Common wad mistakes

[Goopychu]

What are some common mistakes new WAD creators make when designing a WAD?

[Nefelibeta]

Worrying about making mistakes.

[ViolentBeetle]

Misjudging sizes

Monsters stuck in walls

Testing map in gzDoom but not mentioning it on release

[Doomkid]

Super-skinny hallways and excessive symmetry are two that come to mind, but until you know all the fundamentals of constructing a Doom map like building doors, lifts, stairs, and all that fun stuff, it's best to not overthink gameplay or try to make the greatest wad ever. Use your early time as a mapper to feel things out - once you feel comfortable opening the editor and building things, that's when I'd suggest getting more "serious" (lol) about the gameplay side of things.

[indigotyrian]

The most common mistake any creator makes is the paralysis that comes from the realization that their product won't be very good.

 

It might not be. That's okay. Creating things isn't about the quality of the output. It's about the act of creation itself.

 

Notice that I say "any" creator. This does not apply just to novices. This is a recurring issue for journeymen and even grandmasters.

 

Do not allow perfect to be the enemy of good. Do not allow good to be the enemy of mediocre. Do not allow mediocre to be the enemy of bad.

[CFWMagic]

For the most part, I don't believe there are many mistakes as such so long as player input can circumvent the issue. The few that can't be circumvented however:

- Broken monster closet teleporters. Not very common nowadays, but some monsters failing to wake-up or teleport out of their closet into the playing field and then being un-killable without cheats is really frustrating for UV-Max, especially blind. If it's not a well known wad and the broken monster isn't documented, you get the classic "decino conundrum" where you spend a good 30 minutes looking for that last monster, not realizing it's broken.

- Broken secrets. Pretty much the same as above, but secrets instead of monsters. Again, not very common nowadays, but it still shows up every now and then. And once more, particularly frustrating if it's not documented (which tends to be the case, as these kinds of mistakes are typically made by newer mappers who don't get as much attention to their releases).

Those two are pretty much the only things I would genuinely believe to be mistakes, objectively.


---


If we're talking from a subjective point of view ... Then there's a few more I have a personal gripe with. But keep in mind, this is highly subjective and debatable. Those aren't "mistakes" per-se but rather what I find to be bad taste:

- Inability to backtrack in the map once the player reaches the exit. This is understandable if you want to keep the flow going while the player is fighting, and want to prevent the player from running back into parts of the map they've cleared already to cheese some fights. But once the player has reached the exit, if you don't open up the map, you'll prevent the player from coming back for completionism sake (be it hunt down remaining monsters, secrets or items), which makes running UV-Max very awkward and occasionally, infuriating.

- One time secrets. This is more of a gimmick than a mistake, really. Basically, any secret that can only be opened/accessed once, and if the player fails to reach it within the time allotted on the first time, that's it. No secret. This is extremely blind unfriendly. One could argue: "Don't play blind, then?" and ... In a way, it's a passable argument. The again, I'm biased against such gimmicks because I don't understand their appeal. To me it feels like artificial difficulty. But then again, as said, this is highly subjective.

- Lack of report on pressing switches/activating secrets. Again, this is something highly subjective. And this can be countered by streamlining your map. But here's a simple example of this: You activate a secret switch, but you're too far away from the thing it activates. You can't hear it. You can't see it. Aside from randoming around for a while and finding what it activated by sheer luck, you won't really find it. Can be easily countered by properly streamlining your map, however. For instance, place the activated object somewhere where the player will have no choice but to revisit and notice: "Wait a minute, was this open before?". It's still poor taste imo, because it confuses the player as to "What the !@#$ does this switch do?" and "How in the !@#$ did I open this?". But again, highly subjective. And not a problem at all if you don't insist on playing blind in the first place.

