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riderr3

Where do you get ideas for map titles?

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Usually I'm inspired from some music track names, preferably metal.
Or combine 2 words like Plutosaurus or Subcataract from Urania.wad

Someone can create a library level and call it "UAC library". But it's too obvious and uninteresting!

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I favour literal titles preferably with some dry humour in them. Elixir was eventually revealed to be a factory for health potions. Token Archvile was poking mild fun at a type of early Doom2 pwad, while subverting it. Bugger This was what I thought people would say when they tried to play it. Aggravatingly Cramped was a literal description of the map's gameplay.

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  • Something something Latin language
  • A description of the level's primary gimmick using obtuse and ostentatious vernacular
  • A pun on an otherwise well-known title of any other medium, but themed around violence
  • [predominant map colour] [synonym for death or murder]
  • Some form of domicile, of the dead
  • The longest word found when opening a dictionary on a random double-page spread
  • Dead [x]

Or track titles. But not Nine Inch Nails tracks because that's my hideously-original-and-not-ever-done-before idea so do not steal. :P

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Music track titles are classic. Someone would say tired, but I think there can be good ones when they have at least some relation to what's going on in the map.

 

As for me, I often come up with retarded words and phrases, and I don't know where to put them. Sometimes they seem like an okay fit for a level title. When I tried to make an entire D1 episode, such titles often came before the levels themselves, influencing their design a lot. The one I'm almost not ashamed of was Garbeige - a predominantly brown waste-processing plant of sorts.

 

Luckily for everyone, none of those saw an official release.

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45 minutes ago, Jayextee said:
  • Something something Latin language
  • A description of the level's primary gimmick using obtuse and ostentatious vernacular
  • A pun on an otherwise well-known title of any other medium, but themed around violence
  • [predominant map colour] [synonym for death or murder]
  • Some form of domicile, of the dead
  • The longest word found when opening a dictionary on a random double-page spread
  • Dead [x]

Or track titles. But not Nine Inch Nails tracks because that's my hideously-original-and-not-ever-done-before idea so do not steal. :P

 

"Dolium Obturaculum"

"12 Duos of Vexatious Magical Firemen"

"Somewhere Over the Painbow"

"Atomic Turquoise™ Asphyxiation"

"Mom's Basement of the Dead"

"Fallopian Tube" (if two words count)

"Dead Dead" 

 

"Fallopian Tube" sounds like it could be the precursor to "The Womb" if Ribbiks does a new mapset. 

  

Edited by rdwpa

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Some name explanations:

 

Voyage to Deimos - there is an old film "Le Voyage dans la Lune", and the map was a E2M1 replacement.

Not in my courtyard - George Carlin was talking about "not in my backyard", I adapted it to Map18 which I was remaking.

Kukuku - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-QvltErols

Horalky - there was a funny last.fm group where fans of some Slovak waffles were gathering, but actually they were all just fans of breakcore. I liked the name.

Toilet Break - the map starts on a toilet, I thought it was a good opportunity to make fun of Coffee Break.

Together - made for February 16th, the birthday of both me and The Green Herring.

Dominion - there is a beautiful poem "And death shall have no dominion" but that seemed kinda long.

Disaster - a promising looking map deliberately "ruined" by obtuse progression.

AHAHAC - in Russian it says "pineapple" while in English it laughs at you, which I thought was amusing and fitting considering the "fuck you" nature of the level.

Kentucky Fried Wad - there is "Kentucky Fried Movie", so why not a wad as well?

LDFXGESA - I smashed my keyboard.

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I look at the level theme & think of a good name. The one for Doomworld project 2017 that I made, is quite ambient, dark & felt like loneliness, thus Isolation is the name I gave that map.

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Usually, a name just comes to me in the middle of mapping, in a way that I would not be all that surprised if it was the same way most of the vanilla levels were named. Aqueduct, because it's clearly some sort of man-made structure made for transferring large amounts of liquids. Access, because it vaguely made me think of some sort of UAC sewage plant access and I was thinking of turning it into the first map of an episode. Demon Disposal, because it seemed kinda like one of Hell's garbage pits.

 

Heck, sometimes it comes to me early enough to make a pretty significant difference. My current "map that I started an got a chunk done in one burst but now I probably won't finish it" is something I've dubbed Metalworks, as it seemed to be pretty human-esque yet involved quite a bit of lava. That ended up giving me more direction to role with, although not enough to actually finish it I guess.

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1 hour ago, rdwpa said:

"Fallopian Tube" sounds like it could be the precursor to "The Womb" if Ribbiks does a new mapset. 

 

OMG SUNLUST 2 CONFIRMED. :P

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1 hour ago, rdwpa said:

"Fallopian Tube" sounds like it could be the precursor to "The Womb" if Ribbiks does a new mapset. 

