Looking Back on your older Doom Maps

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Doomkid92
Junior Member

Posts: 234
Registered: 06-08

What do you usually think when you look back on your older Doom wads/maps?

The other day, I re-stubled upon SMDM.wad (Sabbat Martyr DM) and had a cruise through all the maps in the wad. Mechadon, Jimmy91, TheShooter7, StrikerMan and everyone else involved contributed some generally fun and interesting maps, and my maps seemed to stick out like a sore thumb. The mapping wasn't bad, per se, but it was so horrble for a Deathmatch that I can't imagine what I was thinking (I was I think 15 at the time, so that's no big surprise.)

However, I'm not so sure why SMDM has faded so far into obscurity like it has. Some of the maps are a bit over-detailed and an eye strain, but generally, I was really pleased with everyone else's efforts.

My current project is ZMatch 2013, and the deathmatch experience is so much more smooth and flowing in comparison to my old crammed up style. I had the luxury of learning how NOT to map, the revising my entire take on the whole procedure and starting fresh. The results are much better and this is one thing that any new mappers should definitely take note of - your first project won't be your best, but it will refine your style in a good way.

The maps were very much precursors to UAC Rebellion, but the tight-spaces conflict can work well for Single Player - Not so much DM. But even looking back on Rebellion, some of my design choices were pretty horrbile. I think I nailed my mapping style with ROT90fix.wad - big outdoor areas, wide open buildings, just with the occasional Episode 1-ish closed in area. Even so, I could've done better to remove a few sectors are maps altogther that were a bit of filler.

EDIT: Added downloads for comparison's sake.
My Older Megawad: http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=15616
My Newer Megawad: http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=17016

So anyway - All the mappers out there - give us some examples of your old work, then your newer work, and let us know how you think you've improved - Mapping speed, mapping style, More refined Dooming experiences, etc. After looking back on my old shit, and feeling glad that I've honed my style a little more I'm very curous to hear what you all have to say!

Last edited by Doomkid92 on 02-13-13 at 14:31

02-13-13 03:07 #

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schwerpunk
Senior Member

Posts: 1295
Registered: 05-12

Alas, I don't have any evidence of my first maps (they were all SP), as I lost them all in the great HDD crash of '12. Sadly, I never bothered to upload any.

Which is probably for the best. Thinking back (which is all I can do) my first few maps were more testing-grounds for new ideas. Each one felt more like a series of connected testing chambers, than one logical, contiguous level.

Granted, I'm a newer mapper than most here, but even in the past year I can see that I map more with a plan nowadays. Although recently learning ACS has kind of kick-started the whole theme of each new map being a test of an interesting new concept I want to try out.

The main difference between me a couple years ago and me now? Two words: Keyboard shortcuts. My God, it's so much faster when you know what all the buttons do, lol.

Great idea for a thread, by the way.

02-13-13 03:28 #

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Capellan
Member

Posts: 589
Registered: 10-02

Doomkid92 said:
What do you usually think when you look back on your older Doom wads/maps?

Most often, "Damn it, how'd I not notice that texture misalignment?" :)

Pretty much anything I did before MM2, I find looks very plain - and often boxy - these days. And I usually have issues with the gameplay and design choices ("too many doors" being a big one).

From MM2 through to the last five levels of Demonfear, I am happier with the quality of most* my work. Even then, though, there are always things I would do differently now, than I did then.

* obvious Requiem exceptions are obvious, but those maps served their purpose

02-13-13 03:33 #

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Doomkid92
Junior Member

Posts: 234
Registered: 06-08

Capellan said:

Most often, "Damn it, how'd I not notice that texture misalignment?" :)

As many times as I've somehow left textures misaligned, I definitely know the feeling!

And yes - Keyboard shortcuts are a must for Doom Builder users. I remember the days before Doom Builder... Using WadAuthor or DeepSea was really hard, coupled with the fact that I was about 12 (9?) when trying those programs out for the first time ;P

Last edited by Doomkid92 on 02-14-13 at 03:14

02-13-13 14:26 #

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joe-ilya
Member

Posts: 276
Registered: 10-12

First I had rooms with not alot detail but it had ideas , but now I put more detail and textures , the wad is doom 0.
I am thinking about remaking the wad.

