Detail

In the early 2000’s, a common term was used to describe the aesthetic appearance of a map. Whether a map looks good or bad was often referred to as being more or less “detailed” than the norm. It’s kind of a shitty term because in the past some wads were criticized as “needing more detail.” The term “detail” I think better refers more to an unquantifiable “attention to detail” by the mapper in his/her creation rather than quantity of examples of detail displayed in the map. So in attempts to be better mappers, more people would make maps that had a greater amount of sectors and linedefs per square measurement of units. Results varied.

I don’t see this word being used as much these days. There’s a greater focus on gameplay, as there have been many examples in the past that detail can conflict with gameplay. More tiny sectors, borders, trims and jutting supports can affect the player’s movement, causing them to take unwanted damage. Too low of lighting, while looking cool, can obscure important ammo or health items or make monsters too difficult to see. Prioritizing gameplay ahead all else is good, but I don’t always like to see attention to gameplay take the place of attention to visual details of a map.

I see we have a lot of excellent players here in this community, many of them are getting much better at discussing gameplay concepts and flaws in peoples’ maps as can be seen this in their reviews of maps. I’m very happy about this. However, I don’t see many reviewers discussing the aesthetic quality of a map. I’m not sure why this is. Is it assumed that this isn’t a particularly important goal for the level designer? Are we lacking the vocabulary to do so? If we’re using the word “detail” as a means to measure how appealing the map is to the eyes, then perhaps we can to discuss what is important for a map to succeed in that goal.

Detail can refer to the use of a smaller grid to create more or differently shaped sectors as smaller and more intricate “details” on a particular surface to give them more visual depth, but it should also refer to harmonious color schemes, attention to texture alignment, fitting the shapes of textures on particular surfaces, lighting, and other factors that contribute to how impressive a map looks to the eye of the player. Being able to produce a more visually compelling map is a tremendous promotional skill to get people to play your maps when you provide screenshots.

I feel this is a particular avenue that contributes pretty highly to how good a map is (but also affects negatively if taken to a wrong path) and I’d like to talk about it in a way that doesn’t simply point to maps that do it right. If mapping was new to me, it would appear as though making a really good looking map is a skill you either have or you dont, and there isn't really any way to train that particular aspect of mapping.

First, do mappers even want to make better looking maps? If so, how difficult is it to word the questions to get the kind of advice you want? What are some things that should be looked at when measuring a maps aesthetic quality? What are some tips you would give to the hundreds of new mappers who want to make great looking maps?

I Think Detail is an overused Term that it has been loosing his meaning over the course of the time

While Detail its important into a map we can't forget gameplay, If you ever played an Indie game You will most likely notice that the graphics and details aren't that big like Triple AAA Titles that are coming out , instead of graphics they focus on Gameplay as their primary objective while i think Detail is a fundamental part in Mapping to seek attention in the hundreds of maps that are nowdays, gameplay can't be put aside, without it the game wouldn't be fun

Detail and gameplay should be both equal so a map has the right amount of detail and doesn't distract and interrupt the player while fighting with the enemies.

35 minutes ago, Maisth said:

I Think Detail is an overused Term that it has been loosing his meaning over the course of the time

 

While Detail its important into a map we can't forget gameplay, If you ever played an Indie game You will most likely notice that the graphics and details aren't that big like Triple AAA Titles that are coming out , instead of graphics they focus on Gameplay as their primary objective while i think Detail is a fundamental part in Mapping to seek attention in the hundreds of maps that are nowdays, gameplay can't be put aside, without it the game wouldn't be fun

 

Detail and gameplay should be both equal so a map has the right amount of detail and doesn't distract and interrupt the player while fighting with the enemies.

I can give you an example....KDiZD...

I always preferred "sense of place" rather than "detail," and it's still the most important thing I look for in a map. Hell, there are plenty of maps that have a lot of detail but not much sense of place.  When I was reviewing stuff every week for The /newstuff Chronicles, I always liked pointing out the maps in megawads that had the coolest settings or that were the most beautiful. I don't remember whether I used the word "detail" or not.