- Inescapable platforming death-pits. A veritable pet-peeve of mine, but again, highly subjective. I despise doom physics with a passion. I despise doom platforming with a passion. And I personally consider that doom is all about combat and movement while in combat. Passing some tough fight, spending 30 minutes in a map, and then dieing because there's no teleporter out of a japanese bamboo-jumping room is EXTREMELY infuriating and has nothing to do with killing demons. But as I've stated multiple times ... Subjective. Maybe I should just get good at doom physics. Then again, I'm of the opinion that getting good at something that sucks, doesn't make that thing suck any less.

- Poorly tested ammo-to-monster ratio. Goes both ways. If you have too little ammo for the amount of monsters in the map, the player either has to jump through hoops with infighting and punching (which isn't always possible) or simply give up on UV-Max. The opposite is also true. Overwhelming amounts of ammo, particularly rockets and cells, can make just about any fight trivial, short of slaughter-maps. Of course, this too is subjective and some maps are specifically designed with ammo starvation in mind, be it because the player IS supposed to zerk-punch or rely on infighting, or because the map is a puzzle rather than a straightforward kill-em-all experience. Or on the contrary, if you're designing a slaughter-map and want the player to focus completely on movement, target-prioritization, precision and rate of kills, throwing ammo-management out of the equation altogether.

These are all that I can think of right now. Take those with a mountain of salt. As said, they're highly subjective, and some of them can be map specific gimmicks if well thought out, as opposed to "mistakes".

Edited December 1, 2022 by CFWMagic

[ZethXM]

Not knowing good criticism from bad.

[Misty]

First I'd like to say that there are no mistakes only lessons to learn. Each level you build helps you build an experience you will use later on. It's perfectly okay, if your level won't be similiar to one you had in mind or looks imperfect in your eyes. 

Second, don't afraid scale down if you feel like level is going out of hand.

Third, start with basic mapping format - vanilla/limit-removing or boom is good place to start. Of course if you know what you're doing you can work with udmf.

Fourth, do lots of experiments and keep mind open up - no point to stick with one format or port. Flexibility is good trait to have and really handy in lots of situations.

Lastly, study levels you like, many things can be learned from maps and  deconstructing tricks they use. 

 

Oh and place many death pits and no secrets in maps much as you love :)

[prfunky]

On 11/30/2022 at 6:51 PM, CFWMagic said:

- Lack of report on pressing switches/activating secrets. Again, this is something highly subjective. And this can be countered by streamlining your map. But here's a simple example of this: You activate a secret switch, but you're too far away from the thing it activates. You can't hear it. You can't see it. Aside from randoming around for a while and finding what it activated by sheer luck, you won't really find it. Can be easily countered by properly streamlining your map, however. For instance, place the activated object somewhere where the player will have no choice but to revisit and notice: "Wait a minute, was this open before?". It's still poor taste imo, because it confuses the player as to "What the !@#$ does this switch do?" and "How in the !@#$ did I open this?". But again, highly subjective. And not a problem at all if you don't insist on playing blind in the first place.

 

Reminds me of an old Steven Wright joke which I'm not about go research to quote verbatim,

but it went something along these lines:

 

I moved into a new apartment and there was this switch on the wall that didn't seem to do anything.

So, every day I would flip it on and off. After about a month of living there, I got a call from a guy in

Germany who said, "Stop doing that!"

 

[erkyp3rky]

i havent released a single level yet (except for a level i didnt finish for david x newton's ramp, love that guys work btw and im working on finishing that level :D) and i have a pile of unfinished projects just sitting around, but i think i might be able to help. though again im technically still a newcomer so take my words with some salt grains.

