What are some mapping tips and tricks newer mappers can make use of?

[Alexagon]

Tips and tricks that may or may not be obvious when it comes to level design. Things that either make processes easier or improves the design of the map.

[TMD]

Stairbuilder isnt just for stairs.

Support textures are your friend, always know where to get a 24 or 32 unit thing in.

Try not to use more than three colors in a given map.

[Juka]

Monster placement > aesthetics. It's easy to get carried away and create great looking rooms only to realize there's no good spots to populate with monsters. Build a room, test monster placement and only when you're satisfied with it you start texturing.

 

Add shapes and depth to walls so they don't look boring, stuff like support columns (both in and outward), panels above the player's reach, pipes, whatever, take a look

Spoiler

A very bland wall

 

It looks way more lively with some details

 

Also if you're going to repeat a pattern (like the above example does) don't forget to use copy/paste. Really, just make one sector and paste the rest, it's only cheap if you overuse it, the red lights on the wall were used five times in that room, so I'd do something else with the remaining walls, otherwise it's going to look bland.

 

If you need to add a vertice in the exact middle of a linedef, but can't figure out where middle is (maybe it's an odd diagonal line) you can just use the "Curve Linedefs" tool on it, set Vertices to 1 and angle to 0.

 

Talking about diagonals, if you want them to have nice exact sizes like 64 or 128, just create an horizontal/vertical linedef the size you want and rotate it to the desired angle.

 

Don't be afraid to change light levels and floor/ceiling heights between different sections of the map, use stairways and lifts to add verticality.

 

Most textures are some multiple of 8 (8, 16, 32, 64, 128 or 256), so it's only natural if most of your linedefs end up being these sizes, makes texturing easier.

 

You can "create" texture variations by splitting linedefs and aligning textures manually, here's an example.

Spoiler

Here I wanted a large metal gate, 128 was too small and 256 was too big, so I ended up creating a longer linedef, split it in half and mirrored the left texture. You can see my cursor is highlighting only half of the gate, that's because that linedef is split in two.

 

Experiment with different textures and sizes for different results, there's a lot of detail you can add with this.

 

And I'll second TMD's opinion on support textures, they're very useful overall!

[Alexagon]

That's a lot of great advice. Much appreciated!

[Aurelius]

On 9/20/2020 at 8:14 AM, Juka said:

Talking about diagonals, if you want them to have nice exact sizes like 64 or 128, just create an horizontal/vertical linedef the size you want and rotate it to the desired angle.

While this strategy is still completely valid today, UDB has a "rotate grid" functionality that makes this a whole lot easier (unless you've already grown accustomed with your non-orthogonal design pipeline in the past 10+ years of mapping as some of the community greats have). But for new mappers I'd recommend this option.

 

(And I'm using non-orthogonal here to refer to any rotated geometry, even though technically if you rotate a square, the lines are still orthogonal with respect to each other :P So non-orthogonal with regards to the grid.)

Additional ramblings about rotated geo:

Spoiler

 

It's important to realize both the power and limitations of non-orthogonal geometry in Doom. All monster hitboxes are rectangular prisms (so boxes) that do not rotate, so in many ways drawing along the grid is not a bad option to avoid collision issues. With rotated geometry, you have to make your monster hidey holes bigger just to prevent the inhabitants from popping out pre-emptively (the issue is illustrated below).

 

 

You can check out Mechadon's Counterattack if you want to see how pretty some of those rotated bits of geometry look like from a top-down view. In-game it's often not as noticeable though (in the heat of combat), but if done properly it can create some organically flowing memorable structures. Also, since you can't rotate or align the floor / ceiling flats in vanilla or Boom formats, you'll have to make do with more uniform textures or make rotated versions yourself. 

 

So while it does create variety, you can still make very unique structures while staying within the confines of the regular grid (in terms of orientation). So don't rotate stuff solely for rotations sake (I learned this the hard way in a map I released recently) but try to do it when it serves to highlight an area or more organically connect it to another.

 

 

 

On 9/20/2020 at 8:14 AM, Juka said:

Add shapes and depth to walls so they don't look boring, stuff like support columns (both in and outward), panels above the player's reach, pipes, whatever

 

I want to add here that it's very important to start out by making an interesting piece of macro-architecture instead of going about doing smaller micro-detailing to an otherwise very simple overall structure. Instead of rewording it, I'm quoting rd's post from another thread:
 

Quote

good detailing adds to a map's identity, augmenting a core that is already attractive -- Breach and Brigandine, anything by lupinx-Kassman, you name it -- rather than serving as little more than deliberate 'visual clutter' to patch up ugly or bare parts. If a wall or surface looks bare over a long stretch, the lens of architecture and macro-oriented design will usually offer a better solution than tossing in mindless little insets or floor-hole patterns.

