Doom Musings: Tom Hall's Design Gimmicks

Here we are in another Doom Musing. Once again, I'll look at the original designers, this time with my personal favorite map author in Tom Hall. Now, Tom's work with Doom was actually finished and finalized by others in the group (notably Sandy Petersen, but E1M4 was finished by John Romero). This post will more or less deal with the way Hall designed his levels, as well as one gimmick in particular.

So for those that have seen the level's Hall designed, they are E1M4, E1M8, E2M1, E2M2, E2M3, E2M4, E2M7, E3M3, and E3M7 for Doom, and MAP10 for Doom II. Notice how most of these levels look in an automap? Yep, on the grand scale or scope of things, they seem to be rectangular in shape, as if Hall was trying to fill out as much space as possible. Contrast this with Romero's design, which doesn't make as many attempts to rectangularize the sectors as much but attempts to keep things compact for the gameplay to be better. Hall seemed to favor making plenty of locations have some sort of feel to it, gameplay may or may not be withstanding in those cases. But at the same time, these levels that Hall had designed favored a lot of exploration and accessibility, and players don't have any trouble reaching key locations due to their easy accessibility, which combines well with the overall nonlinearity of each of these maps in general. Go left or right, your choice, you'll be finding the key at one end and other cool stuff at the other but the paths converge quite easily.

There is one particular gimmick with Hall and his design though, and this is seen on E2M2. In the beginning area with crates, there's two yellow key doors. Where would the yellow key be? Oh it's across from some sort of blood puzzle. While that's neat, and not difficult to figure out, the other two keys are the only ones required to beat the level, one retrieved after the other. The yellow key is only for those specific rooms, and in those cases the player is well-rewarded, a chaingun in one room, and the rocket launcher and more ammo in the other. These are actual secrets, but not only that, they provide extra challenges. Yet another major thing to note about this particular Hall gimmick is that the key is far away from the optional areas that need it. This is where the gimmick is.

Oddly this gimmick is more prevalent in his Wolfenstein levels, so this blog post may end up being more of a Wolfenstein 3D musing in the end. I think Hall designed all (or at least most) of Episode 2, and E2M8 is the first example of this, well sort of. The silver key is first to be acquired, but that door nearby requires the gold key, which is found later. But here's the thing, the room itself just has six mutants so in reality this room is a red herring. Then there's E3M6, which has the gold key in an optional maze so the player can get some good goodies at the starting point. But then there's the god-awful starting map of Episode 6, which the gold key is in a secret pushwall right near the exit, and the secret room of goodies is behind another pushwall that's easy to miss in the officer corridors, that needs the gold key as well. It's incredibly spiteful. This is practiced again in E6M3 just to get to the secret level, where the gold key is behind pushwalls near the exit, then you get the key and have to go back to the goodies behind the gold key doors (although I'm sure you can lure an enemy to opening them which is a bit better). All these levels are designed by Hall (well E6M3 was mostly done by Robert Prince himself, but Tom Hall had a hand with it).

The weird thing about Hall's "get optional key in hard-to-reach location, go back to previous area to get good stuff" is that it's somehow still practiced by lots of WAD authors to this day, even if he only used it in like one Doom map. I could name several WADs and levels that do it, but I can't remember any for now. Still, it's nice to know just how much Hall's influence with this gimmick had on mappers.

A look back at: Grandia III

 

Grandia III is a disappointment. Now, when I started this, I had already read several reviews of this game, in particular RPGenius's blog which tore through the game and all its bad qualities, as well as several reviews on GameFAQs, so my expectation weren't really that high. That being said, I was actually amazed at how this game managed to be so bad.

So the sounds, music, graphics, and the battle system. They're all alright. I appreciate some well thought-out stuff going on here. I can appreciate the slight changes in the magic usage and the introduction to skills, as well as how to get new skills, fuse mana eggs, etc. I can also appreciate the slight randomness in getting new skills or even upgrading current ones, all of which are new. That's all honestly okay. Okay at the very best that is.

