Doom Builder 2

I downloaded Doom Builder 2 yesterday and went through all the tutorials, but I have some questions that weren't answered in those things. Most of them are probably bonehead questions to anyone with even a small amount of experience, so bare with me.

1.Doors I make are always way too thick and huge, and they're rarely the proper proportions to fit the texture. What's a fast/effective way to make a door with the proper width and size?

2.I want to create an area the player walks over that triggers lifts to come down nearby, releasing enemies. So, traps. Do I need scripting for this or can I simply do it with lifts? I tried, the lifts made the "SHUNK" noise but didn't come down.

3.I've examined some other maps and they're way more intricately detailed with much smaller sectors and verticies than Doom Builder seems to want to let me make, even when I'm looking at things that were made IN Doom Builder. What causes restrictions to this certain bulky size?

4.The basic textures for Doom are very limiting. Is there some grandaddy of all texture packs that I should know about? I need a lot more than what I've got.

5.Any other advice for someone who's just starting out?

Okay, I don't use Doom Builder, so bear with me. ;)
But I think I can answer most of your questions.

1) Doom doesn't really have a way of scaling textures and such. Doom Builder should tell you the dimensions of each texture. Typically, you'll find that common textures are in widths of 128 or 64. So, to make a door where the texture will fit, you just have to scale the door accordingly. Now while you can't scale textures, you can align them by setting X and Y offsets. This just makes the texture shift around on the surface, so you can place it however you like. In contrast, floor and ceiling textures are fixed to the 64-grid. So if you want to align a teleporter pad texture, you have to actually move the teleport pad so it aligns to the grid.

2) I'll assume you're using the classic Doom editing configuration. Doom has a set of linedef actions where they have a certain activation type. Activation types include walkovers, switches, shootables, and [tagless] doors. Usually wad editors will denote this by using a letter that stands for the type (W/S/G/D), and a "1" or "R" to denote whether or not it is repeatable. So you might for instance have a linedef description that reads "D1 Open Door Wait Close". This means the linedef will trigger the sector on the back side of the line (because "D" types don't need a tag), and it will open, wait a few seconds, then close. The "1" means it can only be activated once. For the other types of triggers, you need to tag the linedef and the target sector with the same number. Floors can lower/raise and stay put, while lifts will always lower and then raise, much like a door. You want to use a "lower floor to lowest adjacent floor" or perhaps an "open door stay open" W1-type linedef action. When you walk over the line, the target floor will lower or a door will open, respectively. Since you only need to trigger it once, a non-repeatable type would be most suitable.

3) All editors have a grid size you can adjust. I'm not sure how to go about this in Doombuilder (there is probably a shortcut key or menu option), but you can usually change this to whatever size you want. Snapping to the grid is a good way to keep your lines and such straight so they are easier to work with.

4) Texture resource wads are so numerous it would be impossible to list them all. However, here is a good place to start.

5) Just keep practicing, experimenting, and observing other maps. Doom editing is sort of tricky at times. Usually you can expect the average person to gain a solid understanding of map editing in several months or so. Getting to be a good mapper is probably the most difficult part of the process, simply because a lot is expected after 16 years of Doom. :)

Allow me to plug CC4-tex as a large, general-purpose texture wad, containing lots of useful textures covering a variety of Doomy themes.

To adjust the size of the grid (the default is 64 map units I think which is too large for almost any kind of work) press G and then change the size of the grid on the dialogue box that should appear. I find the most often useful size is 16 although 8, 4 and 2 are also very useful for detailing, although I would leave that until you have honed your mapping skills a little further. Try to keep your grid sizes to these numbers: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256.

PhilibusMo said:

To adjust the size of the grid (the default is 64 map units I think which is too large for almost any kind of work) press G and then change the size of the grid on the dialogue box that should appear.

That certainly solves that problem. Thanks a lot.

Still, I'm curious why that wasn't in the tutorials...

Aseph said:

Still, I'm curious why that wasn't in the tutorials...

My guess? It seemed too blatant to deserve mention. Sometimes, people are so accustomed to certain notion that they forget complete newbies could not know about them.

A bit off topic, but I just want to say its good to see new mappers still popping up =)
Im new also, started out about a year, maybe closer to two years ago myself =)(had lots of long breaks though)

You can use the bracket keys ("[" and "]") to adjust the size of the grid as well.

Another question that wasn't covered in the Tutorial:

How do I get a flying enemy (such as a Lost Soul or Cacodemon) to start in the middle of the air instead of being stuck to the floor?

Aseph said:

Another question that wasn't covered in the Tutorial:

How do I get a flying enemy (such as a Lost Soul or Cacodemon) to start in the middle of the air instead of being stuck to the floor?

If anything ZDoom based, there is a Z-Height function, in 3D you can scroll with mouse on the specific Sprite to be at that height, but not all sprites will do so, only flying I believe.

I tried scrolling around. Also tried Shift+scroll, the mousewheel, and page up/page down keys.

Aseph said:

I tried scrolling around. Also tried Shift+scroll, the mousewheel, and page up/page down keys.

What stuff you can do depends greatly on what format you use. Boom has quite a few special line actions that let you change sector properties, and zdoom (doom in hexen) has parameter based actions and scripting, plus the z-height you're trying to do. I'm not sure on all of the ones that have it, but some ports like eternity and gzdoom have 3d floors and portals that can give true and the appearance of room over room with sector stacking.

For a beginning mapper, boom has plenty of stuff added to vanilla to give you room for more advanced stuff and get your basic mapping skills down, but if you really feel restricted you can go to other ports and learn scripting and the other special features. Taking it all in at once is alot though, so I'd suggest experimenting with a few maps and all the basic features. Getting a sense for how to make great gameplay helps a lot and is much easier when you don't have to wade through all the map details.

ArmouredBlood said:

For a beginning mapper, boom has plenty of stuff added to vanilla to give you room for more advanced stuff and get your basic mapping skills down

I'm actually not totally sure how to use Boom in Doom Builder. I know I go into Game Configurations and select Boom, but I'm not sure where to go from there... with regular Doom 2, I just add Doom2.wad as a resource. What about Boom? Using the Boom directory as a resource didn't work.

Doom2.wad is your resource no matter what map format and sourceport you're using, as long as you're mapping for Doom II (which you are), rather than Ultimate Doom, Hexen, Strife, or whatever.

Aseph said:

How do I get a flying enemy (such as a Lost Soul or Cacodemon) to start in the middle of the air instead of being stuck to the floor?

More specifically, you can set thing location on Z-axis only in ZDoom and derivatives (not sure about Eternity). You can not make flying enemies start in mid air when mapping for vanilla or Boom.*