Compare your first map to your latest!

I'll bite - this is pretty interesting from an introspection point of view. I am all about introspection!

Like Tango, my first ever map is long gone, but was a 32-sided polygon dropped into DEU, then stretched out into a jagged splat, stuffed full of things (back then it was called "Things Everywhere Syndrome", now we just call it bad Slaughter mapping...) and then a second sector added so that the game would load and to house an exit.

Oldest surviving map is very old, still, and was already gone over in a thread on Doomer Boards, so here's a quote for that:

Quote

Phobus said, on 6th Jan 2018:

 

Picture the scene... It's the early 2000s, probably 2001. A young boy, not yet called Phobus, has an interest in Doom and has been making blob maps in DEU II 5.21 - an editor missing the FLATs from Doom II an limited horribly by the RAM in the PC he's using. He's just been given Hank Leukart's Hackers' Guide to Doom and is ready to learn all about Doom from a man who literally wrote the FAQ back in the day. There's tutorials abouyt all of the features Doom has to show and it'll be an exciting new world!

 

Old Map Compilation MAP01 (previously CRUSHER.WAD)

 

Available in the Phobus Pre-'13 Grab Bag

 

I decided that map that takes just over a minute and only has 15 low-tier monsters in it could be summed up in screenshots easily, rather than needing a video, so here you go:

Spoiler

As you can see, we're looking at about four rooms here. Texturing is basic, mismatched and haphazard. 

FLATs change without any height variation or borders. The one door in the map is absurdly tall and poorly tiled on one side, as well as being 64 units thick. I've not even taken a picture of the crusher, which is a 64x64 square you have to pass under right at the start. However, the map has a crusher, door, teleports, a false wall and a lowering floor (triggered by walking through that narrow point in screenshot #5). You drop off of a ledge early on. The door and crusher tracks are lower-unpegged! As raw ingredients here, it's actually surprisingly promising. As a map, it's a learner's sketch that has no need to have been released and only serves as a curio. Very much a first step here. What I'd recommend new mappers take from this is that this is how simple a strong learning experience from tutorials can be. Nobody else needs to see it, but imagine if your first map does as much as this does, whilst being an actual challenge or good-looking. I hope everybody has made something like this at some point in their life!

Not a lot to phone home about, but functional, which isn't bad for somebody around 11 back then.

My latest finished map is in an unreleased, unfinished project. It's also a map made with the limitation of 5 Rooms, so isn't actually much bigger. It looks like this:

Flat ceilings, for the most part, but way more spacious rooms and a lot more going on in each of them. Obviously this isn't my biggest or best effort, but it's probably an average one for my current mapping enthusiasm.

I don't have my true first map(I don't even remember how it was called), but I have my first shared map here on this forum:

 

My first map added to idgames. Also, far from perfect, but at least it has some proper gameplay(don't mind missing skybox, I used older copy of map):
 

Now my recent maps(for upcoming my first episodic release):

This only proves, that with time and patience, people can learn a lot. Without criticism and help, I wouldn't get here, where I'm now. I still need learn some things, but those are more strengthen my skills. As for tropes, I like build natural settings and put lots of monsters, because I'm scared of empty places.


 

The earliest one I still have:

One I made a few weeks ago:

Around one year and a half of difference between these two.

I really need to do something about my habit of making cramped corridors.

Few of the first ones I consider "maps" back from 2005 for Shareware episode of doom (never released).

And my last and technically only (current time) released map in 2019.

2012

2018

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Don't have any screenshots of my first map to hand but I figure my second does the job well enough.

Fun thread! I'll hop on.

My first real map is just as well lost in the sands of time unfortunately, but if any of you are unlucky enough to have You Fail It DM on your hard drives, everything in that wad is basically my first experiences with Doom Builder as a 13 year old kid. Also delete it, it's garbage.

First singleplayer map I've made with actual effort was in Techwars, MAP12. There was an even older version of it before I "revised" it for Techwars, but here it is:

 

And here is a map from my upcoming mapset, Endless Night, 13 years later. There wasn't a lot of mapping inbetween, but I feel that I've improved quite a lot.

