To those who take notes while playing Doom maps, how do you do it?

[Catpho]

I've been wanting to be able to remember more interesting details about maps via taking notes, but I'm unsure what's the best way. I typically find taking notes during first playthroughs to be disruptive to my enjoyment, especially with big ambitious single maps where it's a bit more difficult to decide when to "stop", but replays are a bit of a luxury, so I might bite the bullet if that's how things are meant to go. This applies generally i.e. non playtesting purposes. Feel free to share any details of your note-taking process.

[SilverMiner]

I write them left-handedly

[Kyka]

If I am playtesting a map, my way of recording/noting anything I see is by taking a screenshot, often with text written with the chat function in Doom as well. This has been hugely beneficial in terms of playing maps, as it doesn't really break the flow of actually playing the maps, which writing manual notes/alt-tabbing out of Doom to write notes in a text document has.

 

If I see a scene that inspires me, I also take a screenshot.

 

If I do take notes, I do it with a text document open on my other monitor. (Having two monitors is a huge bonus.)

[baja blast rd.]

I normally don't take notes in-map during first playthroughs for the same reason as you. If a map is very long though I sometimes will do a quick pitstop but I prefer no writing interruptions.

 

One key idea is that brief shorthand can 'unpack' to full thoughts, so you do not have to write complete sentences for notes. I can write short phrases and sentences and then re-access the corresponding thoughts and feelings later. My notes might look something like this: 

 

parallax of distant towers

grass midtex unusually lush

<3 concept-architecture setting ('stars' as building material)

subdued pacing supports storyline, feels lonely

progression is intentionally unguided, like you're meant to stumble across it 

seemingly no hitscanners

I like how gay the music is

lol you can grind e1m1 runs on the computers

 

(This map does not exist, sorry. :P)

 

So what that means is you can stop between levels (or part of the way through a long level) and take broad-spanning notes in a relatively low amount of time. Having to write full sentences would be quite limiting in that regard. 

 

My visual memory and imagination is decent so I can often 'revisit' a map in my imagination and take more notes that way if I want to. It might seem scary to rely on memory exclusively but compulsively stopping to write can really hamstring the experience, so it helps to just trust yourself. If you can afford to, recording video while playing helps too, because you can rewatch specific moments and take extra notes there (you probably won't want to rewatch a whole playthrough), but I haven't really done that much unless I wanted to write at length about a specific part. 

 

I feel that reexperiencing something in our imagination after playing it helps the experience stick better (there are parallels to "recall testing" in learning), so taking notes after the fact with no assistance is a really good anti-FOMO device. 

[Catpho]

SilverMiner: Heh, not exactly what I had in mind when I started the thread. Thanks for sharing I suppose :P

 

Kyka & rd: I would imagine the process being something like that, but it's difficult to know what you are doing best in isolation, so thanks for the replies, especially the advice on the whole trusting the memory and imagination. I'm always amazed by some of the better writers on this site's attention to detail, so I was curious to see how they can write so extensively so quickly.

[Helm]

the ingame chat+screenshot is valuable. Sometimes I run around and when I have a thought I put down a marker on the automap with M and write a word or short phrase on a piece of paper where the mark was. At the end of the map, if you don't clear your marks, you've got an annotated legend. 

I wish Doom was like Ultima Underworld where you could jot down verbose notes on anywhere on the map.

[Maribo]

The only time I really take notes when playing Doom is when I'm playtesting something for somebody. I'll have a .txt file open in another window and tab out when it's safe (ie, not pausing in the middle of a fight to take the note) to write down what I want to. These notes are usually things like stuck/broken monsters and their closets, HOMs, geometry/floor height that feels particularly poor to navigate, when a fight is overtuned or too easy compared to the equipment you're given, etc.

 

I have also taken notes for a handful of max demo runs before, but typically I don't. The case for these are usually something like... lots of secrets that have to be remembered, or something like a complicated set of switches that have to be pressed in a certain order.

[Nefelibeta]

Feedback: Usual stuff such as potential softlocks, skips. I will also write down things that I find smart/creative as well as summarizing how I feel about the map as whole. You won't believe how impactful a simple compliment could be. This will also mean it would suck when you couldn't find meaningful things to say but I rarely actively seek for maps to playtest and I only give feedbacks for maps that I care about anyway.

