Beginning Guide for Newcomers - 2015

I apologies if what I'm requesting already exists and I'm just blind.

So this Thread is mostly a suggestion/request for adding a sticky or dedicated page to help fresh new Doomers to begin their mapping career during these modern times. There is a vast amount of information out there found via simple google searchers and Wiki however most of the information is mixed by different source ports, editors and their versions. For someone who hasn't grown with the editing community and are totally fresh would likely face much confusion like I have, considering the various versions and directions available.

I have started mapping for Doom recently and this is how my learning process went:

I can't help feel there IS a great updated beginners guide out there somewhere or more logically in the Doom forums here. However I can't find it if so.

The sort of beginners information I was thinking about is:

• What Doom Editors are available and why you may choose one over the other
  
• What formats you may want to jump into when editing with Doom Builder 2 and GZDoom Builder, like UDMF of Hexen.
  
• What other programs you may want and why - i.e. Slade
  
• What are Sector Specials with a popular example (like Secret sector) and where they can be found, what are Linedef specials with a popular example (like walk over to open door) and where they can be found.
  
• What is ACS (although the wiki does provide that information well), what are some of the most common scripts used with examples and what 'Things' are required / recommended to have them run properly.
  
• Links to sites with useful resources and guides like Realm 667.
  
• Various links pointing to the basic videos that won't cause much confusion such as Chubz first few beginner videos.
  

Again, a guide with all this information filtered down to the modern formats and editors may already exist. Or someone may suggest I make it however I am new myself and don't feel capable or knowledgeable enough to make a thorough, accurate and informative guide. At least no yet. But there were some rather basic solutions to issues that took may way too long to figure out on my own. An answer with a brief explanation and an example would be perfect.

I have to give lots of credit to this forum, Zdoom and the Wiki as some posts and pages actually do have good summaries, example maps, example scripts but it is limited to select functions.

I began working on a sort of power point presentation that I was gonna convert to a YouTube video a month or two ago as a sort of tutorial for beginning mappers, seeing as doom 4 is drawing in a new wave of mappers to the doom community. It was basically a slide show that explained what doom terminology meant, what editors and tools you need to do certain things you might want to do, and a very in depth demonstration on how to create good maps. I began working on it a little bit but I found it to be a lot of work writing a script and preparing slides to explain every briefly explain every menial thing. It was pretty time consuming. If I could find a few people to collaborate with me, id be more motivated to do it. But id imagine wed run into a lot of disagreements on "the right way" to do it.

Its funny your asking for exactly what I felt the community could use. :)

Funny you should ask,



It's slow going though.

I know what you mean 40oz, I could imagine the effort and trouble.

Linguica said:

Funny you should ask,

It's slow going though.

This looks good! May I suggest these lessons be stickied somewhere? Or somewhere more obvious if it has already lol. I still can't find its location. Even a stickied thread with all the lessons and links to them provided would be great.

Probably because they don't publicly exist yet. I'm adapting the tutorials from an old 1995 Doom editing book, changing all the WADED stuff to GZDB, to start up a tutorials subforum.