Mapping - how much of it is talent?

[Kwisior]

It's a question I've been thinking about for a while. Do some players simply have more natural creative ability than others, and can design levels of similar quality with less effort? How much does it really matter in the long run anyway?

I take a look at creator like mouldy, who knocked it out of the park with his first map, and can't help but think that there can be some truth to that. Perhaps his animation/art background helped? On the other hand many people grind for years to get on the same level of recognition/ability. Is it a matter of skill, less natural talent making them work harder for the same results, or a combination of both?

Perhaps it's just a matter of will, as many people screw around with the editor and don't make very serious projects in their formative years. There are of course exceptions to that, and those are more in my focus here.

 

I can't find an answer to all these questions myself, as I'm not a mapper (except for one unfinished map, which also inspired me to create this thread). What do you think?

Edited November 27, 2023 by Kwisior

[Biodegradable]

I mean, like anything else in this world, some people can just have a bit of a knack for a specific thing and can take to it like a duck to water, but on the other side of the coin, anyone can learn just about anything if they put in the time and effort. I don't believe in the idea that some people are just born brilliant and never had to work for their skill set. I think people can find that they may have a natural aptitude for a certain thing, but I don't believe that people are just infinitely locked out of learning or obtaining a skill that they desire. The only thing stopping them is the willingness to put in the work.

 

You want to make Doom maps? Open your level editor and start drawing lines, fam. It's how every other mapper you admire got to where they are now.

[Sonikkumania]

Well I'd say you have to be somewhat a creative person but you also need to understand the game mechanics and what makes an entertaining level. So yes it might be up to talent. But it's not depending only on that, you also need patience and to be somewhat humble.

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

None. I'm convinced that the whole concept of talent is actively harmful. 

It's not like mouldy made one wad and it was an instant hit. He has understanding of level design that comes from experience. Making a good wad is spending a lot of time and energy on making wads. The idea of somebody being uniquely gifted, and making great stuff with little to no effort is nonsense. Just push that idea out if your mind, it's poisoning you. Poisoning you into thinking you have to be born under a specific star sign or whatever to do something competently. No fate has sat on the edge of your crib to decide what you can and cannot do. The one and only reason somebody can make great map is that they've been learning to do that. Make mistakes, recognise and correct them again, and again, and again. 

[baja blast rd.]

Good thread. We're having a convo about this but here's some excerpts of some thoughts of mine: 

 

Quote

Doom is a medium that is very flexible and can draw from lots of other disciplines. The work of mappers like Nanka Kurashiki and Dashiefrickintyan sometimes definitely feels like it draws from their art background. Some authors you can tell they have lots of level design experience in other games, other engines. Skilled players sometimes jump in and start making very good gameplay-oriented maps early on because they already have a developed sense of what good levels feel like to them. It wouldn't surprise me if the imagination in Mouldy's maps was honed in some other context. There seems to be a lot going on like that.

 

...

 

A big part of what passes as 'talent' seems to be the habits and routines you have in place for learning. It isn't that relevant whether you're already good with your first linedef laid down -- but if you have good learning practices, you can go from beginner to good surprisingly quickly, which might look like 'talent' but probably isn't. One example of a good learning practice is learning by (re)making. It's easy to analyze something and assume you get it just from deeply comprehending it, but there are so many finer points that you pick up by actively making what you're trying to learn.

 

 

[slowfade]

I think if your parents are prominent Doom mappers you're likely to have a better start than the average mapper coming from a non-mapping family. But I don't know if any such people exist yet.

[Patrick_Plays_Doom]

20% talent

80% everything else (creativity, insight, etc)

if you consider creativity a talent then its 50% talent 50% etc 

[s4f3s3x]

Natural inclination, or talent as you might call it, is a real thing but even then it falls short if enough practice is not put into it. Talented or not, it's always very frustrating to not be able to realize the images or creative purposes you have in your head, and that's where training skills and mastering come into place.

[MFG38]

I 100% second everything @Biodegradable said. If level design wasn't a learnable skill, I'd still be making maps that consist of rectangles of different sizes all connected by doors, flatter lighting than a pancake, no height variation to speak of and the least engaging gameplay you've ever seen. Also, they'd only work in (G)ZDoom due to untagged sectors and whatnot. But thankfully, through a thing called practice, I've gotten much better, and I can not understate its importance.

 

Nobody is a master of a craft the instant they get involved in it. If anything, mastery is a myth. But you can strive to keep yourself at a level of competence that's satisfactory for you personally, and the only way to do that is by practicing.