__________________
name at skulltag:-=joe=-
name at zdaemon:ilya_the_joe_12

02-13-13 19:04 #

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BaronOfStuff
Member

Posts: 551
Registered: 06-08

I recently found a CD containing some of my first experiments (usually hacked-up IWAD maps), along with my first few original works.

Quite frankly, they're shit. I am never sharing them.

02-13-13 19:42 #

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Phobus
Forum Staple

Posts: 2138
Registered: 10-06

I view my mapping "career" as a continuum from enthusiasm to proficiency. These days I could use the same ideas and make something much better than I made back then, but it'd take longer and probably stagnate at some point, hence getting deleted.

The sweet spot was a while ago and now I just never feel like I have the time to dedicate.

My earliest surviving maps are pretty terrible, all told. All the beginner mistakes one could imagine and very basic level design throughout. Even my first released map set suffers a lot of that sort of thing. Still, when you've been doing something for 16 years, it stands to reason you'd get good at it and it's likely you'd start to lose interest too...

02-13-13 20:20 #

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scifista42
Member

Posts: 276
Registered: 05-12

Looking back on my old maps, those of the first ones, I find them flat, detail-lacking, annoying, overpopulated, oversized to surreal, cybie-overusing, too experimental, impossible (impossible berserk fights, impossible crushers), and in all other matters terrible.

:)

(note: maps in these pictures ~~were never released~~ were just released)

Last edited by scifista42 on 02-13-13 at 21:38

02-13-13 20:31 #

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Memfis
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Posts: 3184
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Some of these look really interesting scifista, upload pls! :)

02-13-13 20:48 #

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scifista42
Member

Posts: 276
Registered: 05-12

Heh. Was never going to do so, but if you want... =D

EDIT: I had a hard time trying, but I finally persuaded Speedyshare to work :) Here you can find those masterpieces from my screenshots: http://www.doomworld.com/vb/wads-mo...nd-my-old-maps/

Last edited by scifista42 on 02-13-13 at 21:36

02-13-13 21:01 #

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Eris Falling
Senior Member

Posts: 1455
Registered: 07-12

First things I ever created in DB2 were deleted before they were finished, because I didn't like them.
I'm yet to officially release a level, GothUDMF.WAD will probably be my first standalone map.

02-13-13 21:08 #

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Obsidian
Forum Regular

Posts: 875
Registered: 05-12

Maybe we should make a megawad comprised of our crappy first maps. :P I'll post mine if a few more people post theirs.

Huy Pham better not post here though or I'll blow my top. >:-(

02-13-13 21:54 #

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Springy
Member

Posts: 562
Registered: 09-12

I have a load started but never finished and probably never will be. I still look at maps I work on today (despite 2 years on and off mapping) and think what a disgrace and most importantly why don't I have a single map actually finished and released yet.

02-13-13 21:59 #

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Ribbiks
Member

Posts: 638
Registered: 02-11

Sometime roughly a decade ago I voluntarily deleted all the pwads I made. I think I was bored with Doom and didn't think I'd ever bother playing it again -.-

no biggie though, from what I recall the wads ranged from mediocre to awful, several 'my house' attempts. I do wish I still had them though, if only to amuse myself with their terribleness.

02-13-13 22:16 #

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Capellan
Member

Posts: 589
Registered: 10-02

Obsidian said:
Maybe we should make a megawad comprised of our crappy first maps. :P

My first map no longer exists. Which is probably just as well since it was a dark, 64-wide maze stocked with imps and demons and with only a berserk pack as a weapon.

02-13-13 22:51 #

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Phobus
Forum Staple

Posts: 2138
Registered: 10-06

Capellan said:

My first map no longer exists. Which is probably just as well since it was a dark, 64-wide maze stocked with imps and demons and with only a berserk pack as a weapon.

Beats the "things-everywhere syndrome" technicolour blobs I was making at 6 years old :P I don't have those any more, but I do have the levels I made when learning from Hank Leukart's Hacker's Guide to Doom still, so I could contribute some crap to this theoretical compilation.

02-13-13 23:26 #

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Doomkid92
Junior Member

Posts: 234
Registered: 06-08

BaronOfStuff (and others) said:
Quite frankly, they're shit. I am never sharing them.

