My life is complete now

At least from a creativity standpoint - this right here is going up on the wall:

Awww yisssssss!


I pointed him at my writeup on his work on Doom 1 and he liked it, which is friggin' super awesome.
My normal verbosity fails me at this point.

And if you haven't seen, here's the link to his newest level "E1M8B".

http://www.polygon.com/2016/1/15/10776094/john-romero-doom-level-free-download

Lessons Learned from Doom 1: PT 2 - Tom Hall's Level Design.

As mentioned in part one: Lessons Learned from Doom 1: PT 1 - Romero's Level Design.

I love the first doom game.  I've played it every way you can imagine, in every engine you can imagine.  I've played remakes, total conversions, the original hundreds of times - spent years of my teenage life deathmatching and playing co-op.

While I feel John Romero's levels are the pinnacle of what the original Doom can muster level-wise, I still have a huge amount of respect for Tom Hall's level designs.

If you've read the classic "Masters of Doom" book (which you really should) - you understand that Tom's desire for Doom was a bit grander in scope than what we actually got.  A bit slower paced, a bit more realistic with a lot more flexibility and options.  More characters, etc.  You can get a feel for that from the 'Doom Bible' which effectively is the technical design document for Doom that was ultimately scrapped in favor of what they ended up with.  Here's a link for those of you who haven't read it: Tom Hall's Doom Bible

Tom Hall was primarily responsible for the levels of episode 2.

The opening screen of E2M2 - note the structural differences between this and Romero's.

Here again right off the bat you see a big difference in color/lighting.  The tones are flatter, more muted.  They're greys, browns, blacks and yellows.  It's all very rational and very sane.

Tom's work is very representative of what you could consider a 'logical' style.  It's far less abstract than Romero's work but is still exceptionally good - especially in a modern context.  His work was similar to Romero's in use of texture, color, lighting... but he clearly had a completely different process.  Whereas Romero's levels gave you a sense of indoor/outdoor and this massive overarching awe at the implied size of it - Tom literally built these huge ass indoor levels.  I mean HUGE.

Courtesy of doomwiki

This is literally the second map.  The SECOND!  It's titanic.  On top of that, on the north part of the map you see what Tom really invented as a genre - the box maze.  You can literally get lost in piles of endless boxes.

Turn left and wait a sec, where the fuck am I?

The combination of rather bland colors and lighting actually work really well in this context; they provide a sense of loss of direction; everything blends in without being so similar that you completely feel hateful at the lack of texture (like Sandy Peterson's levels).  Tom also loved the monster trap - something he did in exquisite detail.  If you ran full speed down a corridor without looking you'd easily trigger a huge horde of monsters and usually your demise.

This is actually one of the smaller swarms.

Remaining observations are as follows: Tom loves secrets; in fact his levels far and away had more secrets than any others. It wasn't uncommon to find levels that had 10 or 12 secrets on them.  You really had to work to find them too; while some were fairly obvious, others took a while of hunting around just to get the feel for where they were.  Often, it was for a meager bit of ammo, just enough to keep you going.  This is in contrast with Romero's 'big win' method of secrets where a secret almost always gave you a huge boost.

Completing one of Tom's levels gave a real solid sense of accomplishment - like you really worked to earn it!  This was one of the better features of his design.  I didn't really like the fully indoors feel of his work which unfortunately left things feeling closed off.  But the mazes and monster hordes really did create an awesome experience which I believe has influenced many more modern games in a very impactful way.  A lot of what Tom did was based around a notion that this game was going to be different and then he got a rude awakening when the design had moved on without him.  As a result his levels have a different feel and rightfully so.

There's a doom mod that attempts to recreate the experience he intended called 'The Tei Tenga incident'.  It's worth a look if you've never seen it:

Definitely has the feel of one of Tom's levels.

So what can we say we've learned from Tom?  Similar palettes, box mazes and monster traps are all going to find their way into my game.  An avid fan of the secret, I think I'll have to make sure a few more make their way into my levels.

Ciao for now!

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

Update 1/15/2016 - John Romero built a new level for Doom 1, I mentioned that I wrote this to him and he was kind enough to like and retweet it with this message:

Sounds like a 'compare the old and the new' is in order :D  (see link below)


Also as a courtesy, here's another review someone wrote in a similar vein if you're interested in more: https://speakerdeck.com/vinull/john-romero-level-design-as-presented-by-michael-neel

Update 1/18/2016 - writeup on the new level is here: http://gamegurureport.blogspot.com/2016/01/lessons-learned-from-doom-1-pt-2.html

**** ORIGINAL POST BEGINS HERE ****

Let me make this clear.  I'm a huge, HUGE fan of the original Doom game.  Like "Beat the game on ultra-violence with only my fists" huge.

Doom was one of those games that defined my generation along with grunge rock.  It was mind blowing and endorphin swilling action; something which is lost in today's translation.  What really ceases to amaze me is how I can load up doom what's basically TWENTY YEARS LATER (holy shit, how did that happen?!) and still enjoy it.

Well, most of it.
There's parts I can't stand.  Which we'll go over shortly.


