Idea of Doomworld design teaching programme/project

[Xegethra]

It could work for those who really need it....but are there any people out there who really need it?

Sure, a lot may like the idea...but as for if they actually need it is another thing. They could do just as well on their own.

I say go for it either way, see what happens. I mean I could be proven wrong and that's cool. If it helps people in the right ways then it's all good.

[Blastfrog]

If anything, I think there needs to be a prominently displayed public service announcement to tell newbies to skip XWE and use Slade instead.

I don't care if my crusade against XWE is silly, annoying, or anything in between. That bugged out POS needs to die already. It's simply an unclean tool that could very well teach bad habits or lead to technical misunderstandings like the following:

*"What's going on with my image? I thought that cyan was transparency?"
*"Aren't Doom patches regular Microsoft BMPs?"
*"Aren't Doom sounds regular Microsoft WAVs?"
*"I can't edit or view these ZDoom texture definitions besides via text!"
*"I'm using Vista or newer, why do I keep running into these compatibility problems?"
*"I merely opened my IWAD file and now it's a PWAD!"

And so on. For their sake, they need to use a clean tool that doesn't obfuscate what Doom really does, and one that's far less likely to crash on them or create problems if they're using newer versions of Windows. I know a lot of people still use XP, but it's becoming rarer these days. It also helps us so that we don't have to answer these same questions whenever anyone new comes in, and so that we don't have to untrain them from bad technique/understanding.

Face it, XWE is a bad utility that's ageing even worse. Let's get them started off on the right foot.

[Xegethra]

Hah, I used XWE for importing custom music into my WADS. But that's about it, I've never used Slade.

Is XWE really that bad?

[mrthejoshmon]

Xegethra said:

Hah, I used XWE for importing custom music into my WADS. But that's about it, I've never used Slade.

Is XWE really that bad?

You can loose an entire IWAD by using XWE, it corrupts shit seemingly at random for me.

[Xegethra]

Damn that's a horrible thing to happen.

[Tarnsman]

SLADE3 is superior to XWE in every way and I highly recommend replacing XWE with it.

[scorpion]

Doom Builder has been the center of my curriculum during my elective classes on Fridays at my school for a number of years now, and as I have some unique problems which people at home who decide to take up mapping won't come across, I've also created some of my own resources, and have some ideas on this subject as well.

Some of the unique problems: The students who take my class chose mine from a list of classes, including debate class, dodgeball, and darts. I teach a course of 12 weeks, each week has 2x40 minute periods, and the first week is 'tryouts' (for them to choose, not me), which is usually a class filled with over 25 students. From the second week on it's usually around 10 students (most students leave when they find out it's not twelve weeks of just playing games, and they actually get homework and everything, some leave because their English level is not up to par - did I mention I'm in China?).

Homework pressure is really high here, especially in subjects such as Chinese and mathematics, which leave them little time to actually spend time on mapping, as well as some who treat assignments in my class as any other kind of homework - something they have to do and thus don't want to. On key aspect in mapping is that you're interested in it and are willing to spend time doing (something some students luckily take to heart). But then there's the fact that many of my students never heard of Doom until they get introduced to it by me, love it, but haven't played it nearly enough to understand the dynamics of proper dispersion of monsters and pickups. Their parents usually don't believe them when I ask them to play the game as homework. ;-)

My requests to the school to have students in a similar age level usually fall upon deaf ears, so I have 11-year-olds and 17-year-olds in the same class, making it harder for me. One last problem: the school's resources seem to be limited -for me- to old computers where OpenGL doesn't seem to work well. Which sucks.

Now that you've read my story which has little to do with this topic other than teaching and Doom mapping, here are some of the ideas that I like:

The first Doom Builder came with a tutorial in PDF format ("Doom Builder: An Illustrated Guide" - find it on the bottom of this page), written by John W. Anderson, which I found very useful. It was indeed written as a step-by-step guide in a single, small map, showing how to work with Doom Builder through either the menu or shortcut keys, different approaches towards similar goals, explaining different functions within a (Vanilla) map, and focusing -somehwat- on level design and aesthetics, all within a single map. The map was small and, although playable, not very exciting, but it provided all the necessary information, guiding the user through different functions, and at the same time giving the user a sense of accomplishment during each step toward the goal of actually completing this small map.

I know I'm verbose - I'm all for a tutorial showing different functions progressing over a single map (over several videos perhaps), showing several different functions rather than just explaining how to do this one thing in one example. You could show how to do, for example, slopes, PolyObjects, or 3D sectors, how to place it well on your map, and how to make it look functional, rather than just a quick 'here's how to do it, have fun figuring out how to actually implement it well'.

Different design styles can be used in this one video. Different approaches can be shown. Perhaps even different 'lecturers' can take turns hosting different video tutorials in progressive steps while still using the same map. I think it would be a great idea.