• overthinking things is HUGE. i speak from experience on this one... i know this may be easier said than done but sometimes the trick is to just do things. just map, just make changes, ect. things more often than not fall into place. its strange really.
• overly cubic/symmetrical maps. this one deeply hurts me because i like things clean and i very rarely make abstract shapes or use obtuse wall sizes, but its really important to not get too symmetrical with your maps. this goes for enemy placement as well as your actual level shape. the reason being is that players will get lost very easy if your map is a bunch of square rooms that look alike. ive heard that for many the solution is to just say screw it and start blocking out wacky shapes, though this never worked for me.
• scale. whether it be your map is too big or too small, scale is a pretty common pitfall and ive been noticing myself screwing up in this aspect all the time in my several unfinished projects. if this ever happens to you, dont be afraid to get your hands messy and redo an area. i have had to do this many times, and more often than not, its for the best.
• this ties into the last point but dont be afraid to make huge changes to your level, sometimes it just has to be done for the better. and with these changes can come some great ideas that you might not have had before! that being said god damn can it be disheartening ripping apart areas in your level you may have grown attached to. whenever you need to make a big change, i always like to make a SEPERATE SAVE of my map so i can always revert if i want to, its good practice.
• dont be so hard on yourself! its all a learning process

[Somniac]

Doors that are flush with walls and not recessed - I did this with my first few maps to be fair, but properly recessing them isn't much work and just looks so much better.

[yakfak]

not thinking about the cute stuff you are going to write in the text file! its a huge error that even the most well-known mappers fall prey to

 

a lot of wad criticism is just the enforcement of standardization and you don't need to worry about it. it's not like what you made has been made by accident; you did it because you felt like it, which greatly overpowers every other stimulus and suggestion. imo. studying expectations is like getting big into demographic marketing

[Thelokk]

3 minutes ago, yakfak said:

a lot of wad criticism is just the enforcement of standardization and you don't need to worry about it.

 

 But but but how am I gonna get them Cacos then ;-;

[yakfak]

1 minute ago, Thelokk said:

 

 But but but how am I gonna get them Cacos then ;-;

 

idk, release a ridiculous puzzle map that mouldy hates giggle

[Thelokk]

1 minute ago, yakfak said:

 

idk, release a ridiculous puzzle map that mouldy hates giggle

 

Framed and pinned on a wall. Took the liberty to add a few more big mapper names tho, hope you don't mind.

[NiGHTMARE]

Three of the most common newbie mapping errors all revolve around doors:

 

- Doors more than 128 units high (unless you're using a custom texture, it will probably just look ugly)

- Doors which raise into the sky

- The sides of doors not being lower unpegged

[Redneckerz]

< User with less than 10 posts

< First reply nails it

< Users with less than 10 posts does not participate in the thread despite being active

 

Seems like this thread meets the bingo chart!

 

However - It is a rather original topic for once. 

 

The most common WAD mistake i see happening is that beginning users do not improve from their previous work despite elaborate feedback. When a Boredwad (Not a troll or Jokewad) is pointed out as being boring, the next release often is the same work, disguised as ''improvement'', or ''I really did my best on this''.

 

Not many deliver an outstanding map from the get go: Most people start with exploration. But from exploration comes experience and thus lessons to be made and learned. The people i refer to, do not do any of these. They keep on churning out the same Boredwad, which often gets a lot of replies (Stealing away thunder from maps that actually are good) and apparently this is their idea of fun to them.

 

No it isn't. It is a Boredwad. Don't be bored, learn something from your mapping endeavors.

 

Spoiler

Note: I am myself also guilty on extending on the whole ''getting a lot of replies'' spiel by commenting when in practice, a report is better.

 

[enigma101]

Either putting too many items and too few ammo in, or making everything too big.

[mrthejoshmon]

One mistake is actually worrying about catering to an audience.

 

If you spend too much time focusing on what you think people will enjoy then you will often fail to actually design something anyone will enjoy.

 

Design and make what you want, your intended audience should always be yourself.

[smeghammer]

This is quite subjective - whenever I play maps, things that grate particularly are uniform lighting and lack of height variation. Lighting can make a huge difference to the general feel of a map. Often, even a mediocre map can be greatly enhanced by just being careful with light variation in adjacent sectors etc.

 

My pet peeve though is badly unpegged doortraks... 

