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yellowmadness54

tips for good maps?

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sorry for another post in this forum, but can I get really good tips for map making?

If im going to start over again, I want my maps to atleast look very good.

Dont point me to the wiki article, because that doesnt really provide much.

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Play maps that you like and then rip off improve on the parts that you find cool.

Failing that, you try checking the basic points in one of these tutorial pages, among the hordes of others you can find with Google.

If you just want advice on 'detailing', I'm sure you could look up Essel's style guide or something similar.

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The most important thing I've learned after making many many bad maps, is that a map shouldn't try to be everything at once. That is to say, don't use 200 different textures in your map, just stick to a few colors and material types. Or from a gameplay point of view, not every map has to be an epic sprawl through hell with every boss in it.

I think the first half or so of Memento Mori is the best place to go for inspiration on making good Doom maps.

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Come up with a back-story in your own mind. It seems to streamlines the design process and you'll find yourself having more inspiration in the room to room construction. Being too literal with a story never really feels right in Doom, but leaving clues or hints to tickle the player's imagination seem to accent Doom's abstract design very well.

Oh, and don't forget ceilings. It seems like the majority of beginner maps always leave the top plane very flat and uninteresting. This is merely aesthetic, but a ceiling can make or break a room.

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Make terrible maps, submit them, and then actually listen to the criticism you receive. :D

Honestly, there is no right answer. Yeah, the majority of people here will agree that your textures should be aligned and your detail should not be obstructing movement and you shouldn't cut off bricks and you should use flats that go with textures and yadda yadda yadda. But there is nothing preventing you from breaking any or all of these rules.

Sometimes you have to listen to people's criticism, but you should never let go of your own individuality for what some of the stuffy mappers would tell you to do.

For me, gameplay is the number one concern, no matter what. So my advice is to pay close attention to your monster (and item) placement, and test your maps a lot to figure out how the battles pan out

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magicsofa said:

Sometimes you have to listen to people's criticism, but you should never let go of your own individuality for what some of the stuffy mappers would tell you to do.


On the other hand, don't pull a CjWright and tell everybody else that they're inferior Archvile-jumping fools who don't see the genius in your work. Be true to your style but accept that your style won't always be everybody else's.

I think the best way to learn mapping, as is the best way to learn anything, is just to start doing it and see what suggestions people make. Think about all the suggestions; some will go against your style or whatever, while others will make sense to you. This is more or less how I learned it, and over time I've been able to figure out what people enjoy in maps as well as (much more importantly) what I personally enjoy in maps. As you do it you'll start to notice things like clashing textures, bare ceilings, cramped areas, etc. more intuitively and will find more creative ways of diversifying the look and gameplay of your maps while still keeping them thematically solid.

That being said, some good starting points are to give the player a reasonable amount of space (it's easy when starting out mapping to make corridors, rooms and even outdoor areas too small...small areas are sometimes good but if the whole map is cramped it will constrict gameplay too much), and to avoid too many dead-end areas, instead providing more than one way to enter and exit any part of the map. This second point can take some getting used to, and is obviously very hard to implement perfectly over the entire map (and in a lot of cases probably shouldn't be), but it's important in terms of keeping the player from having to backtrack too much as well as giving the player extra options in terms of where to go.

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The most important thing is whatever your strongest point is, exploit it, don't follow any rules, i've realised, after trying to emulate ID for so long I wonder who they were trying to copy?

Build a map, submit it, ignore the personal insults and make more for the people who say they enjoy it. Job's a good'un.

Dooms doom and that's it, the fact that you're mapping is doing tons more than the people who deconstruct it, after all, honestly, who gives a shite about anyone else?

Ultimate goal: People play your wads, that's IT.

Ooh P.s, you're not getting paid so frig it

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phobosdeimos1 said:

The most important thing is whatever your strongest point is, exploit it, don't follow any rules


Rules are just tools at your disposal. For example, you could have a stencil of a square and a circle. That's kind of like a rule, but you wouldn't keep using it if you wanted to draw something different.

StupidBunny's comments about space are good basic rules. To be a good mapper, you should follow them...most of the time. Note how he said small areas are sometimes good, and dead-ends sometimes make sense.

If you want to make a really cramped map, go for it. However, I think it takes an experienced mapper to make a tiny-corridors map that's actually good. Specialized maps are generally more difficult to create, and beginners often get excited about their unique idea but fail to execute. Another good example would be slaughtermaps.

As far as exploiting your strongest point, doesn't that disregard the weaker points you could improve on? You want people to play your maps - well if it gets a terrible review on /newstuff, I'm probably not going to bother.