 

Edited March 12, 2021 by Aurelius

[SCF]

2 hours ago, Aurelius said:

While this strategy is still completely valid today, UDB has a "rotate grid" functionality that makes this a whole lot easier (unless you've already grown accustomed with your non-orthogonal design pipeline in the past 10+ years of mapping as some of the community greats have). But for new mappers I'd recommend this option.

 

(And I'm using non-orthogonal here to refer to any rotated geometry, even though technically if you rotate a square, the lines are still orthogonal with respect to each other :P So non-orthogonal with regards to the grid.

 

Oh wow, this is really useful. I'd seen the "align grid to linedef" option before when I was starting out, but I assumed it would just shift the grid, not rotate it. That makes things a lot easier. Up til now I'd just been aligning diagonal rooms with the orthogonal grid, and using fillter textures on the extra space between 32/64 unit wide elements.
 

I only started out recently so this is probably common knowledge, but something I only discovered by accident and found very useful in Doom Builder is the way auto-aligning textures works with selections. If you use a/shift-a in visual mode it aligns all connecting textures of the same type, but if you select some sidedefs first, it only aligns the textures within that selection. Very helpful if you have complex geometry where not everything can be aligned perfectly, so you can align different parts separately. Or if you have a big outdoor area and you don't want to mess up something on the other side of the map because everything is connected.

 

By the way, does anyone have any more tips on avoiding extra work when using copy/paste in Doom Builder? If you copy something like an isolated pillar it works fine, but if you create for example a bunch of wall detail and copy/paste it to the other side, the linedefs on the 'outside' (where it connects to the existing straight wall) have their textures/properties reset. And sometimes it messes up more than that, or shifts all the sectors up/down. I have to fix all of that manually, and I'm sure there's a better way.

[Roofi]

Join sectors.

 

You don't have to make ugly long narrow corridors to create teleportation rooms thank to them and it's useful for detailling.

[Captain Toenail]

Lower unpeg your doortraks

[DynamiteKaitorn]

[1] Be aware that using textures with transparent areas as wall textures don't work very well for most engines because unlike GZDooM, most either do a HOM error, Tutti-Frutti (vanilla) or flash red (I believe BooM and MBF sourceports have this as an option you can enable).

 

[2] Be mindful of difficulty progression. You know that the 5th room in contains a Baron of Hell and 2 Revenants but a new comer to your map wont. I recommend always adding slightly more health, armour and ammo to your maps than what is needed to complete said level since you need to take in to consideration not everyone is pin-point accurate all the time and DooM's RNG can screw over a run if resources are too tight.

 

[3] Hell Knight (or really any mid-high tier enemy) + regular shotgun = N O . There's a reason the super shotgun, plasma rifle, rocket launcher and chaingun all exist.

 

[4] Add depth and extra rooms to levels but don't go overboard. It's cool to see the occasional side room contain a few extra goodies for those who seek them out but don't make a whole load of rooms loop in on themselves constantly (especially if there's no easily recognisable landmarks) and be aware not everyone has jump enabled by default. (If your map needs jumping/crouching, please specify).

 

[5] Adjusting lighting to create shadows is never a bad idea... provided you don't go overboard. :)

[boris]

54 minutes ago, SCF said:

Oh wow, this is really useful. I'd seen the "align grid to linedef" option before when I was starting out, but I assumed it would just shift the grid, not rotate it. That makes things a lot easier. Up til now I'd just been aligning diagonal rooms with the orthogonal grid, and using fillter textures on the extra space between 32/64 unit wide elements.

 

If you happen to use UDB I highly recommend assigning a key to the "smart grid transform" action, since that combines all the items from the menu in one action, depending on what you have selected (or don't have selected).

[EANB]

If you're lazy like me, instant pop-up traps are generally a lot easier to set up and more reliable than teleport traps.

 

Sink the sector(s) containing monsters far into the ground, and don't texture the sides of the pit, so it will appear to be completely flat ground at surface level. Make the player pass line type 19 and the pit will instantly rise and surprise the players, no matter how deep it is. Unlike teleport traps, the monsters will also play their wake up sound.

 

You can't use these traps for every situation (for example for areas you need to pass through multiple times), but it's a useful tool in the mapper's arsenal.