I'm not sure whether I've seen any change in how people view the appearance of maps, although I feel like years of forum discussions have turned people's focus to gameplay because they feel like if they talk a lot about detail, they'll get shot down by people who want maps to be about gameplay. Also, you can give people very specific pointers about gameplay, whereas "you should put more border trim in this room because it isn't detailed enough" sounds like pretty silly advice. But aside from that, the last couple of years have had a ton of wads that were both very beautiful and very popular, and many of them have had really cool settings. There's no lack of detail in modern maps, but people tend to learn how to detail by intuition and by studying other people's example, because it's easier to put it into images than words. I'm quite sure that detailing, or making a map look beautiful, or giving it a great sense of place, is a set of skills that can be mastered, not something that you either have or you don't. But I still have no idea how to talk about what actually looks good vs. what doesn't.

I know this is a bit of a vague topic by nature, but can you give an example of the type of detailing advice that you think it would be good to give people? ETA: Frankly, I would love to get feedback about how good my maps look and how to make them look better, but it's only really helpful if people can be specific.

A map looking pretty without a bunch of sector detail to get caught on will add to the experience, but having no detail at all does not take anything away from the experience.

I still say that focusing on interesting shapes, windows, height/lighting contrasts and clever usage of color and texture will get you far. If a room looks bare, make sure you've taken each of those avenues before you start adding extra stuff to the scene. You really need to envision the space as a whole when designing a map, and only use as much detail as is required to create that space.

Edit:

After some thought, I think that in order to get a good looking map, you need to work from the broad to the specific. An ideal workflow might look something like this, using a bare placeholder texture for everything until you begin texturing.

Height and shape->Lighting->Texture->"Detail"

Are shapes and height differences enough to carry the map? Proceed to step two. Are steps one and two combined enough to carry the map? Proceed to step three, and so on. 

"Detailing as you go" can be compared to getting ahead of yourself when drawing a portrait of somebody. You might notice that the eye is off in relation to the nose, so you redraw that eye only to find that the nose is now off in relation to the mouth and the other eye. At this point you can either leave it as is, or you can repeat the steps until you end up with a smudgy mess that's completely different -- and worse -- than what you started with.

As many mappers choose to do, adding detail sometimes means adding crates to a bare corner of the room, copy+pasting 64x64 ceiling lights with their accompanying brightness sectors, and making rooms needlessly symmetrical just to fill up space... These examples I listed should be avoided in most cases unless truly necessary

Detail is awesome. Look at Breach, Spanish city maps, or Kama Sutra. Locations in these wads tell stories, they make you interested in exploring and seeing more. But seems like nowadays most people want to create lifeless combat zones where every room resembles the starting one. Or wait, they don't even really make rooms anymore because everything has to be connected to everything and doors are forbidden.

3 minutes ago, Memfis said:

Detail is awesome.

When it's tasteful and doesn't look like Lego, which is rare.

9 minutes ago, Memfis said:

Detail is awesome. Look at Breach, Spanish city maps, or Kama Sutra. Locations in these wads tell stories, they make you interested in exploring and seeing more. But seems like nowadays most people want to create lifeless combat zones where every room resembles the starting one. Or wait, they don't even really make rooms anymore because everything has to be connected to everything and doors are forbidden.

I don't think anyone is dogging on detail in and of itself here, the problem is that you have to know what you're doing in order to make it work. Nobody has ever complained about the level of detail in the mapsets you listed because it hasn't impacted those mapsets in a negative way. Regarding "lifeless combat zones where doors are forbidden," I think that's an objectively better alternative than the opposite, which would be "corridors that make poor use of space and have lots of stuff to get stuck on." Would you not agree?

1 hour ago, 40oz said:

detail

For the sake of having an efficient vocabulary (i.e. one where words refer meaningfully to different things), I hold 'detail' as separate from the macro-elements of design such as texturing, architecture, and lighting. I use 'detailing' in the sense of micro-detail: surface-level features like a light inset, a grate looking into the abyss, simulated wear and tear in a wall, etc. Things like 'texturing detail', 'architectural detail', and 'lighting detail' are referred to as such, and 'texturing' on its own, for example, is understood to refer to the broader, mid- and large-scale choices present in a room, area, or the map as a whole. 

