Your most stupid editing mistake?

My biggest mistake was when I made two areas that indirectly connected, there would always be an unwanted sector in the middle. I ignored it and it turned out that most of the monsters could see and shoot through the walls and I had no idea why. It wasn't till a while later I realized you could just delete the sector in the middle and fix everything.

I remember futzing around with Deepsea back in the day and not knowing how in the hell to make a window. Or a door either, for that matter.
/me facepalms

Just remembered another one: I didn't know how to draw a sector inside another sector, so I'd always plan out any interior details before doing the outside. If I decided I wanted something else inside, I'd delete the entire sector and recreate it. It's no wonder I never finished any of my early maps.

A big mistake was when I moved the player start for testing, to somewhere near the end of the map, then forgot I'd moved the player start and gave the wad to my brother to play.

^ I just did that too.

I started mapping with DoomCad 5.1 and all the things are represented as tiny, colored dots. So one day I placed a couple torches in a room I wanted to test, but when I loaded the game, I was suddenly attacked by two cyberdemons and realized I had placed the wrong things somehow. That scared the hell out of me as there wasn't supposed to be any monsters in the map yet. Still not sure how I managed to do that as the things are in different lists in the editor..

Select entire level in editor; pressed 'merge sectors' by mistake.

Using WADED

WADED isn't a mistake, it should be a rite of passage!

Using listacs to decompile scripts meant to be used in a vanilla acs format.

Sticking to old map editors for too long.

I used to use Edmap for a long time before I finally found out about Doom Builder. I had a secondary computer for Dos only, and the almost only thing I did with it was mapping with Edmap because it wouldn't run on my main computer. Of course, I didn't actually play Doom on that computer, so I had to move maps across for testing via floppies.

In 2004.

Wrong line direction for teleporters, being on the inside rather than outside.

Jodwin said:

Sticking to old map editors for too long...

In 2004.

Wow, and I thought my shift from DB1 to DB2 took way to long. It's a night and day difference once you understand the full spectrum of its abilities. Probably took me about 2 years after DB2 was released to transition over and I've never looked back.d You can virtually say good by to catastrophe bugs that stop a map from even running if your a half-decent mapper.

I can't recount how many DB1 maps I had to scrap because of some stupid unsolvable bug. Makes me mad just thinking about it.

fiend-o-hell said:

Wow, and I thought my shift from DB1 to DB2 took way to long. It's a night and day difference once you understand the full spectrum of its abilities. Probably took me about 2 years after DB2 was released to transition over and I've never looked back.d You can virtually say good by to catastrophe bugs that stop a map from even running if your a half-decent mapper.

I can't recount how many DB1 maps I had to scrap because of some stupid unsolvable bug. Makes me mad just thinking about it.

I still don't use DB2 and have no intention of doing so. The controls in it are a mess compared to DB1, and no plethora of nice extra features can make up for what may be lacking in the basics.

Edit: Also, I haven't had a single map ruined by any "DB1 bugs". Whatever it is that happened to you must have been your own doing.

The controls in it are a mess compared to DB1

I have a really hard time understanding that. Care to elaborate?

My own experience with DB1 was, I think, in 2007 or 2008. Tried it for a bit, couldn't understand nor make anything, gave up on Doom mapping entirely. Then DB2 came out and everything was so intuitive, especially the controls, right away I could make maps that were fun to play for me personally.

Perhaps I should check DB1 again now that I've got a better understanding of the way Doom maps work to have an educated opinion on the differences, but I don't feel any desire to do so. For me, DB2 just works.

Phml said:

My own experience with DB1 was, I think, in 2007 or 2008. Tried it for a bit, couldn't understand nor make anything, gave up on Doom mapping entirely.

I had that same problem around the same time - then read Dr. Sleep's guide. Haven't looked back since then.

Having a two sided impassible line with a middle texture and wondering why enemies could see and attack me through it.

Phml said:

I have a really hard time understanding that. Care to elaborate?

DB2 makes simple things like drawing basic shapes too complicated by having lots of different things for doing something, that should only require pressing Insert and then choosing where the vertices go on the map by clicking on the map.

Now, I'm rather sure I could get along with DB2 if I spent a month mapping with it intensively, but I see no point in learning to use something different when DB1 is already perfect for me. That would be like learning Python inside out even though I'm perfectly happy with C#.

Can't say I understand. Insert, click for vertex position, that's how I draw in DB2.

Get off Jodwin's lawn!

Jodwin said:

I still don't use DB2 and have no intention of doing so. The controls in it are a mess compared to DB1, and no plethora of nice extra features can make up for what may be lacking in the basics.

Edit: Also, I haven't had a single map ruined by any "DB1 bugs". Whatever it is that happened to you must have been your own doing.

What!? A mess. Are you kidding me. Granted they are different from DB1's, but not at all a mess. I remember saying to myself over and over after using DB2 for a good long bit "wow, DB2 can do this and DB1 can't". Case and point, (and i think others mentioned it)automated sector creation. In DB1, if you partially define a closed off sector, you have to manually change the rest of the line's linedef references. This was a source of many of my problems back in the day not mention a huge waste of time. Small things like that are just so trivial to deal with. A mapper should concentrate more on layout and design.

Jodwin said:

Edit: Also, I haven't had a single map ruined by any "DB1 bugs". Whatever it is that happened to you must have been your own doing.

Nope, it was DB1. You have a dos editor background... I don't. So when you made that transition to DB1, you brought over a wicked sense of patience and good building habits. Its a different experience.

The only thing I really miss from DB1 is the ability to automatically generate geometric shapes. Why isn't their a plugin for that yet!?!?

Jodwin said:

I still don't use DB2 and have no intention of doing so. The controls in it are a mess compared to DB1, and no plethora of nice extra features can make up for what may be lacking in the basics.

Edit: Also, I haven't had a single map ruined by any "DB1 bugs". Whatever it is that happened to you must have been your own doing.

I'm with Jodwin. I've tried DB2 a few times but I don't have loads of time to map so I'd rather get straight into it then spend time learning something that initially feels counter intuitive to me - even if it may save time in the long run.

I was surprised the basics were changed from DB1 when they work so simply for me and like Jodwin I've never had any issues with it.

To be honest I had the same reluctance to move from WADED to DB1 but I persevered on that occasion because I had more time and 3D mode alone was worth the effort.

fiend-o-hell said:

Nope, it was DB1. ... you brought over ... good building habits.

In other words, it wasn't DB1, it was you doing things wrong. :P