Intimidated by Doom Builder

[Koko Ricky]

EDIT: Disregard this entire post. I panic at the drop of a dime and after awhile realized what I had done wrong. Please excuse how unprofessional I am.

So I decided to finally give Doom Builder 2 a shot and try my hand at map making. Into the fifth tutorial, it is explained how to tag sectors. I'm feeling really stupid right now, because I carefully followed the instructions, even rewinding multiple times and doing them over, but when I tested the map, two frustrating things happened:

1) A sector I tagged as damaging the player did not damage the player (it was tagged just as stated in the tutorial).

2) A sector I tagged as a lift did not do anything upon pushing it (it was given the two tags just as stated in the tutorial).

I'm a little flustered so that early on in mapmaking, I'm doing things exactly as stated and getting a different result. How do I determine what I did wrong?

EDIT: Doom Builder's website does not have a forum and instead said to go back here (among other places) for help, and the manual within the software specifically states that it is "not a beginner's tutorial that teaches you how to make maps." Why is it so user-unfriendly? I don't have a goddamned clue how to map.

[Kappes Buur]

GoatLord said:

EDIT: Doom Builder's website does not have a forum and instead said to go back here (among other places) for help, and the manual within the software specifically states that it is "not a beginner's tutorial that teaches you how to make maps." Why is it so user-unfriendly? I don't have a goddamned clue how to map.

As is usual, experience is best gained through experimentation.

While it is not prominently promoted, there is a forum and can be found through the Development page
http://www.doombuilder.com/index.php?p=development

The video tutorials did not help?

There is the Download Doom Builder: An Illustrated Guide. Granted it is slanted towards the old Doombuilder, but it is still useful.

Aaaand, there are two wikis:

http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Entryway
http://zdoom.org/wiki/Main_Page

which are brimful with useful information.

[boris]

Kappes Buur said:

While it is not prominently promoted, there is a forum and can be found through the Development page
http://www.doombuilder.com/index.php?p=development

... but its scope is not questions like "how do I make a elevator" etc. Questions like that are not really related to DB2 at all, the mechanics are the same as nearly 20 years ago. There are plenty of good resources around, like this here forum.

[arkore]

I just learned Doom Builder 2 few weeks ago. This is the best editor, really.

I learned it up in no time at all--became good at it after couple hours, and fluent after several hours and watching the tutorials. In the tutorials, you should note the hotkeys he's using; I use those a lot. E.g. CTRL+MOUSE_WHEEL_UP while in visual mode will increase brightness of the currently highlighted sector. E.g. SHIFT+MIDDLE_MOUSE to paste a texture on all walls around the sector. Press F to flip lines.

To make sector hurt you, just select the sector and set special effect of Damage.

To make a lift work, make sure the line is facing outwards. Tag that line, and then lag your lift sector with same tag #.

[cannonball]

There are plenty of tutorials on youtube, I learned a lot from Chubz doombuilder tutorials. I also recommend trial and error in some parts. I for one have played a lot of wads and If I'm stuck where I cannot perform a particular action, I resource a level from a wad which uses that and look at the tags relating to the action you want to perform. If that makes sense.
For example I would never had thought line action 19 made monsters appear out of the ground instantly.....

[Harmata]

When i first saw Doom Builder 2, the first thing i thought was: I HAVE TO make a map with such beautiful tool. Like, it would be a SIN if i WON'T make a map with this thing.

Yeah.

[schwerpunk]

Kappes Buur said:

. . .
There is the Download Doom Builder: An Illustrated Guide. Granted it is slanted towards the old Doombuilder, but it is still useful.

I can't recommend this highly enough. I have it saved to my desktop, and it's just packed with useful information. [LINK to .PDF]

Also - and this will come up, if it hasn't already - to flip a Linedef (its direction indicated by the little 'pip' sticking out of the sides of all lines), you simply highlight the line, then press 'f' on the keyboard. EDIT: never mind, arkore covered this already.

It took me about two hours to figure this out myself, and I remember it being very frustrating.

P.S. feel free to PM me personally - I've very recently got into Doom Builder 2 as well, and would be glad to help out a fellow mapping newbie. :)