[DavidN]

I’m about to do a video with some of my own design hints :) What I’ve got so far:

 

A level’s difficulty should come from hindering a player on their way to the next goal, not in making the next goal harder to find. (i.e. clearly mark coloured doors, don’t hide vital switches, etc)

 

Don’t use the same texture for a directly openable door as you would for a remotely openable door

 

Use SW1 textures, not SW2, so that there’s consistency in the visual appearance of switched vs nonswitched buttons.

 

Except SW1PIPE, because it’s drawn the other way round

 

Be very careful with shootable switches - one way to make their function obvious is to put them down little tunnels that can’t be reached by the player. Or use custom target-style textures for them

 

Don’t make the player travel back through dead areas, make routes loop around back to where you want the player to go or add obstacles on the return journey

 

Be consistent in which flats will damage the player and by how much

 

Use switches for places where the player can see or hear the result of pushing the switch. If they can’t, use a key pickup instead.

 

Get feedback as much as possible! Ask people to record their first attempt at a map so that you can see if your traps surprise people in the right way, if there are points where they wander around stuck, and so on.

[Juka]

On 9/20/2020 at 5:04 AM, Aurelius said:

While this strategy is still completely valid today, UDB has a "rotate grid" functionality that makes this a whole lot easier (unless you've already grown accustomed with your non-orthogonal design pipeline in the past 10+ years of mapping as some of the community greats have). But for new mappers I'd recommend this option.

Now that's am interesting and very powerful feature, I've been using GZDoom Builder so far, just searched for UDB and looks like it outclasses GZDB when it comes to features, I'll give it a try.

 

 

On 9/20/2020 at 5:04 AM, Aurelius said:

I want to add here that it's very important to start out by making an interesting piece of macro-architecture instead of going about doing smaller micro-detailing to an otherwise very simple overall structure. Instead of rewording it, I'm quoting rdwpa's post from another thread:

This is important too and it went over my head. Overall architecture speaks more about the map's identity than detailing, after all a map is remembered for it's overall feeling, not the details :p

Edited March 11, 2021 by Juka

[URROVA]

Vary on room heights, i see that a lot of newbies makes maps that all haves the same floor height, basically Wolf3D maps, while DooM is designed to have multiple heights on rooms. 

 

Never make teleporters with the linedefs looking to inside the sector, becouse teleporting line specials doesnt work from back.

 

Join sectors can be used for teleporting traps (powered by sound propagation), but can be used for lifts too. Join an elevator with a dummy sector outside the playable part of the map, make a control sector and raise its floor height, and you can elevate the lift to an arbitrary height. This trick is used on MAP30. Joining sectors can be used for multisector doors too (eg raising bars).

 

Doesnt use multipatch middle textures or transparent lower/upper textures on vanilla.

[Doomkid]

1 hour ago, DavidN said:

I’m about to do a video with some of my own design hints :)

Yay! Your videos are like Doom ASMR to me, which I know might sound odd, but they're great.

[DavidN]

3 hours ago, Doomkid said:

Yay! Your videos are like Doom ASMR to me, which I know might sound odd, but they're great.

 

Thanks :) It's always great to have your support!

[Bridgeburner56]

I'm gonna list some less technical suggestions (as a lot of good stuff has already been said around that)
- Make a map and then another and then another. Getting stuff out there and being played, receiving feedback, then applying said feedback is the best way to improve your mapping. It is also often better to apply the feedback to your next map rather than endlessly try and refine early maps that are in all likelihood, not worth the effort
- Join mapping discords and hang out with other mappers/players. You will get faster feedback and being surrounded by other mappers should provide additional energy, motivation and assistance. Some good ones to start with are Dragonfly's Doomworks, The Joy of Mapping (hosted by Jimmy) and The Hellforge (mine).
- Experiment with ideas both within a map and across maps. Try and do new things. Some ideas will be good and some will be not but you wont know which is which until you put line to grid
- Don't be afraid to make a 'bad map', you can still learn from them. You might not want to go all the way to uploading the map to idgames but getting a few people ot roll through it and point out where things can be improved is valuable. Speed mapping is a good example of this. Most maps made in 2 hours are not what you'd call 'good' but you can mess with a concept or an idea and try stuff out. Or you might accidentally make something genuinely exciting that you can use to build off later. 
- Read this article. Read it again. One of the most useful things I've come across with regards to making engaging encounters

[Breezeep]

You can use sectors with the same floor and ceiling height numbers to stack textures on top of another. There's a lot of instances where BTSX uses this trick to make their environments look a bit nicer.

 

[The_SloVinator]

I know two tricks. (Both work in vanilla & beyond.)

 

1.) You have probably seen some marble faces light up & even glowing or blinking but for a beginner, this could be a very puzzling thing.