Grandia III's gameplay nosedive does happen around Disc 2, or perhaps just slightly before that. The biggest problem is the INI stat. This is what governs when your characters and the enemies can start their actions in combat. Two problems. One, your characters actually DON'T gain an increase in this stat upon leveling up, meaning you have to rely on equipment, which of course is a problem if you want to equip something better. Second, the enemies on Disc 2 get much faster. So much faster that they get several turns over your characters getting one, and sometimes cancelling out your own potential attacks. At least I bothered with mana egg fusion and skills quite a bit beforehand, but it's still tough. There's a few breathers, which feel unorthodox, like the Nautica Plains area that you drop off to with bunnies and sheep and it's quite ridiculous and somewhat insulting to be dropped in an easy area right after the annoyingly aggressive Verse Realm enemies from before. Those Excise guys in particular are the worst. The Psi variant is basically what I'm talking about in regards to a fast enemy, then he has an Omega counterpart in the last dungeon that can even cancel special attacks and spells before they occur. And let's not start with the bosses, because a boss in a SquareEnix game tends to be overblown with regards to HP and defense that it feels like a marathon to survive.

And then we have the characters and plot of Grandia III. It's easy to tell that there are loads of similarities between these characters and the previous Grandia games. Heck, there's a lot of similarities between this game and Skies of Arcadia too! Let's see here.

Emelious is basically Melfice 2.0, he's a brother of a protagonist, he's corrupted with evil, and he redeems himself but dies. But he's not as exciting as Melfice, or Skies of Arcadia's Ramirez by any stretch. Heck, even Sephiroth does his schtick better.

The other villains all suck too. There's Kornell, a typical muscle-bound oaf (who's actually called out on this) who's more or less supposedly a comic relief villain. There's Violetta, the saucy chick who's in love with the bad guy but doesn't get him, she reminds me quite a bit of Wild Arms' Lady Harken both in style and character. There's the dude in the communist beret who doesn't even have a name or combat scene, and then the General Grievous-looking guy La Ilim who is there to be fodder. They're not really allusions, but they still all suck.

Miranda is basically a budget Sue, except she's Yuki's mother despite not looking like a mother at her age. Like Sue, she's only there for the first half before a tearful goodbye but could have had a lot more potential.

Alonso is a budget Gadwin more or less, except significantly less macho and not as strong. He basically is another adventurer sort of person who also leaves after the first half.

Hect is a cross between the emotionless Tio and the mysterious Liete but without any of the fun parts of either.

Ulf is Rapp 2.0, a regular fighter, but has weird fireball skills just like Rapp. Hell, his voice is almost similar to Rapp's!

Yuki is a worser Justin (or a worser Vyse for that matter). He's definitely an adventurer, but is more in line with flying rather than just trodding. Then he gets caught in the intertwined plot of the mysterious magical girl Alfina (a worser Feena, Elena, or Fina, take your pick) and madly falls in love with her, saves her at every possible point, etc. Then he marries Alfina (just like Justin did with Feena) and has a kid. Real original...

Dahna is the only playable character who has some sort of originality, but that seems to be sidelined more or less for a past love that most players would only feel sad for once. She's got a few spicy qualities that remind me of Millenia, but she's definitely not like her attitude-wise.

I don't think Raven is a ripoff of anything. But he's probably the one character who should've been playable. I liked him somewhat, even if he's one of those brooding swordsmen archetypes that gets overdone.

The Guardians really do give off some Skies of Arcadia vibes, which don't really entail much overall.

Finally the actual plot seems like a crappy rehash of the original Grandia's plot. You have the sense of adventure in Yuki wanting to fly, much like Justin wanting to adventure, and then he basically succeeds at flying a great plane. Woohoo. But then you're thrust into the plot involving Alfina's brother Emelious and his dealings with Xorn. Seem familiar? Well, in Disc 2 of Grandia 1 the evil known as Gaia corrupts the world by way of petrifying nameless NPCs and other living things. Grandia III does the same thing with Xorn, who essentially does the same thing except turning them into glass instead. There's that moment where both games make it feel like it's hopeless (Justin losing hope after Gaia's attack, same with Yuki's here) but gets encouragement (Justin gets it from his companions, Yuki gets it by finding his mentor's plane). And I already mentioned that at the end, Yuki and Alfina marry and have a child together.

I heard this game was apparently rushed in development as well. That's never a good thing for any developer to do. There's no real sidequests, but just a main plot with a bad difficulty spike, and a plot that basically makes you, the player, try to figure it out for yourself. But it's just not worth trying.

Doom Musings: The Plutonia Saga

Well with the new interface that Blogger has, I just have to say it, and I've said it before, and yet these stupid super-corps never ever understand things every time a customer complains about them.

IF IT ISN'T BROKE DON'T FIX IT

There. If you must know, the last Doom Musings was published today at 8/1/2020. But it says it was published on July 15th, which was actually the day I started writing on it, which sucks because I finished it on 8/1 instead. I decided to start this particular Doom musing at 8/1 and will hopefully get it published by 8/15, as I would usually do these bi-monthly and such. But I bet they'll be saying it was published today. Hell, I'm looking at the "Published" date right now and I'm annoyed by it.

