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40oz

So why aren't you mapping?

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I map for Vanilla Doom, but I'm a perfectionist, so almost every map I make are not good enough (that's what I think) to be distributed. Even though I've been told my maps are good, I decided to stop mapping because it was worth nothing if I only made them to dump them on a folder and forget they are there.

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I really with the best Doomworld mappers started a thread like the Doom club where they play newbie maps and give feedback. I am sorely in need of feedback and new mapping techniques. A big portion of my time mapping is spent staring blankly at the screen not knowing what to do even though in my head I know what kind of map I want to make.

I really have to finish it but it's gotten so big and my standards are so high...

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DooM_RO said:

I am sorely in need of feedback and new mapping techniques. A big portion of my time mapping is spent staring blankly at the screen not knowing what to do even though in my head I know what kind of map I want to make.


My suggestion is to take inspiration from notable WADs and emulate their styles. You can also experiment with new styles and techniques with inspiration from other WADs.

In terms of gameplay (FFA, Duel, Single Player/Co-Op, etc...) What kind of maps do you typically try to make?

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the_miano said:

My suggestion is to take inspiration from notable WADs and emulate their styles. You can also experiment with new styles and techniques with inspiration from other WADs.

In terms of gameplay (FFA, Duel, Single Player/Co-Op, etc...) What kind of maps do you typically try to make?



It doesn't even have to be other WADs, either, there's all kinds of non-Doom video games to draw design inspirations from. =S

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Simply put, I've had trouble mapping ever since UR was released. I think that wad broke my spirit somehow. I've sort of forgotten how to not get obsessed with the map I'm working on and have set my standards way too high.... Like, I'm not that great of a mapper but I'm still trying to be perfect. I know it's the problem and I still can't break the habit.

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MetroidJunkie said:

It doesn't even have to be other WADs, either, there's all kinds of non-Doom video games to draw design inspirations from. =S


Very true.

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Snakes said:

Simply put, I've had trouble mapping ever since UR was released. I think that wad broke my spirit somehow. I've sort of forgotten how to not get obsessed with the map I'm working on and have set my standards way too high.... Like, I'm not that great of a mapper but I'm still trying to be perfect. I know it's the problem and I still can't break the habit.


Perhaps you need to separate yourself from your prior work, and remake your tastes. It's been about 1.5 years since I worked on ng2, and the maps I've been working on are similar, but I feel like I'm breaking new ground again, versus rehashing NG1 in some cases. Forgetting how you worked on the maps, and remaking that process, can give you something new and different.

On topic, I've pretty much tied my mapping into streaming, soooo, when I can't give myself an hour + to stream, I don't map. It's really slowed things down, but now I feel like it's something I do because I want to, not because I want to FINISH THIS MAP NOW. Heheh.

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Play a specific episode of Hexen: Shadow of the Serpent Riders or an episode out of the expansion pack Death Kings of the Dark Citadel. Really you need to get going in a hub map and then you can get the full fighting-solving experience.

edit: tell me your world view isn't altered after completing a hub of Hexen. use the Doom wiki to guide you to the appropriate start point

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the_miano said:

My suggestion is to take inspiration from notable WADs and emulate their styles. You can also experiment with new styles and techniques with inspiration from other WADs.

In terms of gameplay (FFA, Duel, Single Player/Co-Op, etc...) What kind of maps do you typically try to make?


That's exactly what I do. I love WADS with beautiful but clean detailing such as Scythe 2, Threshold of Pain, E3M4 from Demon Eclipse E2 and Sacrilegious Surrexit from HYMN. I understand how these maps work and how the designers made them but it's really hard for me to make something similar. For instance I've noticed that Scalliano likes to use L shapes in his maps and draws a lot of inspiration from Doom 3 but when I want to make something similar my brain just shuts down. Most of my rooms start out as boxes and I always try really hard to not do so but when I try more interesting shapes they more often than not do not make sense.

