Jump to content
Search In
  • More options...
Find results that contain...
Find results in...
The Icon of Sin

Why are many Doom players map creators

Recommended Posts

One strange thing about the doom community I’ve found is that a large portion of people who play the series make maps for it, why is this?

Edited by The Icon of Sin

Share this post


Link to post

It's amazing, thats why! You get to use your creativity in your favourite game. Some make maps as a hobby (like me), while some just do it for fun. Some may even do this to become professional video game designers.

Share this post


Link to post

I do it because it's fun and its something to do, and I'm interested in mapping and I think DOOM is a perfect starter

Share this post


Link to post

Prolly because it's a cool thing to do and experiment with ideas. Liking a game enough can have groovy consequences.

 

Some do it for fun/as a hobby, while others might be doing it because they want to pursue a career in game development at some point in life.

Share this post


Link to post

It's easy, fun, you have hundreds of tools and tutorials at your disposal, and people willing to play your maps and give you advice on how to improve at making them!

Also idk, I think creating content for a product you love is part of being a fan

Share this post


Link to post

I’d like to add that I agree that making content for a thing you love is common but the special thing I see from the doom community is that almost everyone I’ve talked to who is in it makes WADs.

Share this post


Link to post

I do it because DOOM is one of my favorite games and the fact that it is so easy to get into content creation for it is so cool. It's like when you're a kid and you can imagine a level of your favorite game being just a little bit better if you design it.

Share this post


Link to post

It's something I've wondered for a while, why aren't more people into the graphic and sound design?

I think there are more gameplay mods and such in ZDoom community, as it's much easier to do so in advanced engines, but I'm not sure.

Share this post


Link to post
Just now, DuckReconMajor said:

It's something I've wondered for a while, why aren't more people into the graphic and sound design?

I think there are more gameplay mods and such in ZDoom community, as it's much easier to do so in advanced engines, but I'm not sure.

Mapping is shit tons easier. Mapping software such as Doom Builder is super easy to use. With graphics and sound you need to put some solid effort into it to have it sound good.

Share this post


Link to post

I like to tell people I work with game design, when in reality I just make doom maps.

Also I like making neat stuff

 

Share this post


Link to post

I personally love to do it since Doom is so versatile you can make literally anything to your hearts content, The limit being only what's possible in the engine.(But we all know that people have gone well past the boundaries of what should be possible with that.)

 

Doom may have started off as a game, but it's evolved to become something greater then it's original Purpose.

Share this post


Link to post

Even a complete brainlet like me who never used any mapping software for Doom ever recently hitted Doom Builder X and i could make a small garbage ass room.

 

All you need to do is pay attention and read what is explained.

 

Maybe one day ill get more time into it. For now, my priorities are elsewhere, which is akin to writing the explanation :)

Share this post


Link to post

Doom mapping is easy to learn - here's plenty of tutorials, videos with showcases how to make something specific. Besides, people are willing to help new people. But if you want become true master of doom mapping, you'll need work, experiment with ideas and be willing to accept that someone will still be better than you. 

Share this post


Link to post

I agree with a lot of what has already been said, but I'm surprised nobody has seemed to mention that modern games can't generally be modded to the same degree as Doom; they have little to no ability to actually load custom content like Doom.

 

Share this post


Link to post

To me seeing mistakes in the game like sprite inconsistency and some weird texture glitches makes the game seem more approachable for map making for me at least, when I see mistakes in other more modern games I think “they just didn’t care” but in doom It like brings me more appreciation for the game if that makes sense.

Share this post


Link to post

Though I don't 'map' myself I can tell you just by being in the community it's no doubt ( with the possible exception of when a new game is released) the lifeblood of the fandom. 

It's quite amazing what people have made. My hat is off to them for sure.

Share this post


Link to post

It is certainly a nice combination of being really easy to get into while also having close to the sky's limit on what you can make, the incredibly vast amount of attractive and awesome user content already made, and the simple fact that Doom is all around a really fun game. You also have a whole range of personal motivators that can come into play such as finding it an enjoyable hobby for your free time or a preferred outlet of artistic expression. And while I don't know how true it is today, there was a time where making good quality & popular Doom maps opened doors into jobs within the gaming industry. At the very least you can still use Doom mapping and modding as a nice stepping stone into getting the skillset needed if you want to make a career in video games.

Share this post


Link to post

I reckon that it's mainly because it's relatively easy to make maps/mods for, being an old game, with a source code release and having up to date map and mod creation tools.  Certainly Doom mapping was much tougher for most of us before Doom Builder and its various forks came about.  There's also a remarkably wide scope, from creating vanilla maps to creating advanced GZDoom maps that come close to offering the graphics and functionality of most modern games.  As it happens, after stints of modding for Doom 3 and DOOM 2016 with limited success, it was playing Minecraft that primarily inspired me to go back to modding/mapping for the original Doom games.  I enjoyed creating stuff in Minecraft but I increasingly found myself wanting to recreate the Doom universe in Minecraft, and so realised that it was time to get back into mapping for the original Dooms.

Share this post


Link to post

I find it relaxing. Oh man I get right into it - I can spend hours drawing lines and screwing around and making interesting connections and using creativity

 

but I only enjoy the map building.

 

As soon as I declare the level is complete I totally forget about it - like I couldn't care less lol

 

Is that normal?

Share this post


Link to post

I think it's mostly for fun. I like being creative in Doom, though I've seen a lot of people from different countries making maps for Doom but haven't found someone from Slovenia making some, so I stepped in & decided to start making maps for my fellow Doom fans. :>

Share this post


Link to post

It’s because making a basic map is easy as hell, especially with modern tools. I think if other games that are as beloved as Doom are also had tools that allowed you to make a decent map in 30 minutes flat, game modding would be more common in general. Toolkits are such a huge part of that. Even when they were less refined, Doom’s modding tools have always been usable.

