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valkiriforce

What inspires you to make maps?

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I'm curious to know.

 

Personally, I've always felt the most motivated to create something from playing maps that have such an awareness of space all around the place - maps that if you hadn't been told Doom was 2.5D you would have almost sworn it was 3D. I remember thinking this about Doom II in my early days with Doom but hadn't ever noticed that it really wasn't true 3D, but I liked the awareness of scale both vertically and horizontally in levels like Downtown and Industrial Zone. Even more so nowadays since we have plenty of maps that take advantage of all the nooks and crannies of these gigantic structures with secrets jammed between pillars and secret spiraling staircases hidden in corners and whatnot. I can sense how inspired the mapper must have felt when creating these types of settings and they motivate me to push Doom as much as I can to capture that almost 3D feeling. I also love when there's very clever sector usage that transforms the environment around you and makes navigation around the map a little more accessible.

 

The other part that really got me during Reverie's development was the automap layout; if you look at a lot of maps in Memento Mori 1 & 2, Requiem and Icarus (since those were my four main inspirations at the time) then look at Reverie's maps, you might see a little consistency in how I tried to keep it simplistic but also interesting. It helps sometimes to look at a map without playing it and guessing what some of the areas might look like when you play the game - only to find out it's actually very different, BUT - now I might actually feel inspired to do something closer to what I first imagined it to be.

 

Last and certainly not least - I love beautiful areas. I don't just mean aesthetics in how people build techbases or castle fortresses...I mean actual, beautiful locations almost like paradise. I liked making these open vistas where you could see a vast valley with a mountain backdrop or an opening to the ocean with a nice sunset - places that make you wish you could go there if it weren't for the hordes of demons running amok. I think a beautiful atmosphere or a paradise of sorts is kind of a nice contradiction for Doom, and I think that's one of the reasons why I have a hard time trying to make a good hell map - it just doesn't motivate me in the same way since hell maps are typically full of jagged-red caverns and lava and corpses and such. That's not to say I don't like hell maps - I've had plenty of fun playing them, but they don't motivate me like other maps with more real-world locations would.

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Lainos said it best: "I make maps because I can't not make them". Honestly, I don't know how to explain it better. Once in a while I just get that burst of creativity and I know that I need to create something new right now. Usually I start with no plan of any kind and just improvise on the go. I rarely aim to express some particular idea or feeling, my mapping is based on something a lot more abstract. It's probably not a very good way to go about it because these moments of inspiration are often fleeting and lead to either frustration or abandoned maps. But that's just how I operate and I'm not sure if it's ever going to change.

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My childhood drawings. I'd spend math class in middle school drawing up Doom maps on my papers (using triangles as if IDDT was turned on), and my teacher would be like "Get back to work, you have to stop drawing these......things". He also asked "What are these things that you are drawing? A secret meeting or something? Tell me." And that's when I told him about Doom.

 

My other inspiration is Resident Evil. I've turned the first three RE games into Doom maps, and I'm finally after all this time turning Code Veronica into a Doom map, after grappling with how to make it in Doom (since there is a character switch midgame, I'd figure to split it into two different maps). For once, I actually like how this is coming along.

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It took me a really long time to find any inspiration to make Doom-engine maps, and I was happy just being a player even though I modded for another game in the past. I felt like basically everything had already been done many times, and even though I still like playing the new Doom mapsets that come out, and many of them still offer interesting new ideas, I didn't feel like I had anything I wanted to add. But playing a couple of Heretic releases last year made me feel like there was potential there for something fresh.

 

So then all the sudden I had goals: turn Heretic into a game that I really found engaging to play and make maps for, and give it a new identity that was separate from Doom's. I think Doom's core identity comes from the juxtaposition between Hell's surreal, mostly organic alternate reality and the concrete reality of the techbases (especially when they bleed together), and the constant display of horror and gore. For Heretic, I want to switch out the surrealism and try to find a sense of wonder that goes hand in hand with the realism of the architecture/landscapes, since it's a world where magic has always existed instead of suddenly being this crazy new thing that's splattered against the old reality, and I want to create a sense of a world where everything is desolate, melancholy, and long-dead rather than still covered in recent bodies and bleeding out the walls.

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For me, in mapping I find this to be true: The journey matters, not the destination.

Sometimes I get a lot of ideas. Many of them might be crazy, others might be of medium difficulty to build and some can be very easy.

But it always feels so good to start working on an idea I had and to make all those small changes, until I reach the point of completion. It is very satisfying! (like putting together the pieces of a puzzle)

And when I get to see the product of all my hard work, I am amazed and proud of myself, knowing that I created this, with my knowledge and the tools that were given to me.

 

Also, mapping is like a drug.