One of my weaknesses, I think, is that the techbase part of my map needs to be "realistic" and "make sense". I don't mean KDIZD realistic, just that it vaguely feels like a real place and just enough detailing to make it beautiful but not too much that it stops being Doom. I also do not use any usemade textures nor any Zdoom-isms. I consider these practices to be harmful to new mappers. I think overcoming the limited resources of Doom and making something good is a testament of good mapping. Kdizd looks old while map 26 and 27 of Scythe 2 and E3M4 from Demon Ecli[se will be forever young.

One of the reasons why my hell sections were much easier to make is because they can be a bit more crazy and don't need as much detailing. I can spend weeks on a single room in my techbase part while I can make a cool hell part in just one or two days.

I am considering sharing the map for input but some hallways are grossly unfinished. You might be in a very detailed room with cool gameplay now but you might enter a bland, souless and unfinished room after that. Still, I really need to make this map good, I've spent far too much time on it for it to suck.

Here is my UAC part (the parts I am showing are slightly outdated)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68B2JFx8iUw

Here is the hell part I was talking about

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWCD2pkZtDM

Here is the kind of detailing I like to make. It took me only a few hours to make these.



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DooM_RO said:

Here is my UAC part (the parts I am showing are slightly outdated)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68B2JFx8iUw

Here is the hell part I was talking about

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWCD2pkZtDM

Here is the kind of detailing I like to make. It took me only a few hours to make these.

http://i.imgur.com/vfWr0vl.png

http://i.imgur.com/hxpnw8U.png

I mostly like it. I agree about inconsistent detailing being a problem: Too detailed areas would feel odd in combination with less detailed ones. If you aim for a detail amount like in your screenshots above, all OK - I find them nice. But I'd say that some of the elaborate floor detail (shown in your first video) will inevitably add to the feel of inconsistency, maybe consider simplifying it drastically. Also, I advise you to radically cut down on symmetry, mainly in the Hell parts (and the areas in screenshots). As I see it, symmetrical design is unimaginative design, and any kind of repetitiveness is generally inferior to varied architecture and fresh ideas.

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Thank you!

My biggest weakness is coming up with interesting layouts. I do my best not to be symmetrical but I often fail...I wish there were warmup exercises for designing layouts like practicing scales in music. I am really doing my best but this (along side my Minecraft city and Skyrim level) are my very first modding projects so I am struggling. I am making progress but it's slow. I don't think my map has a right to suck just because I am a newbie.

Well...I am going to upload a version of the map in the following days. Just need to do some much-needed cleanup in some places because some doors are not opening. I think I'm going to start a thread for it. I really need to finish this beast, I might even split the hell section in a new map. It should never have gotten this big...

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Ok, one more screenshot



I am now going to prepare my map for the public. Will open a new thread for it.

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DooM_RO said:

I wish there were warmup exercises for designing layouts like practicing scales in music


There are. Try sketching layouts on paper (it's faster, so you can practice more). You can also draw layouts in DB, ignoring texturing and detailing and everything that isn't directly structural. Here are a couple of my training exercises in that vein:



Re symmetry: you don't have to avoid it completely. A lot of good maps have plenty of symmetrical and semi-symmetrical rooms/areas. Overly extensive symmetry (e.g. two mirrored areas around a "hub room" with the exact same monster placement) is generally going to be a problem, but I like localized architectural symmetry.

DooM_RO said:

Here is my UAC part (the parts I am showing are slightly outdated)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68B2JFx8iUw


I think the detailing here is a mess -- too cluttered. It's like you're trying to cover every surface. The hell part looks better.

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@rdwpa

Strange, I thought I achieved quite a good balance. I am actually being very careful with my detailing.

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Your screenshots are pretty good. Notice how all the "inset" details in this pic (http://i.imgur.com/vfWr0vl.png) fall within a cohesive color/texture scheme. When you do that, you can use a higher detail density without it becoming cluttersome. The shapes are sleek and nice too.

But in this room (http://i.imgur.com/4Ullyxs.png), there are too many insets and they all clash, color- and shape-wise. I think you could get rid of the panels on the narrow brown walls and reduce the number of light borders on the door at the top left (or make them fit better), and the room would look a lot better for it. Also watch out for things like this: http://i.imgur.com/TBOOILr.png. Notice how the lights are wonky since they are off-grid.

