how do you place your monsters?

i'm looking for suggestions on how to properly place monsters in a map.

obviously, as a player, you don't know where monsters are placed, where monster cabinets are, where other traps are etc. but as a mapper, you put the monsters in the map, you define triggers etc. you know exactly where the monsters are, what triggers monster spawns and so on.

to me it's always hard to have really good monster placements. i put them where i think they work well but when i playtest, i already know exactly what's going to happen. when i open a door, i already look where the monsters are. i try to force myself not to look there but i can't pretend to get surprised.

so, i was wondering, how do you approach this issue? what are your methods for monster placement? are there some rules one can apply to their maps? or should i simply not care too much about it? 

I also had a similar thought about that recently. I was wondering if there's any possibility to implement a randomizer, sort of, that changes enemy layouts or even item locations. Maybe it's possible to script such events to surprise yourself but I'm not that experienced in scripting yet. It would be surely a nice tool to have in mind. 

1 hour ago, zzzornbringer said:

... or should i simply not care too much about it? 

That's what I do for now. I'm working on an episode myself and I'll be happy when I manage to finish it correctly. On the other hand, if you played Doom or other games several times, you also got used to them and know what's going on. I still like to play Doom II or else, although I know it by hard. Let's see if other mappers share their ideas about that.  

Getting testers is important for the very reasons you suggest. There was a thread that might help you find willing parties.

But as far as testing yourself, just do it differently every time. Try to break the map. Try to trivialize the encounters. If you can't, great. If you can, how easy was it? If it took a reasonable effort and/or several attempts, maybe you can leave the encounter as is. But if it seemed like the obvious thing to do, maybe you need to switch it up. 

Some general guidelines: 

• build the encounters into the space. This doesn't mean you can never map by doing all the geometry first, things second, but if you do, do not be afraid to alter the space to accommodate the encounters.
• Multiple directions. Try to make Doomguy get caught in the crossfire so he has to choose the lesser of two (or more) evils. 
• Be careful of infighting. Some is good, but you don't want the enemies to do all the work for you. Some ways around this include using fewer monster types and using different heights (turret monsters are good for lessening infighting).
• have an interesting use of non-deaf(/ambush) monsters. A player will sometimes think they see everything that's going on, but then more monsters come down the hall or through the door or whatever. It's kind of a slightly more organic "trap." Works well with hitscanners and flying monsters
• Know the roles of the monsters. For example, a lone baron in any decent sized room is not good. Arachnotrons, mancubi, and hitscanners are the best instigators of infighting. Etc.  
• Surprise the player. Don't always put traps in cliche places. Do sometimes put them in totally unexpected places, like for example, crossing a simple path that suddenly gives out and now you're in a room full of monsters.

Best of luck.

You should absolutely care about monster placement. Where and how you place monsters influences the way that a map will play, which is what players will remember and will keep people coming back and recommending your map to others. In a lot of ways, there's both science and art to it, and it's something that takes practice to do well.

However, start off by reading this:

It's an excellent guide on monster placement and includes suggestions by several leading designers and cacoward winners. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

I also agree with the suggestions that HAK wrote.

With regard to not being able to surprise yourself, this is really only an issue when it comes to the timing of a monster ambush. Knowing that something is coming doesn't necessarily take the teeth out of an encounter. It really depends on the difficulty/complexity of the overall encounter. If a single imp teleports in after you hit a switch, that's different than if chaingunners teleported in behind and to the sides of the player. This ties in with HAK's point about multiple directions. Force the player (and yourself) to have to face in different directions to overcome the monsters, and you'll find it is more challenging than everything just being in front of you (and it won't matter if you just turn to face one of the monsters, because there's another one behind you).

Ultimately, if all the challenge in your map comes from surprising the player, then you'll probably find that players go through the map waiting for something to teleport in or jump out every time they pick up a key, hit a switch, open a door, etc. Concentrate on creating robust encounters that don't rely on ambushes and surprises.

I place monsters as I build the space, because I don't want to carefully build exquisite geometry, add the monsters last, then realize that the area plays badly. The amount of monsters I put in goes by feeling, how the map feels to play. I don't want an area being too empty. I often include a mix of monsters that will in-fight because that adds a random element which can make the game play out a little differently each time, which means my monster counts are somewhat inflated to take that into account.

I try and vary up my use of ambushes so that picking up that key doesn't always open up a ton of monsters immediately. Sometimes, the big fight comes before you get the key, and there isn't further trouble after you pick it up. Sometimes I open up pens or teleport traps a distance away from the key, so that there is a short rest period.

One of the things I try to do is to use sound propagation and free roaming monsters to create a randomness whenever I playtest.   I personally get bored of my maps the more I playtest them and this always works in keeping things interesting.

As example hide monsters between crates, behind corners/columns and in unexpectable places (not just in front of player's face). Roaming monsters is always interesting, so map layouts can be made to help enemies to do that. It is better to put flying monsters somewhere behind the cliffs or behind sector objects, so they are can fly over and create nice effect.

the idea of flying monsters hiding behind cliffs is actually quite nice. this happens in more open areas anyways, so i don't see a problem there.

however, i do feel that roaming monsters can be a problem with how i would want my maps to pace. for example, when i build rooms, or places, i design the encounters that happen in these rooms. optimally this will apply to the entire level. so, i have a certain goal in mind when designing each room. each room has specific gameplay. if i had roaming monsters, this could potentially mess up those encounters, potentially even make it imbalanced. i'd rather have this random element within each of the rooms. designing them in a way that gives you small variations depending on what direction you go. having a combination of deaf monsters and normal monsters can help with this as well while also reducing but not eliminating a little randomness.

it all depends on the map itself i suppose. in my latest map, roaming monsters would screw up a lot actually. when they open doors, they potentially allow for line of sight for monsters that are not supposed to see the player until he opens the door himself. this would then spiral out of control and completely change how i intended the map to be played.

my ultimate goal for a map is to have a more controlled and directed environment but allowing for different approaches to get to and to beat those environments. i remade e1m1 recently which is pretty linear as you all know. but through the first secret, it gives you an alternate route through the level which changes the gameplay of that map. at least slightly. i tried to emphasize this by adding more weapons, another secret and some new combat encounters. depending on where you go first, the gameplay is different. i could even take this one step further and add scripts that spawn specific monsters depending on where you go first. this would add another layer of variation. 

Play good maps. Multiple times. Think about what the monsters are accomplishing while doing so. 

Don't lose yourself in theory. Also, watching demos is only a very small fraction as useful as playing a map yourself.