Even if I achieve what I wanted, the joy is never enough. I want more of it. I can make small fixes on that idea, continuously, until I get extremely bored of that part. Or I can move on to another idea of mine. Mapping is truly incredible!

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If I have ideas for fights, I start a map, if I don't have ideas for fights, I don't start a map. For me, a map isn't "rooms with monsters", it is "rooms for monsters". That's a huge difference, imo, and that's why I like mapping.

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2 hours ago, peach freak said:

I'd spend math class in middle school drawing up Doom maps on my papers

Replace math class with school day long and that would be my school activities this year (not because i am a bad student but man my teachers are LAZY)
 

1 hour ago, Not Jabba said:

I want to create a sense of a world where everything is desolate, melancholy, and long-dead rather than still covered in recent bodies and bleeding out the walls.

So you want to make a Soul Reaver mod for Heretic

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22 minutes ago, ShotgunDemolition said:

Also, mapping is like a drug.

I get you man.

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I like to entertain people. I have a strong inclination to please others above anything else so I make things and hope others will get some enjoyment out of it.

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52 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

If I have ideas for fights, I start a map, if I don't have ideas for fights, I don't start a map. For me, a map isn't "rooms with monsters", it is "rooms for monsters". That's a huge difference, imo, and that's why I like mapping.

For me it's the same as for NIH, except that for me it's "hacks and cool effects" instead of "fights". I can spend hours trying to set up a badass-looking vanilla hack, and I adore the process of doing that.

 

After that, replicating my super-cool effect with a simple voodoo script in Boom feels like cheating. :]

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I like imagining spaces, the feeling I get from visiting certain rooms, claustrophobic corridors or open areas. I might play a random WAD, maybe even a crappy one, but it could have a specific design at some place that somehow makes it interesting or epic. It can be a big area with grand view or a hidden dark path inbetween a corridor. I usually can't put my finger in what makes some spaces feel so great or inspiring and what not. When I see it I get it and that inspires me to try mapping something similar. It doesn't have to be high detail, it can be minimalistic but yet the structure of it creates awe. Sometimes I am outside in real life, observe some building or other structure in the city and think how could that look like in Doom.

 

Then, I like when some specific WADs have placed real life things together to create some atmosphere, for example a descending staircase to a vast sea with a boat, especially when it's some hidden area or something you could skip but feels like a special area you have to observe and reach. I am also used to be inspired by maps playing too much with shadows with multiple sectors and tried similar smooth shadows like that in my own maps. Also using sectors to create lifelack things on the floor. And lastly the various tricks used to create unseen effects with the engine, (like bridges over bridges, etc). Sometimes I try to invent something on my own.

 

I seem to be very obsessed with the spaces, atmosphere, feeling and special effects and forget about the gameplay though.

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I suppose most of my inspiration comes from music, oddly enough.  Whatever I listen to as I'm building a map pretty much always influences how it looks and feels.  The colors in the level are from the colors I see in my head as I hear the music, and the map's theme is from the song's feeling.

 

"Interesting architecture" is my other main inspiration.  By that I mean things I find in other games or in real life that just look cool, unusual, or emotionally stimulating.  For example, the boss area in Extreme Terror was influenced by the layout and architecture of the Halls of The Sargerei, which is where you fight one of the bosses in Hellfire Citadel, in World of Warcraft.  It's not an exact copy, nor is it meant to be, but the influences are there if you look hard enough.  Another example is one of the three "illusion areas" in Shadows of The Nightmare Realm's boss map, specifically the one where you fight two Cyberdemons around a bunch of pillars.  This area came from a cool set of very angular archways on a building near my mom's office.

 

Gothic stuff in general is also a huge influence on what I make.  Gothic architecture, Goth subculture, Gothic literature, H.P. Lovecraft... all those are muses for me.

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My motivation is always evolving, to be honest. Story time...

 

Initially sometime in 2013 I was desperate for more Plutonia-esque maps to play, having felt i had exhausted the IWAD. I tried PL2 but it doesn't really feel the same - at this point i didn't know about PRCP - but, I knew about Doom mapping having experimented with it on and off through the many years since I started playing Doom. So at this point the seed was sown - "why don't I just make some maps myself and make exactly what I am looking for?"

 

I then began to really explore the library of established PWADs available primarily via the old "Top 100 Doom WADs of all time" and some of the older Cacowards , the key results being playing AV, Scythe, and the original CC1. Some environments I encountered really captured my imagination in terms of both architecture and the gameplay offered - particularly AV maps 6, 11 and 14, the whole of Scythe, and Use3D and Magikal's CC1 maps. CC1 map29 in particular was a complete game changer - it is a total monster of a map and I was blown away by the sheer scale of it despite its flaws. These examples opened my eyes to what is possible, i.e. anything you want. I liked the idea of being able to turn imagination into reality.