I map with weird intervals between each of my works, sometimes months or even years. It's important to still keep the touch and keep improving.

My very first map made in 2013 (I really started mapping in 2016 , it was just an 1 hour experimental speedmap)

My actual WIP map (the screens are a bit outdated but I'm on my cellphone)

I think the more I map , the more I take inspiration from ToD maps.

My map from mayhem 2018

Here's an effort of a smol pooh around 3 years ago
 

And heres an effort of a bigger pooh now
 

My first map from 2004 is fifteen years and four or five hard drives gone, but the oldest map I have on my hard drive comes from 2008.

Since I'm working on so much as once, it's hard to properly decide what my latest map is.

My latest completed, but unreleased map:
 

My latest released map (by definition of most recently released, not most recently built released):
 

And my latest incomplete map as it stands:
 

Ten years makes a difference, for sure, but most of this has, admittedly, come about very recently.

I have been mapping barely a year and a half, so I have obdurately held onto my first map. Below is it in original form and current.

And my latest is almost complete.

It was immediately obvious to me that I was much better at outdoor/natural areas than interior buildings. My second biggest improvement is that: visual detailing of "manmade" environments. But my biggest improvement is easily gameplay - mostly the combat itself (my first map had zero proper traps - not that that's bad per se - and numerous roaming nobles in massive areas) but also flow and layout to some degree (My first map had multiple yellow doors that eventually brought you to a red door, but you could do all that without even seeing the red door or key. In my latest map you can see all three keys and all three doors within the first three "rooms" basically. My first map had 16 doors. My latest has 7.).

Ohh really nice topic, i like the idea of having some introspection, i have some of my earliest map attempts somewhere around, they were made somewhere in 2003/2004, i had absolutely no idea how to make proper maps, and it shows, they are full of glitches and all sectors are fucked up
 

Flash forward to last year, i know that's a lot of time, but to be fair before that, i just randomly made maps every once in a while, and they all looked quite boxy and boring, this map i did last year on UDMF format was kinda in the same style. At the time i built it, i hadn't mapped for nearly a year, so it was a return to mapping of sorts

I do think the map is fine but there's a lot of boxyness in its design, some unnecessary backtrack, and a lot things i kinda dislike. I was really improvising a lot with it and i had no clear design other than 'just build a snowbase map' idea. But the thing was that i really had a blast making this map, so after that i just kinda started mapping again and haven't stopped

Few months after that one, i did a boom map and i started experimenting with some things, doing some weird shaped rooms, adding shortcuts to avoid backtrack, and all that sort of stuff. Lots of flaws present, but i feel this is the map is when i started to evolve from the maps i had done before

As for the present, i feel i kinda evolved a lot, it's been a year since i last did that map, and lot's of stuff changed, i started to focus on gameplay and layout designs on my maps to make them be fun to explore. I still feel i have a lot to learn and i don't know if i have developed a style that tells right away i did a map, but i feel good looking back and seeing how much distance there is from that map and the stuff i make nowadays, this is the last map i did for UDMF
 

And this was the map before, made with 1000 lines for vanilla format

Both were done with the goal of being fun to explore and navigate, quite different from the previous map =P

My first map ever was an obligatory MAP01 edit called "Fat Mushkin's Lavapit". The name relating to a lavapit with a... you guessed it.. Mancubus in it :P I don't think it's ever been released publicly as editing iwad maps aren't exactly the best thing to do.

This is a screenshot from a map I'm currently working on. Don't know where it's heading yet, but I'm at a place now where nothing related to Doom editing is certain for me, so I'm very relaxed about it.

5 minutes ago, Chris Hansen said:

My first map ever was an obligatory MAP01 edit called "Fat Mushkin's Lavapit". The name relating to a lavapit with a... you guessed it.. Mancubus in it :P I don't think it's ever been released publicly as editing iwad maps aren't exactly the best thing to do.

 

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Hah, I was wondering about this since it's listed in so many of your .TXTs. 

