Any tips on coming up with a map layout?

[Breezeep]

I'm not that good at coming up with layouts. any suggestions?

[Memfis]

Don't know if my layouts are any good but what I usually do is leave some openings here and there while making areas. I don't know yet how they will be used (if at all) but if I get close to them again I try to connect stuff. So kinda improvising way with not much planning. Also I tend to avoid making rooms that are too far away from everything else so everything ends up compact and maybe this helps. Or maybe it limits me to only certain kinds of maps and I should get rid of that habit.

[Tuxlar]

1. Think of a challenge you want to make.
2. Think of a layout to implement it, or else go back to step 1. Disregard all aesthetic considerations that are not intuitively obvious.
3. Implement layout prototype.
4. If challenge sucks, decide if it's the layout's fault, or the challenge's fault. Otherwise...
5. If satisfied, repeat from step 1 for next area until bored, or finished.

[Kontra Kommando]

I like to begin with a main starting room with different exits, that I build around; creating different divergent paths the player could choose to take. I find this helps to avoid making the map linear.

[Cupboard]

1) Draw random shaped-rooms in editor. Square, circle, triangle, hexagon, pentagon.

2) Draw corridors that connect these shapes.

3) Within these corridors and original rooms, make smaller sector which create height variation, windows, lifts, crushers, donuts, and environmental hazards.

4) Add some secrets. Don't give players anything that they don't NEED in order to complete the map. Berserk pack is a good one, computer map, extra weapon/chainsaw, health/armor bonuses.

5. Make sure there is more than 1 route to the exit.

6. Add decorations and make your shapes less explicit, more panels, antechambers, skylights, switches, bars, cages, extra rooms, etc.

[joe-ilya]

Go to school and you'll come up with a layout in no time!
At least that's how I make maps if I can go to school.

[Superluigieth1]

I think of mine while watching gameplay videos.

[wesleyjohnson]

Take a map of your city and imagine it as a doom map.
Place several rooms for the industrial area and fill them with appropriate machines.
Make several rooms for the residential areas, and make them living quarters.
Make rooms for your local mall and fill them with stores.
Make rooms for power, water, and sewer.
Make the roads into corridors, big road are large corridors and small roads are small passageways.

This is a start for just about any theme you want to make it into.

[Egregor]

I usually consider level layouts as having 5 major areas. The start, the finish, and the three areas where keys can be found. Think of these areas as several interconnected rooms and halls sharing a theme. Think of the starting area as the map's 'hub'. Have all the locked key doors connect to this hub, that way the player will always pass locked doors before being able to access them with keys. (Nothing dumber than finding a locked key door but you already have the key)

Spice up backtracking with monster closets, lowering walls, and teleporting monsters. Think of each 'key area' as being either a dead end (in and out) or a loop (one way in, one way out). Consider making two key doors at either end of an area, the player will then have to choose which path to use (two way loop). Use pit drops, elevators up, lowering floors, one way doors, and teleports to create one way loops.

[Cupboard]

Definitely reward the player the more times they are "forced" to backtrack according to the flow of the level. If a player must revisit an old sequence of the UAC base he thought he cleared out (because he just grabbed a new key or flipped a mega switch, etc), it is better to reward him with some more hell knights, imps, ammo, and small bits of health to let him know he's going the right way. This can be accomplished with monster closets, teleporting-in monsters from a room outside the map, and Mapspot Things coupled with ACS scripts.

The term "backtracking" is never a sign of defeatism or discouragement, for a professional Doomer, "backtracking" is a sign of being thorough and gauging all possible areas for secrets.

Even consider adding secrets inside of monster closets when the player is forced to backtrack, for example.

[Kontra Kommando]

Much like the way I draw images, I draw up maps with no clear plan really. I like to let it evolve as I create it. I feel without having a prefabricated plan, you would be less restricted on how it will come out. A lot of times, the best works of art and music were created by accident, or on the spot. That's how I like to make my levels. Certainly, I have an overall idea of what I want. But that could be subject to change, if I come up with something cooler along the way.