Bauul Posted April 30, 2020 In early April 1995, a few months after Doom 2's release, the Waite Group published a guide to editing Doom entitled The Doom Construction Kit: Mastering and Modifying Doom. It was written by Joseph Grant Bell, an author who went on to write fair few other gaming-related books, including the official strategy guides for Hexen, Deus Ex and Half-Life. The majority of the 300-page book is made up of overviews of Doom's monsters and weapons, as well as detailed guides for the software included in the bundled CD: DEU, Dehacked, and command-line asset extraction tools like DMGRAPH, DMAUD, and DMMUS. But towards the end of the book there is a chapter on what constitutes a good Doom level, and ideas for new mappers. What it covers is a pretty fascinating view of what constituted a "good" Doom level design in an era when the very earliest levels were first being made. Some of the advice still rings very true today, some of it is positively quaint, but it represents a thoroughly interesting snapshot in time when mapping was in its infancy. I recently bought a copy of the book, and so for pure historical interest, I've reproduced the section on level design below (complete with the original diagrams!): --- CHAPTER 9: DESIGN ISSUES It's fun to just play around with the game editors, but after a while you might want to do some serious level creation. That one-room level filled with eight Spider Masterminds is amusing, certainly, but only for so long. This chapter will deal with the nuts and bolts of design. I'll discuss mission difficulty, the different types of challenges you can put in your missions, and some important ideas to bear in mind when designing different types of levels. It's easy, after all, to just throw together any old level- but it’s hard to make one that other people actually want to play. We'll take a look at several types of challenges to include in your level, and how to balance the difficulty presented by those challenges. CHALLENGES There's more than one type of challenge in a Doom level. Or at least there should be. Many of these challenges are closely linked, but it's important to understand them all separately. We'll break them up into three groups: creatures, supplies, and environment. A good level usually includes a good mix of challenges, thereby avoiding repetitive play. CREATURES Creatures present the most obvious type of challenge. There are dozens of hungry monsters wandering about in every Doom episode, and the main challenge is to get through the level without letting them kill you. When you design a level, you'll have to decide what creatures to place, how many there should be, and where to place them. Let's take a look at a few common pitfalls to avoid (such as including too many big monsters) and issues to consider (like the use of creatures as obstacles). DON'T GO OVERBOARD WITH THE BIG GUYS There are lots of custom Doom levels out there and we've seen quite a few of them. One bit of wisdom we've gleaned from hours of trekking through home-brewed infernos is to go easy on the biggest monsters. There's a tendency when you first start designing to throw in rooms full of Cacodemons, Barons of Hell, Cyberdemons and Spider Masterminds. It's easy to see why the designer envisions a scenario where not one, not two, but three Cyberdemons emerge from the walls and pummel the player into oblivion. "This will be cool!" the designer thinks. Unfortunately, most players don't think it's cool to get killed over and over again—it rapidly grows tiresome, and then downright frustrating. If you want people to enjoy playing your level (in other words, if you want them to spend time playing your level instead of somebody else's), follow some basic guidelines when placing the "boss" monsters. Give the player lots of room to maneuver. A big open area or a maze of long corridors gives the player a chance to escape. Close quarters, or mazes full of very short corridors, will ensure point-blank hits from boss monsters. Game over. (A noteworthy exception to this rule is the Archvile, who is nearly invincible when placed in an open area.) Don't place more than two boss monsters in an area unless there is some architectural feature that really helps the player. Two is usually fine because the player can get them fighting with each other. Three Cyberdemons or Spider Masterminds at once are really too much: three Barons could work, if the player is very good. Try not to have a big creature around every corner. If the player encounters huge opponents all the time, they begin to lose their shock value. The big end-level heavies become commonplace threats, and the player soon becomes bored with them. If you save them up, though, they'll really make an impression when they do appear. QUALITY, NOT QUANTITY While you shouldn't use too many boss monsters, it's also advisable not to have huge hordes of little or medium-sized creatures. After playing a "Monty Hall" style level packed with loads of ammo, great weapons, and huge swarming hordes of creatures, the player can get fatigued. After you've entered the tenth room just packed with Former Humans and Imps, it gets to be a real pain just shooting them all! It's a chore, like mowing the lawn. The player enters a room, wearily