Official Tutorial Request Thread

Apparently we're not all as pretentious as I thought! If you don't have all the answers to every question in Doom, perhaps its a good idea to get the ball rolling by using this thread to post something you don't know enough about!

That way the Doom gods can get an idea for what isn't already known and consider writing a tutorial about that instead of whatever they feel like unnecessarily schooling everyone on.

You may, but you don't need to post specific questions to things you're having trouble with. But this is a good thread to draw attention to some criticism you may have received in your mapping or other kind of editing that you're not sure how to remedy, or something you don't like about your own mapping, or other concepts that are discussed in Doom editing that feel foreign to you. Then hopefully this subforum can get some use and your questions may be answered on a new thread in this subforum.

While not entirely 'tutorials', I would love to read some process descriptions on how people tend to work. Anything from written up descriptions with progress screenshots to workflow videos a la https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWxSWTPjGFE etc.

Things like that can provide valuable insight on how to achieve certain things, as well as just being an interesting read/watch.

I know that this request is on the boundary of belonging to this thread or not, but: I'd like a guide explaining how to make MIDIs in a way that they will play and loop properly in all Doom ports. I vaguely remember reading some threads where this proven to be a problem with certain MIDI editors or MIDI-making techniques or MIDI-exporting techniques or something related to how the MIDIs were ended.

Great thread idea. I'd like to see an introductory guide to creating custom monsters in WhackEd4. It's not something I want to do in my own levels yet, but I have a burning curiosity about how custom monsters were put together in mapsets like Valiant and Mayan Mishap.

Like, let's say I wanted to replicate the Arachnorb as a training exercise (without just copying and pasting the relevant DeHackEd entries, which would defeat the whole training part). What steps would I take?

A tutorial like that would be cool.

jmickle66666666 said:

While not entirely 'tutorials', I would love to read some process descriptions on how people tend to work. Anything from written up descriptions with progress screenshots to workflow videos a la https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWxSWTPjGFE etc.

Good point. It could be encouraging for people to write tutorials if threads in the editing tutorials were viewed more like "How I would do something" and less like "The best/definitive way to do something"

rdwpa said:

I'd like to see an introductory guide to creating custom monsters in WhackEd4. It's not something I want to do in my own levels yet, but I have a burning curiosity about how custom monsters were put together in mapsets like Valiant and Mayan Mishap.

This would be really great.

rdwpa said:

Great thread idea. I'd like to see an introductory guide to creating custom monsters in WhackEd4. It's not something I want to do in my own levels yet, but I have a burning curiosity about how custom monsters were put together in mapsets like Valiant and Mayan Mishap.

Like, let's say I wanted to replicate the Arachnorb as a training exercise (without just copying and pasting the relevant DeHackEd entries, which would defeat the whole training part). What steps would I take?

A tutorial like that would be cool.

I'd echo this, especially since there's some important aspects like being limited by (as I understand it) both thing id #s and frames, which is non-obvious at first thought.

Um...
Can we have a secret and/or item placement guide?

^Those are subjective things that different mappers handle differently and that depend on the mapper's style and the goal he wants to achieve, not some feat that need to be done by following instructions. Anyway, basic principles are somewhat covered here.

Zulk-RS said:

Um...
Can we have a secret and/or item placement guide?

This is the sort of topic better served by a "How do you place your secrets?" or "How do you place your items?" sort of thread (with "I've been trying to improve this aspect of my design, so I'm wondering how other designers do this or that" or something in the post body). There's an extremely wide variety of approaches, so even a good tutorial will only scratch the surface. Plenty of these threads exist already, afaik. Scanning through the DWmegawad Club threads (all of them!) for comments on secrets and item placements -- and playing some of the referenced levels, of course -- might be a good idea too.

I'd like to see a more detailed introduction to UDMF - specifically, its advantages over the WAD format and its features that aren't directly related to level design.

^You must either mean "classic Doom map format" where you said "WAD format", or "PK3" where you said "UDMF". File formats (WAD or PK3) are unrelated to map formats (classic or UDMF).

+1 to Bucket's suggestion

Also I would like to see video tutorials of really neat tricks you can utilize in UDMF format. For example, I had no idea you could create multiple 3D platforms in one sector until I spotted a few maps suggesting this. So a video briefly discussing and demonstrating a range of these special techniques available in modern sourceports and Editors would be beneficial to many of us. Seasoned map makers may even learn a thing or two.

I'm curious of what other simple but special techniques I'm missing out on while working on my wad. I'm gradually including 3D and Slopes more and more into my levels, added various rotating sectors and crushers, discovered how to make earthquakes and collapsing ceilings, include custom resources with Slade, have a good grasp on the very basics of ACS scripting and know how to script infighting, lighting, actor properties, various sector effects, elevators etc.

I still haven't experimented with underwater, mirrors or cameras yet. Any other special features I'm missing?

So I can make maps entirely in UDMF format and save them in a WAD file?

yep

I just thinking now, there's not a vanilla Hexen or Strife mapping tutorial?

Sure these games are not quite well known as the doom ones, but i think it could be interesting also talking and having some more knowledge about other IDtech games!

I took out Heretic, Chex quest and HACX (maybe there's much more games around, but they are pretty obscure and they don't have any relation with the main IDtech1 games) because i think that uses the same rules of vanilla doom editing, since these games are pretty similar to the original doom with some modifications, but in the core of the engine is still the same old vanilla editing tips...

Can there be a tutorial about how slopes are totally inappropriate? As in, thematically speaking, they are unwelcomed for the time being. But seriously. Slopes just for the sake of slopes are silly IMHO. When they are implemented poorly, I feel bad for the mod designer, "bad" as in a a sense of shame or incorrectness.

I'd love to finally know how to add colored lighting to my maps.

perhaps handling sprite image formats, creation, modification, and bug fixing of image files that will be for example your brand new Ubershotgun?

A tutorial on how to make an irregular shaped room look just as good as an orthogonal one.

How the .dwd file system works and making it only using notepad.

Superluigieth1 said:

How the .dwd file system works

http://doomwiki.org/wiki/DWD_format

Superluigieth1 said:

and making it only using notepad.

Click a .dwd file -> "Open with" -> select program "Notepad" -> check "Always open files of this type in this program".

scifista42 said:

Click a .dwd file -> "Open with" -> select program "Notepad" -> check "Always open files of this type in this program".

No, I mean like how the file structure works and making it from scratch.

Create and/or edit the .dwd file in notepad as you wish, within specifics of the format as described on the wiki page I linked above. The wiki page lists the exact specifics you wanted to know, doesn't it?

Colored lighting.

http://zdoom.org/wiki/Colored_lighting

Colored lights in a sector can be set in several ways:
- In UDMF only: with the lightcolor sector property.
- With a ColorSetter thing placed in the sector.
- With the Sector_SetColor special, which can be used dynamically in a script.

The wiki page has links to further info on each case.

how could I make a new linedef action? all I want to do is change 'door open stay' to 'door open wait close'. is there an easy way to do that?

Making entirely new linedef actions is not possible unless you're a source port author, but Boom's generalized linedef actions are a thing. "Door open wait close" action already exists in vanilla, in S1, SR, W1, WR and DR versions, I think. If you wanted for example a GR version, you would have to use a generalized linedef action, which means that your wad needs to be at least Boom compatible.

dang. thx for the info though.

I'd like to see Xaser's tune-up tutorial for Joe Ilya turned into a tutorial thread here. Lotta great information in there!