whats your mapping process.

Urthar - that's just epic.

I'll totally have rethink my mapping process!
I tend to come up with a level name/theme and then just start to lay it out. I never plan anything before hand I just let it flow.

Dave

Pretty cool Urthar. If you don't mind me asking, do you use the Curve Linedef tool a lot? I haven't played around with it enough to love it, but I've been getting used to using the shift key to detach vertices from the grid when working with weird angles. I feel like it could take me hours to get the measurements right with a level like that, which seems like more trouble than it's worth.

I certainly used it a lot on MAP01, creating 45 or 90 or 180 degree curves with different subdivisions until I found one that had lengths that were roughly 32 or 64 units long. And yeah, that was a time consuming process at various points.

If I ever build a big round thing again, I'll probably experiment with rotating sections and snapping them to a pivot vertex.

Not every map was planned out to the extent of MAP01. Other maps grew much more organically, with just a single test room to establish the basic texture palette and form. But MAP01 really needed to be planned out a lot more to conform to the design, and to keep it short and sweet.

Personally I started working on a set of maps almost immediately after discovering Doom Builder 2 (and doom editing in general).

I made up a rapid scenario in my mind that allowed me to come up with a list of rough places that my Doom guy was going to travel through and suffer in. :)

Then for each map, starting from that overall idea of an environment, I try to think rationally for "populating" my environment.

For example, if my map is gonna be a space ship, I start thinking of what you generally find in spaceships (using my experience of watching sci-fi movies or playing games) but also, what would make sense to exist in such an environment even though it's purely imaginary. I think "oh, a space ship has to have a living district with sleeping rooms, bathrooms, a canteen, maybe a swimming pool for that matter!", and this gives me ideas for rooms, with generally some gameplay ideas following: "oh, a swimming pool full of blood that the player will have to empty in order to grab the key dropped at the bottom!", this kind of thing.

Long story short, my maps are generally quite coherent and scenarized, and I pay attention to the little details to make them as realistic as they could be.

Lately I've been spending more time planning than building the level itself.

Normally I come first with a basic idea: theme, playstyle (linear, non-linear, open, sandbox, etc), scale (small, big), resources (weaker monsters and weapons, or stronger) and some vague setpieces idea.

After having something more solid in my mind, I start planning on paper. Some years ago I would more like care only about the level's pacing, structure and basic stuff, lately I've been being more careful with enemy placement and creating structure that complements the battle I want to create. Since it's all on paper, it becomes easy to predict what will work and what won't (and especially avoid chessy battles like the ones where the player stays behind the door, or a cover, or just circle strafing or just delaying the player with easy but long battles aka fillers).

After I have the sketch done, I start mapping and change probably around 20% of the original sketch (mostly due to structure scale with is normally pretty bad on the sketch haha or stuff I don't feel secure that will work well, or when I playtest it didn't felt good enough).

Since I don't like spending too much time on detailing stuff, the building process takes some hours from 2-3 days, while planning might take weeks.

Although I myself find map-making hard, I have landed upon a strategy. Start by making the map just rooms with no fancy texturing. Then once you have a working map, add doors and mechanics. After this add monsters. Finally add the lighting textures and other cool stuff :) Hopefully this will work for you as I hope it will work for me. I wish to release at least one map in my life.

rdwpa said:

Results of the experiment: This process, done in GZDB itself, failed miserably, as in nothing ever got done. It was too tedious. But ... drawing on paper first and then translating the results to GZDB worked a lot better. Stuff actually got done, albeit at far from a blistering pace. Part of the reason is there's a lot of erasing and redrawing involved in the initial construction of the layout (where things like flow, connectivity, substantial height variation, and everything else, are thought out), which is a lot more fun and efficient for me on paper, easily enough to make up for the time lost with an additional step. I found it a lot easier on paper to draw things that (from the overhead view) look like they belong in a good map, which is cool, too.

Further updates: I've since become fast enough with layouts in GZDB that the paper sketches aren't strictly necessary, and I'm back to a version of the process I originally proposed. The sketches are a useful secondary option, however; I imagine they might come in especially handy with areas that have a lot of geometric complexity.

1, Make Interesting room
2, Nothing
3, ?

Generally I have an idea for how I want the level to play --- for me the interaction between player and monsters is usually what inspires me. Once I get that right, the lighting, changes to architecture or textures comes afterwards.