produces the chaingun, and begins the slow work of dicing up the rabble (yawning all the while). Two minutes later, the chaingun whirs to a stop, and the player trudges through a sea of carnage, only to open up the next door and find hundreds of new creatures. Don't let this happen to your levels! HIDE THE LITTLE CRITTERS Doom monsters are, on average, pretty slow and dumb. Putting them out in the open is, in effect, just lining them up so the player can knock them down. These monsters become downright deadly though when hidden in clever places. Instead of putting them in the center of the room, tuck them away in corners. For example, you can hide them in nooks beside the door where the player will enter. (See Figure 9-1.) Be sure to pen them in with lines bearing "MO" (impassable by monster) flags. They'll wait back there until the player appears, and then shoot at him from their alcoves. These flagged lines prevent the player from getting any use out of the charge-in-and-retreat-quick ploy, because these monsters can't be suckered out into the corridor where they're vulnerable. The flags also keep the critters from wandering out of the room at the sound of distant gunfire, leaving it vacant and uninteresting when the player finally enters it. So put those monsters in sneaky locations, and use invisible lines with "MO" flags liberally to keep the beasties right where you want them. Always remember that your hordes of hench-critters are hungry and mean, but they're also stupid. You can give them a great spot for an ambush, but they'll quite readily leave it at the first hint of gunfire. So use those barriers and make them stay put. THINK ABOUT DIRECTION The direction a monster faces when the game starts can be important. Noises will make creatures start moving around, but if they don't see or hear the player, they will just stand there, frozen in place. Make sure your badguys are facing the proper direction from the start, or the player might enter rooms full of statues. The monsters will just stand in one spot, begging to be shot in the back. It looks a bit silly, and doesn't provide much of a challenge. But you can have lots of fun with direction, as well. For example, the WAKO.WAD level (included on the CD) begins with a huge spiral staircase. Monsters stand facing the wall all along the staircase. If you're very careful and don't shoot or touch any of them, you will be able to sneak all the way up that staircase and none of those creatures will spot you. Realistic? Not a chance. But the effect is pretty funny. Or think about this: as shown in Figure 9-2, a player enters a room with three new exits (all hallways). Each hallway has an invisible sound barrier wall (a line with the "SO" flag) before it, blocking out all sound. Visible down each corridor is a Baron of Hell, taking up almost the entire hallway. The Barons start the game facing directly away from the player. Now, with a few rockets, this is a very simple situation for the player: pump five rockets into each Baron's back and he will die. The sound barriers prevent the other Barons from waking up and causing trouble while the shelling goes on. But the players don't know about those sound barriers. What a situation they'll think they're in! Three Barons, all hulking quietly in their respective hallways, oblivious to the player. But a single shot would attract the attention of them all (or so the player thinks). It's a great joke. Now, if you removed those sound barriers, it would be a tricky situation indeed. IMPOSSIBLE BATTLES Sometimes it's good to put in creatures that the player can't kill. After blowing away hordes of slavering demons, players often start to believe they can kill anything. Show them they’re wrong! But make it obvious that they can avoid of impossible combats. Those impossible creatures will demand a change of strategy from the player. Instead of cleaning up all the monsters along the way, the player will have to come to terms with the idea that this particular bad guy must be left alone. Maybe you could start a level with two doors. One leads to the proper path to end the level. The other opens onto a little room with a Cyberdemon inside. The player will learn right away that the Cyberdemon door should not be opened especially at the start of the level, with limited weapons and supplies. Maybe you could end the level with a BFG 9000 and a stack of cells, so a player who simply can't stand to leave anything alive can go back and try to finish the job. USE CREATURES AS BARRIERS Also you can use creatures as barriers. Instead of a locked door, you could just have a regular door—but with a pair of Spider Masterminds guarding it. They should be penned in by walls about as high as the player's waist: just high enough to keep them in place, but low enough for them to shoot over. Trying to run past them would be a real challenge. Killing them outright would be unthinkable without a BFG and a ton of cells. Used this way, the monsters are creative obstacles. If they were free to roam through the level, though, they would become a regular monster threat. And two Masterminds on the loose are a bit unfair. SUPPLIES The weapons, ammo, and artifacts you put in a level determine (to a surprisingly great extent) how tough that level will