So let's move on to the topic of Plutonia. Everyone by now knows it's one-half of Final Doom, and everyone knows it's basically the ultimate challenge as far as IWADs go. Made by the Casali brothers, at that point known members of TeamTNT and created a few levels in Evilution, their goal was to make Doom levels for battle-hardened players. Nowadays, there's plenty of those who have managed to beat far more than the Plutonia Experiment and probably think that standout level Go 2 It is too easy. And then you realize that the Plutonia wad features lots of green, brown, newer rock textures, as well as challenging, mostly claustrophobic encounters often with chaingunners, arch-viles, and revenants in notably tricky places.

The weird thing is this all holds up well to this day, as even now, I can still feel the challenge of playing it. The regularly tough levels are still regularly tough. Hunted, well-known for being the arch-vile maze, is still a harsh maze, and the secret maps do what they can to really drive their points home, with Go 2 It being a benchmark for slaughtermaps. Some of those annoying gimmicks like resurrecting chaingunners from beyond areas (MAP10, MAP15, and MAP27 all have this gimmick). The maps are original, but seem to have homages to classic IWAD maps to give you a small sense of familiarity overall. Plutonia not only holds up well, it even gets its own MIDI pack thanks to the community wanting to pitch in and change the IWAD music, as well as a few sequels.

Plutonia Revisited isn't necessarily a sequel per se. It is a community project, you know, like Evilution, which was a community project. Regardless, it's all about making maps in the Plutonia style, with the homage to levels here and there. It all is generally good, although one cannot help but think that a lot of these maps draw a lot of inspiration from Plutonia's levels, both in name and in design. MAP09 Ruined Kingdom draws heavily from MAP08 Realm. Maps 21 and 22 share slots with the maps they are inspired by, and so forth. Even with these obvious-seeming homages they're not to be untouched, as they all do what they can do well.

Except MAP15 Helix. This map actually sucks.

Finally I'll talk a bit about Plutonia 2. This one's an easy fan favorite. It takes general design styles from Plutonia, and makes them bigger and better overall. The short but hard romps of the original Plutonia are thrown off the table, but in their place you'll find medium-sized levels that all play with similar styles. There's generally no room for error in a lot of cases, and every map feels both fresh and interesting without relying too much on homage-y stuff. Overall though these maps are surprisingly well-balanced too. So if it isn't obvious, this one's my definite favorite of Plutonia's so-called "saga"

There's been plenty of other Plutonia-styled maps. Plutinya was a megawad for 1024-styled maps, then there's Skepland, a three-level wad designed to screw with speedrunners profusely more or less. These don't live up to the reception of the others, but they don't need to, as they are all still quite good challenges overall.

A look back at: Pokemon Grass Jewel

ROM Hacks. They tend to have some alright things to them in general. Sometimes they feel completely fresh, and other times you're revisiting locales in a different limelight. This is the latter. Emerald's plot is basically the same as it usually is, except with only one enemy team to stop, and well, there's an interesting plot twist with a professor hellbent on world destruction. Yes, a Pokemon professor wants to destroy the world while letting the so-called Team Dream be taking the blame.

Grass Jewel also gives you a false sense of security. Once you can use Poke Balls, every mart in the game sells LOADS of convenient stuff from Leftovers to Ultra Balls to every Repel, Escape Ropes, Quick Claws, and even the prices are adjusted to be easier. Also the vitamins are cheaper, you can buy every berry from one salesman, and every TM at the department store and then some. There's even a mart inside the Artisan Cave that sells both Master Balls and Rare Candy. Yikes. The meadows where you can get Eevee and the starters are nice freebies and are quaint. Also most moves tend to have more PP and much more power. I was also not expecting a few type changes such as Cut being Grass, Strength being Rock, and the Fairy type coming back. There's also Epic Justice, a surprise move that is used by uber trainers that replaces Splash and is essentially an unavoidable one-hit KO.

This is all offset by the weirdness of seeing sitcom characters around. And also level gaps more or less as the levels of wild mons are higher, and the trainer levels are also higher. The champion (who is BARNEY STINSON) has at least one Lv100 mon, while all the uber trainers, from Red to Eric to the Smallville cast to two characters from Buffy and two characters from Glee, all having Lv100 mons, and usually a full team. There's also for some reason the seven frontier brains who challenge you to double battles with Lv100 mons in random locations. So yes, there is a false sense of security with what you're offered with, as then you'll be facing the big challenges just as soon as you get to have a big advantage. It's a weird way to balance this hack.