Basically how it's done is you create a very smallish triangular sector by turning the grid into the smallest squares possible.

Then you just simply increase the brightness. Maybe add some special effects to spice it up.

 

In Editor

 

 

In Game

 

2.) Ever wanted to make a light that is only on the floor or only on the ceiling but didn't know how?

The solution is simple. Just raise the ceiling/lower the floor within the same sector & make sure the gap does not have any textures.

In game, you'll see nothing out of place for the gap unlike in the editor where you see 'textureless' marks.

 

Very important! If you lower the floor, there is a risk for players to fall into the gap if it's wide enough. Make sure you work around that someway.

 

In Editor 3D Mode

 

In Game (Kind of hard to see here but it works.)

Edited September 21, 2020 by The_SloVinator

[boom_compatible]

On 9/21/2020 at 11:29 AM, The_SloVinator said:

I know two tricks. (Both work in vanilla & beyond.)

 

1.) You have probably seen some marble faces light up & even glowing or blinking but for a beginner, this could be a very puzzling thing.

Basically how it's done is you create a very smallish triangular sector by turning the grid into the smallest squares possible.

Then you just simply increase the brightness. Maybe add some special effects to spice it up.

 

In Editor

 

 

In Game

 

2.) Ever wanted to make a light that is only on the floor or only on the ceiling but didn't know how?

The solution is simple. Just raise the ceiling/lower the floor within the same sector & make sure the gap does not have any textures.

In game, you'll see nothing out of place for the gap unlike in the editor where you see 'textureless' marks.

 

Very important! If you lower the floor, there is a risk for players to fall into the gap if it's wide enough. Make sure you work around that someway.

 

In Editor 3D Mode

 

In Game (Kind of hard to see here but it works.)

2- I discovered it today by a silly mistake!!! "poor's man pseudo BOOM transfer ceil/floor light "

[Somniac]

On 9/19/2020 at 11:48 PM, TMD said:

Support textures are your friend, always know where to get a 24 or 32 unit thing in.

 

This is a big one, its a small bit of visual detail but makes a world of difference, especially if you're going for the "sense of place" approach.

 

EG, before:

 

After:

 

 

Whether its trim on doors or breaking up contrasting textures, this is pretty much the first visual detailing I put in once I've got a layout down. That and recessed computer panels, because recessed computer panels.

[Doom_Dude]

Moving multiple level parts at once on the vertical plane. (Using Ult Doom Builder*)

 

 

This sounds tricky but it's really pretty straight forward. You can move an entire map up and down if needed.

 

You can move multiple sectors at once while keeping the various heights constant. Sometimes you decide that room you made is too low in the ceiling department or you take a chunk from another map, paste it in (and yes you can do that too. I use sectors mode, lasso what I want copied, close map, open the other map and paste it in). Anyhow if your floors are not close enough height wise and you don't want stairs or a lift to join them.... then this should help you.

 

To select just the floors ----> Go into View / click on floor textures.

To select just the ceilings ----> Go into View / click on ceiling textures.

To select both floors and ceilings ---> View / click on wireframe.

 

Just lasso what you want to adjust. Hold down your left mouse button and draw a box around everything.

 

You can also select / deselect parts that are not attached if needed by clicking on them with the mouse. If its a lot of clicking to add a multiple sector area you can lasso that stuff too (you have to completely drag the box around any sector you want added or not).

Shift + left click will add sectors you draw around.
Ctrl + right click will unselect [you'll see a blue box when dragging].

 

Once you have everything selected go into 3D mode and (in preferences I have Raise floor/ceiling/thing by 8and lower floor/ceiling/thing by 8 set to the mouse wheel (scroll up and down)... so anyhow you use whatever button you want and move everything. It's easier to do than explain. lol (you can also move by 1 unit or 128... )

 

It's early morning.... need covfefe.... hope this wasn't too confusing. lol

 

*Should work with other DB variants.

Edited March 11, 2021 by Doom_Dude

[Dwimepon]

On 9/20/2020 at 7:14 AM, Juka said:

If you need to add a vertice in the exact middle of a linedef, but can't figure out where middle is (maybe it's an odd diagonal line) you can just use the "Curve Linedefs" tool on it, set Vertices to 1 and angle to 0.

 

Oh god, this is life-changing. Thank you SO MUCH.

[Doritos420]

There are some great tips on this topic. I've just gotten back into mapping recently but one tip I would give is make every switch obvious as to what it does.

