I gotta ask - level DO's and DONT's

Is there any kind of guideline for what, or what not to put in your levels, I mean over at <plug> www.geocities.com/jayextee </plug> my project, Innocent Evil only has two levels, but already has the player face about seven arch-vile and a spider mastermind. And all the weapons except the chainsaw and BFG.

Is this kind of thing right or wrong? I'd like to think that I'm going to better this with my later levels, so therefore what you see in my 2nd level you'd expect to see in level 20-ish of TNT or something. But, as I ask - Do I or Don't I do this kind of thing?

Personally if you are going to put all of you levels together in one wad, then I think it would be good to make some levels without almost every weapon and tons of huge bad guys. Adding differant kinds of gameplay and atompshere wont make level after level seem like playing the first one over and over again.

It all depends on how the levels are designed. If the levels are huge (as in it takes 15 minutes to run on -nomonsters) and the enemies and weapons are well distributed, than it makes sense to have that many weapons and enemies. However, if the level is small (as in DOOM2 level 2) then the levels are crappy)

Whoah, within one minute...

cool

That kinda reminds me of some of those levels on my maximum levels dis...all these stupidly short levels with only the chainsaw for an upgrade from the pistol as a better weapon and when you play the level through you get to the exit door...open it up to find..an arch vile which kills you 3 seconds flat...anyway keep enemies evenly distributed...dont make only pistol zombies throughout the level until the end and place an archvile there...make some power enemies here , some chainguns and rocket launchers there , a bfg here and a few small enemies there...oh yeah dont put a whole bunch of power enemies in a lava pit i mean who likes getting chased downa river of lava by 4 arachnotrons and up ahead you see 10 knights and 4 barons all flinging their green bolts at you without radiation suits or invincibility artifacts...make sure the enemies are ditributed evenly along with enviroments...phew not the longest ive seen but the longest ive posted...

Make challenges. Make the player use his brain for fighting too. What weapons you use depends on what monsters you use. If you put in a big horde of deamons, you might want to have a bfg there too, a few rooms before the horde so the player _might_ waste his bfg ammo on something else before he really needs it =)

Keep in mind what monsters work where. Archies are hard when there's no cover. So are chaingunners\sarges\zombies. Imps are pretty much useless cannon-fodder, but use them, try to put them in a tight spot where the player can't strafe too much.

ambush the player. when he picks up the key in that dead-end room, make a helluva lot of deamons spawn in there. If you have a room like this and let's say a room with a lot of monsters in a cage, and you have a Plasmagun and a Rockelauncher... where would it be smart to use wich. catch my drift?

Allso, pick a theme and stick to it. Plan ahead a little, decide if you want to make a castle, base, spaceship or whatever before you go, it helps a lot. Everything you build should be for a purpose, DO NOT build a ton of hallways and a few rooms that might look cool and stick in some monsters and gunz because it is cooler than nothing. Build the map for the monsters, the challenges. Have a few hard spots where there's real danger of dying, leave the rest a little bit more easy.

When you master all of this, you're prolly the greatest mapper in the world! It takes practice so be patient =) I just know the theory myself, or at least this is my thoughts on what makes good maps. Hopefully, i'll handle all this some day.

PS: Please shoot me if i ever type this much again

Personally, I go for levels that look moderately realistic. I mean, anyone can do a open the door, kill the monsters, open the next door type level. I like castle levels, like 2besiege.wad. Another great level was church.wad. Check them out on cdrom.com if you haven't already played them. Also, it looks great when you cunningly use the sectors to create chairs, beds, or like I did crates.

I like the part of the church.wad that has the Marine with a rocket launcher in his grave, just like from the story.

cybersquirrel said:

Personally, I go for levels that look moderately realistic. I mean, anyone can do a open the door, kill the monsters, open the next door type level. I like castle levels, like 2besiege.wad. Another great level was church.wad. Check them out on cdrom.com if you haven't already played them. Also, it looks great when you cunningly use the sectors to create chairs, beds, or like I did crates.

Yes, I too like realistic-looking levels. In fact, I have created several levels and conversions that strive for realism. Speaking about chairs, beds, desks, etc., they certainly lend an air of realism to a room, but they tend to require very many sectors to appear reasonably realistic. In the first level I ever did, I created a chapel-like building with rows of pews. The game would crash with vis-plane overflows. It ended up requiring a source port to play. Still, I continue to incorporate realism when I can.