Doom mapping fads

I don't know about died out but some modern ones that are becoming too frequent:

Bisexual lighting (look it up if it's unclear) basically replacing the palette with lots of purple, pink, soft blues and the like. Essentially making the entire wad look like a tampon commercial. Interesting once or twice but that's enough.

Big midtex towers with a crown-like edifice on top. Wow you made the thing. Next please.

Not sure if it's a mapping trend but what I like to call 'kind' gameplay, where the action all happens directly in front of the player. Very little breaking off the main path of combat or placing traps behind. It's okay to make the player gasp or drop some excitement on their asses once in a while!

This is well-put.  I noticed that trend in screenshots of many projects in recent years, where the palette was changed so that it was dominated by pastels.

I think whoever wrote these was making fun of Tormentor667's detailing guide. I don't really recall a time where this came and went. I love detail borders and flat detailing.

I can think of a few fads today that I'm ready to see go away and never come back.

For what it's worth, the new Doom + Doom 2 release has sort of boosted multiplayer a bit - lobbies are reasonably full during peak hours (yesterday I made a kid cry by repeatedly melting them with my BFG lmao).

As for fads that died out, I guess Zdoom features-heavy wads (a la Agent Spork or Ed Cripps) are nowhere near as popular as they used to be in the mid 2000s, nowadays most UDMF mappers seem to focus on standalone games.

As for current fads that need to die an ugly death - I recommend a two-year embargo on PIPEDARK, black flats, and all SHAWN recolors.

Using the Eternity Engine became a minor fad after skillsaw’s Heartland came out in 2021. Was used for Mayhem 2023, Tarnsman’s Touhou wad (also apparently was compatible with ZDoom though but I have no idea I didn’t play that thing) and a few Doomworld Maximum Project maps. Kinda died down of course because Eternity ain’t that great. Eternity is just the “Heartland” port because the only thing worth playing on it is Heartland (maybe Vaporware if you’re a die hard essel fan)

JackDBS I think the Eternity fad is still active, isn't it? Has anyone seen NokturnuS' Light Pollution? I saw some screenshots recently where he's working on a follow-up map to this. It's a massive Cyberpunk city level. The night city backdrop looks incredible. It literally came out like two weeks after Auger;Zenith and I only just found out about it for the first time last week when I stumbled into NokturnuS' page on doom wiki. Did anyone know about this? I can't find a single video of it being played on youtube.

I feel bad. Auger;Zenith really dominated the "cyberpunk megawad" theme when it came out. Eternity is a gaping blackhole for great mappers. I don't know how people get roped into mapping for it. Every time a project for Eternity comes out on doomworld, there's always some congratulatory "great to see Eternity getting some love" posts but... honestly who fucken cares if no one wants to play it?

Look how cool this is!

That looks pretty awesome! There’s still barely much of any wads in Eternity though, maybe like 2 or 3 a year. Auger Zenith 2 DBP in Eternity Engine when?????????

Sorry if it’s a little off topic but it would be epic to see more DBPs in general use other mapping formats other than limit-removing. I can’t imagine what people would get up to with Eternity or MBF21.

for dbps, edge is in query to be the first non limit removing config I guess

two colors is boring shit. three is better

Or brown, beige, and tan.