I don't have my very first few maps anymore, so I'll use my earliest surviving map.

And latest finished map:
 

Bonus Umbra of Fate just because it's large:
 

I guess 20-some years makes a difference.

16 hours ago, Egg Boy said:

How has your design philosophy changed or stayed the same? What tropes still continue to this day, and which have you discarded?

Gameplay-wise it hasn't changed much at all, it's just been whittled down through practice.  I always start with a general core idea ("central hub with spokes coming out of it", "two paths diverge, then meet in the middle", "low road, then high road") then build from there.

Visually a lot has changed.  I've gone from stock 1994 Doom map looks and not caring much about texture alignment to Lovecraftian-gothic temples inspired by Quake with far too many point lights.  I've always tried to pay attention to lighting, though.  And the ceiling decorations have always been there.

The first Doom map I have ever released Dates back to April of 2014. Erik Alm was a big source of influence and inspiration for my work at the time. (especially the music!)

My most recent release, for a 1000 line community project:

My works have gotten a bit more distinct over the years, if I do say so myself.

As as bonus: My most recent non-speedmap map made with modern standards in mind:

(Mayhem18 Purple and Orange)

I've had a habit of copying various mapper's styles back then, basically ranging from Eric Alm, Skillsaw, so Xaser at some point. Most of the maps I've made in my career were mostly speedmaps for the Abyssal Speedmapping Sessions, and It was there where I began to experiment a bit with different shapes and angles to the point where it interfered with my workflow, Making myself think about how my map would look bland if it didn't have any interesting shapes from an automap view. That's something I've been trying to break away from to do my own thing. Mind you, I am still playing around with a style to find what I'm most comfortable with when making my maps. The same thing can be applied to my Quake 1 stuff as well. Who knows how long until I find that perfect balance anyways?

Hmm well this was my first map (Made for DMP2012)

And one from the end of last year

I hope I have at least improved a little, I guess the biggest change is the same as most others with maps becoming much more organic and free flowing in terms of the connectivity.

Since I did my first mapping attempts somewhere around 1995 all those maps are lost. But of the framents I can remember they both looked and played terribly.

The few maps I've released since then haven't really improved visually, but in gameplay. The situations where I think "WTF was I thinking" when looking at my maps retrospectively have gone down substentially. That said I think it'd be fun to have a thread where people critique their own maps, looking at their own mistakes and how they'd do it better now.

First completed map:

Most recently completed map:

I think my main vehicle for improvement has been spending time studying my favourite mappers' works in order to try and fully understand my influences.

Bonus year-by-year showcase for the general progression and overall ambition of my mapping:

2015:

2016:

2017:

2018:

This is the first map I finished, in its first version (Circa 2010):

 

Here is the map of the final version of this one (early 2012):
 

And this is last map I made entirely by myself, still WIP, needs more detail, this is for Interception 2, MAP12:
 

There is an improvment, but not that much, I had at least 4 years from 2013 to late 2018 without touching Doom Builder, so I could be on a better spot

Here is the first map as it was in the late 90s (1997?) when I thought it was finished.  It was later split into 4 maps because my friend said it was too big.  All 4 maps still get tweaks now, as I continue to release new versions of my compilation, Empyrion.

Here is my latest released map.

A dobu map in 2013

A dobu map in 2019

Really fun seeing how almost everyone's first maps are strictly orthogonal, and then a bunch of us get slowly get consumed by circles and angles. My mapping style of starting with a "vision" and fleshing it out room by room is still the same, but I've slowly evolved what my initial "visions" are in order to suit Doom's gameplay better (for instance, making a map less boxy and linear). A majority of my maps through the years have also all roughly stayed the same size too (ie too damn big).

My fist map wasn't boxy because I heeded the advice in Hank Leucart's Doom Hackers Guide to avoid too many 90 degree angles so it will not look like a Wolfenstein map.  The first sector I drew was an octagon, and I still use octagons now.  The area that was all boxy was deliberately looking like a Wolfenstein map, inspired by Doom II MAP31 and MAP32.