A lot of frustration for me occurs when I progress through a level and hit a switch, only for it to open a door that's halfway across the map that I've already forgotten about. Usually I'll try to have a switch as the same room the door/object is in (maybe on an elevated area that you must take a different route to get to), and I've seen mappers add little cutscenes into their maps to show what happens when you've activated a switch. Another trick I've seen (for example in Foursite by Bauul) is to make very important switches uniquely designed. For my example the first unique switch you encounter opens up a door in the level hub (that way you know similar switches open up the other doors in the hub as well).

[ketmar]

On 9/21/2020 at 5:29 PM, The_SloVinator said:

Just raise the ceiling/lower the floor within the same sector & make sure the gap does not have any textures.

please, please, please, please, switch to using Boom specials for that, don't abuse vanilla rendering glitches! please! you can't even imagine the PITA of supporting such things in hw accelerated sourceport! please!

[Doom_Dude]

Also a nice shortcut in Doom Builder is you can load your map in any particular spot. In the olde days we had to move the player start or run through the level like a n00bst3r d00fu5. Place cursor where you want to start the map and press Ctrl + F9.

[Dwimepon]

3 minutes ago, Doom_Dude said:

Also a nice shortcut in Doom Builder is you can load your map in any particular spot. In the olde days we had to move the player start or run through the level like a n00bst3r d00fu5. Place cursor where you want to start the map and press Ctrl + F9.

 

I think that only works in later versions of GZDB / UDB unfortunately, tried it out on DBX and it doesn't seem to work.

Still, if you're okay with having a voodoo doll lying around, I guess you can just put another player start, and it will start you up right there. (shrugs)

[Pompeji]

I'm a new mapper, and my best easy advice for beginners is as follows:

 

- Doomworld and YouTube are your friends. Can't figure out why your lift isn't working? Look it up on YouTube. Chances are Chubzdoomer or Doomkid already have a video about the issue and how to fix it. Still no luck? Look up "Lift not working" on the search bar over at Doomworld. If no threads pop up, or they do but the solutions presented aren't working for you, make a thread.

 

- If you make a bridge, and add damaging floors to either side of it, add some way for the player to escape. Maybe a wall with a different texture, that when clicked on opens up a teleporter so you can dip. Or plain ol' teleporters, they'll do.

 

- If you put blood in a map and it isn't damaging, keep it non damaging. If you put lava in a map, and it's damaging, keep it damaging at the same damage values. Consistency is key.

 

- Using a switch that's only able to be activated via gunfire? Use a different texture for it. The map I'm working on uses skull textures for pressable switches and eye textures for shootable ones.

 

- MAPINFO is your friend.

 

- Make sure your textures align. If you're changing textures for the area, add a support beam to separate said textures. Also try changing floor heights.

 

- Verticality is the spice of DOOM

 

- If you're going to use hitscanners, please, for the love of God, add cover. Less of a tip, more of a favor to me.

 

- The stronger the foes you add to a level, the stronger the weapons you should give the player, with some exceptions. Level is mostly imps, hitscanners, but you want a baron or revenant boss fight at the end? Give em a pump shotty, the stronger demons can feel like bosses. Starting your level with an immediate baron fight(looking at you, Pompeji)? Put a SSG right in front of the door, so the player is adequately equipped to deal with a strong foe.

 

- The order that works for me in a level is: Build basic architecture first. Boxes for rooms, rectangles for corridors, circular areas, etc. Texture everything. Add actions. Doors, switches, lifts, etc. Add detailing. Populate with Demons before anything else. Give your level a test, using IDKFA. Keep a mental note of how much ammo you used, and only use the guns you want the player to have. Took your notes? Good, add ammo proportionately. Used 20 shells 50 bullets? Give the player 24 shells and 60 bullets on UV. 30 shells and 90 bullets on HMP. 50 shells and 120 bullets on baby mode. Keep in mind, players on UV and HMP get less floor ammo because they likely will be fighting more zombiemen and shotgunners, which both drop ammo. Try your level, on UV. Died? Add a health pack around where you died. Maybe make it so a medikit spawns on easy and medium but only a stimpak spawns on hard. Populate with health, armor, powerups, etc. After all is said and done, add decorations and obstacles for final details, and have somebody else playtest.

 

I know I only have one published map on Doomworld, and it ain't great because it was my first ever map when I didn't know what a vertex was, but trust me, I use all this advice on the map I'm currently working on.

[Doom_Dude]

1 hour ago, Dwimepon said:

 

I think that only works in later versions of GZDB / UDB unfortunately, tried it out on DBX and it doesn't seem to work.

Still, if you're okay with having a voodoo doll lying around, I guess you can just put another player start, and it will start you up right there. (shrugs)

 

Yeah, I wasn't sure when that shortcut came into play.