be. Bearing this in mind, it's easy to adjust a level's difficulty without adding or removing creatures. VULGAR EXCESS If you want to have a level (or even part of a level) that's overflowing with tough creatures, go right ahead. Just add lots of Medikits, armor, good weapons, and ammo to balance the creatures. You can test a player's intelligence in combat by placing storerooms full of Medikits and armor somewhat away from the main killing fields. The player has to be careful, then, to keep track of how much damage the Marine is taking—and run back for supplies when necessary. THE MISER'S CHALLENGE Vulgar excess can be exhausting after a while. Sometimes it's even more fun to make a miserly level: a level with a whole lot of Former Humans, some Sergeants, a few Imps but not much else. There shouldn't be many sources of healing and armor, and the best weapon available is usually a shotgun (or a chaingun with limited ammo). The best way to create a level like this is to refer to the charts in Chapter 2. First, count up the creatures in your level and figure out how much ammo would he necessary to them all if the player made every shot count. For example, a tiny level with eleven imps would require a single "placed" shotgun: it takes six shots with the pistol to kill an Imp, so you could finish off three imps with the 20 bullets you begin the level with (and still have two bullets left over). The eight shells in the shotgun will take care of remaining eight Imps. Of course, this assumes that you are both lucky and incredibly dexterous. Once you've determined the bare minimum of ammo necessary to kill every creature, add an extra 10 or 15 percent when you figure how much ammo give the player. So our "eleven Imps" level would get an extra "placed" clip of 10 pistol bullets (or a 4-pack of shotgun shells if we were feeling generous). This way, ammo conservation is still a real challenge, but not to the extent that a single misplaced shotgun blast will make it impossible to finish the level. Bear in mind that the pistol is a dreadful way to kill monsters, so if your level has no chaingun, and you want to make it miserly — yet avoid the possibility of players having no ammunition at all — throw in a few extra boxes of 50 bullets. The pistol is so weak that all the ammo in the world won't unbalance the level. Now if there's a chaingun to use those bullets, that's a different matter entirely: the bullets become a much more potent resource, and could make the level too easy if you pile them in. ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARDS The architecture and environment of a level can make all the difference in the world. Six Demons in a huge, open room pose no problem for a good player with a shotgun and plenty of ammo. But put those six Demons in a small room, and add a trip wire that closes the door behind you when you enter — and the situation becomes downright deadly. It's important not to underestimate the role that architecture plays in determining level difficulty. ENCLOSED SPACES Yes, it’s much easier for the player in those wide-open spaces. Small, winding passages and cleverly hidden enemies make Doom levels much more challenging. Just be careful not to make the whole level a maze, and try not to limit the space so much that the player never has any room to move. The idea is to limit the player's possibilities, not to remove them entirely! And put in a few big rooms too, just for variety. CREATURE TRAPS Most effective Doom traps release a horde of monsters and limit the player’s movement in some way. This is necessary, because a good Doom player has little difficulty with common threats. Most of Doom’s demonic beasts are as slow and dim-witted as they are mean – so you have to help them out a bit. Trip wires and trigger plates are the easiest way to achieve a nasty surprise. A simple but effective ploy is to make trip wires open up rooms full of enemies right behind the player. This is particularly useful if the trip wire is near a door with enemies behind. If the player opens the door before realizing what has happened, the poor Marine will be suddenly surrounded by enemies. A variant of this is to let out the enemies after the player has entered a dead end or a very enclosed space. These enemies should block the only exit, and force the player to fight it out. The western part of E1M5 (Doom Episode 1, Mission 5) has an excellent room of this sort, where the player enters a roughly circular area. Triggers release several waves of creatures as the player delves westward. Just when it seems that there can't be any more opposition, another trigger is activated. There's no choice but to fight the monsters that come from both directions. Closing the player's entry door outright is another highly effective trap. Even worse traps start a crushing ceiling right above you, or even slightly behind you, as well as releasing monsters. Your flight is cut short by a loud squishing noise.... TRICKS Tricks can be bewildering, deadly, or just amusing. Often they do not cause the player harm directly, they just create confusion and make other trouble easier to fall into. The false exit on E2M6 is the perfect example of this—it lulls the player into complacency. Just when it seems that the mission