In modern times the focus has definitely shifted from the 'simple rooms adorned with lots of microdetail' style of years past, and a lot of visually sophisticated mapsets these days rely almost entirely on texturing, architecture, and lighting. Although some marry the best of both (tourniquet and antares031 come to mind), and some, like gaspe, combine their modern influences with cues from the '90s, using what I'd call 'object detail': small free-standing elements such as furniture and shrines that aren't necessarily inset into larger structural features. 

1 hour ago, 40oz said:

Are we lacking the vocabulary to do so? If we’re using the word “detail” as a means to measure how appealing the map is to the eyes, then perhaps we can to discuss what is important for a map to succeed in that goal.

I do think that there isn't much in the way of 'advanced' aesthetic advice, and when a map isn't overtly deficient in some way (misalignments, bad flat/texture matching, dull and boring features, lack of lighting) sometimes it's hard to give advice about how to take visuals from from 'passable' to 'good'.

But if you are diligent enough, there is plenty of advice already out there. I widened both my vocabulary and my understanding of how visuals work quite a bit by reading lots of essel's posts over the years. Here's a somewhat random assortment of examples (because I could quote hundreds): post #1 (scroll up for the darkreaver image that is being discussed), post #2, post #3, post #4, post #5. She also had a tutorial that is precisely the sort of thing we could use a lot more of these days, but sadly most of the images no longer exist (they were mostly intact in 2015). 

It'd definitely be cool if more people who understand design at this level were willing to share. I think you really have to study and emulate maps with good visuals in order to truly understand them, but supplementing that with good 'book learning', so to speak, only speeds that process along. 

4 minutes ago, Memfis said:

Detail is awesome. Look at Breach, Spanish city maps, or Kama Sutra. Locations in these wads tell stories, they make you interested in exploring and seeing more. But seems like nowadays most people want to create lifeless combat zones where every room resembles the starting one. Or wait, they don't even really make rooms anymore because everything has to be connected to everything and doors are forbidden.

I'm not going to say all modern detailing sucks, because I've played lots of gorgeous maps made in the last few years, but in some ways this rings very true to me. There are a lot of maps that appear initially beautiful but aren't quite as captivating as you continue through them because ultimately they're not so much living, breathing worlds as just...generic blobs of beautiful color and theme, or something. And a lot of times it is really weird how much people avoid things like doors in service of gameplay.

Not that gameplay isn't important. You've got to find the right balance, I guess.

31 minutes ago, Not Jabba said:

I know this is a bit of a vague topic by nature, but can you give an example of the type of detailing advice that you think it would be good to give people?

Either don't do it too much, or do it everywhere. Works for pretty much anything related to mapping.

Make sure your map has at least a stair and a lift. Height changes are absolutely necessary.

Colors that contrast. Some slightly muted yellow in a black room. Red and gray/green. Basically, one or two highlight colors, with one or two base colors.

Give something for the player to look at, specially in the main rooms. Cool architecture, weird decorations, whatever.

Never use 90° angles, unless you're making man or demon-made buildings.

Unless it's some simple, random battle with fodder monsters, make sure the player is being shot at from two different directions.

I really enjoy the element of visual design in mapping. I agree that the term "detail" is not very helpful - putting a lot of thought and effort into a map's visual design needn't involve putting a lot of thought and effort into the sorts of things which tend to be picked out by "detail". Good visual design and minimalism are not mutually exclusive, and - in Doom's case - can go hand-in-hand very nicely. I find that well executed visual design can really add something to map, making the experience more immersive, while bad visual design can have the opposite effect. I think in Doom's case, less is often more - the more visually complex things become the more difficult it can be to balance it all. But more visually complex things can look really stunning (though one might still wonder if it's worth the time, given how quickly the player moves through the map).

Detail is indeed pretty much a nonsense term as it's been historically used in the Doom community. I'm glad that the emphasis on sector quantity has died down in recent years, and the mid-2000s-era heavy focus on visual design has been paired with more emphasis on layouts and playability.