 

 

[UncleTito]

17 hours ago, ZethXM said:

Not knowing good criticism from bad.

 

This. Making a mistake, then taking good criticism overtly negatively, and taking bad criticism way too seriously is what I see crop up a lot of times just from casual browsing.

 

One could get into how stuff on the internet can get in your head pretty easily, and how much of this is affected by various issues of the user themselves (ego, self-image)..

 

But I'm afraid I'd then be jumping into armchair psychology too much.

[baja blast rd.]

First off, "mistakes" that concern specific design choices are nearly always irrelevant. Like: damaging floors, ammo balance, secret-handling. As Yakfak said that stuff is just a matter of taste and enforcing that stuff is rooted in an ability to separate "good design / bad design" from "stuff I like / stuff I don't like?" Also focusing on those externalities misses the underlying abstraction so isn't even a good way of enforcing matters of taste. 'Improving' at that stuff does not even make you a better mapper. It's just a huge red herring for possible improvement.

 

I feel like as a total beginner (first couple months or so), the only mistake you can make is overthinking yourself out of jumping in and trying things. It's paradoxical, but if there was an amazing mapping book -- which was actually good and not just people trying to enforce personal subjective norms like "don't use inescapable pits" -- you should not read it in full at that point. Maybe just a chapter or two to get you excited or whatever. Reading through all of it without making a single map of your own would be a disaster. 

 

That takes us to being a more advanced beginner -- and I think the mistakes here are still mostly innocuous low-hanging fruit. But they tend to be way more about process than, again, specific aspects of maps.

 

That would be stuff like: 

 

- letting a desire for good mapping get in the way of enjoying mapping (or feeling like mapping at all) -- the fact that the goal of mapping seems to be to make a Good Map is sneakily harmful. (and that's not just because focusing on maximizing quality with every decision is not even the best way to make a Good Map (and basically guarantees a 'local maximum' of creativity and quality))
 
- being overly unexperimental with method: as one example (out of dozens), when you realize you don't have to make a map in order of how it is played -- first area -> second area attached to first area -> third area attached to existing areas -> ... -> last area -- you unlock a whole lot of cool design approaches, but it sometimes takes people a long time to realize that

 

- not exploring editor functions diligently so you end up failing to realize, say, that you can floodfill textures on a contiguous stretch of wall in 3D mode instead of painstakingly applying it to each wall linedef -- and a lot of busywork eats up energy you could better spend being creative

 

- playing maps but not ever consciously trying to learn from them (you're passing up a lot of value by not doing this -- every now and then, just replay a map you loved, zoom in on one aspect, and think about why it's awesome and how you could have made it yourself)

 

(There would be more here.)

 

These mistakes are often made by experienced mappers too! Which leads to the next point: if a mistake is 'beginner'-only, by definition it's not that relevant because it's low-hanging fruit that is easy to pluck. People plateau because of the sorts of mistakes that even experienced mappers still make. 

[baja blast rd.]

9 hours ago, erkyp3rky said:

•  this ties into the last point but dont be afraid to make huge changes to your level, sometimes it just has to be done for the better. and with these changes can come some great ideas that you might not have had before! that being said god damn can it be disheartening ripping apart areas in your level you may have grown attached to. whenever you need to make a big change, i always like to make a SEPERATE SAVE of my map so i can always revert if i want to, its good practice.

 

also if you learn only one thing from this thread, make it this, especially the bolded ;)

 

[Firedust]

Don't be offended when a famous doomtuber critisises your map and just improve on your work next time :p

[Catpho]

13 minutes ago, baja blast rd. said:

letting a desire for good mapping get in the way of enjoying mapping (or feeling like mapping at all) -- the fact that the goal of mapping seems to be to make a Good Map is sneakily harmful. (and that's not just because focusing on maximizing quality with every decision is not even the best way to make a Good Map (and basically guarantees a 'local maximum' of creativity and quality)

Can you elaborate this part, especially the advice in the second parenthesis? I'm no creative, so stuff like this is a bit hard to imagine. It sounds counter-intuitive that thinking hard about every moment would be an inefficient process in making something "good". What does "perfectionism" actually mean, then?