[Kwisior]

1 hour ago, slowfade said:

I think if your parents are prominent Doom mappers you're likely to have a better start than the average mapper coming from a non-mapping family. But I don't know if any such people exist yet.

John Anderson has a son who maps and (IIRC) I read somewhere that Tarnsman's father is a level designer. Idk about the first guy, but Tarnsman is really good, and if what I read is correct then it might have something to do with it.

Edit: There's also Tom and Bob Mustaine. Tom (the son) is quite decent from what I've played.

Edited November 27, 2023 by Kwisior

[DoomGappy]

28 minutes ago, slowfade said:

I think if your parents are prominent Doom mappers you're likely to have a better start than the average mapper coming from a non-mapping family. But I don't know if any such people exist yet.

The nepoDoom Babies are coming.

[Matthias]

1 hour ago, Sneezy McGlassFace said:

It's not like mouldy made one wad and it was an instant hit.

 

Actually, I have a little feeling that this is how it happened :D

 

Cyriak made Going Down and puf, it was far better than anything I made previous 15 years.

[Pechudin]

Most of it is probably practice, but some "talent" can help.

 

For example, being able to visualize spaces in your mind's eye. Some people have better natural, base ability to do so. But! That too is a learnable and improvable skill, meditation can help sharpen images in mind's eye.

 

So I'd say that starting position can help and probably yield biggest return in the beginning, but with enough practice two people should approach equal skill.

 

RE: Cyriak - he is (among other) a proficient animator, and who knows where he perfected his creativity. That naturally translated to doom mapping.

[Matt Eldrydge]

I kinda feel like some people just sorta get it when it comes to how to make a map look good, play well and have a distinct mood early on, while others improve their skills over the course of time until that magic touch feels like it's been there all along. If you practice something long enough you'll definitely get good at it, after all.

[ebrl]

(I removed the original post. I had made a comment here about having a "grand vision" and apparently multiple people misread that as "picturing the entire finished map in your mind". Go figure.)

Edited November 28, 2023 by ebrl

[Fonze]

Natural predisposition still needs to be cultivated

[Deadwing]

There's probably some talent involved, as with any other "skilled" tool imo, but also a lot of practice, learning and definitely creativity.

 

Being influencied by different backgrounds also helps to get "there" faster, though. Still, honestly, in any field there will always be someone with (a lot) less experience that is capable of doing something "better" than what we can. It's not a competition, though, so (at least for me), one step at time and not comparing yourself to others is always an useful advice.

[Maximum Matt]

Some people are simply genetically hard-coded over millennia of generations to have the natural, animalistic, instinctual urge to make quality Doom II maps, like the Casali Brothers and Drake

[Stabbey]

One very important aspect of any highly creative task is the ability to self-criticize. To recognize on your own when something you've made isn't as good as it could be. Couple that with a desire and willingness to make it better and that can increase the speed at which one improves.

[Li'l devil]

Talent is everything. There's no point in learning anything. You're either just good or just bad, and that's it.

[DoomGappy]

A lot of people also don't publish their actual very first maps, there is probably a very big hidden stash in their hard drives somewhere of many failed attempts and errors. It's kinda crazy to believe that first map actually means first map. We all know the first map a Doom mapper makes is their house.

[mouldy]

"Skill" and "talent" is pretty much just doing something a lot. My early doom stuff looks visually ok because I've been doing art since forever, but I'd say the gameplay of all my maps before going down was kind of questionable. That was after I'd already played doom for 20 years, so clearly just playing the game a lot isn't enough either. You have to watch loads of people playing your maps to get an idea of the mistakes you are making. Having an artistic background might help with that process, where you are constantly trying to figure out why everything you do is not as good as you want it to be. Its a shame, but its true - to be any good at creative stuff you have to always feel embarrassed by the stuff you make. Thats why you keep improving.

 

Anyway, the point is: just looking nice isn't really everything when it comes to doom maps. It can sure help - the visuals can be a substantial part of the gameplay after all, providing player motivation and a sense of drama for example - but I often find that if the gameplay is interesting then it helps create an interesting visual style just in the way that it arranges the space and breaks up the symmetry. And players won't often be spending a load of time gawping at the scenery while they are running around shooting stuff. So make a lot of bad maps and get a lot of feedback.