 

Then came ‘catching up’ with the community and playing sets like Sunder, Swim With the Whales, Ancient Aliens, Sunlust, CC4, Going Down. Just a sequence of constantly being blown away with what I was playing, I simply could not believe how incredible an experience I was having was having playing these mapsets. Astonishingly beautiful maps, so far removed from the original Doom 2 type experience – although admittedly I did not initially appreciate the gameplay offered in some cases (something that has significantly changed in recent times – beating Sunder maps 5 and 7 particularly completely opened my eyes to the way I thought about the type of Doom gameplay I enjoy). I think I owe a lot of what I can offer at this time thanks to those 6 WADs. They underlined the abstract beauty that can be created in Doom – again, the idea of converting sheer imagination to something tangible.

 

Music is another point of inspiration. I have long felt that music can inspire thoughts of visual and environmental settings. Some midis I can listen to and in my mind I will picture environments that I feel capture the spirit of those sounds in a ‘physical’ form, and so I set about trying to make that a reality.

 

Nowadays my main motivation is to create maps in these aforementioned environments based upon various stimuli that have captured my imagination which emulate gameplay styles I enjoy, ranging from high impact, fast paced affairs, to daunting massive encounters that are exhilarating to beat, because I find massive enjoyment in these kinds of experiences and just want more of that. I am still trying to fully understand my influences really, but am motivated to keep mapping until I can capture all these influences in the way I want to.

 

tl:dr I am simply inspired by what I have seen from the community and some of the artistic brilliance on display from similarly inspired individuals spanning decades of output, and I thank you all so much for basically unveiling this incredible thing that I now cannot live without. Mapping is a true create outlet and allows me to convert my imagination into something real... This is a constantly changing experience too and I look forward to the next inspirational maps that I play, bring it on!

 

Edited by Scotty

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Triggered events motivates me to map, oddly enough.

 

Since I could remember, sequences such as the introduction to the IOS in map 30 or the many mini moments in Half Life motivates me to create my own experiences. I'm also eager to see the player reaction when coming across them.

 

Some people can find them too linear of an experience but I believe unexpected rare occurrences can keep a game fresh - until over played

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What gets me started is when it's new and exciting. All through the 90s I was learning the ropes of it, so it was easy to make a little map, be really excited and finish it. Then in the early 2000s it was the discovery of ZDoom and the ambition to make a megawad that excited me.

 

After that the combined novelties of a Doom community and advancing ZDoom features like Decorate really captured my imagination. ZDCMP1 was a massive inspiration for me. Now that I'm in a load of community projects and even got to take part in a successful ZDCMP2 (as well as the ill-fated original), I'm kind of done with community participation. Speed mapping and other limits and themes provided some nuance, but judging by how slowly I've been making Triacontathalon and the Escalation series, the shine has worn off then, too.

 

I did think the advent of accessible 3D floors in ZDoom would get me going, but after playing with them for a bit, my curiosity was satisfied. The only thing that brings me back now is that I've got unfinished and not officially abandoned projects sitting about. The thing is though, I feel like they'll keep indefinitely, so there's no sense of urgency.

 

 

Short answer: Novelty, which explains why I've barely made a map in three years.

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I think all the zillion variants of "things that get me mapping" all boil down to "I've got a cool concept." Whether that be a gameplay gimmick, a cool monster encounter idea, a piece of architecture, a setting, some kickass textures, a random sketch, a new weapon/enemy or two, or even just a map title (all these are real-world cases), it's the "let's make this concept exist" factor that gets me off my lazy arse.

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I create maps just for fun, sometimes I get inspired to do maps, sometimes I just... map.

But the problem with mapping is that you always run out of ideas when you think you got a good concept going, hell, by the time Half-life 3 is made, I won't know any mapper who at one point was all like "Man, fuck mapping, mapping is boring." and "I don't have an idea for this one, I'll never complete this!"

 

Although you start running out of ideas, It's sometimes fun to start brainstorming and even visioning levels twice the size of Foursite, But, unfortunately, I am an impatient person, and I usually don't know what to put down on the map, and end up just becoming bland after detailing the hell out of a 192x192 room.

 

All that aside, I am half inspired to map, the other half, i'll just get bored and decide to create a map, and that will be the way it will be for me until my brain upgrades.

Edited by Angry_Cat

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doom is just such a good canvas both for visual design and the breadth of gameplay it can elicit, I think pwads are a surprisingly expressive medium.

 

provided you have the technical ability to articulate your ideas in the editor you can impart a good amount of personality into a map via general aesthetic, design quirks, combat motifs, etc. being able to sense such things (doom as high art™) is much more interesting to me these days then deliberating over what makes something fun to play. so basically the "inspiration" is: I have vague architecture/gameplay ideas + doom is easy to implement these things in = welp I guess I'm making a map now.

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