppykeks said in Stupid things in maps that bother you:
Wait what's the pushback against UV? Do they put an inaccessible monster on UV only or is it something even weirder?
Stuff like the drama over Magnolia, with Ribbiks sabotaging his own wad and making you submit demos of HMP to get the un-cut version, as well as offering bonus maps to the first lucky people, due to his longstanding grudge against 'UV only', then there was the weird conversation on DW where a bunch of elite modders were plotting ways to screw over UV max players, whole thing just really comes across as exceptionally rude to me. Like, why be so weirdly hostile to your userbase? I just dont get it. Maxing out the items, kills and secrets has been part of the game for almost 30 years, and people have been playing on UV for almost as long.
On other subjects; one thing I forgot to mention was widescreen stuff. We live in 2022, in an age where pretty much every TV and monitor you'll ever see is 16:9 minimum. Even Doom and Strife's official rereleases have everything in 16:9 now. It baffles me that 99% of the Doom community hasnt adapted, and that some of the bigger ports like Eternity STILL dont support widescreen, when the 'shitty Unity port' does. It makes me a tad grumpy that even with the widescreen asset thread and the IWADs all being nicely WSed on GZDoom courtesy of Nash, people arent budging in the slightest. Is it really so hard to start your new assets in widescreen THEN reduce them to 4:3 for older ports? You futureproof it that way.
Yes, im picky and cantankerous, I know
Its one of many side effects of working in a video game industry firsthand, changes how you look at modding. Theres a level of efficeincy and forward thinking you get used to, at least, where I worked.