Of course, I didn't like plenty of things too. I can appreciate the little usage of HMs this time around, but the opening of many areas feels strange to me. And the Safari Zone really does suck since so many areas are locked off. And I just HATE those NPC guards that block everything until certain points. And there's no justice for that invisible wall maze in the Neverland portion of the Storybrooke post-game.

Well here's a walkthrough as usual. I plan to have all my walkthroughs on GBAHacks at this point, as well as on my PokeCommunity account.

A look back at: SaGa Frontier 2

Ah yes, another SaGa game. Another moment of momentary frustration with regards to gameplay, dealing with highly damaging foes, only limited HP, weird stat growths, and scaling gameplay. At least both SaGa Frontier games tried to work well with their Western releases in regards to difficulty, but they are still among the hardest RPG games for the Playstation.

SaGa Frontier 2 may actually be harder than the previous SaGa Frontier. While it can admittingly be easier to learn new skills in battle, via those duel battles, those are a double-edged sword depending on what you duel. And a game over for just one character going down isn't fun. Then there's the dilemma that I've had regarding the SaGa's enemy scaling: should I continue to grind my ass off to ensure my characters are super powerful with great skills learned? Because doing that will end up with the enemies being just as strong, if not stronger. Or should I try to speedrun through areas avoiding encounters, fighting through easier enemies? This of course becomes an issue when it comes to boss time, as those bosses would have tens of thousands of HP and either take forever or result in total party kills.

And then you have the overall nonlinearity of the game with quite a lot of discrepancies. This is something I didn't enjoy. Certain party characters don't show up for lots of scenarios in general, making grinding these characters an afterthought. Only Ginny's party by the end of the Knights scenario was worth grinding in any way. I also noticed that many parts of Gustave's scenario are entirely cutscene-based, and I finished with his scenarios way too quickly. Would it have made the game better to have more playing involved with his scenarios instead of giving characters offscreen deaths all the time? And the idea of fake Gustaves, ugh. The Knights family scenarios are more gameplay-oriented and often make a lot of sense, although the main villain being this "egg" is also a bit silly. So yeah, this is a silly game that will throw you for many, many loops.

Doom Musings: Easter Eggs in maps

Well this has to crop up eventually. Easter eggs. They are often in-jokes or weird references to things that players may never be able to get in games (or get right away). Build Engine games, especially Duke Nukem 3D, are just full of these things. They make the overall game experience feel wacky, especially during normally serious moments. People who find the easter eggs are then quick to immediately go on the internet and post what they found, which then leads to hysteria as all of a sudden everyone wants to find them. Heck, some people probably got fooled by some "fake" easter eggs, like the unlocking of Sonic and Tails in Super Smash Bros Melee which was fake, or unlocking Toad in the same game. Good times.

So Doom's got a few notable easter eggs. The ones that immediately come to mind are the Nine Inch Nails reference in E4M1, the secret maps of Doom II, Commander Keens at the end of MAP32, and of course Romero's head technically being the final boss. One might argue that the map layout of E3M2 could be an easter egg in some way as well. Then you've got the ones in the PWADs, like the Sparkster easter egg in MAP15 of Community Chest 3, a super-hidden Dopefish artwork in Doom The Way Id Did, the secret levels of Doom 2 The Way Id Did in general, the cybie.wad references in Paul Corfiatis wads, and "IT'S A CHEST!" from Community Chest 4's MAP14. Like the IWADs, PWAD easter eggs are often tongue-in-cheek references or tributes to other things that the authors enjoy, which is acceptable.

On a personal note, I like it better when an easter egg does NOT count towards the secret total at all, such as the aforementioned Dopefish in DTWID. They act like "super secrets" essentially, in that they shouldn't count towards the secret total, but offer a lot more effort than a standard find for a secret sector (and if you know me on Doomwiki, I'm all about finding actual secrets).

This post comes about two months after a seemingly offensive easter egg was removed from a Doom mod as well. I won't go into detail, but from what I saw, it's...actually something from Shadow Warrior more or less. The author who put the easter egg in seems to have a fetish for the sort of thing he puts in as well, according to some members (who may or may not be telling truth). Well, more power to him I suppose, I honestly don't care about the backlash it received. In general though, easter eggs shouldn't seem offensive, because you never know when the nitpicking police will lose their cool.

