How easy do you think it will be to map for Doom4?

I was wandering, since Doom 4 will probably take place on Earth, it might not have the extremely detailed space corridors that Doom 3 had, this could mean that mappers may not have to worry about spending hours just working on adding detail to a handful of rooms, i mean that's what turned me away from Doom 3 mapping, i released 3 maps, all of them took a very long time to make, and yet they are not very long and don't even have much detail compared to the levels from the actual Doom 3.

I really hope that Doom 4 level design does not focus as much on huge amount of eye candy and small details like Doom 3 did. Also, unlike Doom 3, Doom 4 will have large outdoor areas! I wander how much mappers can take good use of that :)

assuming there ever seriously is a doom 4 released, then i would assume (since it is coming from ID) that it would be chock full of eye candy and next-generation style graphics, and would probably be annoying to map for (like i find doom 3 is).

Well, since they are working on it I expect them to release it. When it's done.

From what I've seen of Id Studio. it's gonna be a great tool set for creating worlds. But if you found it too complicated to make a simple Doom 3 map. Then don't expect it to become less complicating.

ahh i didnt know that ID was seriously producing doom 4, i thought they simply stated they had plans.

Creating landscapes and detailing the surfaces will most likely be easy while creating geometry will be the same chore. On a side-note, all outside is no better than all inside.

It's important to note that IdTech5 isn't some sandbox engine like the Cry engine though.

I really should learn to map for this when it comes out; it'll be a fun change from Doom sourceports, though I doubt I'll be able to abuse it as much :P

kristus said:

It's important to note that IdTech5 isn't some sandbox engine like the Cry engine though.

Yeah, and that is very reassuring in terms of inside vs. outside. I believe we will have a mix of the two rather than being excusively outside. What I don't think we'll get, though, is variation in location. I'm personally getting pretty sick of playing entire games in the same damn location. Be it a Mars base, tropical island, africa, weird spaceship or city 17.

The biggest concern is will the level designer be able to produce content as quick and easily as with all ID-tech based games, as in building with BSP-based brushes.

Unfortuently many games out there are slowly drifting away from BSP-based level design and is more focusing on imported content like the god-awful Unreal tech where almost everything is a static mesh that is produced by an artist and where 5% of the level is made up of BSP, which that is done by the level designer.

If the new ID tech starts leaning towards this path, then modding will be a nightmare and thus will loose intrest for modders everywhere.

Kaiser said:

Unfortuently many games out there are slowly drifting away from BSP-based level design and is more focusing on imported content like the god-awful Unreal tech

Just because its a pain to MOD with the Unreal engine that doesn't make the engine "god-awful"

Its a great looking engine and i like it allot since it runs smoothly on my PC at high quality unlike allot of other engines out there!

kristus said:

But if you found it too complicated to make a simple Doom 3 map. Then don't expect it to become less complicating.

The problem i had with the engine was not that i found it to complicated to use but that the levels tool forever to be made if i wanted large amounts of detail into it. It just doesn't feel worth it to spend moths creating something that will only give the player 10-15 min worth of gameplay!

As they said in that interviews, the tools are more powerful and easier to use, but modding is still more complicated anyway.

hardcore_gamer said:

It just doesn't feel worth it to spend moths creating something that will only give the player 10-15 min worth of gameplay!

People do that with Doom 2 levels...

hardcore_gamer said:

Just because its a pain to MOD with the Unreal engine that doesn't make the engine "god-awful"

Thats just one of the reasons. I got plenty more reasons.

esselfortium said:

People do that with Doom 2 levels...

Besides the just handful of super high detailed and lengthy levels, i can't think of many Doom 2 maps that could have taken months to make and only be worth 10-15 min worth of gameplay. Also, Doom 2 level design is very different from Doom 3 level design, Doom 2 maps don't have to have large amount of detail and eyecandy to look good, but most Doom 3 maps do or otherwise they will just look bland and ugly. Also the Doom 3 engine allows you to create more or less anything you want thus allowing for much more complex levels.

Kaiser said:

Thats just one of the reasons. I got plenty more reasons.

Such as?

hardcore_gamer said:

Also the Doom engine allows you to create more or less anything you want thus allowing for much more complex levels.

What?

Shaviro said:

What?

Ops! I meant to say the Doom 3 engine! Sorry! I have corrected what i said in my above post!

It usually takes me at least 6 months to a year to finish a single-player Doom/Doom2 map, unless I'm doing a small speedmap. It's no coincidence that almost none of them are finished or released as of now :X

Shaviro said:

What I don't think we'll get, though, is variation in location. I'm personally getting pretty sick of playing entire games in the same damn location. Be it a Mars base, tropical island, africa, weird spaceship or city 17.

Not that it will happen, but if it is supposed to be "Hell on Earth" then fighting in various locations around planet Earth might be interesting, not just some generic grimy urban environment... or whatever things are likely to be.

After watching a few videos of ID's editing tool for the new Idtech5 engine, I can already see myself mapping for Doom 4 (granted if I get a new god damn computer).

hardcore_gamer said:

Ops! I meant to say the Doom 3 engine! Sorry! I have corrected what i said in my above post!

