my first map

[C30N9]

xvertigox said:

Did you play lots of Doom before starting mapping or do you have any design/art experience?

deference said:

@esselfortium this is my first attempt at using a map editor. i studied other maps by various authors in doom builder 2 before attempting anything.

[xvertigox]

C30N9 said:

@esselfortium this is my first attempt at using a map editor. i studied other maps by various authors in doom builder 2 before attempting anything.

That could mean he opened up a few maps to see how to get monster traps to work etc or he actually looked at the design aspects, I was looking for a more specific reply since it seems he's got a good mapping sense already.

[deference]

i studied "simplicity" by AgentSpork, "Suspended in Dusk" by Espi, "SpaceDM9" by esselfortium, and the original "City of the Damned" by Tormentor667 for a good long while to get a feel for the 2.5d space i'd be mapping in before i even touched the draw tool on my own. after a while i went and looked around at some doom 64 maps for a closer look at the gameplay and atmosphere side of things (as doom 64 is one of my favorites).

i've been sketching and writing out ideas for maps for something like 2 or 3 months and i've been lurking doomworld like crazy in between work and the boyfriend, but i can't say i have much of a feel for building in 3d yet... i find myself often times not able to take full advantage of height variation in terms of gameplay, and i still can't quite make sense of how to use certain enemies like Chaingun guys without pissing people off.

i still don't quite think i have the hang of the engine, but i've also spent at least a good solid month reading up on the engine specifics for vanilla. i know next to nothing about some things even still, though... like how nodes and segs work, and many of the more complex vanilla tricks. i was thinking of studying boom generalized behaviors, but i think strictly limit-removing with vanilla fx is a good place to start.

[NiuHaka]

deference said:

...i still can't quite make sense of how to use certain enemies like Chaingun guys without pissing people off.

Man, I would not even worry about that. You've got to put heavy weapons dudes in there. Just give the player some cover wherever you do and it will be fine. Besides, your maps are too brilliant to worry about pissing people off. If you try to cater to everyone you won't ever finish this stuff... You could always be like me and cater to nobody but yourself. Life is so much easier that way.

[magicsofa]

deference said:

i find myself often times not able to take full advantage of height variation in terms of gameplay

Height variation is a great way to have rooms connect to each other via windows and ledges. This allows you to sequester monsters to a certain area, and reveal items and such that the player must figure out how to reach. It also provides a bit more versatility than just having windows or grates that you can't get through. Ledges, for example, allow the player to jump down but not climb up.

I often think of it just in terms of rooms. Sometimes I will raise a pillar or ledge just for visuals or monster placement, but more often I use it to build adjacent "spaces" if you will, which are not totally separate.

Doom2's MAP06 and MAP09 have some good (and rather obvious) use of height variation. Then there are maps like MAP13, which can be a bit much in terms of crazy heights :D


EDIT: For example, in this pic I would definitely want to allow the player to eventually come out of a door on one or both of the ledges inset into the wall.

and i still can't quite make sense of how to use certain enemies like Chaingun guys without pissing people off.

Use them sparingly. A single well-placed chaingunner can tear down the player's health significantly. As with all hitscanners, you can basically expect the player to lose some health, unless they are some idiot savant.

Some mappers tuck them safely in places where they won't cause infighting, but I like to allow that kind of chaos. The fact that chaingunners are dangerous to the other demons when provoked balances how dangerous they are to you.

[toxicfluff]

What a first effort. Whoever said it's the tools, I don't agree. You've just got a real talent for design, pure and simple. Even dressed in grey and brown, the flowing architecture in the 3rd shot of the first 3 posted absolutely sings.

From the number of doorways it even looks like you might have avoided the room->corridor->room first map idiom... just about. That on the spectrum between a map consisting of a room attached to a corridor attached to a room (my first map) and E1M7 (interconnected, flowing brilliance) the areas in the shots you posted do appear to be on the side of self-contained basic shapes, would be my only criticism.

Magnificent though, looking forward to playing it! Hope it works in Vanilla, I only really play in Dosbox these days.

[esselfortium]

toxicfluff said:

Magnificent though, looking forward to playing it! Hope it works in Vanilla, I only really play in Dosbox these days.

I reckon you can use this in Dosbox.

[FLiP]

Wow, this is quite the opposite of what I expected in a thread titled "my first map". Are you sure your not using some kind of direct brain-to-computer interface or something? It's beautiful and about as close to perfect as doom mapping gets I think. You have some real artistic talent.

I always screw up trying to over complicate little details when I should have made an area simpler and better looking.

[deference]

thanks to everyone for the kind words. here's a little underwhelming update:

[esselfortium]

I love the first shot!

The second one, though, I think I liked better before. The lighting doesn't make a lot of sense (why is it so dark under the overhangs where bright lights are pointed at the ground?), and the metal supports across the upper sides look kind of odd to me how they split up the flesh on the wall from the flesh on the ceiling; if you do want to split it up, I'd maybe try three of those metal supports 8px or 16px away from each other, or making the metal surround the entire flesh ceiling as a trim. (Actually, a trim of just one row of STONE3 on the ceiling might look good, it'd add some balance to the two rows of it along the floor.)

Also, in the second shot I'd either make the support columns on the sides stick out more (at least 32px) so they can be used for cover, or not at all; as-is, they don't serve much of a gameplay purpose but to give you something to get stuck on the edges of.

[Guest DILDOMASTER666]

This is amazing stuff, you know.

Goddamn.

[deference]

http://i.imgur.com/YC4rR.png
http://i.imgur.com/CpD47.png

not really my best stuff imo... trying to find different ways to use some of these textures from the iwad, and i'm having difficulties. :/

[NiuHaka]

I seriously love that last screen.

[Lila Feuer]

Very nice shots.

[molten_]

That last screen is awesome. Nice usage of textures and shapes.

The first one has some nice height and light usage, too. Really digging this.