Lessons Learned from Doom 1: PT 3 - Peterson's Level Design.

And here we are.  The final episode of the original Doom.  Not counting 'ultimate doom', that is.

"INFERNO!" 

So around this time, if you're familiar with the mythos of iD software, you find that Sandy Peterson's levels kick in.  Some have described his levels as 'ugly'.  I'd describe them as hideous.  But that said.. let me get to the real crux of the matter here.

I utterly despise Sandy Peterson's levels.  I mean that, of course, in the nicest possible way.  It's actually a compliment.  They did good choosing Sandy as the guy who did the "Hell" maps.  This guy... I mean he's just a sadist, through and through.  His maps make this game very, VERY challenging in very short order.  I can get through the first two episodes on stupidly hard difficulties (including the Brutal Doom versions) without issue.  I get to Sandy's and .. shit just falls apart.

Here's your first indicator something is off.  The very first thing you see on Episode 3 is this closed-eye-switch-thing.  A far cry from the 'unfamiliar rooms' of Tom Hall and John Romero.

Don't worry... it opens when you toggle it.

From this point an elevator rides you upwards to... the surface.  Yes, an actual outdoor area complete with withered trees and... three imps (on ultraviolence setting, of course). 

I find using melee tends to save a lot of ammo when playing his levels.

So you shoot the imps down, pick up two boxes of ammo and open the door to find two Cacodemons.  Now.. this is a big deal for those who don't know.  Cacodemons are TOUGH.  They hit *HARD*.  They generally act as a damage sponge and work best if you use them to kill other minions.  You know - the ones you just iced.  

Damnit, Sandy.

So you tear down these two Cacodemons and are presented with what seems like an obvious trap.  "Get the shotgun, and you'll be better armed!", your mind says.  You, like an obedient dog, oblige in a Pavlovian fashion.  

It's a shotgun on a bridge, what could go wrong?

As you run across the bridge.. it sinks.  Into the lava or blood or .. whatever that hurty liquid shit is.  So you learn to just run across and think something will happen - a wall will drop or ... but nothing happens.  You literally run RIGHT THROUGH THE WALL into ... you guessed it - 3 imps with no room to maneuver.

Damnit Sandy.

This pattern continues.  Over .. and OVER again.  Simple trap becomes complex trap becomes keyboard smashing rage-inducing trap.

This isn't an isolated event.  It happens again...

Damnit Sandy!

and again...

 I SWEAR TO GOD SANDY!

AND AGAIN... 

*Throws Keyboard*

 This insanity was brought to you buy a god fearing Mormon, if you can believe that.

AND IT GOES ON FOR 9 DAMN LEVELS.

Now.. I have to say - I *REALLY* respect the proficiency of Sandy's trap and maze design.  He may make the game less fast paced and fun in the Romero sense - and he may not have Tom Hall's MASSIVE level design with hundreds of secrets - but he really has a truly insidious method of drawing you in and blowing you to pieces.  It has it's own rhythm and there's a lot to learn from.

So here's a few cliff notes I've taken on his methods vs the others:

Sandy's biggest weakness is actually of all things wall textures.  His use of wall textures was ... minimal at best.  His light sourcing was some rock bottom shit.  That said, you barely have time to notice it as you fight for your life in what goes from a run-gun-shootfest to a George A. Romero-esque survival horror.

• Sandy uses very assymetric architecture like John Romero (no relation to George A.) - but in a completely different way.  Areas are large and flat, but open. 
• Use of outdoor is taken to an extreme.  Outdoor areas are huge, with trees and what not.  Presents its own challenges in terms of enemies and mobility.
• Sandy places objects in locations that are deliberately going to impede your movement.  For instance you get pillars in the middle of an area that gets swarmed, doors shut behind you and lock you in against hordes, etc.
• His secrets are nastier than just 'walk in and pop a monster swarm'.  It's more like 'walk in, get item, die in lava unless you move backwards in which case you get crushed by the ceiling instead but oh hey if you survive you get to fight fifteen enemies at once and only get four shotgun shells for your effort.'.  
• Sandy's secrets were INCREDIBLY hard to find.  In many cases they were not intuitive at all.  That said, they were often necessary as part of your progress (if you weren't cheating) just to keep your ammo count from hitting the dreaded goose egg (0).  
• Sandy's Doom 1 levels are time consuming mazes that actually tend to wear on you.  I found this element a lot less fun.  When taken in context with the other two developers it's easy to use lessons from each to strike a balance.

I found myself getting bored by his levels.  The traps became routine (ironically), the ammo scarcity was frustrating on an unnecessary level, and I had no desire to spend 40 minutes getting lost in a maze.

That said, his levels for Doom 2 are SUPERB.  His textures are still a little flat but improve dramatically and the design is interesting and novel.  Though seriously - his traps only get nastier, if you can believe it.

The final word here is despite the negatives Sandy's levels really represented Hell for both the player in a figurative AND literal sense.  So in this, it was a good choice to make his levels the final piece of Doom 1's original set.  I respect the hell out of a guy who can take an action shooter like doom and turn it into what basically amounts to a fucked up version of Myst with shotguns and demons.

So this concludes the Doom 1 level design lesson set.  I hope you've had as much fun reading as I've had writing it.  Hopefully you've learned a few lessons about how the devs managed their design methods - each one had a good and bad side; all of them had things one can glean.  I for one, have learned a great deal and hope to put those lessons forward in practice soon!  I hope a few of you replay doom and maybe post your comments about the design; I'd love to see what else everyone else picked up on this!