 

 

[Matt Eldrydge]

13 minutes ago, DoomGappy said:

A lot of people also don't publish their actual very first maps, there is probably a very big hidden stash in their hard drives somewhere of many failed attempts and errors. It's kinda crazy to believe that first map actually means first map. We all know the first map a Doom mapper makes is their house.

 

Can confirm. I don't think 5 old, sucky, lame UDMF maps is a lot, but either way I'm glad they're lost forever. I've made something like seven more UDMF maps this year before making the jump to limit-removing/Boom, which I think is better suited to what I like making. Out of those, only one is publically available and the others are languishing in cloud storage.

 

I still remember my first ever room in Doom, which drew direct inspiration from the L-shaped stairs in my house. :P

[Noiser]

Talent is a lie. Natural inclinations exists but are minimal and can be overcome. What we associate with talent is mostly tied to externalities - prior education, social circles, luck, money, free time (...). However, nothing beats practice. Do what you like and be kind with your limitations - but do it, just do it. You will get better in your own terms!

[Roofi]

I don't think talent matters a lot in Doom mapping. The hardest part to accept is the fact that's a really a time-consuming activity. 

 

You don't need that much skills or talent to make a good map but you need patience and lot of time. You just have to know how Doom works in order to create fun maps.

 

[Treehouseminis]

31 minutes ago, DoomGappy said:

A lot of people also don't publish their actual very first maps, there is probably a very big hidden stash in their hard drives somewhere of many failed attempts and errors. It's kinda crazy to believe that first map actually means first map. We all know the first map a Doom mapper makes is their house.

I published my very first map lol.  I do wanna do a house level, but cant decide if my childhood home would make a big enough level or not.

 

As for the main topic, I think small part of it is talent, or very least practice in other forms.  If you've dabble in any other art from, you'll have a decent idea of contrast, composition, and form.  Your practice might not have been in the editor but most creative endeavors have overlapping concepts you might not realize it until you do various things. Ive been doing art my whole life, but In a few weeks It will be a full year for me mapping. 

 

It also helps UDB is easy to learn, but hard to master.  So many shortcuts you learn over time to make things simpler.   

[DoomGappy]

2 minutes ago, Treehouseminis said:

I published my very first map lol.  I do wanna do a house level, but cant decide if my childhood home would make a big enough level or not.

Sorry for the plug, but map for my project, you can make it as big as you want and have fun with zany ideas. 

[URROVA]

Another thing to take account is the other skills you have developed that helps with doom mapping. If you have experience with level design from other games, you will have learning doom mapping more easy than someone that didnt designed a level for any game. If the game is a retro shooter (eg Duke Nukem or Quake) you can easily translate your knowdelage from one game to another, instead of building it from zero.

And other skills too: If you developed visual art skills you will struggle less making good looking levels. If you have experience with programming you can make levels with support of scripting more easily, or do stuff with the engine that requires programming (that its outside the mapping part but its related). 

[Helm]

Not sure what talent is exactly but since keep using it it must have some intuitive function. Anyway, map-making aside, all creative pursuits are first of all foundationalized by some sort of self-belief in the part of the creator. Beyond self-expression, materializing some sort of art piece stems from feeling like this is worth existing, right? Think of the psychological ramification of '...well, I guess it's ok that I exist too' that comes with some sort of creative validation.

Most of the time I think people struggle with that sort of self-belief 'I can be a mapper' is the same as  'I can be an artist'. If you ever said 'I want to be an artist' and someone laughed at you, you know what that does. If someone for whatever reason had to go through the fire and the flames of all this doubt and came out of it thinking 'yeah I can do art or whatever', then I think they devote themselve to new creative angles in a more linear way. Not saying the doubt and loathing goes away, but I do believe it arrests the process less for more secure folks. I wish somehow that fundamental was something we could communicate more and support each other on (as in, anyone can be an artist or whatever they want to be, of course you can make doom maps) and not so much on the upper layer of searching for some sort of mystical talent that others have and we didn't. Secure self-belief comes easier to people with privileged backgrounds, yet the creative desire often comes in relation to trauma so I think that somehow gives some valuable insight as to why creatives constantly oscillate on this.

[thiccyosh]

To put it into the words of James Paddock:

 

Quote

ANYONE can make a DOOM map.

 

Just like how anyone can cook or play gituar. But you need skill to master these, skill you can only get skill through practice. Talent is a very minor aspect of every hobby, even people with "God-given talent" will blunder sometimes. Talent to me is just prior knowledge and the ability to grasp certain ideas quicker than others - not to be confused with intelligence.