For teaching a 'class', I think one on one would be better than a group, although the latter may be found easier and less time consuming, but then you'll deal with different people's schedules as well as speeds. I often have to slow down my class to the speed of the slowest participants, aggravating some of the other, faster students.

About my teaching: I don't get a lot extra for this, but I mainly do it because I like it better than teaching Science, English, or even my regular IT curriculum. I have students who, for the most part, WANT to be here, but I'm in no way an accomplished mapper as in, I've released nothing other than one small entry in the Doomworld Mega Project (MAP11), which originally was an example map for my class showing doors, lifts, and teleports.

[dew]

"Guys, how about we come up with proper methodology so we can teach Doom mapping?"
"That's my paid job. At a school. In China."

I find this completely ridiculous and amazing and cool.

[Phml]

If anything, I think there needs to be a prominently displayed public service announcement to tell newbies to skip XWE and use Slade instead.

I find it interesting we see a steady stream of newbies who pick XWE in the first place. What makes them do that? Why not Slade 3?

Googling "doom edit wad", the first result I get is this page (doom.wikZZZia.com/wiki/Choosing_a_WAD_editor, I've messed up the link so it doesn't get changed to doomwiki.org) from the wikia doom wiki. Slade isn't listed on that page.

If I google "doom modding", I get this page advocating XWE. And, four results down the page, a link to wikia which eventually links back to that "choosing a wad editor" page without Slade.

Obviously we hatessss wikia but this is what newcomers are going to see anyway.

[Blastfrog]

Phml said:

Obviously we hatessss wikia but this is what newcomers are going to see anyway.

Yes, I figured it was because doing some quick searches, they find plenty of old references back when not even SlumpEd existed and XWE was the only decent option of the time.

It also doesn't help that the Doomworld editors page only mentions up to Slade 2.x when it was only a map editor, and prominently displays XWE by highlighting it in bold font, as well as the XWE subforum, and the hosted site. I don't see any good reason to promote XWE in any way these days; it's a sloppy, long-abandoned, completely surpassed tool that should be buried.

Obviously, I don't have any problem with veterans who know how to work around its quirks and simply don't wish to learn a new tool, but I insist that newbies should have zero exposure to it. I don't think we should be sitting back doing nothing. If we're pointing people towards Doom Builder 2, and not WADAuthor, why can't we do the same in regards to Slade over XWE? I personally think it's harmful and not just quirky or benign to allow XWE's continued exposure.


A tad off-topic, but I wonder if Wikia pays Google to keep their search results on top... It also pisses me off to no end that it's still got active contributors, though as predicted, the quality of that one is deteriorating pretty badly (which makes its continued prevalence in search engines that much worse for newbies). I might add a reference to Slade on the Wikia version to do what I can to mitigate the damage myself, but I feel that there needs to be some kind of community-large (or at least leader handled) campaign to steer people to the proper wiki, and the modern tools.

Is there anything we can do to get Google to show the proper wiki more prominently? Because even if the administrators here choose to stop displaying XWE so prominently, wikia's continued exposure will still limit us in many ways.

[Tango]

scorpion said:

stuff

have you elaborated more on this anywhere else, like in other threads? I'd be interested in hearing more, particularly about how this came to be and how this sort of thing is received by the school itself

[scorpion]

Sodaholic said:

Is there anything we can do to get Google to show the proper wiki more prominently?

Create more links to SLADE on more websites, and make sure they outnumber links to XWE.

Tango said:

have you elaborated more on this anywhere else, like in other threads? I'd be interested in hearing more, particularly about how this came to be and how this sort of thing is received by the school itself

If you did a search, you probably couldn't find this thread, which is in the closed Doom Builder forum.

The 3 images in the first post of that thread no longer work. But one of them is on the front page of the Doom Builder website, along with some information which CodeImp added soon after I started that thread.

The school seems to be happy about it, since the students are kept busy and are learning something in the process. At first I thought it was because they let me do my thing without any class observation by the admin people or principal, but after they started asking me to give a presentation to groups of students considering their options, they told me I gave a great presentation. So I guess the learning process outweighs the subject matter of the game.

[Devalaous]

Xaser said:

Then again, I do have like eight zillion projects that may or may not happen at any particular point, so this is just another oddball idea in the pile. :P

Hire/clone more people for Xaser Corp then!

[printz]

If this system were put in practice, people would just teach other people how to design highly detailed (Doom Builder 2 helps it) Doom 2 maps with lots of height variation, plausibility and sane detail. Less realistic maps with intuitive design and distorted reality, like original Doom 2 ones or good 1994 ones, will not be made.

[Aaron Blain]

I think Doomers are often the sort of people who are too cool for school. Am I wrong?

However, I think if we made positive efforts to advance a sort of "Doom Theory Symposium", if we made a point of talking and arguing in detail about what is best in Dooming, if everything gradually became less haphazardly instinctual and more intentional, the overall quality of map design would benefit.

If any accomplished content creators want to expound on why and how they do what they do, I would love to read it.