Lessons Learned from Doom 1: PT 2 - Romero's *New* Level Design.

Warning: Long post/Profanity ahead.
This is an update post based on this:

http://gamegurureport.blogspot.com/2015/12/lessons-learned-from-doom-1-pt-1.html

John Romero made a replacement e1m8 level.  I messaged him on twitter, let him know I did a review of his Doom 1 level design rather recently... and he replied indicating that he might be interested in further review.  So rather than make some impromptu write up over this weekend while I was grinding for a Cicada 2A in Mechwarrior Online (which I play a considerable amount of) - I decided to give this thing a proper run through.  I cannot understate my excitement here.  A god of gamedev not only knew I existed but had read a post of mine on his work.  Further, he had redone a level I absolutely hated.  I always felt E1M8 was sort of a weak conclusion to what was otherwise an EPIC first chapter of Doom.  It's no secret I love that first episode, having gamed it to oblivion over the past 20 years. 

I WAS NOT PREPARED.

Let me make this abundantly clear; I went into this thing knowing how John Romero recommended playing it:  Old school - start with a pistol, no mouselook, no jumping, no cheats (of course) and in my case - ultraviolence difficulty.

I also kept my usual setup:  smoothdoom + textures and 'fast' enemies.  Doom64 weapon graphics (except the pistol; original pistol is the best!), blood sprites, gore sprites, weapon shell casings.. etc.  Mouselook and a crosshair because I don't think I can send myself that far back in time.  No sound because I don't have that luxury at the moment.  So that's an added difficulty I impose on myself as well.

Yeah, this should be fine.  No problem.

I quickly learned how mistaken I was.  Romero was NOT fucking around.  Not a single - damn - bit.

This is literally the first room and probably my fourth or fifth death.

 Remember this?  Well - 20 years later, it happened.

So ... I had to turn fast monsters off.  I was simply getting mauled with that setting on with no gear to speak of.  I tried again and... dead.  Even on standard ultra-violence with just a pistol I was having difficulty.  Luckily I had a recent save from a play-through where I'd stopped on E1M7.  

 

Ready to go, clearly this will be enough (I hoped).

Side note: You'll notice the weapons 6 and 7.  That's because on this play through I wanted extra weapons like the BFG and Plasma rifle - so I used the cheat code on E1M1 to get them.  However, for the sake of the old school, I swore not to use either.  Bear in mind up to this point I'd been playing just fine with my fast monsters/etc.

 Yep, that did the trick.

So at this point, I'm realizing he really was going for broke.  I'm not going to rehash 'old dogs learning new tricks' or some other trite bullshit.  It doesn't do him the justice he deserves.  

Romero clearly wasn't up to par - he was beyond it.  Gods, after all, don't age.

Around this point I noticed the monster count in the mapper.  291 enemies - that's... pretty substantial alright.  Someone's clearly going to make me earn the 'beat this level' achievement.  Fine.  Let's do this.   On top of that, I was trying to get good shots of the level design.  I noticed he'd kept the map texturing consistent with the old episode of doom.  The Brutalist Architecture was in prime form and every corridor gave me a renewed respect for someone who clearly hadn't diminished in the slightest.

This map, no kidding, is GIGANTIC.  The outdoor area is mindblowing for a doom map.

Refined principles of lighting, design and traps showed that Romero had designed not something for the masses to enjoy.  This was something for himself to enjoy - he just deigned to share it with us.  

 No matter how painful that gift is, we still love it.

Secrets were well placed; they provided a welcome refuge against the literal onslaught of hell-hordes which constantly required piles of brass and a bullet hose to cleanse and purge.  
 

 

This one, in particular, gave me a wicked grin.  The berserker pack on this map is wicked fun.

 

Brutal and effective.  The invisible pinkie splits in half quite readily.

One thing that really stood out here was that this map supports a variety of playstyles.  I for one, take a fast but conservative method.  I'm not a big fan of those speed-runs that just get you through the map as fast possible.  I want every ... SINGLE ENEMY DEAD.  Weapons can be anything you want; he's got it setup that if you want shotguns, you use shotguns.  Chainsaws? Fine.  Fists?  Go for it.  Inventive use of barrel explosions?  You betcha.  Whatever you want, this map has it in spades.  It only asks for one thing:

 

I know this lady.  She's a harsh mistress... but I know what she likes - blood.

 

Heaping buckets of blood, specifically.

So now for some more critical elements I've picked up while blasting my way through this map:

 

1.  Romero clearly had an itch to redesign E1M8 - I'm just spitballing here but this is the kind of thing that reminds me of an itch that had never been scratched just right and for whatever reason deemed now was the time to get it right.
2. He uses a lot more Doom-3 style surprise teleports where the enemy appears behind you and you're left wondering how the hell they got there.  This was a frequent cause of my demise.
3. Secrets are difficult at times to find and easy at others.  His old tricks of texture maps being slightly off or an out of place color seem cleaner and more efficient.  There are a few that you'll only find if you bang on every wall with a hammer or check the map for obvious wall differences.  A certain one in particular ran me in loops for 30 minutes reloading saves until I finally figured out the right way to make a switch appear.
4. The sense of awe on this map  can only be known by playing *IN* the game.  I mean it's something to behold, literally.  The colors, the SIZES of the rooms.  The outdoor area - there are many times I just stopped to soak it in.  It's something rarely matched in modern games - let alone a map made in a 20 year old engine.
5. The use of enemy position on this was far greater than previous work that I've seen.  This was some kind of devil-bastard child of Peterson's traps with Romero's level design.  
6. One thing I realized here that Romero had that Carmack never did - Romero coded; he was adept at it.  He also did a lot of other things - but eventually ended up doing level design.  Carmack never had that breadth of experience.  It gave him an incredibly powerful but narrow view of game development.  To me, that explains why the life fell away from iD after John Romero's departure.  Carmack is a coding god in his own right - but without the force of energy and passion behind the game you end up with something very rigid, clean, precise - and boring.  Romero's levels are anything but.
7. Item placement is handled at first with a sort of liberal aplomb but it's actually very well managed; at times you feel like you're starving for an item and then realized `if only I'd have found that secret, this wouldn't be happening`.
8. Use of color is expertly done with natural contrasts occurring regularly - browns and blues, reds and blacks (See below).

The redesign of this room gave me cold chills on the first glimpse of it.  I knew what was coming and was anxious, happy, thrilled, and fearful all at once.  Note the cell count hasn't wavered.  I stuck to my promise and cleared this bastard using only what I'd earned to this point.

I'm not sure how to wrap this up, honestly.  I'm going to be absorbing what I can from this asymmetric masterpiece for at least the next few weeks.  It will *ABSOLUTELY* take the place of E1M8 for me - in perpetuity.  It's easy to see this was how it should have been.  I can literally forego the rest of the Doom saga - to me - this is all that's needed.  It brings to a close the best episode of the best FPS game I played as a kid.  I am humbled to have witnessed something like this in my lifetime.  It's akin to Leonardo Davinci coming back to life and adding another painting to his original works.  Or, if you're an Ayn Rand fan - it's a bit like hearing Richard Halley's 'Fifth Concerto'.

I truly hope that Romero keeps working on more games; a talent like this should not be wasted.  It's something that can only be gleaned by thousands upon thousands of hours of gameplay, testing, design, and full understanding of  game development as a WHOLE by living through every piece of it.  The world is better off for it, in my very humble(d) opinion.

For now, I am happy to have witnessed and perhaps learned something myself from it.  He's given me a lot to think about, that's for sure.