Haha well, I don't have any dowload for "Doomkid's Planet" but that was my very first true wad that actually had 10 maps complete. My very first attempt at mapping ever was at age 9, and I started this at probably age 12, still using WAD Author, since Doom Builder was still a new thing that had yet to truly catch on. These levels would've probably been cramped up enough to make the UAC rebellion seem roomy. Not sure why but with the exception of the rooftop levels or big space towers with huge lava pits, I sorta seemed to be trapped in "Episode 1" mode, with lots of square hallways and bland (by today's standards) rooms.

scifista42 said:
Heh. Was never going to do so, but if you want... =D

These maps are great examples of some what-not-to-do moments that all new mappers should check out - Very long boring corridors, everything at a 90 degree angle, and an insanely low amount of ammo.

I'm not trying to be harsh on your maps, dont get me wrong ;) There are some ideas in there that could also be awesome with some TLC. I'm a huge fan of my Doom puzzles (Also a Zelda lover, so that's to be expected) and I really liked the idea of the crusher puzzle on Map06. The Projectiles are thrown at you enough to be avoidable, but also still being a risk, not to mention the obvious stamina test.

I also really like the areas you had to crawl/sneak through.. Hidden passageways add a whole new level of fun and exploration to Doom maps, The Keycard trim going all the way around the doors was also a nice touch, just a bit of visual niceness.

This is exactly why I started this thread. Anyone else who has terrible/decent/potenital/whatever old maps, I urge you to share them. What-Not-To-Do examples are just as helpful, and there are often often a few little golden ideas hidden away in these starter levels!

02-14-13 03:09 #

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Ed
Senior Member

Posts: 1159
Registered: 07-01

I emailed John Romero with something along the lines of "HOW DOES I BUILD MAPS FOR DOOM??" in which he actually responded and gave me a run-down on getting started. My first uploaded wad was this Boom monstrosity, DDTW.wad and that was way back in 1998. I associate that with my bedroom at my parent's house. Staying up late and mapping until the wee hours of the morning on Waded 1.83.

Another one the other oldies that I have a lot of memories attached to is RC01. I was about 18 when I made that. I was fortunate enough to have cable internet and p2p was hitting it's stride. A lot of the music I listen to today I was just discovering back then. Most of all, I remember that coming of age energy that happens in your late teens and early 20s was in such high quantity. There's so much of that energy in that wad, it's a big trip down memory lane every time I go back and give it a run through.

Even though it's not that old, Valhalla has a lot of memories attached to it, and hardly any of them are any good. At that time, the company I was working at went under. My long time girlfriend and I had broken up and I was living in my recording studio, selling my synth collection for money. In fact, I had sold ALL of my synthesizers to buy a car in which the head gasket had blown two months after the fact. I traded a Les Paul Prophecy EX for a laptop and ended up toting it around wherever I went and DB2 had become this OCD escape from how miserable my day-to-day life was at that point. If that map comes across as melancholy, it's definitely attributed to that.

Last edited by Ed on 02-14-13 at 11:01

02-14-13 06:30 #

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BaronOfStuff
Member

Posts: 551
Registered: 06-08

http://imageshack.us/a/img521/5696/shitmap01.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img18/3047/shitmap02.png

There. Savour the awfulness. There's also a door somewhere, and the sector contains a 'deep water' thing. On the other side of said door are three Spider Masterminds. And no exit.

02-14-13 12:34 #

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Phobus
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Posts: 2138
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Just for laughs, here is the compilation of old maps I have (we're talking pre-2000 for most of these). There's a text file included for a bit of trivia, but basically these were all made with DEU2, poked around in with DB 1.67 much more recently (like, 2005 I think, when I was getting to grips with the tool) and had a MAPINFO added in XWE in the last 3-4 years. My brother (not the one who worked on The Mouth of Death with me) and my Dad also made a map each (MAP05 and MAP03 respectively), although neither really stuck with it or got as into mapping as I did. Should be vanilla compatible if you rename the .WAD to an 8-character file name, as that's what they were running with back in the day :P

Anybody familiar with Coils of the Twisted Tale may be able to see where the ideas from these maps were brushed up and reused!

