What gives you ideas for DOOM maps?

[Doomsday]

When making a DOOM map I usually struggle with making rooms look interesting or just what to do next. What helps you with making DOOM maps?

[Tango]

in the last few years, here's what I've been doing:

• subscribe to channels on youtube that post UV Max demos and other playthroughs of various mapsets (either that I have or haven't played). the DooMed Speed Demos Archive channel is a fantastic channel for this
• watch random videos on my commute, or put them on my tv in the background while at home doing other things
• anytime I see something in a video that gives me an idea (either in terms of gameplay or visuals or whatever), I either take a screenshot and save it, or I sketch down the idea in a notebook
• anytime I feel like mapping but don't know what exactly to make, I look through the screenshots I've saved, and ideas I have in my notebook

 

I've found this to be extremely helpful for me, because I almost always have a pretty decent bank of gameplay and visual ideas that I can pull from anytime I need inspiration

 

Edited October 27, 2019 by Tango

[Doomkid]

Play a Tango wad, you'll get excellent ideas right away, mans been putting out quality for years now

[DavidN]

When I’m stuck I look at photos or videos of real life locations that fit in with the theme of what I’m going for, and try to imagine how to convert them into sectors and make an interesting room or encounter out of them. Once I have a basic layout for a room, that often sparks the rest of the map back to life again with all the potential for how it could be connected to the main map and how the level route weaves in and out of it.

[Brock]

Music and pictures

[00_Zombie_00]

As Tango said about looking at other maps, here is a list of maps that I use for inspiration:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_FDYYgoUTwOTZbYKCV12PYLd8ATaVj52

 

[DynamiteKaitorn]

I regularly go for walks around where I live and I must say, it does help to sometimes keep an eye on how some buildings look. Bonus if you can walk around at night to get a feel of how you can contrast a dark scene with lights from a town.

[Octillion]

This will sound very unconventional and weird, but hear me out. Look at MMORPGs. They have some of the most beautiful and brilliant architecture out there. Particularly, the raids, dungeons and cities.

 

That's what I do when I look for inspiration.

 

Of course, treat this as a bonus idea after you look through the maps everyone above me mentioned.

[Roofi]

I mainly get inspired by the last maps I played. For instance , I like making hard maps after playing hard wads.

 

The music is one of my source of inspiration. The choice of music is extremely important. It will give the atmosphere and the pace of the level.

[Phobus]

Real places, other games and other maps can be sources of inspiration, but often the ideas just seem to form in my head and I've got to get them out quickly, or risk losing interest.

[Aurelius]

I actually listened to some Stephen King talks while I was mapping like a month ago, and he said that good ideas stick. At least to him, if the idea was good, he didn't write it down. He waited a few weeks, maybe even longer, and if the idea still stuck among the others that he'd come up with in that time, it was a good idea.

Good ones stick, and it has been true for me so far. Although there are good ideas that disappear too, so the logic there is definitely not infallible. Sometimes we just have bad memory. But I think there's a good point to be understood there.

I personally look at other games, not necessarily anything related to Doom or FPS games. I got plenty of ideas playing Zelda games, for example. Anything that has architecture and monster encounters works. But be open to different games, since only looking at Doom will give you Doom-like ideas, and sometimes you need something completely different to make a novel map.

[Scorpio]

It's quite a complex subject-a source of inspiration. I'm sure every author has his own. For me, for example, it is primarily the atmosphere. The design and gameplay should create a kind of hellish mix that should make the player empathize with what I put in when creating the map. It's bloody complicated. And sometimes it's a shame when people don't understand the emotions I put into my creation. These are necessary costs to be put up with.

[MAN_WITH_GUN]

Music only 🎵

[PeterMoro]

I think of and list ideas before even starting a wad. I try to have a least one new idea in a wad so that it's not just a generic techbase wad but offers something new conceptually. Put them all down on paper first. Could be any new concept about gameplay / monster placement / room design / motifs / lighting / story / architecture / even color schemes.

For example in my last wad i had an idea where the player sees an enclosed tech room that is accessed by portal only, but when they arrive it's the same layout but all the textures have been changed and it's a hellish version of the tech room. 

 

Lighting is a big factor in this game and using brightness / darkness / strobing can have amazing effects on levels. I like having areas where the lights go out, become dim, or get turned on like in DoomII's map 04 (the Focus). Great use of lighting in that wad and i love how the lights can be turned on in the corridor. 

 

Also look all around for architecture / design ideas. I take photos of random stuff all the time to put in a Doom level. For example i saw this light in a restaurant. The exact same copy didn't work so well in the map but i changed it a little and came up with something new. It's a similar idea. 

[Beleth]

artstation.com has nice ideas, also old buildings like temples or churches. They had to work with very raw material back then. f.e. gothic churches are pretty awesome, considering what they had to work with and how they did it. also if you just walk around in big buildings, look what they did with architecture, where they placed light, have changes in height or else, this can be quite an inspiration.