Doom Dunce

[Spicy Cacodemon]

I like Doom; it's great fun and I like to make environments in Doom Builder 2. I would check out GZDoomBuilder but the temporary machine I'm using right now won't run it.

Making great maps for Doom isn't easy when you don't know ACS or C or well anything about scripting whatsoever. Variables, Action Specials, Arrays, Arguments, I have next to no idea about any of those things. I struggle to do even the most simple of tasks. So far I've just been copying parts of script from others and altering them slightly hoping it all works fine.

Is ACS something I with no programming/script knowledge can jump straight into? If not then where should I start? What should I learn and where should I learn it? For me this is a whole new world, something I've never been taught before so you could say I'm still just crawling along.

Bear in mind besides game making/editing I can't at this time think of any other reasons I'd want to learn a scripting/programming language.

[scifista42]

http://zdoom.org/wiki/ACS - See both "Subpages" and "ACS tutorial".

Knowing/learning C helps too.

[Altazimuth]

I know it may seem a bit counter-productive, but I'd strongly suggest not using ACS in a first map. Wanting to make "great maps" isn't even something that requires ACS, and there are so many amazing mods that don't use it. In my opinion, I think that you would be best off making a Boom map, or a regular old Doom format map. I understand that scripting may be enticing but I would strongly suggest against using it unless you really think you need it. If you want to mess around with UDMF or somesuch that's fine, but scripting adds a very confusing extra dimension of complexities. Outside of that, I wish you luck with your first outing!

[Melon]

I agree that if you're looking just to make Doom maps then ignoring ACS completely at first is a good idea. There's enough to wrap your head around without worrying about learning programming fundamentals at the same time. Doom and Doom 2 don't even use ACS, it's a Hexen / Heretic feature, so clearly you can make good maps without it.

If you do decide to learn ACS eventually, you might be surprised at how knowing basic programming fundamentals can end up being useful. Understanding variables and loops and stuff is really useful for things like macros in Excel or all sorts of proprietary software you'll inevitably end up using in some office job at some point in your life. You don't need to be a programmer to get some use out of programming.

I've never learned a proper programming language and everything I've learned has come off of the back of game scripting systems and loads of people I work with seem to think I'm some sort of computer genius because I can turn their incredibly tedious monthly task into a one-button-click Excel macro.

[Gez]

Melon said:

Doom and Doom 2 and Heretic don't even use ACS, it's a Hexen feature, so clearly you can make good maps without it.

Fixed.