How do you choose your wad name?

I'm trying (hopefully) to start a new wad (or megawad?), however I'm finding difficulties to choose a catchy name. Last time I made a wad was using a translate system, then I ended up in "The Mort".

How do you make up with a nice/catchy name (Reverie, Interception...)? From where do you get inspiration?

I'm betting most people just think of a cool-sounding word or phrase and then go with it. Something dark, mysterious, or ominous usually fits the bill since the game is about slaughtering hellspawn. I wouldn't overthink it too much though.

Yeah,like...The Dark Secrets of Necropolis....or...The Morgue City...or...dunno,use your immagination.

Vordakk said:

I wouldn't overthink it too much though.

Check yourself, son!

More often than not I come up with the name first. If I hear something cool sounding I'll have it in reserve for the next map I make that suits it or even try to build a map based on the name.

I have almost a megawad's worth of titles for a project that I've made half an abandoned map for.

Radar Base and Panopticon are my two most recent maps - both of which the name came first.

It didn't work out that way for my progfic maps though. I think it was due to being partly tied to the previous mappers vision. Some ended up with functional, descriptive names like Washed Up and Terminus - also some of the maps I didn't make but did name like Storage Basement, Sub-Station, Excavation Site, Communication Tower and Drilling Station. Dead Planet was inspired by a Gorillaz song, Ostoyae Anomaly was inspired by an episode of QI and Septic Underbelly by a Death in Vegas song

How I choose?

Hardly.

I can spend weeks fretting over names. Weeks. It's a real kink in my personality that I should constantly strive after a perfection that seeks to align itself with some ridiculous, arbitrary and usually illogical aesthetic. And the conundrum I face when selecting names for maps is the same sort of pointlessly deliberative thought process that I apply to all major life changing decisions.
It might lend a certain creativity but it bloody well gets in the way.

Oh, how do I chose a map name? I find something that fits. But because of my nonsensical brand of perfection, the shape I feel I must make it fit into is polygonal. And prone to melting, thanks to a perpetual indecisiveness.

Yes. Profundity arises in the most unlikely of threads, it seems. Carry on!

Song names (Blood Red), words that sound a bit cool in some way (Scourge), small phrases (Scars of the Wounded Prey), working along themes (Claws of the Enraged Beast) or puns (Goblecoque Island) are my main choices for map and project names, unless it's simply a blunt description of what the map actually is (Small Dark Twisted Computer Lab).

Thinking of a name is usually the easiest part for me.

purist said:

Storage Basement, Sub-Station, Excavation Site, Communication Tower and Drilling Station

This type of names is the worst. So damn boring and leaves nothing for the imagination. IMO, even base maps with hints of IRL stuff (like excavation sites, cummunication towers etc) should have some kind of...other names :P

Example; a "communication towers" map could easily be named "Crimson Horizon" or something like that.

I understand those examples were in context with some progfic-stuff, but that doesnt matter imHo

edit: didnt exactly stay very on-topic here, and didnt even come with any good examples, but then again the OP is quite...what can I say? How do I chose my map names? Well, I just come up with something.
"From where do you get inspiration?" Well that one I can answer. I get alot of inspiration from song-titles and band names.

Step 1: adopt a cat
Step 2: leave kibbles on your keyboard
Step 3: wait

Oh yes, well, there is always sir Oija. Or you could throw a dart at an atlas. Or perhaps at an anchored dictionary, flitting in a hurricane. Personally, I might take to listening to the shipping forecast, as there's a lot of good material in there.

Well, my WIP mod Xodus was inspired by the company that made my weightbench...Xodus...heh. Other mods that I start and give up on are usually cool sounding Latin names.

Song names provides infinite inspiration, especially if you listen to metal

Something short, dark and catchy is usually the route I go. Also, for that one wad I'm working on, I wanted to go for an abbreviation that (insofar as I know) hasn't been used before by speedrunners.

Alternatively, I'll choose something from a list of optional map names provided by a project le- *ahem*... Sorry, got caught up in random nonsense for a minute there.

darkreaver said:

"communication towers" map could easily be named "Crimson Horizon"

Well that's just as bland without having the added bonus of being descriptive. I take your point though and I do try to be exotic on occasion, but the names I mentioned work well if you want the player to define the level by a selected place, which is harder to illustrate in the level itself. This is of value in a project that has an evolving story.

I don't agree those types of names are the worst either - I dislike it even more when people give their maps self-depracating throw-away names like Bacon Sandwich or Tech Base #765.

I've noticed that usually most people refer to a megawad's individual levels by their map number as opposed to their name (and a megawad often by it's initials) so maybe it's not something we should lose sleep over.

^Agree. Some maps fit with a normal name, and some need a cool sentence.
The same as E1 and E4, from normal names to a book words.

purist said:

I don't agree those types of names are the worst either - I dislike it even more when people give their maps self-depracating throw-away names like Bacon Sandwich or Tech Base #765.

Yeah I have to agree. I played some maps in Slaughterfest 2011 the other day, and there were maps named Soup, Waffles, junk1, 00shit1, 00barf1, Untitled, Bananabread...

please..

PSX Doom MAP30 ;)

For techbase levels, I tend to give them descriptive names. For hellish levels, I try to come up with something that would sound good as the title of a metal album.

Think of a word like 'mystery' or 'despair,' then google translate into some obscure foreign language.

I just use the basic plot.

Halls of Obscurity
A Bridge Over Troubled Nukage
Acid Bath
Quarantined Zone
Fading Echoes
Shadows Darkening
End of Days
Sector NGC7
The Dreadhold

Are a few I've come up with. I just use my imagination :P

Wordplay. Lots of wordplay. Every day.

Hexed Decimation is one Ive been waiting to use.
For my current TNT2 map Im either using Styx and Stones or World of Pain. Ill probably have my mind made up when I finish the map.

With 32in24 maps, (which is 2/3 of my stuff) I crank up the bad puns or just use wonky phrases that somebody used in the past year. Seriously, I have a notepad document full of prospective names for either bands or 32in24 maps. They are pretty much interchangeable.

I do map naming last. It's the least important part. When it comes, I name it to the setting of the map. "The white canyon" for an arctic map as an example.

Random section from a random book, until it sounds half-decent.

Use3D said:

Check yourself, son!

I checked myself. Underwear's clean.

I'd come up with the cheesiest name I can think of and go with it, because I honestly don't care. For example, if I were to make a Heretic wad I would call it Helletic. Shit like that.

I have a good Megawad name, but you might wonder what it is. It is...

Randomly.

I can take a long time to come up with good titles for both WADs and, where applicable, maps within WADs. I'm also kind of a perfectionist when coming up with such things. Of course, sometimes a name will just jump to my mind that totally sticks, as was the case with my first mapping project ("Hellward Bound", which is more to the cool-sounding as opposed to place-namey effect).

Sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's easy. Usually I think about what's the level about. Now for my current project, the name is also part of the story. Doomguy takes a walk in the dark and stumbles on a teleporter and gets sent to some hellish place. So I decided I call it:"A Walk In The Dark".