is over and all is well, the floor drops out and a brutish horde charges forth. Other tricks make you think you understand your situation when in reality you do not. Figure 9-3 shows a simple "trick" room that has this effect. In a room full of really tough enemies, have the entry door close as soon as the player enters the room, blocking any retreat. Then have another, very obvious door on the opposite wall, prompting the player to scurry across and try to get out that way. Instead of a regular door, though, make the exit a door controlled by a very small wall switch located right next to the door where the player first came in. The player won't notice it in all the confusion, and will most likely be eviscerated while pounding on the space bar, wondering why the new door won't open. Another simple trick is to have doors open and close themselves (the "moving sector" option explained in Chapter 4), or to have them open and close only by triggers. This takes the initiative of opening and closing doors away from the player, and allows creatures to come and go more unpredictability. Combinations of tricks and traps are useful, as well. How about a pair of trip wires located right next to each other (as shown in Figure 9-4), so a player who activates one will probably activate both. The first wire activates a large elevator sector under the player, who perforce rides down into a pit. The player patiently waits for the elevator to rise again, and eventually it does. Unsuspecting players expect to simply walk off the lift when it reaches the top, then go on their way—but the second trip wire, which was activated along with the first, lets loose a swarm of Specters who surround the lift when it rises. Yikes! On the amusing side, how about a Hall of Horrors? The player must head down a long corridor with normal doors on each side. Each door opens on a tiny room, just large enough to hold the single creature inside—say, a Cyberdemon or a Spider Mastermind. None of the rooms contain anything valuable or necessary for the completion of the mission, and none open unless the player chooses to open them. It's a place that players just have to learn to avoid. But it will give people fits if they feel obligated to kill everything in a level. ADDING LENGTH AND DIFFICULTY TO A LEVEL Using multiple teleporters, doors that require various keys, and obstacles controlled by distant trip wires are all ways to add difficulty and playing time to a mission. They're all perfectly legitimate techniques, and they save you from having to design huge, sprawling levels to boost the level's playing time. So don't forget to put them in. The player will have to double back a few times and traverse familiar ground while gathering the keys, but that's expected in a Doom level. However, don't go overboard when hiding your keys and teleporters. You might note that the designers of Doom didn't require you to find secret areas to complete most of their levels (though it certainly helped to find them). Sometimes you can be a little too clever careful when hiding essential objects, so be careful. Also, it sometimes a good idea to give the player multiple paths instead of designing a purely linear level. It doesn't really take any more time to design a very open level than it does to design a closed one. And adding extra doors and connecting hallways can be an easy way to increase playing time. When there are a lot of options, players often feel lost and wander about a while before finally finding the "right" path. You can also create a level that is essentially linear, while giving the player the illusion of choice. Maybe there are three directions the player can go from the very start of the level, but two of them are extremely dark and full of Specters, and the only Light Amplification Goggles lie down the third (brightly lit) path. The only effective way of completing the level is to enter the well-lit area first, and then clean out the dark places once the goggles are in hand. This also works with levels that have more and meaner creatures down one path than another. The player must go down the path that is easiest first, gathering weapons and good ammo, before taking on the harder areas. To see how this works, load up the Alien Doom levels (discussed later) and look at E2M2. This is a good example of a level that gives the player multiple paths from the very start, while still providing one optimal path. --- So there we go: level design tips straight out of 1995. The book states that 1.666 is the latest version of Doom (in reality, by publication v1.9 had been released), suggesting it was written somewhere around the end of 1994. Ether way, I personally find it fascinating how some of the advice here is still pretty relevant, while other ideas probably should stay in 1995. All in all, an interesting snapshot in time as people were still getting to grips with what constituted a good Doom level. 24 Share this post Link to post
xvertigox Posted April 30, 2020 Good work transcribing these. I've got the other books and can post photos of the design sections if people are interesting. 3 Share this post Link to post
elend Posted April 30, 2020 Wow, very interesting. Great work archiving this here, thanks Bauul! 0 Share this post Link to post