I think it's worth studying good techbase releases and noticing how little "inset" detail they actually use. Texturing and good architectural detail are 80%+ of what you need, really. (Once again, your screenshots are a decent example of this.) You can use the insets and the borders as garnish, but a boringly structured room with a ton of non-structural detail is still going to be a boringly structured room.

In this pic for instance (http://i.imgur.com/nWdM4Zi.png): The little crook in the wall on the right is more important, imo, than the computer panel. If I was obligated to remove one feature, I'd take out the panel and leave the wall bent instead of flattening the wall and leaving it "detailed". (Though it's fine with both.) The wall on the left is good because it's what I like to call a "composite wall": the recurring scheme of floor/ceiling borders and that light fixture combine to give the impression of a single complex texture that the wall is built out of. It's a lot better imo than slapping a ton of random lights and comp panels into a flat SILVER1 wall. Urthar's post (http://www.doomworld.com/vb/post/1349032) has many examples. You can see a lot of insetting, but most of it isn't used for garnish, to decorate flat, boring walls; it's used to depict composite structures, built out of many materials in a logical fashion.

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Thank you for the post, that was very helpful! I will reevaluate that room you considered cluttered. With that room I tried to go by the principle that the player has to see something interesting from every angle. I am not talking solely about detail but in that room you can see the blue door, a hanging corpse on the elevated part indicating something interesting, light changes, and a splitting hallway. It is actually one of my first successful rooms, alongside the one where the player picks the shotgun. I think Doom is first and foremost a game of variety and contrasts. You might be in a very dark and gray room now and a very open and vibrant room afterwards. I tried to implement these principles in this part of the map as well as all others.

I know fully well that layout and room shape are more important than the detail (or garnish as you call it) but again I am having a really hard time coming up with interesting shapes, even after studying maps like the ones I mentioned. More often than not I start with a square then I try to move things a bit but it still doesn't feel right.

However, sometimes I get this really cool idea, like I really know what I am supposed to do and make one interesting room after another but these moments don't happen very often.

I will open a thread with my map in the next two or three days.

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As much as I have tried to map, I can't ever really sit down and do it. I haven't been on Doom Builder in ages. I'd have to go back and watch tutorial videos on it again lol. It's amazing at what some people can do with it though.

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Mapper's block and the fact that I don't really know how to utilize monsters that well. Anyone know of a guide for monster placement?

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I've posted here before, but anyway:
- nearly everything I think about has been made already. It would be much cheaper to look for ready-made levels than work to make new ones.
- inspiration is really low and it seems to be environment influenced. Here in the city with all these distractions it's hard to get dreamy. So what happens is that I try hard to think of something without getting decided, then I get bored.

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As lame as my answer is I'll post it anyway; I feel kinda hopeless with it. I mean, not my mapping skills or anything. Just I started taking on a ton of shit in real life, not necessarily bad stuff, but it just gets me thinking what's the point of trying to map if you don't even know you can commit. I even have something I want to make, it's small, fun, and if I had all the time in the world I'd be capable of finishing it. But it feels like it'd be a waste of time I guess?

In the past I was just lazy and never finishing anything. But after getting better in school I also got better in mapping and actually managed to be on a roll for a bit. But being good in school equates to more and harder school.

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I started a thread for my map two weeks ago because I urgently need feedback. In a nutshell, the map is very big and probably too large for a first time mapper but I am determined to make it as good as I can. It takes me 25 minutes to finish it and I know it inside out. If you decide to play it be warned that you might find yourself in a finished room now and an unfinished corridor after. It is not finished.

Save often and explore every nook and cranny. I put a lot of love in each room. Some rooms will be redesigned completely. I am quite unhappy with the blue keycard room and the very first room for example.

I urgently need feedback on it.

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/wads-mods/72306-overambitious-first-map-wip-need-help/

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I'll admit I had Doom Builder open at one point yesterday and managed to get a starting area somewhat finished. But, I was quickly reminded that I have a power lifting meet coming up. So I shutdown my pc and went to the gym. At this rate I should get a map out the door...in the next few months.

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My standards are way too high, so my mapping moves at a glacial pace.

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