Oh, right. Didn't make any sense before :P
But yes, the Doom 3 engine let's you create pretty much anything you want. This, at first, sounds like a good thing and it is. It's just important that you learn how to use all that freedom creatively, because you won't have all those restrictions to force you to think creatively.

Enjay said:

Not that it will happen, but if it is supposed to be "Hell on Earth" then fighting in various locations around planet Earth might be interesting, not just some generic grimy urban environment... or whatever things are likely to be.

Yeah absolutely. I'd love to see some very different locations. Not one for every mission of course, but please give us some nice milestones like in the good old days. We could start in some gay urban setting (perhaps the main character lives there?) and progress out into the desert and hook up with some crappy military stronghold. Go underground into a huge complex kinda like Black Mesa. Eventually being teleported by freak accident to an arctic environment only to, after a while, discover that hell is also infesting the earth right there, so you come across some hellhole where there's lots of lava and everything is melting....

and so forth.

Oh and please let the player fight his own battle and not necessarily a lonely fight to save the planet.

Shaviro said:

Eventually being teleported by freak accident to an arctic environment only to, after a while, discover that hell is also infesting the earth right there, so you come across some hellhole where there's lots of lava and everything is melting....

That would be such an unbelievably awesome setting.

I would have to agree, the arctic area setting would be really fun to play. I hope it would have a slightly more open world setting where you can explore on the outside and go into levels, but that might be because I've been playing fallout 3 lately. However it seems like Rage is going in that direction as well. But exploring the frozen arctic wastelands for a few hours, and seeing a giant steam cloud rising in the distance and working your way towards it, only to find a giant gaping hole in the ice shelf with a magma filled chasm to work your way down into. The ice melting into streams of water as they get closer to the lave flow, yeah that would be a cool setting if done right. They'd have to do the stark contrast between barren, windy arctic wasteland, and bubbling magma cauldron effectively, but it would be fun.

As for the original topic, which I should get to, I haven't mapped for a game after Soldier of Fortune 2, and I still couldn't quite get the hang of the Quake 3 engine. Wolfenstein, Doom, Chasm, Quake, Half Life, I can do fine, but I could never get the hang of the Quark editor. Probably because I spent too much time with worldcraft. Still I've heard horror stories about doom 3 mapping. The engine can look great, but the amount of time and care it takes to make even the smallest detail takes far too much time, which is probably why we haven't seen many doom 3 level sets. I suppose that's why those people actually get paid to make maps for them.

I only used Quark a bit for Quake2. Otherwise I always went with Radiant. Worldcraft I also used for Quake2 (I had problems with saving files in the old QERadiant version)

The horror stories are false. It takes longer time to build a map in it than in Doom2 of course. But that's expected.

I don't think creating a good looking Doom3 map takes all that much more time than creating a good looking Doom2 map. It's just as much (if not more) a matter of lighting than it is 'detailing'. Normal mapping takes care of a lot of details for you.

I thought that if Doom 4 were to take place also in Antarctica, it would be completely melted, not only near the "hellhole". A molten Antarctica would fit the Doom theme for two reasons: 1) global warming, 2) it would be all rocky and give a familiar look, 3) probably I should read more Lovecraft.

Mapping for an Earth-themed game shouldn't be hard, because there wouldn't be as much need to justify maintenance for a base on a space rock. People make boxes here, if they can. I hope this doesn't turn into a reason to even cancel Doom 4 :)

hardcore_gamer said:

Besides the just handful of super high detailed and lengthy levels, i can't think of many Doom 2 maps that could have taken months to make and only be worth 10-15 min worth of gameplay.

What the hell are you talking about? How long does it take you to kill some monsters and find an exit switch? Do you ever look at your time in the intermission after playing a map? There are only a few maps I've played that take me more than 10 minutes to complete.

I have no idea of what Doom 3 is like to map with, but by the way I've seen it and judged the architecture of the maps, it really just looked like a generic prefab system, where simple rooms and hallways were created before hand, then layed out in pieces to form a map. Each hallway and room would be given distinctive textures and modified architecture so as to remove the "I've been here before" feeling. I'm pretty sure it isn't made that way, but if it were, it probably wouldn't take them more than a year to make Doom 4, 5, and 6.

JohnnyRancid said:

I have no idea of what Doom 3 is like to map with

And that is probably why you think mapping for it won't take that long, try making a Doom 3 map that has all the eye candy of actual game and then come back here and tell me that mapping with the Doom 3 engine doesn't take that long.

printz said:

I thought that if Doom 4 were to take place also in Antarctica, it would be completely melted, not only near the "hellhole". A molten Antarctica would fit the Doom theme for two reasons: 1) global warming, 2) it would be all rocky and give a familiar look, 3) probably I should read more Lovecraft.

If the recent discovery of a buried but still active volcano is any guide it'll take a lot to melt the Antarctic icecap. Ross Island is an obvious choice for an end-of episode map. :-)

Mapping for Doom 4 should be little different to it's predecessors - there'll be the the usual steepish learning curve while coming to terms with the editing tools, discovering engine features that can be exploited and limitations to live with or work around.

Bethesda should make a Doom.

I have a feeling Doom 4 will be a lot like Dead Space.

geo said:

Bethesda should make a Doom.

No.

Long answer: Fuck no.