I recently did a playthrough (on ultra-violence, of course) in the doomsday engine to just get a feel of how the level design shifts from designer to designer and how it impacts overall gameplay.  I've read the doom bible, bios, "Masters of Doom" etc.  And I have to say, bar none one indisputable fact:

John Romero might have a titanic ego - but he earned it.  He's the best level designer I've ever seen from a pure gaming standpoint.  His masterworks - the levels in doom, doom 2, quake - are all easily my favorite levels (long before I knew they were his creations).

What spawned all this was I recently found this blog post:
http://vectorpoem.com/news/?p=74

It's a superb writeup from the guy who made one of the best areas in the original Bio-Shock (Arcadia) and Bio-Shock 2's lead dev.

It reminded me - why is it I liked Doom so much - what levels were my favorites?  Why?

So here's the opener:

 

The infamous first thing you see when you start a game in doom.

So right off the bat you have a few really important observations: 

• Colors are a good mix of browns, bright blues, greys, dark greens, and sporadic bright red/greens.  It's well balanced and aesthetically pleasing, palette wise. 
• Natural lighting is clearly present from the window but doubles as  means of 'highlighting the path to take'.  You also have a clear sense of the wall to the right, so you want to explore the left.  When you do you find: 

 

A breathtaking vista.

• I mean it when I say these mountains were something I absolutely loved about the first episode of doom.  The choice of terrain, the eerie white lighting - it's subtle in it's mastery.  A blue sky would overload the scene; a red sky (as is done in later episodes) eliminates contrast on outdoor portions.  
• Of course, after you are sucked in by the incredible concept of being outdoors or 'close enough to touch it' - you start to consider the weirdness of the space.  The design of the level is vaguely human but intuitive; exceptionally so.  Compare that with later levels done by Tom Hall which are exceptionally well ordered and feel 'human' but are cold and distant from a gaming perspective.
• Each room acted as it's own scene; a picture to be taken in - sort of a hologram in that it's a two dimensional picture you can explore, like the eponymous 'computer room':

   

Still one of my favorites. 

• This room was one of the few Romero EVER did that was linear and rectangular.  Even still, it had a clear feel of depth and height.  Every room he made gave you a feeling that the area was far bigger than merely a large box.  It was clear he was tired of running around the Rat-Mazes of Wolfenstein.
• Paths were clearly denoted by color such as here: 

 

• and lighting:

Lovefest aside, I came to realize as I played that as I got to later episodes* - I hated them.  Specifically episode 3. 
*EDIT: I had the word levels in here, swapped it for 'episodes' to clarify.

Each had their own unique style of course.

So I came away with a few understandings about Romero's design philosophy.

There are of course the known tenets of his design method:

            Romero's rules:
                Always changing floor height when I wanted to change floor textures
                Using special border textures between different wall segments and doorways
                Being strict about texture alignment
                Conscious use of contrast everywhere in a level between light and dark areas, cramped and open areas
                Making sure that if a player could see outside that they should be able to somehow get there                               Example:

 

                Being strict about designing several secret areas on every level                Making my levels flow so the player will revisit areas several times so they will better understand the 3D space of the level
                Creating easily recognizable landmarks in several places for easier navigation

These are great rules but I discovered through what's basically amounted to several years of my life in this game the following about Romero's style:

• He prefers fast, streamlined brutality.  Epic high speed fights were his preference.
• He seems to loathe complex mazes. 
• Rooms are huge; outdoor skies are used on indoor scenes to provide a false sense of size.  
• Huge areas give people a sense of awe. Windows were an effective way to do this. Later designers rarely 'left the building' - save Sandy Peterson who periodically would go completely outside.  His designs however, are among my least favorite.
• Light levels are hugely important to him; everything is carefully monitored and aligned to ensure a proper 'alignment' in the brain of where things are - despite the abstract and dreamlike quality to his levels.  
• Abstract level design forces people to think in unique ways; brings them out of the doldrums into something interesting and new; makes them feel surprised by the shape and feel.  Truly lends to the 'alien' feel.
• Asymmetric designs mess with peoples sense of space and encourage fun gameplay.
• His secrets are easily found and of medium proliferation.  They act as a true reward for taking your eyes away from the 'line' of the level. 
• His traps were mostly line of sight, they played off his high speed style that you'd 'run into' a horde of enemies.  Later devs used monster traps in different ways.
• Items are arranged in very obvious locations so you will not easily overlook them. Often, they act as a carrot over a pit of zombies.

There you have it.  There's more of course; coming up I'll go over the pluses and minuses of the other game devs of Doom one; next up will be Tom Hall's levels.  While not my favorite levels I will say far and away he did superb mazes.

I don't care if DaiKatana sucked.  I can't fault Romero for reaching for the stars and failing.  He's done more than I'll ever likely do in Game development and did much of it in short order.  My hat's off to him and I'm sure I'll learn more in another twenty years when I go back and replay the first episode for the four thousandth time.

Just an FYI - I'll be doing a writeup/review of something interesting in regards to game design and theory in the next few days.
Keep your eyes peeled.

Hint, it's about Romero.