Looking for Mapping Advice

[duckkickergames]

Alright, so I've made two wads previously (titled "Corners" and "In Plain Sight"), and from each one, I've learned valuable lessons in the way of mapping. I'll list what I've learned below, but what I want to know is if there's anything else I should know for good mapping.

LESSONS IN MAPPING:

- Use varying textures and room heights.

- Base areas in maps around enemies' various attributes.

- There is a such thing as too much ammo.

- Never put a player against a strong enemy with a weak weapon.

- Not every port allows for jumping.

[exl]

Contrast in brightness (sector light level) can make an area look much more interesting.

Lights attract the player's vision. You can use this to subtly guide them through an area.

Don't be afraid to scrap an entire area if it just isn't fun to play or looks uninteresting despite your best efforts.

Long endless combat can be fatiguing to some players. Inserting simple puzzles or less monster-dense areas in a map can give the player a brief rest.

Test your map as much as you can and keep iterating on monster\ammo\health placement. Then get honest feedback from players who have never played your map before, and test some more.

On the opposite side of the previous point, if you leave your map alone for a good while (days or weeks), you will come back and see flaws and room for improvement where you saw none before. This works best halfway through and near the end of a project.

[scifista42]

Don't let anything in your map repeat too often, or it becomes boring or even downright disgusting (if exaggerated). This includes:

-orthogonality
-symmetry
-corridors
-rectangular rooms
-particular detail structures
-texture usage
-monster types, placement and usage
-too much darkness everywhere / too much brightness everywhere
-anything

(an absolute randomness is a bad thing too)

Simply put, make sure to put fresh ideas into every part of the map. Make it varied, interestingly shaped, interconnected, employing engine advantages like height / light differences etc., and balance the fights so that they're (at least a bit) challenging AND don't get tedious at the same time (player should be able to kill monsters fast-enough before he gets bored).

[Memfis]

Don't listen to feedback unless you can honestly agree with it. If people are complaining about something that you have no problem with, don't pay attention to them. Don't read forum threads about mapping often and when you do, read them very carefully. They are full of dogmatism that seems convincing at first but really just makes you a part of the reason why Doom maps are so unimaginative nowadays. Ideally never talk to other mappers so that they don't influence your preferences, just develop your own style. If necessary, get out of the house and go live in a forest at least 100 kilometers away from the civilisation. That way those filthy interconnection worshipers will never get to you!

[40oz]

duckkickergames said:

LESSONS IN MAPPING:

- Use varying textures and room heights.

- Base areas in maps around enemies' various attributes.

- There is a such thing as too much ammo.

- Never put a player against a strong enemy with a weak weapon.

- Not every port allows for jumping.

-varying textures, lighting, and floor/ceiling heights are dooms strongest points. It can help a lot to look at the original Doom IWADs or other mappers' work for inspiration. If your maps look anything like wolf3d, youre not taking advantage of what doom mapping is capable of.

-yes this can be wise. Many monsters come pre equipped with both a long range attack and melee attack, so most circumstances are good. Revenants, archviles, and chaingunners tend to have no trouble with long distances, and monsters like hell barons and mancubi are your worst enemies up close. Its good to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the players weapons as well. Super shotguns are deadly up close, while the rocket launcher does about the same damage but is better over distances by being harmful to the player up close. Monsters naturally walk towards the player which makes the ssg a very powerful weapon, but to put monsters on high ledges or on the other side of a gorge might push the player to vary his weapon usage.

-an abundance of ammo increases the allowance of increased margin of error. Giving the player too much ammo essentially means he can spray shots wildly until all opposition is dead with no penalty for missing. You want to encourage the player to try to be a little precise, but not starve him of resources in the process. Giving the player too little ammo can make seemingly trivial monster encounters needlessly stressful. In most cases just giving the player just enough ammunition plus a little more in case the player makes mistakes is often the best way to go. and dont forget, zombiemen, shotgun guys and chaingun guys drop ammunition when they die. Shotgun guys in particular drop shotguns with 4 shells each. A LOT of damage can be done with just 4 shells if the player has a super shotgun.

- in most cases, yes, having to fight a heavy monster with a garbage weapon can be very time consuming and tedious. We've killed all of dooms monsters many times over the course of two decades, so not giving the player a weapon to use against them only really drags out the process, not so much increases the difficulty. However, there are situations that happen in the doom IWADs a lot where you will be presented with monsters without sufficient weaponry to kill them, and the player is expected to flee and look for a weapon while being hunted by the monsters. Sort of like Pac man, where you're vulnerable to ghosts until you get those big orbs. The principles are the same.

-and yes, jumping is a pretty unconventional thing in doom these days. It was cool when it was new but for the most part most of us have gone backwards to assume that maps weren't designed with a jumping feature in mind, and make the assumption that jumping will "break" the map, should he accidentally reach a location he was supposed to find another means to access, or risk falling into an area that can't be escaped.