Even with those changing trends, there are still lots of distinct authorial voices in Doom mapping, I think -- hell, what other game modding community could lay claim to having different generational movements that build on each other into different schools of design like Doom has?!

1 hour ago, Memfis said:

Or wait, they don't even really make rooms anymore because everything has to be connected to everything and doors are forbidden.

Usage of doors really depends on how you want your map to be paced, and I don't think that's really a detail question. Doors lend themselves better to slow exploration, because they completely separate areas and slow the player's movement down. To take DOOM.WAD as an easy example, doors are very few and far between in free-flowing layouts like E1M4, but numerous in E2M5, which forces the player to slow down and take a different approach.

47 minutes ago, rdwpa said:

She also had a tutorial that is precisely the sort of thing we could use a lot more of these days, but sadly most of the images no longer exist (they were mostly intact in 2015). 

It's probably for the best, honestly. I cringe when I look back at some of my old posts where I was trying to give mapping advice. 2008, holy wow.

20 hours ago, esselfortium said:

It's probably for the best, honestly. I cringe when I look back at some of my old posts where I was trying to give mapping advice. 2008, holy wow.

It's the best I've seen so far. I'm sure something great could be made with a combined effort of a bunch of different people.

On 6/30/2017 at 1:46 PM, 40oz said:

First, do mappers even want to make better looking maps? If so, how difficult is it to word the questions to get the kind of advice you want? What are some things that should be looked at when measuring a maps aesthetic quality? What are some tips you would give to the hundreds of new mappers who want to make great looking maps?

I'd imagine that mappers create maps with different motivations behind them. Some are probably intent on merely creating a sandbox in which the player can go wild. Here, the gameplay probably takes precedence over the aesthetics. Others probably want to experiment with geometry and space, and to them the looks of the map are more important. Yet others want to challenge themselves by the limits of vanilla/chocolate DooM to create unseen wonders.

As for what makes a map beautiful? I'd say a combination of geometry and texturing (both, the raw textures, and their application). I recall when I first played Unreal, and started the game. Seeing the inside of the wrecked landing craft, with its realistic elements, made me sit up in my chair. But what really blew me away was stepping outside the ship and seeing the surrounding valley. And this is a game from nearly 20 years ago.

Our expectations of what is beautiful in a game continue to grow. Unfortunately, we sometime use the yardsticks of modern games when creating mods for DooM. It just isn't possible to create the stunning visuals of modern games with the limited resources of DooM. Still, there are many in the DooM community that have brought considerable talent and imagination to bear, and have created works that get the shapes and the colors just right.

Others have described what makes a map attractive, so I'll just provide the essence of my opinions:

A. GEOMETRY

1. Orthogonality interspersed with non-orthogonality (angularity)

2. Height variations in both, floors and ceilings - ledges, overhangs, stairs, lifts

3. Windows

4. Skylights, recessed ceiling lights

5. Recessed areas in walls for lights, computers, tech panels, etc.

6. Sloped surfaces (in source ports that permit such)

B. TEXTURING & DECORATING

1. Consistency of theme - tech, medieval/hellish, urban, etc., rather than a mish-mash

2. Consistent colors with periodic contrasts (e.g., GRAY1 walls mixed in with GRAY4 and GRAY7, bracketed with SUPPORT3 or METAL/2).

3. Color and texture pattern contrasts ought to be more obvious between floor, walls, and ceiling (e.g., GRAY1 for walls, MFLR8_1 for ceiling, FLOOR0_1 for floor, rather than GRAY1 for walls, FLAT5_4 for ceiling, FLOOR0_3 for floor)

4. Consistency in use of decorations - tech, medieval/hellish

C. LIGHTING

1. Introduce adequate light variations - outdoor areas are generally brightest, indoor areas with working lights should be reasonably well-lit, and indoor areas with non-working (or no) lights should be dark or dim (depending on the presence or absence of nearby light sources).
2. Provide occasional sharp contrasts in lighting - a dark corridor punctuated with a flickering or blinking light

3. Avoid map-wide (or even wholesale) lighting whose level is very low, i.e., 96 and below

4. Consistency of lighting as much as possible - e.g., outdoor areas in a given map ought to have comparable light levels

5. Light gradations