Doom Musings: 5 Hard-to-get Secret Exits (Plus 5 that were too easy to find)

Secret levels. Known for being bonus levels for additional challenges as well as offering lots of potential surprises or bonuses that players may want to experience. So in the course of Doom WADs, there's going to be at least one slot (E1M3, E2M5, E3M6, E4M2, MAP15, MAP31) that would have multiple exits. So what can we expect from this post? How about five notable secret exits where getting to them is hard as compared to five that were just too easy to find? Well here we go.

Hard to get: Industrial Zone (Doom II)

id Software was fairly mixed on their secret exits. The secret levels that were more or less fairly normal definitely didn't have a lot going for them for secret exits from the previous maps, but then they have special levels that they made, such as E3M10 of Wolfenstein 3D, in which they really wanted to immaculately hide them in things that would make player's heads turn. As I mentioned Wolfenstein, that's the secret level that is accessed from Industrial Zone, and they did hide it well. A big concept of this sandbox level will end up being backtracking. What's the deal with that switch above the moat? It opens a location with an invulnerability at the east end, and that opens the path to the secret exit, a location nowhere near it. The obtuse backtracking is what makes this one hard to get.

Too easy to find: The Twilight (Plutonia Experiment)

Of course I come up with another IWAD secret exit that was simply too easy. How to get to the secret exit? Simple, just open a wall near the normal exit teleporter and you're there. Easy peasy. This is a pattern on a majority of the secret exits that are far too easy. However, I should probably mention. MAP31: Cyberden does not have a normal exit, only a secret exit to the slaughterfest of Go 2 It. So you should probably prepare ahead of time if you think it's worth the trip.

Hard to get: Secret (STRAIN)

I've burned into my brain a lot of things involving secrets and exits, but one that always gets me is MAP31 of STRAIN. You need to hit practically every single secret in order to get to MAP32: Super Secret, but you also have to do things in a specific order in order to unlock the middle lift. It's not apparent at all just how you're supposed to do this without looking in an editor. Most players will just stumble around empty corridors for minutes until they see a change.

Too easy to find: Technology Base (Memento Mori)

The only hard thing about getting this secret exit is accessing the half of the map that is only available for co-op. Yes, it's possible and necessary for 100% runs of this map, but once you get that the secret exit is as simple as dropping onto a damaging floor and pressing on a recessed wall. For shame.

Hard to get: Fortuna Bridge and Forgotten Caverns (No End in Sight)

Episode 3 of No End in Sight does something unthinkable. It makes E3M9 more of a normal exit, while making the maps in E3M5 and E3M6 actual secret levels. The secret exits on E3M4: Fortuna Bridge, and E3M5: Forgotten Caverns, basically have you doing most of the legwork through the entire levels, thinking outside the box to get specific secrets that are absolutely necessary. The reward pays off in a rather brutal bonus level in E3M6: Anomaly Retribution.

Too easy to find: The Devil's Coterie (Memento Mori II)

I've known Adam Windsor's level style, and even in this rather big and memorable map from Memento Mori II there wasn't really much effort in hiding the secret exit. It's even worse considering just how it's really next to the normal exit, and all a player needs to do is just open the middle wall and there it is.

Hard to get: Mayhem Mansion (Reverie)

As I've probably said before, I love a level that has an exit available early. This one takes it for a spin by making a normal exit available right from the get go, but having the player work extremely hard just to find the secret exit, in an almost true Eternal Doom fashion. Of course Eternal Doom didn't necessarily have secret exits, so I won't count that, but this was definitely a big switch hunt and a key hunt for just one level exit.

Too easy to find: Bulls on Parade (Alien Vendetta)

It seems that the main trend with the easy secret exits comes from them being from older WADs. Alien Vendetta does the same thing Memento Mori II and Plutonia does, give the secret exit away right next to the normal exit. Granted, you backtrack through several areas just to get to the secret exit, but it's still far too easy.

Hard to get: Babylon's Chimera (Sunder)

This level is already hard enough. You have to go through all of it to reach the normal exit. But where could the secret exit even be? Oh wow, a tiny little button right at the normal exit. And then you must backtrack, find a new teleporter, then find the right spot that has a radiation suit, then run across the lava until you find the elusive secret exit. And of course, you can't escape from the lava once you fall in, so finding the right spot is a challenge in and of itself.

Too easy to find: Doorway to Quake (Requiem)

Ending this with Requiem, another classic. While one secret exit has an innovative way of reaching it via arch-vile jump, the actual secret level itself makes things simple in regards to its own secret exit, opening up yet another wall near the normal exit. Hey, it's at least a nice Quake tribute done well in Vanilla Doom.