Step 1: Have an awesome idea. Think it through and realise it won't work. Repeat several times until I have an idea that I think will work.
Step 2: Test the basic idea using a map I make which is just a couple of rooms, to try to get a better feel for the idea.
Step 3: At this stage I may make a mechanism for the idea I have thought of (such as that in SuicIIde.wad)
Step 4: Procrastinate a great deal about the 'main body' of the level and how to position monsters etc.. I often vex about 'Level Designer's Advantage', trying to make a level that I and folks downloading it off the net can both enjoy without me finding it too boring (because I know the level) and without my imaginary downloader finding it too scarily difficult.
Step 5: Build a prototype of the main body of the level, playtest it, find it awesome for a few minutes and then criticise it mercilessly. At this stage I often feel dissatisfied but do not know why.
Step 6: Change the prototype, often in ways that ruin it completely. Become more disillusioned with my idea, Doom editing and life in general.
Step 7: One more moment of insight comes along and saves the idea, or I give up on it completely and return to Step 1 (actually happens very rarely).
Step 8: Playtest my version repeatedly, wavering between thinking it is too easy and too hard. Often with a version that is too hard, I keep finding ways to say it is my fault that I have been killed before I finally stop kidding myself and go back into the editor to make the level easier to play.
Step 9: I declare the level 'fair' to myself, that is to say that a sufficiently skilled player gets a fair opportunity to defeat the level, even if they are unlucky (e.g. unlucky with where an archvile runs too or how much lost souls keep coming at them etc.).
Step 10: I prettify the level with textures and extra bits of architecture, occasionally cursing my poor frame rate when I playtest it, and having to simplify the level again.
Step 11: Anticlimax - the level is finished. If I go a few months without playing it I will enjoy playing it again, but for now it is ruined from an enjoyment point of view as I have playtested it so much.

MathsDevil said:

Step 7: One more moment of insight comes along and saves the idea, or I give up on it completely and return to Step 1 (actually happens very rarely).

I know this feeling very well. Numerous times, I've either abandoned my work in progress due to lost enthusiasm + dissatisfaction with tentative results, or I somehow convinced myself that the results are acceptable enough to make them worth continuing. This suddenly gained satisfaction might be a fake feeling, but it helps to make maps done, which I very often fail to do nowadays.

MathsDevil said:

Step 11: Anticlimax - the level is finished. If I go a few months without playing it I will enjoy playing it again, but for now it is ruined from an enjoyment point of view as I have playtested it so much.

That's another feeling I can confirm on my part. And I consider it a harmful one. When I finish a map to a playable state, I'm so tired of the map making that I don't want to go polishing it. At that moment, I want to never touch the map again. As a result, it makes me release maps that are not so great.

an alternative to excessive playtesting: don't. nowadays I pretty much just test that core functionality works, and cruise through once or twice (often with cheats) to verify things look possible to beat or to make coarse balance adjustments. with enough experience/intuition/whatever dictating thing placement only rarely do things need substantial reworking. let the grievances of trusted playtesters guide your fine-tuning, and then at the end of the day you magically have a new map to try and beat :D

Nowadays I don't load the map at all until it's complete to maintain interest. Gotta finish it so I can see what it's like, kinda exciting.

Ribbiks said:

with enough experience/intuition/whatever dictating thing placement only rarely do things need substantial reworking.

That's the problem. I don't have them! :D

The mapping work itself makes me exhausted in the end, not just playtesting - but still, playtesting is the primary culprit of my mapping fatigue, I think.

Ribbiks said:

an alternative to excessive playtesting: don't. nowadays I pretty much just test that core functionality works, and cruise through once or twice (often with cheats) to verify things look possible to beat or to make coarse balance adjustments. with enough experience/intuition/whatever dictating thing placement only rarely do things need substantial reworking. let the grievances of trusted playtesters guide your fine-tuning, and then at the end of the day you magically have a new map to try and beat :D

Whenever I try this, I end up waaaaaay too short on ammo, and am usually pretty inaccurate as far as appropriate monster counts go (oddly, I screw up in both directions here about equally often).

For now I start by choosing a theme and making in my head an image of what the starting area would be. Then I try to replicate it on doombuilder and when I am satisfied with it I continue by adding areas/rooms in progression.
Again in my head I imagine how the next area/room must roughly be and I make it. I keep doing this until the end of the level.
Meanwhile Im making an area I change my mind if i see that it doesnt convince me or that it can be improved. I also try to give shape to the areas by thinking of what monsters/traps put there, like: "to place these monsters here will be really cool! I hope...".

MathsDevil said:

... it is ruined from an enjoyment point of view as I have playtested it so much.

^ This. Maybe like @Ribbiks and @Memfis have suggested I should do less playtests but I dont have enough experience to judge the general balance and also I end up having not enough ammo/health :P

1) think up an idea (and the idea is always "A Cyberdemon fires at the player who is trying to climb up a cliffside without falling into the lava below")

2) make a crap level which sort of features that idea but also meanders into insane TNT-ville tangents

3) despair

4) restart this process with the exact same idea switching from Doom to Doom 2 or vice-versa

I allow myself to watch YouTube "let's play" videos of various genres. I watch 10 minutes then switch back into the editor for a while and make a nice room that looks fun to move around in. It gives me motivation because I end up telling myself: I could make this other FPS level so much better in the Doom engine... My mapping process also involves staying away from all social media

gaspe said:

Maybe like @Ribbiks and @Memfis have suggested