 

Review: I usually like to guess the intentions behind each design, whether it seems apperent or not. Doing this kind of thing could be inspiring as well, except that I don't really notice it until I look back at what I've created. Even though I'm terrible at expressing things like feelings, I really like to think about the atomsphere of the maps and how they achieve it, either via gameplay, layouts or visuals. Since "feelings" is so important for any kind of creations, doesn't matter whether you're making some sort of generic techbase or hardcore slaughter maps, it's always going to be the first thing that come to my mind.

[Not Jabba]

Unless the order of specific details is really important, you can usually just finish playing the map without writing anything, then restart it, turn on noclip and map cheats, and dive around to refresh your memory, and write down a bunch of stuff all at once. If you do need to write notes while playing (e.g., it's a very large map and you're discussing small-scale gameplay notes), usually I can save up several ideas in my head at a time, pause periodically, and then write down those several at once in the shorthand style rd mentioned.

 

5 hours ago, baja blast rd. said:

This map does not exist

 

Yet?

[Nine Inch Heels]

I take no notes whatsoever, unless it's a behemoth sized map that takes me like >1,5 hours to finish (Assuming no deaths, and no saving or loading). Feedback in the form of a written-down first impression is based entirely on what I liked/disliked the most, and what stood out so much so in general (one way or another) that I couldn't not remember it. Personally, I think that part of giving feedback/providing readers with an impression of what to expect is the most important one, since it will let mappers know how someone else perceives their map's highlights, and it will let the supposed reader know if the map in question is going to be their cup of tea or not...

 

What I do instead of taking notes, however, is dropping several saves as I play the map. Aside of helping me make it through any given map faster, these saves also serve as "bookmarks" that I can use to flip through the map quickly, provide insights on the less obvious stuff while I do a "re-play" from what's basically a checkpoint (and also a shorthand note), which would then enable me, or anyone else, to take their time writing anything down, if needs be, while also being time-efficient at it...

 

All that being said, taking notes at all doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to me personally. Most maps aren't so big that something of great importance to mappers or players alike is at risk of being forgotten entirely, especially not if you do aim to provide more than just a first impression, meaning you'll re-play the map anyway...

 

 

 

It is worth noting (heh) that my approach is different when I'm play-testing a map. One example that comes to mind would be "Mutabor" by tourniquet, which is pretty huge for a vanilla compat map, and intricate enough to warrant taking a couple notes here and there to make sure that smaller bits and pieces won't be left out.

Be all that as it would, how useful notes end up being for what you aim to do depends on your "use-case", but I would always recommend writing down a first impression "free-style", and keeping that separate from any details you think are important to point out.

[LadyMistDragon]

It's something I really want to do more of but of course, stopping to take note of general stuff can be quite tiresome, not to mention slowing me down. There are definite times though when I've actually done such that my writing drastically improves to something with better flow. But outlines were never explained to me very well by my teachers or when less or more detailed outlines would be more appropriate.

[Jacek Bourne]

As a person who designs maps, whenever I have someone playtest a map, I prefer to have my play-testers stream their play through in discord so I can watch them in real time and they can actively talk to me while playing the map. This also allows me to fix technical problems as they are discovered.

[Dreamskull]

You start with something that catches your eye. If it doesnt catch your eye, theres no point.

You can go problem solver route or you can workshop what they did properly to improve yourself.

 

Most of it comes down it seeing how other people handle concepts differently. How do things stack up comparatively? The feel for how the levels themselves play out is often regarded as subjective, but thats not truly the case when you take notes, its objective because under the surface exists a motivation, your job as a notes taker is to discover that aspect to make it a wholly objective case in of direction and of design to improve your eye. Its a refined thing as you have your own preference, though if you loosen up youll find that you can agree or disagree with what its trying to accomplish.

 

Try to get to the heart of the matter, the original motivation or desire. Its there, it does exist. Does it succeed in its own world its created, what about outside? Things become conceptual as tried and true tropes, similarities of level design among different levels already made, ideas that already exist, do enter into the equation. Design is intentional like that. Aesthetics arent as important as you might think.

 

Without this sort of discovery, its empty minded. There's more to be done than simple critique.

Edited February 22, 2023 by Dreamskull