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phobosdeimos1 said:

The most important thing is whatever your strongest point is, exploit it,

I can't disagree with the idea of using your best skills to the fullest, but I don't think that it's the most important thing by any measure. In my opinion, the most important thing going toward a truly good map is 'completeness'; good maps are those that are not noticably lacking in any significant way. To make good maps, you need to have more than a single 'strong point' to base your designs around. If somebody is great at monster placement, but sucks at layout and architecture, it will reflect in their sub-par maps. Anyway, how can you tell what your strongest point is in the first place? I certainly have no clue what aspect of mapping would be my forte, and I think this determination would really be up to each player to decide for themselves.

don't follow any rules,

You need to follow some kind of design guidelines to a certain extent, or your maps will end up without any semblance of unity or coherence. That doesn't mean that you need to restrict your creativity by following some cookie-cutter list of mapping rules, or to build variations of the same thing each time, but it means that you need to do more than just randomly slapping down sectors and monsters without thought.

i've realised, after trying to emulate ID for so long I wonder who they were trying to copy?

Regardless of whether they were trying to copy the design or atmosphere of anything else, the level designers did have a fairly distinctive style, resulting from the 'rules' of design and common motifs that they used. Romero even explained the guidelines that he made up for himself, which you've probably seen by now. Of course, this doesn't mean that you have to emulate the originals, but to make good maps, you usually need to hold up some kind of internal consistency.

Build a map, submit it, ignore the personal insults and make more for the people who say they enjoy it. Job's a good'un.

From experience, I'd say that if people are insulting you for your maps, that usually means that they are shit, in some way or another. If you don't mind that, then that's fine (as long as somebody indeed enjoys it), but you'll probably get a bad reputation if you keep it up without improving on the criticized aspects. I'm serious; carefully considering the criticism that you recieve is probably the biggest factor on how fast you will improve as a level designer, and CJWright stands as a fine example of what can happen when you refuse to do so.

Dooms doom and that's it, the fact that you're mapping is doing tons more than the people who deconstruct it, after all, honestly, who gives a shite about anyone else?

Many of the people who critique others' maps actually make maps themselves, so it's not like everyone who does so is lazy and useless to the community. Also, if you're releasing your maps to the public, you should give at least a little shit about the people who will play them, and whether they'll like the maps. If you don't care, you might as well keep them to yourself.

Ultimate goal: People play your wads, that's IT.

If the goal is to have people play your maps, wouldn't it be better if MORE people play them? And wouldn't it be better if those people enjoyed them, too? Maps will only have a wide appeal if you design them in a way that lots of people like. I got the impression from the above paragraphs that you were talking about mapping mainly for one's own satisfaction, which is cool, but this statement seems to contradict that.

Ooh P.s, you're not getting paid so frig it

If one's general attitude toward mapping is along the lines of "It's only a hobby, so I can just half-ass everything", then they shouldn't expect to make good maps very often. Not that everybody should be expected to give up their real life for the sake of Doom, but there must be a more optimal balance somewhere between those extremes.

Heh, that came out a bit more verbose than I'd expected. I'm not trying to start a dispute or anything, I just think that we have vastly different ideas about what makes some Doom maps better than others. :>

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Mithran: That's fine i know what you're saying with each of your responses, someone's gotta say it,

I tend to not argue these days 'cause there's a million factors in everything, plus personal preference isn't an arguable thing,
you can't please everyone, and most doomers seem to have vastly difference likes and dislikes so there is no good WADS, there is only wads

also I was pretty slaughtered when i wrote that

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phobosdeimos1 said:

Mithran: That's fine i know what you're saying with each of your responses, someone's gotta say it,

I tend to not argue these days 'cause there's a million factors in everything, plus personal preference isn't an arguable thing,
you can't please everyone, and most doomers seem to have vastly difference likes and dislikes so there is no good WADS, there is only wads

also I was pretty slaughtered when i wrote that


Agreed!
Some people like short, punchy levels, others like long, suspenceful levels.

Since everyone is different, fid your style and stick with it!

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I'm playing an awesome megawad right now (njdoom2). It's damn old, from 1994, and the detail level is even less than Knee Deep in the Dead. The architecture is so-so. But the gameplay man! WOW! It's like on every level the author tried something different, and that alone keeps it from getting stale.

I've played other PWADs that looked great and were technically very good, but got boring after a couple levels. Not this one!

Just something to think about...

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i think a good golden rule with any creativity is to first and foremost try to please yourself, and do whatever *you* like.

though i think thats the general idea of other people's replies here.

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NEVER ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever EVER put a cyberdemon or a spider mastermind into your map unless youre SURE this will improve your map. ESPECIALLY on your first map.

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One thing ive learned. Is when you run out of ideas instead of trying to just force yourself to map, just go do something else. Then come back when your in the mood or get an idea then the ideas flow like water for me even if its been a few days.

Just my .02

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