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Thelokk

How do I stop thinking with rooms?

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So, I finally realized why my maps' layouts look bland and run of the mill. In my heads, I'm always thinking of each map

as a series of rooms, one after the other. It makes for blocky, stiff maps; excessive symmetry; and encounters that don't really

take advantage of the space provided.  

I'm having a really hard time getting out of this mindset. Any tips or tricks on how I can stop thinking with rooms, and inject some dynamics 

in my map layouts? 

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A popular and easy advice consists to avoid creating doors.

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1 hour ago, Roofi said:

A popular and easy advice consists to avoid creating doors.

As well as teleporters, they can engage the mapper to make more rooms.

Also, another advice is to rely on making huge battlefield areas; rooms mainly used for adding a lot of monsters.

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I like rooms, rooms are good.

It helps to try and make a path through those rooms forking and looping. If each wall in your room has a distinct purpose, they will instantly become distinctive.

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Try thinking in terms of encounters - what would be an interesting encounter, and build a room to service the encounter - don't build the encounter to service the room.

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You don't need to eliminate rooms/doors, but what you can do is try centering them around a large, central area, a setpiece in your map. Think about how MAP29 of Doom 2 has that large blood pit, and even though you don't spend a lot of time in there (or any), it's an integral part of the level, and 75% of the level is directly connected to it. Even in a techbase-style map, you can get something similar by having a central courtyard area, with rooms and hallways surrounding it but with multiple windows/pathways into it.

 

Also, think about the vertical space. A walkway above the rest of the level can add some much needed dimension to the encounter, as can enemies perched above the player.

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I can recommend mapping out the layout before you do anything else. It really helps against that "room after room" mindset.

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I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with making rooms if you can make the rooms themselves interesting. And interestingly interconnected.

Not making doors sounds like a fun idea but then you need to worry about sound propagation a lot more. Guess you can try to make an outdoor map. Because outdoors is like a one giant, misshapen room. I'm actually doing that with the current map. Big open natural space. Because I always feel like my outdoors look like a room with f_sky1 ceiling. Make random shapes, lots of elevation changes, simpler texturing, good stuff. Makes you think completely different.

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Use irregular polygons? you can break those down further. doors are still useful.

 

if its an outside map. you can define your "area" first then add everything else. if your worried about space you can just scale the rooms smaller. if its indoors. you could use fewer "rooms" and have those rooms have multiple "areas" like in scythe MAP02 where the back is separated into a low area and high area.

 

It really depends on what you mean by a "room"

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Try to think about how you can see outside of the room you're in. Should there be a window? Should I see a room that's much later on? Try thinking about hallways that blend into a room and even a small enemy trap.

 

One method I've tried to keep in mind lately is "flow". If I was a giant body of water, where can I go and where will I be blocked off? Sometimes just a slight elevation here and there with stairs can add quite a bit extra life to a map, even if there's only basic detailing.

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I like to connect sectors with features that are larger than a typical door or hallway. Doors and narrow halls have an isolating effect, and monsters don't move through them very well. New sectors that abut an entire side of a room, or more, will open up the space. If you have a few rooms that loop around to each other, consider filling in the negative space with a new area. A great example of this is in E1M7, where the central area would be much more isolated if it weren't for the nukage river connecting multiple places.

 

Also, make use of odd angles, and I mean really make use of them. You could have four rooms - one square, one diamond, one triangle, and one circle - but if they are all arranged and connected in a square-grid fashion, the map will still feel gridlocked. Try making the path of your map break away from the grid instead of just the lines, if that makes sense.
 

Depending on your mapping style, you might be running into your own detailing. If that's the case it might help to focus on making the layout decisions before prettying up too many walls, so that you aren't torn between keeping a really cool computer terminal or sacrificing it to add more space.

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