3D Level Editor

Let me first start off by saying this is not going to be some flame war ...

Ok, with that said, I'd like to thank the authors of WadAuthor and DeepSea for superb Wad editors. Both are excellent, and choosing between them seems to be a matter of simple taste, as both have innumerous features ... in 2D mode.

I've been mapping for Doom ever since it came out, but it's always been hard for me to see the 2.5D Doom world while being constrained to a 2D editing grid. With the release of Duke3D and BUILD, things got alot easier, in my opinion.

There are a few reasons why I believe such a 2D/3D hybrid is better for making levels. Let's enumerate ...

1. LEVEL CAN BE 'PREVIEWED' IN THE EDITOR. This is certainly the most obvious, and has the most benefits. A big one being the time saved by having to quit your editor, loading Doom, then back to the editor. Also, this leads to faster Wad creation on the whole, since you can get more ideas in the Wad in a shorter timespan.

2. STRUCTURE CREATION IS MORE INTUITIVE. This is a big issue as well. Specific things like: 'How high should these ceilings be?', 'Can the player fit in this corridor?', or 'How do a make a good transition from room to room?' In a 3D level editor, these questions have answers not of mathematics, but of looks; more precisely, how it looks in the game, in realtime.

3. BUG AND ERRORS ARE OBVIOUS. This is another highly underrated issue when talking about BUILD-type editors. Simple errors like misaligned textures, wrong textures, floors/ceilings being a little too high/low, etc. etc. all can be seen and dealt with right then and there. Thusly, cutting product development literally in half, in most cases much more.

The point of this is not to rip on current level editors. Indeed I give many props to the teams making these fine programs to have so much editing *without* a real-time 3D counterpart. That in itself seems challenging enough. What I would propose to these teams then, is possibly a collaboration if you will; a collective effort between them, and say ZDoom, or JDoom, or Boom, or what have you. I honestly believe that such an editor, if ever to come into existence, would be, as they say in Zimbabwe, 'da bomb'.

Take these points to heart - and keep up the good work!

-LeadG

If memory serves, DoomCAD has a nice 3D preview mode, which is something I hope to add to WadAuthor someday. Given the amount of free time I usually have, however, I wouldn't hold my breath. Of course, if I ever get around to writing WorldAuthor, the long proposed 3D variant of WadAuthor, you can bet it will have a special WAD output mode :)

You know, if intigrating this kinda thing into an editor is too hard, then someone could take the doom source, and build an editor with that... I think. :^)

Test-0

Phileosophos said:

If memory serves, DoomCAD has a nice 3D preview mode, which is something I hope to add to WadAuthor someday. Given the amount of free time I usually have, however, I wouldn't hold my breath. Of course, if I ever get around to writing WorldAuthor, the long proposed 3D variant of WadAuthor, you can bet it will have a special WAD output mode :)

Yeah, I can imagine it would take quite a lot of time to integrate such an ambitious feature. Although, it wouldn't really have to be that fancy. Even if it ran at something like 3fps it would be still be very very useful.

As for it cutting down on design time, all I can say to that is maybe. Making a good level takes time. Making an excellent level take a LOT of time. Quality comes from the talent of the person doing the creation. I've played a lot of Duke3d levels. Most of them were pure garbage. The fancy Build editor had some mad features no doubt. It still didn't translate into better levels by any means. Imo, it just let people create crappy levels faster :)

A comment on design time:

It's inherently true that the faster you can create something the more time you can spend on revisions. The Duke3D levels that you saw that you deemed 'crappy', were simply made by untalented mappers. I've seen some incredibly awesome Duke3D maps, as have I seen aweful ones. The same is true for Doom.

Just like you said, 'quality comes from the talent of the person'. That is completely true. But think about this: why do all these editors have a 'test level' function on the file menu? Why would they put such a 'feature' in? It seems to me, that you're saying the best mapper would only need to think in his/her head the level design, then just put that idea to the screen; one fall swoop. Maybe that's true, but I, as I'm sure most people out there that aren't in touch with the absolute one, need many many revisions to make a work as good as we can make it. And I think it's silly to say that something like a real-time simulated gameplay environment wouldn't lead to a faster creation process. Of course it will. Why does EdMap have an 'enhanced map view' that shows the level in quasi-3D, the sectors being isometrically displayed? Why does DeepSea have a 3D viewer? Because it helps, that's why. Because most people can't sit down and write a 400-page novel in one setting. Most people can't look at a 2D grid, make a level, and know it's good without testing it. That's what the whole revision process is all about.