02-14-13 12:45 #

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cannonball
Senior Member

Posts: 1424
Registered: 07-11

I only started mapping as of last year about this time. I don't really have any old maps which are not freely available or in other project which have been heavily modified and updated.
The first is the first map from the doomworld megawad project
http://timeofdeath.wrvids.com/doom/DMP2012e.zip
The second is map20 in slaughterfest 2012
http://timeofdeath.wrvids.com/doom/SF2012b.zip
Of course these are a lot better than they used to be and I cleared the older versions out a long time ago, sorry :P

02-14-13 12:56 #

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Memfis
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BaronOfStuff said:
img

Where did you get that HUD?

02-14-13 14:53 #

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BaronOfStuff
Member

Posts: 551
Registered: 06-08

Memfis said:

Where did you get that HUD?

Made it by editing the vanilla STBAR and related graphics. I did it out of boredom one day (along with a couple of others to see if I could make reasonable STBAR graphics out of texture patches), and now just have it on autoload.

02-14-13 15:12 #

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Memfis
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Well, can you share it pls? Looks good. :)

02-14-13 15:20 #

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BaronOfStuff
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Posts: 551
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Memfis said:
Well, can you share it pls? Looks good. :)

Sure thing, when I get home.

02-14-13 15:34 #

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pcorf
Senior Member

Posts: 1178
Registered: 06-05

First map I ever made was the map used in the first secret level of The New Adventure (MAP31), Named "A Map from 1996 Part 1" a map with no height variations, terrible texturing but somewhat good gameplay. For sure its the best level in "The New Adventure". Back then I had no clue how to make a sector within a sector and only wanted to do door to door, room to room.

I recently gave the map a tune-up and released it as Botero's Mansion. http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/?id=17085

After making a handful of Experimental wads I made a 13 level Wolfenstein episode for Doom 2. A few of its maps were released into other wads but many remain unreleased as it will get very bad reviews for sure. MAP03 of that wad is named Hitler's Theatre .... its a map I may consider tuning up but gees it needs a ton of work as it was made in DoomCAD 5.1 with the grid turned off, much better to remake it.

I was thinking about a community project where people would submit their older, lower quality maps to me and I would heavily tune up each map, renovate the architecture, etc and include it as part of a megawad.

02-14-13 16:48 #

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C30N9
Senior Member

Posts: 1131
Registered: 11-10

If you want to look at my old maps:
Redoom
Pitfalls

Redoom was my dream wad. I wanted to make a 32 megawad consisting of remade maps with different style using ZDoom actions and complication, but it ended up with 4 maps not even as good as the original ones.

Pitfalls is my first attempt to enter Plutonia Revisited Community Project. Play it to see why it got a triple no.

02-14-13 17:36 #

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obake
Mini-Member

Posts: 55
Registered: 02-13

I'm relatively new to the DoomWorld scene, but, despite that, I can still give some insight to the question at hand.
I wish I still had the very first map I ever made- it was more of a bizarre, I have-no-idea-what-I'm-doing type deal, with random textures, inescapable pits, and very, very glitchy gameplay.
Looking at my current maps, they're not perfect, but to be able to compare them to that very first map I made would be a very interesting experience, I'm sure.
Too bad that map's been lost to time forever :(

02-14-13 18:12 #

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joepallai
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Posts: 75
Registered: 02-07

first map I ever started on was "Morsel"--map03 of Endgame. It had a different start location that was lost to a hard drive crash. I stopped midway through making this make as I became lost in developing it. So I tried to make something smaller and came up with "The Gate" http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=10535

My next map was Entryway http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=10688 which had several ideas that I thought were clever. This also has the typical unpegged linedef problem with doors and is fairly easy for experienced doomers.

finally Crossfire which I never was satisfied with (the ending is meh) http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=10534

After those, I joined a team and started getting feedback. My earliest stuff is easy to play, and has random unpegged textures with the occassional misalignment and odd texture choice; but it also had a more experimental nature to it and a level of fun that can be lacking in my more serious releases.

02-14-13 18:21 #

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Phobus
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pcorf said:
I was thinking about a community project where people would submit their older, lower quality maps to me and I would heavily tune up each map, renovate the architecture, etc and include it as part of a megawad.

I can't imagine why anybody would want to take part in this rather than do the tune-up themselves to try and reach what they were aiming for back when they didn't have the skill to acheive it.

02-14-13 19:22 #

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Doomworld Forums > Classic Doom > WADs & Mods > Looking Back on your older Doom Maps

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