[Thelokk]

There are no mistakes, only happy accidents.

[Doom_Dude]

3 hours ago, NiGHTMARE said:

Three of the most common newbie mapping errors all revolve around doors:

 

- Doors more than 128 units high (unless you're using a custom texture, it will probably just look ugly)

- Doors which raise into the sky

- The sides of doors not being lower unpegged

I'll add to that with...

 

- Too many doors. Not every room that joins another needs a door.

[esselfortium]

14 minutes ago, Doom_Dude said:

I'll add to that with...

 

- Too many doors. Not every room that joins another needs a door.

Yes! Moreso than just "too many doors", I'd say it's good to consider what your intent is when adding doors, because if you're just adding it because "a door is supposed to be there", it's likely to have gameplay effects you're not considering. The difference in pacing and flow between a map like Doom's E1M2 (which has hardly any doors at all, other than locked ones and secret ones) and E2M5 (which has various doors everywhere) is significant, so you want to use doors with intention so that your map will have the pacing you're after.

[baja blast rd.]

44 minutes ago, Catpho said:

Can you elaborate this part, especially the advice in the second parenthesis? I'm no creative, so stuff like this is a bit hard to imagine. It sounds counter-intuitive that thinking hard about every moment would be an inefficient process in making something "good". What does "perfectionism" actually mean, then?

 

Partly because 'conceive of something -> then make it good' is a lot more permissive about the breadth of good things you can end up making than just sticking to stuff that you have full confidence already works. The latter funnels you into a much narrower range of possible choices at every turn. 

 

Or another way of putting it is that I can take a really creative, inventive map (finished or not) that is just plain jank in a lot of ways, very flawed -- and then overhaul it (or sometimes even just polish it) into something simultaneously creative and good. But with a high-quality, polished, competent map that made every right choice there's no guarantee that I can then add enough creativity to it. And even if it works both ways (it can!), it's probably going to be more fun and invigorating to start by doodling something creative that isn't concerned with being all that good. 

 

Also it's important to look past community norms on 'polished competence' bc I'm not invoking that whole Memfisian mindset. If you look at authors like tourniquet and Mechadon and Ribbiks, it very much looks like they are just having fun doodling layout shit at first without being ultra concerned with it 'working' (and the shared accounts of Mech's and Ribbiks's works corroborate that). Then they make it work. So that seems to be better for 'high-polish, high-competence' design too! 

[Arsinikk]

1. I think this may be a strange point, but I wanna make it anyway. Don't make action on every single piece of feedback you receive. While feedback is important, who is making the feedback is doubly important. If you make a map with slaughter elements, and someone who doesn't play slaughter gives feedback, their feedback is going to be alot less useful than the feedback of someone who does play slaughter.

 

Keep in mind, I'm not saying to avoid feedback altogether. That is also a common newbie WAD mistake to completely ignore all map criticism. I just think it's important to make sure that you aren't reacting to feedback so much, that your map's vision becomes compromised.

 

2. The "magnus opus" approach is a trap. Trying to make the biggest bestest map ever very rarely works out. A smaller-medium sized map often is easier to fine-tune and for people to play. Alot of times, this approach at mapping tends to make bloated and forever lasting maps that outstay their welcome. This is also not really advised for newer mappers, since it leads to potentially more issues, and you often don't have to mapping experience to know what works well and what doesn't.

 

3. I actually think it's better to not focus on perfecting one map. For a perfectionistic creative like me, this can lead to me forever working on the same map. Sometimes map concepts are just going to be flawed. I think it's better to acknowledge that a map isn't perfect and use the newfound knowledge making that map to make your next maps even better.