 

Conceptually, it would be super easy to make custom levels for old arcade and NES games, even compared to making Doom maps - if there were good tools available, that is. There aren’t though, so content can only be produced by certified geniuses who are programming gurus.

 

Good evidence for this is that there are also thousands and thousands of Super Mario World hacks. To me the obvious explanation is that the tools for SMW level making are super easy to use, much like with Doom, so producing custom content is easy. Combine that with a big fanbase and you have a perfect recipe for endless custom content.

 

So many forgotten games would still be far more alive if good modding tools had been developed for them (that’s my theory, anyway)

Share this post


Link to post

To me it's like golf courses. You have your fundamental tactics that you take with you everywhere but the map determines strategy.

Share this post


Link to post

When I played many different computer games as a small kid in 90's, I always desired to be able to make my own maps for these games (mostly 2D platforming games like Commander Keen, Hocus Pocus). But there were no tools and level editors available (and even if there were, internet was not a thing that time so I would probably not get one anyway). As a compensation, I was drawing some levels on a paper, or built levels from a construction kit similar to lego, and then I played through my "levels", resembling some gameplay logic like randomly taking off a health point when an "enemy" shot me etc.

From what I say, I believe, that many people generally desired to create their own levels when they were playing games. Some minority of games actually provided a built-in level editors on their own, but these were rather simple games, so there were limitations what you could do.

At first I got a map editor for Duke Nukem 3D and tried to use it. But it was so confusing and very uncomfortable to use, figuring out how to make basic things like doors with those special "sector effector" things and numbers was a big pain. So I made just one small map and that was it. Later, when I discovered Doom Builder, it was a different story. I just wonder why nobody remade Duke Nukem "Build" editor to something more convenient to use, with similar interface to Doom Builder, it would probably (but not dramatically) increase interest in Duke3D mapping.

29 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

So many forgotten games would still be far more alive if good modding tools had been developed for them (that’s my theory, anyway)

Well, honestly, it is probably not necessarily true. By chance, I personally programmed a modding tool (Level + Graphics editor) for Apogee 2D platformer called Hocus Pocus (https://pckf.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3610) but not much new stuff was made, people probably made and published at most 2 or 3 new maps for this game, which is pretty weak result. I felt this game was popular enough to deserve some new custom content, but probably because I came up with a decent modding tool too late (in 2016), there were not strong and unified enough community to make proper new content for this game.

I also made level editor for another 2D platformer called Vinyl Goddess from Mars (https://pckf.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3629) but this one gained even much less attention and zero new content expect my own two custom levels.

Share this post


Link to post
1 hour ago, Jayextee said:

The truth nobody wants to impart in this here very topic is; those politicians were correct. DOOM rots our brains, to the point where it's all we can do. A lot of us wear DOOM shirts and sip coffee from our DOOM mugs whilst making maps for DOOM with DOOM builder because our thinkmeats are corrupted in a manner that makes us crave more DOOM.

Sorry to break it to ya, by the time you've signed up for a DOOM forum you're already past the point of no return on that one.


I totally agree with this statement.
I had to ''take a time off'' from Doom, as it was the only thing i talked, thinked, and played. God, i also dreamed about Doom. And that wasn't sane at all.

So i get out. Thats why i doesn't show up or comment here as i usually did in the past months.
I'm in a detox program, kinda.

Now i just check Doomworld once a week, just for notices. And i had to stop playing. And thats something hard... really hard to do.

And yes, sometimes i just got the urge to take the shotgun and just blow everything on screen...
Doom is literal. When you sign here, you are probably doomed for a long time to come.

Why? because the enthusiasm here is addicting, the new projects, the new ideas, the beautiful concepts, every damm thing is a melting pot for something bigger.

Some friends asked why i loose all my time playing an old game.

Because its an infinite game. Every day something new appeards an so, its a never ending story.

Always more...

Always more...

That why i had to leave this place.

 

Good memories from when i was a kid comes to me everytime i shot an imp, or shivers run along my spine at every stomp of the cyberdemon. In that moment i'm a kid again, just caring for whats on screen. And nothing else... and nothing else...

But i had 30 now, i have a job, i have my studies, i have to be responsible. Nothing good will come for me reliving past days. Even if they are totally fun and magic all around.
Some might think that this is just a game, but no, for me its my childhood. Its soo part of me that i can't think of me without Doom in my life. But i can't live all the time in the past. Nostalgy/melancholy is a serious problem sometimes.

But, how many people (beside us) can say that they faced Evil and survived? how many people have punched a cyberdemon in that juicy ass?

In Real Life, not many.

Here... we all know that bliss...


This comes to be long, i don't wrote this looking for answers, just because i'm a writer and i needed to write something today. Something from deep within me. ANd maybe, some might relate to this experience.

I enjoy my time with you all, i come to really love the humor and jokes, and also the serious and tragic.
I'm working in a pretty BIG book that will be cement the new avant-garde style...

this style might be goofy and unsympatethic for some, but some will feel it inside...

 

here is a little poem/song that some might recognize that touch the theme of my ongoing pseudo philosophical opus...

 

Tom the happy pretender
One eye on the mend
One eye on his watch
His parents told him
Don't worry, Tom, there's plenty o' jobs in the big
City but with one eye only
It gets so hard

No depth perception
Cyclops
No depth perception
Cyclops
No depth perception
Cyclops
No depth perception

 

Share this post


Link to post

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×