[scifista42]

Memfis said:

That way those filthy interconnection worshipers will never get to you!

Hehe, I didn't think I was that dogmatic mapper. Anyway, what's good on having a map not interconnected? I'm curious about the answer, I might even agree with it, really. :)

[obake]

40oz said:

-and yes, jumping is a pretty unconventional thing in doom these days. It was cool when it was new but for the most part most of us have gone backwards to assume that maps weren't designed with a jumping feature in mind, and make the assumption that jumping will "break" the map, should he accidentally reach a location he was supposed to find another means to access, or risk falling into an area that can't be escaped.

It really matters on the wad being played.

The nice thing is, nowadays if a mapper wants to let players know they aren't supposed to use jump or crouch, they can simply disable those features in MAPINFO (BtSX comes to mind.)

[DaniJ]

obake said:

The nice thing is, nowadays if a mapper wants to let players know they aren't supposed to use jump or crouch, they can simply disable those features in MAPINFO (BtSX comes to mind.)

That seems rather backward to me. Surely the only logical interpretation is that jumping is not designed for unless stated otherwise, given that vanilla doesn't even implement a jump mechanic.

[scifista42]

DaniJ said:

That seems rather backward to me. Surely the only logical interpretation is that jumping is not designed for unless stated otherwise, given that vanilla doesn't even implement a jump mechanic.

Not every modern-day player realize it, mainly newbies. Even experiened players might forget/disregard prohibition of jumping and break the map worse than intended, or simply play it differently than intended and then see visual bugs or get stuck or break progression etc. That's what the nojump/nocrouch options are good for. ZDoom players will lose some of their advantages compared to other players, for the map's goodness.

[DaniJ]

Yeah, I do understand the reasoning behind the addition of those features. However, I don't agree with the above interpretation because the user that believes it will make incorrect assumptions about the mods they play (i.e., assuming that jumping is designed-for because the mod hasn't disabled it).

[scifista42]

One of D2INO playtesters used rocketjumping with mouselook to get into places where he shouldn't have got to, and then he insisted he got there in a "legit" way. D2INO already had jumping and crouching disabled at that point.

All I say is, not everybody see things in the same "right" (?) "commonly accepted" (?) way.

[DaniJ]

The point I am making is that there is only one, valid interpretation of the nojump/nocrouch feature, in the context of a DOOM mod.

Yes users may interpret it differently but there is only one interpretation that makes sense as a general rule of thumb.

[Graf Zahl]

The problem in general with these things is that the decisions were made back between 1998-2000 and as a result tons of maps rely on the questionable default settings. Back then there was little to no awareness about keeping default settings compatible.

It's simply too late to fix it without breaking a shitload of stuff.

[DaniJ]

Agreed. I'm not suggesting there is a solution or that anything can/should be done about it.

As I see it the only thing we can do is to try to educate users so they don't make invalid assumptions when playing or indeed making mods in the future. Hence my comments about the matter in a "Mapping Advice" thread.

[scifista42]

DaniJ said:

As I see it the only thing we can do is to try to educate users so they don't make invalid assumptions when playing or indeed making mods in the future.

And I say that there's a simpler solution - use those jumping / crouching disabling tools to make it clear. :)

[DaniJ]

You don't get it scifista42, those features are not universally supported in all ports, let alone in vanilla. If the user uses this as a way to gauge whether a mod intends to allow jumping they'll make the wrong assumption when they play a mod that doesn't even use MAPINFO.

[scifista42]

In the future mods, I meant. It's always possible to import MAPINFO and it will just be disregarded by vanilla and other ports.

"Educating" players / mappers to make competent assumptions about "compatibility" is (of course) a good thing! What I suggested just makes things simpler in many standard cases.

I get a feeling that we're both right, just speaking about slightly different things. I'm sorry if you view it as an argue, I view a discussion like this as a good exchange of ideas / opinions. But for all cases, once again, sorry. We've derailed the thread, mainly I.

[DaniJ]

Yeah, we're both talking about the same thing but from different perspectives. I, from the perspective of an end user looking for a rule of thumb to apply when playing existing mods. Yourself, from the perspective of a mod author wishing to prevent ambiguity wrt their mod.

(The problem with the MAPINFO approach is that its not a universal feature in ports, let alone in vanilla, so it cannot be used as a deciding rule that applies to all mods in all ports/vanilla.)

[BlueFeena]

I'm fairly certain ZDoom specific lumps can be added to vanilla wads as long as the author places the lumps carefully. I have a text file at the bottom of one of my vanilla wads, and vanilla Doom simply ignores it. You could easily change that into a MAPINFO lump that ensures some limited ZDoom rules and compatibility. Ditto for just about any other source port I imagine, as vanilla is by far the pickiest.