 

(Double post in error, please delete)

Edited by Jayextee

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1 hour ago, rdwpa said:

"Atomic Turquoise™ 

We got a winner here. Just atomic turquoise is enough (you're sly though with that ™ xD).

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My map names come from a variety of places. I generally try to find something that fits the core idea or theme of the map. The map name can be some sort of pun or come from a common phrase, trying way to hard to be clever, based off a song title, something dark and edgy (usually for hell maps), a random reference to something, or something literal that describes the map or location.

 

A couple examples of my map names:

  • Up Creek - Sewer level. Trying to be clever
  • Bunker Hill - It's a bunker and it's on a hill. Also an indirect reference to the Revolutionary War
  • The Chompers - Reference to Galaxy Quest, will have crushers
  • Lavyrinth - Lava + Labyrinth. It's actually this cool map I posted a while back.
  • Ghost River - Nightwish is one of my favorite bands
  • The Dark Acropolis - I used a thesaurus to come up with something less generic than "Hell Castle" because I'm not good at words

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3 hours ago, rdwpa said:

"Fallopian Tube" sounds like it could be the precursor to "The Womb" if Ribbiks does a new mapset. 

  

 

or an alternate level in the binding of isaac :p

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Mainly from other video games and music. I might come up with something original from time to time.

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The names I give usually describe the map / something in the map, or refer to something else.

Names of some of the maps I've worked on:

DBABRM DBAB13: L'Hospital's Rule - This map was made during a period in which I was taking Calculus. The map is a castle. Pretty sure it explains itself.
DBABRM DBAB16: Clientside Orbiter - Derived from a joke about Client-side scripts/DECORATE.
DBABRM DBAB30: Captive Satellite - It's a satellite and is held in its orbit by a planet's gravity.
DBABRM DBAB33: Within the Sea of Solaris - Name based off a song by Isao Tomita. Commonly gets called Sea of Psoriasis on Teamspeak.
AEONDM AEON14: Temple of the Warbird - References the Romulan Warbird from Star Trek (I made this during a DS9 craze).
AEONDM AEON26: The Heliomancers of Orionis - The result of desperately looking for a good name for a map, so why not use big words? Orionis refers to a star system, and heliomancers are sun worshippers. Makes sense since it's a temple.
AEONDM AEON33: Prismatic - A map where many of the people who worked on DBAB and AEON constructed a room and detailed it in their own way (seven people, in fact). The name (I think I was the one who came up with it during some brainstorming, but I don't recollect for sure) refers to all of the different mapping styles the map was comprised of. Prismatic seemed like a good name considering the variety of mapping styles and detailing present was reminiscent of a prism dispersing light, with each color associated with its respective wavelengths. Likewise, each mapper who worked on the map had their own distinct styles.
MAYHEM1500 MAP20: Somnolent Keep - I named it for the Cyberdemon in the middle of the map that is "sleeping" - The player should only wake it up when they're ready.
MAYHEM16 MAP08: Vaalbara Reborn - Refers to an ancient supercontinent.
MAYHEM16 MAP20: Kepler Communications - Refers to the Kepler Telescope.

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Generally I take map names from obscure sources. The current map I am working is named after the so-called 'demon star' Algol. I've also referenced H.P. Lovecraft stories such as The Nameless City and Celephais. Another map I named was called Eudoxus, a reference to a Greek astronomer from ages ago.

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i name the map what the map should be named

 

i dont like to name like 32in24 like "dr pebble's trip to the explosive gastroenterologist on a dark and stormy morning"

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real life situations and/or people that piss me off

 

Elon Musk is a constant inspiration

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4 minutes ago, yakfak said:

Elon Musk is a constant inspiration

I look forward to playing your upcoming map "The Universe is Probably a Simulation Because I Dunno Lol"

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+1 on a word or phrase usually popping into my head sometime during the design process. Failing that I'll usually fall back onto some hipster-obscure reference (e.g. sl12, sl20), though that often feels cheap. Sometimes designing around a title is fun; the tone, scale, and coloration of many Crumpets maps were quasi-speedmapped with just the title + midi in mind.

 

as superficial as it seems, map titles and midi choices are actually huge factors in my enjoyment of a wad :p

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I see a common theme that the name for the map occurs to people half way through the process. It's certainly true for me. 

 

The best names I think evoke the same mood as as the map. 

 

Of my two recently released maps, Foursite was a play on that fact that a) the map has four sections and b) you see previews of the future sections before you get there.

 

For the DW2017 Community Project my rather silly map was named Spiralunky because it's a big spiral in the ground you climb out of, kind of like spelunking. Also Spelunky is my wife's all time favorite game (she's literally played it for at least 20 minutes every single day since it's released) so it was a nice homage to her.

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