Sneezy McGlassFace

I take any opportunity to make people play Rush. It's one of my all time favourites. The wiki calls it slaughter but it's really a nice introduction to the slaughter elements without the high demand for player skills that many slaughter wads have. For most of the maps, at least.

Working on it. Making interesting combat with that limited roster is surprisingly challenging. With the exception of chaingunners, it's all mid tier guys. They made doom 2 stand above the original but they aren't very interesting on their own, i think. That's not a complaint about the project theme btw, just an explanation why it takes so long.

Time spent doesn't guarantee success. You can spend ten hours tagging sectors, and twenty hours drawing lines, and that time is entirely wasted because you could've used stair builder and tag range, and achieve the same result in two minutes. It's not only about how much time and effort you put into something, it's about how well was that time and effort used. What you learn and how you learn is extremely important. Attributing somebody's success to talent is devaluing their other skills that helped them get there. In this example, the skill to learn new skills.

No? Of course not. Dedication to hone a set of skills is what allows you to freely and accurately express your unique experience. If you make the connection that dedication = quality, you're reducing art to a product. The point being made is that you don't need to be born with doom mapping genes to express yourself through the medium of doom maps. Not all maps are of equal quality, obviously, but that still doesn't make talent (or lack there of) anything more than a bullshit excuse not to put in the work. Why should I work hard on learning to make maps, I'll never be as good as [revered mapper], I'm sure it's really easy for them because they were born the right way, unlike me.

None. I'm convinced that the whole concept of talent is actively harmful. It's not like mouldy made one wad and it was an instant hit. He has understanding of level design that comes from experience. Making a good wad is spending a lot of time and energy on making wads. The idea of somebody being uniquely gifted, and making great stuff with little to no effort is nonsense. Just push that idea out if your mind, it's poisoning you. Poisoning you into thinking you have to be born under a specific star sign or whatever to do something competently. No fate has sat on the edge of your crib to decide what you can and cannot do. The one and only reason somebody can make great map is that they've been learning to do that. Make mistakes, recognise and correct them again, and again, and again.

Have a play through Baron Door series by clippy and co for tons of creative uses of barons. Often as literal doors but not always.

I don't know if that's a crutch or style or whatever but I tend to avoid 90° walls, and favour almost always 45°. If you look at my more recent maps, they're almost exclusively a mishmash of lines along the three axes. Unless it's a small detail, it's horizontal, vertical, or diagonal. Hope it's not too obtrusive for players, nobody complained yet. That's a self-imposed limitation that oddly enough frees my mind, and helps stay creative. I make a boxy room only when I want to challenge myself because those always suck my creativity dry.

The story of doom was always more in the background, and that's fine. Doom 3 did it pretty well. The setting doesn't allow for that much creativity, i think. There's only so many ways you can have evil space corporation do evil thing in space, and still make it interesting. You don't watch alien movies for the story, do you? You wanna feel the tension, and see people get violently splattered by geiger-esque monster guys. Much like the protagonist in doom 2016. He doesn't care about the power struggle of doctor whatshisface, he just wants to shoot demons. Pretty genius framing to make a bland, generic scifi shlock story into a great scifi shlock story. Of course, like many fps games before it, the sequel need to be bigger and better, which also applies to the story. The story of half life or portal is pretty minimal just to keep you engaged. Then sequel comes out and it's bigger, more important, the stakes are higher. And that's the same with doom 2016 becoming doom eternal. The story was boosted to match the intense, over the top gameplay. Without qualitative judgements, the story is more in the forefront, more than a motivator to keep you going. So is the future doom story gonna suck? Probably but hopefully that won't be a big deal. Who knows, maybe they'll retcon eternal, and go completely different direction. We'll see.

Has somebody already mentioned BLAME? Because that's the coolest shit. Insanely huge, oppressive architecture, all concrete, spaces made with templates that suit humans but turned and twisted by rogue building machines into complete nonsense. (I'll format it better when I'm at a keyboard)

Some source ports (i know nugget does) give you keys only with IDK

Mapping actually unlocked a lot of my creativity. After many years I found a way to express artistically without the usual feeling of failure. It always felt to me that drawing, painting, or music composition, or whatever else I tried isa daunting process. There's so much to get right and all the mistakes stick out. With doom, that's not the case so much. There's no rules or guidelines. You just make what feels good, it's incredibly liberating in that sense. You just learn to use the editor, and then you're free like a bird. Make whatever you want. I don't feel like that in any other medium. When I begun to feel comfortable with making maps, I feel confident to explore other forms of creativity without the feeling of doing it wrong. I love mapping, love the process, each stage of it. Layout, encounters, texturing, detailing, all uniquely interesting challenges. And pacifying the mind, seeing a whole new slice of a world being built up right in front of your eyes.

The blue key puzzle really puzzled me.

Alright guys, don't mind the fact I can't speak because I'm an infant. I have a feeling that we should get more milage out of the Doom engine. How about we make a few more games after Doom 2 is finished, and let Carmack work on the Quake engine? That's probably going to take a good while to get done. Meanwhile, look at what the guys at Raven are doing, doesn't it look great? Bet we could do something better in shorter time. We have a solid gameplay loop, just make new assets and levels. Thanks for your attention, goo goo gaga.

Movies based on games have gotten better over time but I don't think doom would be suitable for a quality full length movie. However, a set of short animations like the first incarnation of Aeon Flux could be awesome. Potentially great quality made on a shoestring budget and a small team. I know TV landscape changed a lot since '92 but I'd welcome more experimental bite-sized shows like this with open arms. So yeah, I don't see an awesome doom movie happening.

I find experiments with limited texture palette very useful to boost creativity. Make a set of a few textures and flats and make map using nothing but them. It can be a quick throwaway speedmap, or make it into a more full featured project with limited palette as a core gimmick. The conditions are really up to you what you find satisfyingly challenging. Texture choices are a challenging skill to develop, and i think that the best way to learn something is to do it. So here's some threads to spark imagination. This post and comments are full of palette ideas, you can get inspired to pick your own or some of those already mentioned. And then there's the wonderful 10x10 project. 10 textures and 10 flats. What a fun number! It's too little and too many at the same time.