And it's true that BUILD allowed people to create crappy levels faster - it also allowed people to create awesome levels faster as well.

I know this is not exactly what you're referring to, but in WadAuthor (as in other editors) you do not need to quit your editor to preview changes to your map. Simply save your changes in the editor, then press the "Run Map" (or equivalent) button. DooM or ZDooM, etc. loads up and takes you to the level you were editing.

Granted that this is not the same as a side-by-side 3D viewer, but using the method I described takes only a few extra seconds to load up a level for checking.

I agree that a textured 3D view would be cool. DeePsea has a colored wire-frame (press `) and a 3D false color level walkthrough (press w) - showing my interest in same a long time ago.

Don't know about "bugs and errors" though. I wouldn't replicate the DOOM engine, merely make the display prettier<g> - that's not the same thing. It would also be much more demanding of the hardware & drivers (not to mention driver complaints).

The question is just one of learning/time and "other things to do". Right now, the texture tools are being fleshed out. It's interesting that an editor takes more code than the actual game<g> The code in the DeePsea is almost 4x that in ZDOOM. The original DOOM is even less.

Level design quality is obviously dependent on the author, but better tools make the job a lot easier.

Jack

this is what i like about qoole(a quake level editor) it had a window of the map where you can fly threw it and see how your map is going to look like without going back and forth coze you changed the lighting by 10 percent or changed the hight of the ceiling by 32 units. this would cange level editing for doom entirly and thus people can spend more time makin the map of there dreams instaed of spening 5 hours going back and forth fixen and tweckin stuff

lfisher69 said:

Quite right. However, from my experience in making levels, by far the most time consuming part of it comes from the actual playtesting of the the level. Checking out how moving sectors behave, seeing if the monsters you just placed provide the kind of fight you envisioned, testing scripts, ammo/health balance etc. I would say that accounts for at least 75% of the time investment put into a level. You can't do that in a 3d preview (at least you couldn't in Build). I said before, it would be quite nice to have, and depending on what kind of level you were making, could save some time.

BTW with Build I found it actually took me longer to make the same general level than with Wadauthor. This is probably because Build's 2d editing mode is quite bad. ie you can't change light levels, floor heights, edit multiple sector or linedef properties etc. Maybe if it had all the same functions as Wadauthor, combined with the 3d mode....

SaGa said:

this is what i like about qoole(a quake level editor) it had a window of the map where you can fly threw it and see how your map is going to look like without going back and forth coze you changed the lighting by 10 percent or changed the hight of the ceiling by 32 units. this would cange level editing for doom entirly and thus people can spend more time makin the map of there dreams instaed of spening 5 hours going back and forth fixen and tweckin stuff

With a true 3d game like quake, a textured 3d preview is really a must. My brother makes Q3 levels and he said he probably would not be able to do it at all without it.

Really fascinating Thread here. Pleasure to read. I learned a lot.
The Idea (out of all the good ideas you guys raised) that really "rings my bell" was suggestion....

"What I would propose to these teams then, is possibly a collaboration if you will; a collective effort between them (and say ZDoom, or JDoom, or Boom, or what have you). I honestly believe that such an editor, if ever to come into existence, would be, as they say in Zimbabwe, 'da bomb'.

What a great idea. Yes, it would indeed be "da bomb".
We have here in Doomworld, two friends (Phileo and Jack) both "kick-butt coders", creators of two topnotch Editors.
If those two guys ever joined forces -- they'd be awesome team.
Can you imagine what a "DeepWorldAuthor" editor would do for the world of DOOM "map/wad/TC-building"? Wow.

OK fragg, come down ta'earth, it'll never happen, too good to be true (fragg walks off...grumble, grumble ...sniff)

I just remembered why DOOM levels are hard to preview in the editor. The answer came to me from Quakex style levels. I did a DOOM->QUAKE converter and the big problem is dealing with concave areas in DOOM levels.

I broke those up so they became convex areas. Some levels became to complicated for QUAKE:)) The number of brushes generated was pretty large.

Hope to "brush" up on this and see if the 2nd time around it becomes easier (bad pun- I know):